Interim Staff
MP Rachael Thomas (Lethbridge, Alberta) told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) targets pro-life advocates.
On Sept. 24 Conservative MP Rachael Thomas (Lethbridge, Alberta) told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) targets pro-life advocates.
She said that CAHN has been funded by the federal government and that in its activities, including a grant to hire an activist journalist, include investigating and shaming “far right groups and individuals,” including Catholics and pro-life organizations. She said that investigating so-called right-wing groups, writing about them, and disseminating such stories to the corporate media “only serves to divide people” and “spurs further polarization.”
She questioned Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Steven Guilbeault about the federal funding for CAHN. Guilbeault said he would investigate if CAHN’s activities do not align with the Liberal government’s values.
Two days after Thomas’s questioning of Guilbeault, CAHN executive director Evan Balgord appeared on left-wing journalist Rachel Gilmore’s podcast Bubble Pop. Balgord said, “it’s not true” that the organization targets pro-life groups.
Jeff Gunnarson, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, said in a statement, “Our organization and the work we do in defending the sanctity of life have been the target of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network on multiple occasions.”
In July 2021, CAHN produced an article attacking the free speech rights of pro-life groups that use abortion-victim photography, describing such depictions as “a form of hate speech” against women.
In 2024, CAHN released a booklet, “40 Ways to Fight the Far-Right,” in which the organization said to “organize counter-demonstrations” against supposed far-right events, including the “annual anti-abortion ‘March for Life’ on Parliament Hill.” An earlier edition of “40 Ways to Fight the Far-Right,” listed CLC as a “far-right” group although it later scrapped the designation after CLC’s legal counsel approached CAHN.
In March 2025, CAHN produced an article targeting one of the National March for Life’s key speakers, Fr. Calvin Robinson, a Christian nationalist and encouraged concerned Canadians to put pressure on the venue hosting the dinner and youth conference to cancel the conference.
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