How vindictive is the Harper government? So vindictive, critics say, that it cuts funding for aid agencies whose politics it doesn’t like. The best known of these is Kairos, an umbrella group of leading churches that has been doing good works for years. Another is Alternatives, a Montreal-based human-rights group. Needless to say, other aid groups are mightily upset, and fear they could be next.
Until now, both of these outfits have been funded through the Canadian International Development Agency. Kairos stands to lose nearly half its funding – $7.1-million over the next few years – and Alternatives around $3-million. The minister in charge of CIDA says foreign-aid priorities have changed. But critics say the real reason is that both groups have been highly critical of Israel. Kairos supporters are especially outraged at Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who singled out the agency’s position in a recent speech. They say he unjustly smeared the group as anti-Semitic. Church groups have passed resolutions “deploring” the government, and the Anglicans have been asked to lobby Parliament to get the funding back. The Toronto Star has written editorials charging that groups that don’t toe the right-wing line will get their funding cut.
But the real issue isn’t the Tories’ vindictiveness, or whether Mr. Kenney was out of line. (In my view, he wasn’t.) The real issue is why groups such as these should get any public money at all.
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Canadians are forced to support these organizations even if we completely disagree with the bigotry some of these organizations promote, it is disgusting. None should recieve funding, if they are so worthy and representative, they can surely raise their own money, they don’t need mine.
I’m completely behind Margaret on this one.
“Why is that?”
The questions keep coming.
Not only should NGO’s NOT be financed by public dollars, they should be deliberately ignored by governments. They are leveraged up far beyond their true importance.
Hundreds of Canadian magazines are subsidized by the Federal government.
See here: http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/conslttn/fcm-cmf/107-eng.cfm
Maybe we should stop that too.
#4, magazines are a completely different issue. A lot of Canadian mags could go the way of the dodo and I wouldn’t miss them.
NGOs are another topic and I think they should all be defunded. If one really examined their financial stmts you would find that most of the money goes for fundraising and salaries and administration costs. And, they spend a lot of time harassing the govt of the day.
It would appear that many of the NGO’s involved here are nothing more than professional lobby groups that lobby the Socialist cause, while sprinkling in Green and Muslim toppings. Nasty Beasts.