Amidst the faux drama in QP this week about the apparent discrepancy between the Dogwood Initiative getting funding for an anti-Kinder Morgan activist while the government refuses to give funding to groups that use such summer jobs grants to pay for students to distribute fliers of aborted foetuses, or to groups that refuse to hire LGBT students, I find myself losing patience with the constant refrains that if the Conservatives engaged in this kind of behaviour, there would be riots in the streets.

I hate these “flip it around” suppositions because they all happened already. Remember when the Conservative government defunded pretty much every women’s advocacy group? The howls didn’t amount to much. https://t.co/GlgID3Vas5 pic.twitter.com/e1t2U89kML

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 27, 2018

Reminder: the Conservatives did engage in that kind of behaviour. They wantonly defunded all manner of organizations, whether they ensured that women in developing countries could access safe abortions, whether they advocated for women’s equality here in Canada, or if they were ecumenical social justice organizations that engaged in education and outreach at home and abroad. They defunded the Court Challenges Programme which helped ensure that minority groups like the LGBT community could do the work of bringing their challenges to the Supreme Court of Canada (because it’s expensive and law firms can’t do it all pro bono). They cut funding to HIV and AIDS services organizations and diverted all manner of funding to a vaccine initiative that they then flaked out on and frittered away millions of dollars so that they had no impact (and the results of those cuts are still being felt today as the current government wants to shift funding priorities to prevention). They prioritized refugee resettlement for Christians in the Middle East over Muslims. They engaged in abusive auditing over charitable organizations that opposed them ideologically. All of this happened, in the most petty and mean-spirited manner at that, and there weren’t riots in the streets. There were a handful of protests, and the media barely mentioned a number of these cuts.

Is the way that the government handled this attestation on the Summer Jobs Grants heavy-handed? Yes. Was the wording clumsy? Probably. But groups aren’t being denied funding because they’re faith-based – they’re being denied funding because they’re refusing to either sign the attestation, or they’ve tried to rewrite it to suit themselves, despite the fact that the government has said repeatedly that “core mandate” refers not to values or beliefs, but daily activities. In all of the rhetoric and pearl-clutching, the actual facts are being distorted and need to be called back into focus. We also need to focus on the fact that the real problem here is that MPs get to sign off on those grants, which is a violation of their roles as guardians of the public purse, and instead makes them agents of the government in distributing spending (clouding their accountability role). But sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this constant invocation that “if the Conservatives did it…” is bogus and amnesiac. They did it. All the time.

Good reads:

• Apparently Justin Trudeau’s officials are warning him that ignoring Sinhalese Sri Lankans in favour of Tamils is causing diplomatic strain.
• Jim Carr disputes the story that there were directions to rig the Trans Mountain expansion approval process.
• Chrystia Freeland is cancelling her appearance at a NATO meeting in Brussels – a Very Big Deal – in order to carry on with NAFTA talks this weekend.
• A study shows that new NAFTA rules on the auto sector could hike prices and act as a multi-billion tax on new cars. Gosh, you think?
• While Catherine McKenna is offering to strike a joint science panel with BC on ocean protection, BC filed their court reference, which is mostly NEB conditions.
• Carolyn Bennett is asking Catholic bishops to meet with residential schools survivors to talk about the need for a proper papal apology.
• The PBO says that the government may be underestimating the cost of changes to the Working Income Tax Benefit by as much as $1 billion (depending on take-up).
• A Liberal-dominated Commons committee is also recommending the taxation of web giants. The government says they’re coordinating with OECD partners.
• Because of the large number of opioid deaths, police chiefs are now studying the issue of drug decriminalization as a possible solution.
• The government came out with a plan to assist with protecting IP in order to help foster more commercialization of R&D in Canada.
• Is “March Madness” back in the civil service, or did Shared Services just save $6.6 million by bulk-buying 31,000 smart phones at the end of the fiscal year?
• The Chief of Defence Staff has apparently kept up emails with VADM Mark Norman, as Norman begins his breach of trust trial.
• The UK has given Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust the Franklin Expedition wrecks as a gift.
• Documents show that delaying the move out of Center Block by a few months to a year would cause renovation costs to escalate.
• Here are more of the responses from Katie Telford in her conversation with Paul Wells on Wednesday night.
• Maxime Bernier stands by his comments about “fake Conservatives” winning Andrew Scheer the leadership.
• Jagmeet Singh had to confer with Guy Caron publicly during a scrum about the party’s position on the gun control bill, because he apparently doesn’t know his files.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column explains yesterday’s NDP Supply Day motion on demanding a papal apology for residential schools.
• Robert Hiltz offers some cautionary notes for media covering unfolding situations, using some unfortunate tweets from this week’s van attack as object lessons.

Odds and ends:

The head of the Canadian Forces’ public affairs is taking on a new position as advisor to the Governor General. His specialization is information warfare.

Tristin Hopper explains why Albertans who criticize Victoria’s raw sewage dumping is a bit of a red herring argument.

Help Routine Proceedings expand. Support my Patreon.