Nice to see Focus on the Family Canada get the attention of a reporter, and another reporter mention the surprised reporter’s coverage of  The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. Douglas Todd writes about religion for The Vancouver sun, and one of his colleagues got a bit of surprise when he saw a’ family friendly cities’ press release and started looking into it.
Douglas Todd: Should marriage lobby group be more transparent about religion?
Chad Skelton: ‘Institute’ behind family friendly rankings backed by religious right?
And yes, Skelton explains in his blog comments why Institute is in quotes. Good. One more reporter educated is one less reporter fooled.
A few years ago The Institute for Marriage and Family Canada has a research fellow of staff who was roundly rebuked by the American Anthropological Association. I wrote the Institute about Glenn T. Stanton, and did not get a response. Andrea Mrozek has been mentioned in a few blog posts also.
What was unexpected, during my quick tour of the institute’s Ottawa offices, was a telling omission in  its decor: no photos of the avuncluar Dobson stared down from its walls and his countless books and publications were nowhere in sight. So eager is the IMFC to distance itself from Dobson’s controversial political role int eh U.S. that, shortly after its opening, Quist made a point of telling me that he had never met the Focus founder nor had he visited his Colorado Springs lair where nearly a thousand employees dispense Dobson’s wares from an eight-eight-acre compound with its own postal code.Quist underlined that his bosses were in Langley, B.C., where Focus on the Family’s independent Canadian affiliate is based in more modest quarters: an upsale mall on the edge of town. But while his disclaimer of ties to Focus on the Family’s U.S. operation my be legally accurate, his Canadian board includes two top officials from the American parent organization, including president and CEO Jim Daly, Dobson’s chosen institution heir. Indeed, when the Montreal Gazette examined the group’s U.S. annual reports in 2005, it discovered contributions for computer, boracast and technical support services to the Canadian brance valued at $1.6 million over four years. page 86
With an annual operating budget of nearly half a million dollars provided by two windfall donations – one from a foundation, the other from an anonymous Canadian philanthropist – the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada was ready to open in the fall of 2005, but the election call convinced its board to wait. “We didn’t want to be seen as an offshoot of the Conservative Party,” explains Quit’s boss, Derek Rogusky, executive vice-presidet for policy. When it finally did throw open its doors less than a month after Harper’s victory, 20 MPs showed up for the festivities, including two of the best-known names in the new Conservative cabint, Jason kenney and Stockwell Day. Excitement was high as conservative Christians cotemplated being heard in Ottawa for the first time in years. “Under previous governments, a lot of us were branded as bogeyman, as somehow unCanadian for our beliefs,” Rogusky told a reporter. “I think that has changed with Harper becoming prime minister.” Â page 89
By that benchmark,  his organization was an immediate sensation, well on its way to emulating the Fraser Institute’s feat of shaking off references to it’s ideological roots. When Quist was quoted, he was cited only as the head of an institute whose  name was already a worthy-sounding mouthful: few reporters bothered to add that it was a subsidiary of Focus on the Family Canada, and there part of the Colorado-based empire of James. Dobson. Similarly, IMFC’s research manager, Andrea Mrozek, who had worked for both the Fraser Institute and the defunct Western Standard, became a regular presence on the conservative commentary pages of the National Post, where she was almost never identified by her Focus ties. Whipping off breezy opinion pieces under titles such as “Good Riddance, national Day Care” and “The New face of Feminism” – a tribute to Sarah Palin – Mrozek offered a contemporary spin on Focus on the Family’s time-worn preoccupations without the baggage of being linked to the increasingly controversial Dr. Dobson. pages 90-91 The Armageddon Factor The rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada Marci McDonald Random House May 2010
Darrel Reid is now in the PMO (since August 2009 he has has been the PM’s Deputy Chief of Staff). James Dobson left FotF – three months ago he started a radio show with his son Ryan, Jim Daly is now president of FotF in Colorado Springs.
Ms. Mrozek is still manager of Research and Communications for the IMFC, and still writes for the National Post. David Quist is still  the Executive Director of IMFC, and Derek Rogusky is Sr. Vice President of Focus on the Family Canada.
Mrozek did not take kindly to The Armageddon Factor.
Update: Darrel Reid has moved out of the PMO and into the Manning Institute for Democracy according to David Aiken. Coffee first, keyboard second, I apologize – correction: Manning Centre for Building Democracy.
Just to note that the name of the organization to which Darrel Reid is going, is the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.
And it is also worth noting that Darrel sometimes gets an unfair rap because of his previous association with FOTF.
He happens to be, among other things, a Phd. who studied under the formidible evangelical historian and social democrat, the late George Rawlyk. I was privileged, as a journalist, in the 90s, to be at a historians’ conference on Canadian evangelicalism in the 19th and 20th century, at Queen’s University, just a few months before Rawlyk’s death.
One of the most entertaining sessions involved Reid and two other former Rawlyk students engaging their old mentor. He twitted them for having turned out more conservative than he and they gave as good as they got — all good naturedly, of course.
And, in my modest view, he gave FOTF excellent leadership, when it needed a strong Canadian to help ensure that the influence from the American side was more constructive than destructive.
One of the eventual results of his work was the forming of the IMFC. And, it has proven to be a good think tank, utilizing resources and research from a broad base. Competing think tanks in different parts of the political spectrum will often accuse each other of “flawed” research, and IMFC has been on both ends of the stick on that one.
But I think it is fair to say that IMFC, on balance, contributes more to solutions than to problems, because it is not afraid to draw on resources in other ideological camps.
And it does not hurt to remind ourselves, also, that Dobson, in retirement, has set himself up, so to speak, in competition with his old organization, which appears to be taking a much more moderate role in social advocacy than it did under his leadership.
In that sense FOTF in the US is now benefitting from the kind of spadework done by Darrel in Canada.
Both the PMO and FOTF Canada have been fortunate to have him and the Manning Centre will now benefit from his particular skill set as well.
Lloyd: Giving FotF excellent leadership is not even part of my thinking. And Lloyd, take a few minutes to read local outlets around Colorado and Washington.
Focus ideology hasn’t changed one bit, and it isn’t going to change. Anything would be a pr plus with Dobson gone.
I don’t have one bit of sympathy for anyone who chose such a toxic organization taking hits for chosing to work for Focus in the first place.
Mr. Reid may well be a smart man who made his bed. It got him to the top of his game. Being a nice guy doesn’t cut it, he chose to work for a benchmark far right group that is as dangerous to democracy as any far left group we could name.
The choice by the IMFC/Focus on the Family Canada to send out pr’s without naming the organization is deliberate and willful, and I applaud Douglas Todd and Chris Skelton for questioning it. I wish every time this group does something like that, they were publicly called out. But they aren’t, and I am pleased this time the institutional knuckles were rapped.
Focus on the Family isn’t an organization I’m capable of having an ounce of respect for, in terms of solutions, I have to ask what the IMFC has churned out that does much of anything except alienate and divide.
We’ll have to agree to respectfully disagree, I appreciate you attempting to humanize someone who make his choices (I’m sorry but it’s lost on me) and who personally benefited from his connections and hard core ideology. The mere fact Focus on the Family Canada benefits from anything in Canada is sobering.
I apologize for the typo, that was sloppy – fixed. Thanks.
“And it does not hurt to remind ourselves, also, that Dobson, in retirement, has set himself up, so to speak, in competition with his old organization, which appears to be taking a much more moderate role in social advocacy than it did under his leadership.”
About that moderate role in social advocacy…
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jim-daly-blasts-obama-recognizing-families-two-fathers