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ACTION CANADA FOR POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
(ACPD: A FRONT FOR U.S. POPULATION CONTROL AGENCIES)

On May 26, 2004 REAL Women received an e-mail from a pro-life NGO (non-government organization) working in Latin America. The e-mail asked for background information on the Canadian NGO called Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD) an NGO, which, according to the e-mail, was "giving a lot of help and funding to the pro-abortion movement in Latin America."

Background to ACPD

REAL Women was well acquainted with ACPD.

It was established by Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC) in 1997 and was federally incorporated in 1998. It shared premises with PPFC for some time until it moved to its own separate office.

Its purpose or mission statement is to mobilize support both within Canada and internationally for population control, abortion (sexual and reproductive rights) and the homosexual agenda, including same-sex marriage.

At its inception in September, 1997 ACPD appointed lesbian activist and lawyer, Katherine McDonald, as its executive director, who still holds that position today. Ms. McDonald was formerly a member of the Board of International Planned Parenthood and served for a time as Chairwoman of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council of Women, a position from which she was subsequently dismissed.

ACPD Activities

It is obvious that ACPD does not lack for funds. Its executive director, Ms. McDonald, flits from one side of the world to the other pushing abortion and homosexual rights at international conferences. She has also been a member of the Canadian delegation at several conferences, which means that all her expenses are paid, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer.

For example, Ms. McDonald was a member of the Canadian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 2003 and 2004, where she lobbied extensively for a resolution in support of homosexual rights. In July 2004, Ms. McDonald was in Puerto Rico as a member of the Canadian delegation pushing abortion rights for women.

She also attended a UN meeting in New York in 2000, as a member of the Canadian delegation. The purpose of the meeting was to review the implementation of the population control provisions of the UN Population and Development Conference (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994.

In between these official jaunts, Ms. McDonald has kept busy organizing conferences, such as its meeting in 2003 in Ottawa of the Asian and Pacific Alliance to advocate ICPD's international agenda. She co-chaired a press conference in October 2005 at Toronto's Sutton Place Hotel along with the UN Family Planning Fund for Population activities(UNFPA), promoting its annual "State of the World Population Report". This press conference also featured the launch of the 3rd edition of the ACPD publication on UN treaties called, "The Application of Human Rights to Reproductive and Sexual Health Law." This publication was nothing more than a lobbying guide for pro-abortion/homosexual NGOs to get abortion and homosexual rights included in UN reports and treaties.

During the 2004 federal election, on June 4, 2004, just two weeks before that vote, Katherine McDonald, together with Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL) and Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) [so called] held a press conference in Ottawa to warn voters against casting a ballot for a Conservative Party candidate. These pro-abortion organizations expressed their concern about the "hidden agenda" of the Conservative Party, which was supposed to strip away abortion rights in Canada. In its press release, Katherine McDonald is quoted as saying:

We believe that this issue will be a deciding factor for many women, especially those who were considering support for the Conservative Party.

Subsequent to the 2006 federal election, ACPD completed a post election analysis of MPs' attitudes towards abortion and same-sex marriage. ACPD, of course, is one of the left-wing NGOs seeking to restore the Court Challenges Program (see article "Conservative Government Cuts Left-Wing Agencies".)

Where Does ACPD Receive its Funding?

Even when it acquired a separate office from Planned Parenthood, ACPD continued its relationship with that organization. According to ACPD's 2000 - 2001 annual report, it stated:

During the year, our office moved to new quarters separate from the premises hitherto shared with Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC). We at ACPD owe a great debt of gratitude to the PPFC for its encouragement and support since our inception, and we have continued a cooperative relationship with it.

The "co-operative relationship" between Planned Parenthood and ACPD is due to the fact that ACPD, because it is a lobby group, does not have a charitable tax status and cannot issue receipts for tax purposes. Thus, it is linked with Planned Parenthood of Canada in regard to donors who request a tax receipt. In effect, ACPD acts as an agent of Planned Parenthood which receives donations requiring a charitable status.

This was confirmed by a letter from APCD to a donor which stated:

Regarding the information I gave you about a donation receipt, I have asked others about attaining the charitable status and apparently we will not be eligible as we act mainly as an advocacy organization. However, Planned Parenthood would issue you a receipt and forward your donation on to us if you would prefer to handle it that way.

This would appear to be illegal.

Initial funding for ACPD came from Planned Parenthood Canada, and US population organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and the U.S. Population Action Council. According to the 2005 financial report of the notorious U.S. Ford Foundation (See Reality Sept/Oct 2006), it gave ACPD $100,000 in 2005. It is probable that ACPD has received other grants from the Ford Foundation in previous years as well - but only the 2005 financial report is available on the Internet. The only financial statement ACPD has posted on its website was in 1999 when, in just after one year of operation, it recorded revenue of $416,032 of which $214,999 came from the Canadian government.

REAL Women was curious as to which federal departments were handing over grants to such an organization. Accordingly, we applied, under the Access to Information Act to a number of federal government departments. From this, we learned the following:

Funding to the ACPD

It was our request, under the Access to Information Act, to Foreign Affairs that interested us the most, as Foreign Affairs supports and promotes the activities of ACPD. This is reflected in ACPD's appointment to Canadian delegations and also the pride of place given ACPD at all the Foreign Affairs consultations, as witnessed by REAL Women. We knew that Foreign Affairs had at least given ACPD funds to organize a series of regional forums across Canada in 1999 in connection with the UN's five-year review of the UN Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. Yet, in its reply of October 29, 2004, Foreign Affairs claimed that it did not provide any funds to ACPD. REAL Women appealed this inaccuracy to John Reid, the then Information Commissioner of Canada. On November 28, 2005, Foreign Affairs finally acknowledged that it had, in fact, awarded ACPD funding as listed above.

ACPD Funded by U.S. Population Control Agencies

It also seems that in addition to funding from the federal government that the U.S. population control agencies are generously funding ACPD in order for it to allow it to work in third world countries to promote abortion and homosexuality. This generous U.S. funding is undoubtedly prompted by the fact that Canadian NGOs can achieve better results than American NGOs because the latter are viewed with suspicion in developing nations which fear so-called "American Imperialism." Canadian NGOs are not nearly as formidable to developing nations and this is the realistic reason why U.S. population control agencies are so generously funding ACPD to carry out its various works abroad.

In short, through organizations such as ACPD as its front, U.S. population control foundations and the Canadian federal government are able to introduce a political agenda in a foreign country and to manage political changes there that U.S. NGOs could not achieve. This deceptive activity amounts to political interference (it is nothing less) in foreign countries, using the Canadian NGO, ACPD, as its front.

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