Terrible Depths

The Religious Right, Stephen Harper and The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada

Gary Goodyear’s suggestion that evolution was a theological issue of faith got several bloggers, including myself, interested in the growing influence of the religious right in Canadian politics. At the time of the comments, bloggers hit the roof. The issue died down very quickly, though – now there are just a bunch of leftists, atheists and agnostics quietly simmering and waiting for some other Conservative MP to make a misguided remark so that they can blow up again.

In the meantime, therefore, I thought I’d stir the pot again – and simultaneously extend my Following the Money series in new directions. The occasion for these remarks are a pair of op-eds which appeared in major newspapers last week, each written by Andrea Mrozek of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: “Marriage Benefits Us All” in the National Post (since syndicated throughout the Asper network, e.g. in the Windsor Star and the Calgary Herald). Incidentally, Mrozek also writes at the conservative group blog ProWomanProLife, which, despite the name, doesn’t always seem overly pro-woman. But whatever. Both of these articles argue in favour of the traditional family – one against divorce, the other against gay marriage.

Mrozek works for the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an Ottawa-based think tank, and in fairness, her pieces are a far cry from the work that the IMFC used to do. That’s because, a year and a half ago, the organization officially stopped its lobbying program on gay marriage. Director David Quist, at the time, suggested that there were few gay marriages going on and that the issue was done and dead, so his little advocacy group was moving on to other issues. The fact that polygamy is now in the Canadian courts, thanks to the fundamentalist Mormons out in B.C., presumably gave them the window they wanted to jump back into the fray.

So, who is the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, anyways? The connections it holds are intriguing and disturbing: American family groups, Canadian right-wing think tanks, and – wait for it – the Conservative Party of Canada, right up to the level of Stephen Harper:

The IMFC is the offspring of the American-controlled pro-family, anti-gay marriage lobby group, Focus on the Family, until recently controlled by evangelical power figure James Dobson. It was founded in 2006 with an agenda that could basically summed up as “everything the religious right cares about”: family laws, age of consent laws (those went up under the Conservatives, incidentally), divorce, euthanasia, taxes, and palliative care. Its founders gave some interviews to the sympathetic evangelical periodical Christian Week at the time, and the weekly reported that these positions would be approached “all from a Christian perspective.” Interestingly, the IMFC itself is no longer in any hurry to promote its Christian background; its official introductory pamphlet says merely that it exists to take “a growing body of scientific research” and turn it into “practical ideas.”

In 2006, the Edmonton Journal covered the creation of the new group and wrote that “their mobilization was not ignited by Harper.” Oh, really? Well, maybe not directly. But let’s move through the list of employees. The first is executive director Dave Quist. For six years, Quist was the executive assistant to Alliance and then Conservative MP and former Baptist pastor Reid Elly. He ran for the Conservatives in 2004, lost, and then spent a year working as Stephen Harper’s director of operations. There’s about a five-month gap between the time he left Harper’s office and the time that the new think tank was announced in the media. Quite a number of his old Conservative colleagues were in attendance at the grand opening, including Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney.

Mrozek, the author of the recent newspaper op-eds, is listed as the Manager of Research and Communications. Her background is in journalism, but her recent work was at the right-wing Western Standard (her bio on IMFC generalizes to only “an independent news magazine in Calgary,” just to make sure people don’t make that connection), and at the even more right-wing Fraser Institute in B.C.

The researchers are a mixed bag of right-wing evangelicals. Peter Jon Mitchell is actually imported from the parent Focus on the Family organization in the U.S. – he used to work at their Institute in Colorado. Kelly Dean Schwartz is a psychologist in Calgary. Frank Jones is a retired StatsCan number cruncher who is also listed at another religious right think tank, the Christian Commitment Research Institute.

Derek Miedema, the last researcher, used to work for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, with its own possible ties to the Harper government. His bio on the Institute webpage says merely that that was preceded by a stint as a legislative assistant for an unnamed MP. I instantly suspected Conservative, and my suspicions were confirmed by a jog over to the website of Miedema’s alma mater, the religious school Redeemer University College, which is less circumspect. Miedema was the legislative assistant for Mr. David Sweet, the Conservative MP for Ancaster-Dundas. Sweet, not incidentally, is the former CEO of Promise Keepers Canada, in which function he told a journalist in 2001 that men were “natural influencers” and women were “natural followers” (his explanation for the notably unbiblical claim that “Jesus called men only”).

Interestingly, both Miedema and Jones have links to another evangelical group, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. That group has its own ties to the Conservative government – and one of their former anti-gay marriage lobbyists in Ottawa recently got appointed to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Jones served on the Fellowship’s Advisory Council on Research, and Miedema was a researcher for them.

Sunday March 29, 2009
Terrible Depths Used by permission

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Blogs:
Pulpit and Politics: Harper promotes religious rightists
Douglas Todd, The Search: Evangelicals promoted to top jobs by Harper
Chyco: The Evangelicalization of The Conservative Party
Bene Diction Blogs On: 2008 Ottawa Focus on the Family fellow rebuked by American Anthropological Association
Slap Upside the Head: 2008. Anti-Gay Lobbyists warn Canada not to sign UN Initiative

Frank Stirk ChristianWeek, February 3, 2006. Focus on the Family Opens Ottawa think-tank
Richard Foot The Edmonton Journal, Febrary 18, 2006. Christians eager to flex political muscle
Gudrun Schultz Lifesite, February 2006 Focus on the Family Opens Institute of Marriage and Family Ottawa