Honourable senators, in recent weeks I have received dozens of emails and personal representations from people at home concerned that their constitutional rights are under attack. Applicants for the Canada Summer Jobs 2018 funds must now sign an attestation that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including reproductive rights. People are rightly concerned that in order to receive funding for important community activities they must forfeit their constitutional right to freedom of belief, and forfeit their constitutional right to hold views that differ from the government’s on religion or social policy or matters of conscience.

If they want to hire a student, they are left with two unpalatable choices: lie on the form, or sign a piece of paper with which they disagree, again, just to hire a summer student.

In this government’s pursuit of promoting their personal and political vision, they have forgotten one key point: Canadians have the Charter right to freedom of expression, belief and opinion. A person is required to follow the law just as much as the Constitution allows them to disagree with it.

Since I was 17 years old I have been working for a woman’s right to choose. I opened the first Women’s Centre at the University of Regina way back when, but freedom of choice is just that. I don’t pick and choose which Charter and constitutional rights people must follow. I don’t insist everyone agrees with me or I won’t raise their concerns here in the Senate. I can disagree with one’s belief while supporting their right to hold that belief.

The vast majority of applicants do not engage in political activities, certainly not at summer camp or at local museums or community centres. Being pro-choice or pro-life should not be a factor in whether you have access to government job creation funds when the task at hand is canoeing or swimming.

In one letter I received, a resident stated:

For some of these children, this week of camp is the only positive experience they will have all summer.

They went on to say:

I feel that this requirement violates our freedom of religion, and our freedom of speech in a country that was built on these very values.

Punishing organizations that just want to give youth a great summer job and experience is detrimental to the valuable community work these organizations carry out. As Star columnist Chantal Hébert points out:

If anything, government efforts to force-march the electorate to a preordained vision of society have a high potential of achieving the opposite.

This attestation in its current form will achieve just that — the opposite of its intent.