I have very mixed feelings about this KAIROS controversy.
For those who haven’t been following the news recently, KAIROS is a liberal Christian social justice agency that, until recently, has received a lot of funding from the federal government to perform aid work in the third world. In late 2009, the Canadian International Development Agency (or CIDA, the group responsible for KAIROS’ funding) denied KAIROS’ request for continued funding. KAIROS was dependent on CIDA for over $7 million worth of cash, so this denial was quite the heavy blow.
At the time, Bev Oda, the Minister for International Cooperation, stated that it was CIDA’s choice to deny funding. It was later uncovered that the word “not” had been scribbled into the request for funding, which Oda initially denied writing, but now takes responsibility.
The opposition is understandably furious. This minister, who has not been asked to resign by Stephen Harper, either lied in Parliament or at the earlier commission, and essentially denied funding to this group for no obvious reason.
Now, I’m fine with our government cutting funding to religious organizations, since I don’t believe we should be involved in them, but that’s not what’s happening.
Under Harper’s government, funding of religious organizations has skyrocketed with over $26 million in economic stimulus being disbursed to conservative Christian colleges like Trinity Western University which received $2.6 million of that money. [1] Another $2.5 million went to build a Evangelical Christian community centre in Winnipeg for the group Youth for Christ. And another $5.6 million has gone to religious groups in Hamilton.
So it looks like our government is okay with funding religious activities – just so long as they’re the right (and Right) kind of Christian.
[1] M. McDonald, “The Armageddon Factor.” Random House (2010) p. 245.