Leadership

  • Unlocking the Doors of Education

    Life’s circumstances have a way of reintroducing us to grace, writes Joseph McDaniel. His personal journey refreshed his perspective on his vocation and encourages us to be open to the expansion of our own horizons by the grace of God.

    I’ve always felt at home in libraries. From the cozy West Vancouver Memorial Library across the street from my family home, to the great coliseum-like Vancouver Public Library, and the many university libraries I’ve been privileged to visit over the years, ...

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  • Stockland Moving On… But Not Out

    Convivium's co-founder says goodbye to become publisher of the Catholic Register but Ray Pennings, Cardus Executive Vice-President, welcomes Peter Stockland home as a Senior Fellow.  

    It is said of Cardus that once you’ve worked here for a certain length of time, you never actually leave; you’re just not there at the moment.

    So it is that while, officially and formally, I’ll be stepping down as editor of Convivium.ca effective Dec...

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  • The Tyranny of Pragmatism

    Ominous State expansion under cover of the COVID crisis isn’t a sign of future despots at work but the consequence of a culture in which outcome trumps process, Robert Joustra argues.

    The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only...

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  • Picture Parliament Without Parties

    Peter Menzies argues the salvation of Canadian democracy lies in our two youngest political jurisdictions where consensus government, not leadership whip cracking, prevails.

    Six years and three elections ago, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was about to become Prime Minister. Deficits were to be modest and temporary, Canada was going to “be back” as a global player, ways were to be sunny, transparency would blossom like flowers i...

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  • The Politics of Red Team! Blue Team!

    Don Hutchinson notes that when sports and politics overlap we become "fan-atics" cheering for our favourite sweaters and socks. 

    Once upon a time in Canada, we knew where we’d be on Sunday mornings and what would hold our attention on Saturday nights. For some, Sunday faith and Saturday fandom were effortlessly exchangeable.

    For today’s Canadian fans of team sports, it’s the b...

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  • Truth and Justin Trudeau

    Even as Canadians auto-correct for political falsehoods by expecting and accepting them, the Prime Minister’s fib on Truth and Reconciliation Day reveals a worrying pattern, Peter Stockland writes.

    George Orwell would likely have caught his breath at news of a prime minister caught in a flagrant fib on a day dedicated to capital T Truth.

    Orwell, of course, spent his journalistic career ferreting out and castigating the incessant political lying...

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  • Pierre’s Vision Begot a Justin Society

    This just in: the current prime minister is steadfastly refusing to follow his father’s footsteps, especially on human rights and justice. Don Hutchinson traces the divergent path.

    The two Trudeaus are the only father-son federal prime ministers in Canada’s brief history. Each in their time, father Pierre and son Justin, led the Government of Canada into record ...

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  • Will Canadians Stick With Justin the Changemaker?

    In his latest Cardus Insights newsletter, Executive Vice President Ray Pennings argues this election is about deciding whether to continue Prime Minister Trudeau’s transformation of Canada.  

    Ray's Cardus Insights newsletter strives to “connect the dots” among faith, business, and public life. Read a sample and sign-up for Cardus Insights.

    The first day of Canada’s ...

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  • Putting Aside Pandemic Mistrust

    We must not let the stresses and fear of the COVID crisis seep into suspicion and crowd out mercy, Father Tim McCauley writes.

    Recently, I was participating in an online training course to volunteer with Ottawa Inner-City Ministries. The facilitator asked us to begin by sharing something for which we are grateful during this pandemic. People responded with various answers such as r...

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  • Intimations of Constitutional Crack Up?

    Peter Stockland reports on the week’s political signs that the past might be coming back to haunt Canada’s future much sooner than we dreamed.

    Ears of a certain vintage had to hear echoes of Elijah in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s emphatic “no” this week.

    The reverberation’s source was the late Indigenous politician Elijah Harper rather than the Biblical prophet Elijah. The latter, of course, over...

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  • Irish Eyes on Meghan and Harry

    This might be the best Saint Patrick’s Day to skip the clownish caricatures and ponder the British monarchy from Ireland’s historical perspective, Peter Stockland argues.

    With her ever-present perspicacity, Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan pinpoints the flurry of furies engulfing the House of Windsor as both family tragedy and institutional catastrophe, two matters of particular program concern here at Cardus...

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  • Call Him Mr. Trudeau

    We can agree or disagree over policies, but the Prime Minister and other party leaders deserve the respect conveyed by the honorific preceding their names, Don Hutchinson writes.

    Why Mr. Trudeau?

    Some will have read the question as if it was written, “Why, Mr. Trudeau?

    Why the multiple ethics violations, Mr. Trudeau? Why the departure of Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and others? Why make announcements about rest...

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  • An Unlikely Alliance Against Porn

    Jonathon Van Maren reports on the teamwork of a socially conservative Alberta MP and liberal feminist senator from Montreal to combat the Canadian-controlled smut giant Pornhub.

    For months, the porn industry has received wave after wave of bad news. An Ontario judge decided that Internet companies can be held liable if child porn is hosted on their servers. The New York Times ran an article by Nicholas Kristoff titled “The...

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  • Hope Born Anew

    In the darkness that can envelop even the Christian Church, Peter Stockland writes, the season Christmas reminds us that Christ’s hope, faith, and truth illuminate the world.

    On the eve of Advent, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal released a devastating report on its own horror-show ineptitude regarding a sexually abusive priest named Brian Boucher.

    Even in a year free of the disaster of COVID-19 church closures,...

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  • Great Reset? Or Grand Unravelling?

    Prime Minister Trudeau has mused that COVID-19 will allow for Canadian society to “re-set” on a number of fronts. Peter Menzies says we’ll have to avoid coming apart at the seams first.

    Last week’s unravelling of the so-called Atlantic bubble should erase any lingering romantic thoughts that Canadians are united in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Since July 3, the nation’s four Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Br...

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  • For Whom the Polls Toll

    Fixated as Canadians are on soundings of popular opinion that foretell who will govern us next, Don Hutchinson writes, the only poll that counts is in the booth where we mark our ballots on Election Day.

    Polling doesn’t have the sex appeal of commercials about beer, pickup trucks or electric cars, but it does attract the attention of millions of Canadians. Whether pick-one-from-this-list junk polling on television, radio and social media, or more extensive ...

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  • Faith Leaders Fight Back Against Expanding MAiD

    The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-7 has drawn multifaith ire across Canada and a sharply-worded public call to immediately halt the legislation, Peter Stockland reports.

    More than 50 leaders across the faith spectrum warn the Liberal government’s changes to Medical Aid in Dying legislation will pressure vulnerable Canadians to opt for “lethal procedures” over living with illness or disability.

    Equally alarming, says ...

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  • What Donald Trump Says About Us

    In his October 3 Insights newsletter, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings warns that even as we disdain the President’s politics of authoritarian preening, we must look for them in ourselves.

    Let’s begin by wishing the U.S. President and First Lady a full and speedy recovery following their positive COVID-19 testing. The text below was drafted before this diagnosis was known and reflects on the toxicity of public discourse for which the Presiden...

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  • Sharing Memory Matters

    Energy wasted defending or toppling statues should instead power a national conversation about what, why and how we collectively commemorate our pluralistic pasts, Peter Stockland writes.

    Pictured: a memorial mural found in Belfast for those who lost their lives in conflict. Photo by Peter Stockland.

    For her book Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland, Elisabetta Viggi...

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  • Can We Talk?

    Will the strong showing of Leslyn Lewis in the Tory leadership race revitalize a socially conservative conversation in Canada? Peter Stockland isn’t placing a bet on it.

    Theoretically, a political culture wedded to the indisputable premise that Black lives matter might have room for the hypothesis that it’s worth at least discussing whether, as most social conservatives firmly believe, unborn lives count.

    Such a disc...

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  • Bidding Loyola a Long Goodbye

    Paul Donovan’s retirement as president of Montreal’s Loyola High School ends his 39-year association with the historic Catholic institution, which included a major religious freedom victory in the Supreme Court. Peter Stockland reports.

    When young Kevin Donovan left Montreal’s Loyola High School 67 summers ago, he could hardly foresee having a son who would one day lead the school to a landmark legal victory for religious freedom.

    Yet his graduation picture in Loyola’s Class of 1953...

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  • When The Flood Hits Home

    Convivium writer Rebecca Darwent missed the last once-in-a-hundred-year inundation of her Ottawa neighbourhood. Two years later, even worse flooding has taught her the meaning of community.

    There’s something about the anniversary of any notable happening that brings us to reflect and ask Where was I when that happened? This crossed my mind as my city, Ottawa, went through the second once-in-one-hundred-years flood happen in, well, muc...

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  • St. Francis Xavier and Friendship for Mission

    Convivium editor in chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reports on the cross Canada pilgrimage of the relic of St. Francis Xavier. Learn more about the legacy of faith and friendship that St. Francis Xavier imparts to us all. 

    There is a large religious news story unfolding across the land, and it is being covered well by the regular mainstream news. A miracle? Not really, but it is about a miraculous relic.

    The forearm and hand of St. Francis Xavier, the 16th-c...

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  • Lessons in Political Cooperation

    Cardus Law Program Director Dr. Andrew Bennett reflects on the way the House of Commons justice committee dealt with Bill C-51. 

    OTTAWA - Sometimes Parliament works just the way the textbooks say it’s supposed to work. Arguably, the most recent example is in the way the House of Commons justice committee dealt with Bill C-51, which aims to erase “outdated” parts of the Criminal Code....

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