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Deadline Looms to Save Hospice Society

Peter Stockland

October 15, 2021

A palliative care group in suburban Vancouver has one week to rally members across North America to protect its vision of MAiD-free end-of-life care.

Ireland insists, though, that the real objective goes far beyond the bitter infighting of the last few years that have seen the DHS board forced out of the 10-bed Irene Thomas Hospice and forced to give up its palliative care support centre, both of which were built through millions of dollars in fu...

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The Biblical Cast of Ted Lasso

Evan Menzies

October 14, 2021

Evan Menzies watches the season two finale of the Apple TV+ surprise hit and sees the shadows of Cain and Abel falling across the characters.

God penetrates Cain with the question “Why are you angry? And why is your face gloomy? If you do well, will your face not be cheerful? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it The show starts with the most gimmicky of premises: Ted Lass...

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The Politics of Red Team! Blue Team!

Don Hutchinson

October 12, 2021

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

It showed up in candidate Trudeau’s campaign stump speeches: the blue team harbours right wing extremists; the blue team leader is hiding blue candidates’ vaccination rates and won’t protect you; the big blue tent cultivates a home for those who will make abortion illegal; elect the blue team and li...

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Have We Become Not-Canada?

Travis D. Smith

October 8, 2021

Travis Smith warns time is running out to free our home and native land from its pandemic-induced contagion of distrust, resentment, and contempt for our neighbours.

There are many reasons why some people choose to trust and many reasons why others have stopped trusting Given our leaders’ track records—not to mention how many booster shots our prime minister has pre-ordered for several years to come—I’m pretty sure it’s unlikely things will go that way People wi...

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The Hard Truth About Reconciliation

Andrew Bennett

October 7, 2021

Healing wounds inflicted on Indigenous people by Canada and its churches means facing what’s wholly true, not what’s politically appealing, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

The abuse is also a clear and ever-present reminder to all Canadian Catholics, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, of how the Church failed to live up to the Gospel and instead aided and abetted an assimilationist policy that will affect First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Canadians for generations Furt...

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Truth and Justin Trudeau

Peter Stockland

October 5, 2021

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.

In answering that question, of course, we must be prudent in our judgements, charitable with our forgiveness, and acknowledge the Prime Minister has apologized at least for the “slap in the face” on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation A consequence is that we miss the significance of preva...

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The Path Back to Trust

Peter Stockland

September 27, 2021

The good results notoriously sceptical French are getting by taking a leap of faith in the fight against COVID shows the necessity of trust within democratic life, Peter Stockland writes.

The outcome? It has reportedly gone from one of the highest vaccine hesitancy rates in the world last January to one of the highest vaccination rates among world powers this September Still, the picture caught my eye a) because a young man of my closest acquaintance works in La Grande Motte and b) b...

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Denying the Reality of Independent Schools

Joanna VanHof

September 23, 2021

Policy confusion inflicted on alternative schooling during COVID shows why Ontario needs urgent discussion of an education system that reflects the province’s diversity, Joanna DeJong VanHof argues.

The vast majority of independent schools in Ontario are small, community-oriented schools that serve specific, sometimes marginalized populations, often of students whose diverse needs are not met within a behemoth public system weighed down by bureaucracy and sheer size When can we have the convers...

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Canada’s Disconnect on Religious Freedom

Susan Korah

September 21, 2021

Our country of newcomers gives scant political weight to global affairs and forgets that for billions worldwide faith is essential to identity, Susan Korah writes.

The phasing out of his position, and replacement of the Harper-era ambassadorship with an Office of Human Rights, Freedom and Inclusion, has left Canada in the curious position of being one of two G7 countries with no envoy for religious freedom and no focused mandate to advance it as an indispensab...

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A Liberal Dose of Compulsory Confusion

James Bryson

September 17, 2021

In the dizzying dash for vaccine mandates, James Bryson asks, what happened to the liberal/Liberal claims of “my body, my choice” that justified abortion and MAiD?

The Liberal support of vaccine mandates represent a 180 degree turn away from what had been their staunch defence of individual autonomy for the last two generations, reaching back at least to the institution of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms introduced by the Liberal government led by our Prime...

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An Election Exercise in Media Conformity

Peter Menzies

September 16, 2021

The shared-bathwater insularity of Parliament Hill’s media elite has made the 2021 campaign an adventure in safe and narrow thinking, Peter Menzies argues.

“In Ottawa, the political culture, which includes the media, lives in a world of its own construction, quite divorced from the daily realities and lives of most Canadians,” she writes in her book Indian in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power “In Ottawa, the political culture, which includes the med...

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Separating Sheep From Scapegoats

Peter Stockland

September 14, 2021

Peter Stockland reports on writer Charles Eisenstein’s work to identify a force even more dangerous than contagious public stupidity.

In a four-part essay series released over the summer, Eisenstein goes beyond the emerging risks of public stupidity and warns of the already-here dangers of darkness in the human soul Following the thought of the late French philosopher of anthropology and literature Rene Girard, he sees the dehuman...

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Taking a Jab at Religious Freedom

Don Hutchinson

September 10, 2021

Despite contrary claims, sincerely held faith is a Charter-protected justification for declining to take the COVID shot, Don Hutchinson reports.

On the question of conscience, The Moving Goalposts of COVID Response by several levels of government from ‘stay home for two weeks to flatten the curve’ to ‘70% fully vaccinated will provide herd immunity’ to ‘mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports’ may well be enough to justify anyone being cons...

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Pushing Back Against Vaccine Bullying

Tara Vreugdenhil

September 8, 2021

In the second of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil writes that regardless of pure intentions, many methods used in the pandemic response are classic harassment tactics.

Why does COVID get special status as the medical condition for which the government (or even private companies) get to dictate individual response? The question is particularly important when the response is not required to guarantee one’s health or ensure the health of others? What are the grounds ...

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A COVID Shot in the Dark

Tara Vreugdenhil

September 7, 2021

In this first of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil argues the pandemic response has unleashed a contagion of fuzzy language, shifting definitions, and logic that doesn’t follow.

There is a presumption that those without the shot put everyone else at risk, but where is the evidence for this? What is the effect on people with the shot if those without it are in their vicinity? Since both those with and without the shot can spread COVID, and the most effective means to prevent...

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