MP Sloan calls out Liberal “ideological colonization of Africa”

On February 26th, Conservative Party leadership candidate MP Derek Sloan called out the Liberals foreign funding of abortion as “ideological colonization of Africa” and subsequently committed to ending foreign abortion funding.

Sloan, in an email to supporters of his leadership bid, laid out what he saw as the issue with the Liberals government’s current program.

Judging from his government’s “feminist international assistance policy,” unveiled in 2017, Trudeau wants to dazzle the people who call themselves “international development experts,” and he’s using billions of your taxpayer dollars to do it.

For Trudeau’s Liberals, the ideological colonization of Africa is the cornerstone of Canada’s foreign policy, and it brings with it the Orwellian term “funding women’s and girls’ health.”

What that means is funding abortion in Africa.

The Liberals had planned to increase the international funding for “ women and girls’ health” by $1.4 billion by 2023 on top of the current $1.1 billion spendings that the program already receives.

Under Harper’s Conservative government, the government still had the international assistance fund, but it was under the Muskoka Initiative  Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, which did not include any abortion funding.

Sloan’s main issue with the current Liberal program is the rather insistent focus on funding abortion in poorer countries rather than more pressing healthcare issues.

Pushing a socially-progressive “feminist” policy on socially traditional countries looks more like ideological engineering and control of third world countries, offering there people healthcare funding, but only for ‘progressive’ procedures. 

To a more social Conservative MP like Sloan, the Liberals program feels like a purely ideological project that doesn’t care to meet the more pressing matter in the third world of sustaining life and instead assists in ending the lives of unborn children.

As these are government programs that are funded by taxpayers, the funding of abortion services, especially internationally, would be seen as a violation of values by many socially conservative voters. 

Sloan’s plan to end the international funding of abortion services may not be a hot topic to the socially liberal wing of the Conservative party membership, but Sloan may be able to pull in substantial amounts of social conservative support during the leadership race if he remains dedicated to pushing such issues during the campaign.