Protecting Freedom From COVID-19

Peter Stockland

January 18, 2021

There’s no question the pandemic is real and really deadly but we must never forget that liberty, too, can suffer the painful demise of simply being forgotten, Peter Stockland argues.

The last time Quebecers were subjected to State control of the hours they could be on public streets was 50 years ago during the declaration of the War Measures Act by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau during the 1970 October Crisis I don’t even mean it as being free from annoying smart phone bla...

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The Spiritual Connection of Violence

Robert Joustra

January 15, 2021

Robert Joustra writes that last week’s violence at the U.S. Capitol isn’t a phenomenon of lone nutters but the toxicity of radicalized communities persistent even among religious faithful.

...

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An Unlikely Alliance Against Porn

Jonathon Van Maren

January 14, 2021

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.

Both Viersen and Miville-Dechêne hope that the new attention focused on Pornhub and MindGeek will also attract new attention to their work, add new members to their coalition, and finally result in legislation—supported by all parties—that will implement meaningful protections for children “Our chil...

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Define the Crime in Conversion Therapy

Iain Provan

January 13, 2021

Canadians must challenge Ottawa’s vague Bill C-6 that sped through the Commons justice committee while we were all distracted by COVID, Iain Provan writes.

Helpful or not, and legal for adults or not, Bill C-6 nevertheless specifies a penalty of two years in prison for anyone “who receives a financial or other material benefit … from the provision of conversion therapy,” or “knowingly promotes or advertises an offer to provide conversion therapy While ...

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We Better Hear the Hoi Polloi

Peter Menzies

January 11, 2021

Politicians and bureaucrats caught flouting COVID restrictions should get over their embarrassment and heed the pandemic suffering of working people, Peter Menzies writes.

Phase Three began shortly after Christmas with a wave of sackings, demotions and shamings of political office holders, health care executives and assorted other public sector white collar types who took foreign vacations - mostly to sun destinations - over the holidays when the rest of us were forbi...

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MAiD Muscles In

Peter Stockland

January 8, 2021

Staff layoffs and eviction of B.C.’s Delta Hospice Society from its facility outside Vancouver show MAiD advocates’ power to impose their will on those who don’t want it, Peter Stockland writes.

In the case of DHS, it met with officials from the local Fraser Health Authority and explained its constitutional predicament: its bylaws banned MAiD and to adhere to the government order would put it in violation of its standing under the provincial Society’s Act government or its local Fraser Heal...

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Tears of Jedi Joy

Evan Menzies

January 4, 2021

Evan Menzies reports on the end of a Star Wars season that left the series’ fans awash in waterworks over a tale of fatherly love.

It’s the love the Father of the Christian faith showed more than 2,000 years ago as he brought his Son into the world so that he could save the world And it’s this pure, poison-free love that shines so brightly through the story of the helmeted Mandalorian refugee He is set on a journey to return th...

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The Year of Smashing Statues

Gavin Miller

December 31, 2020

Along with COVID-19 and a sanity-challenging American election, 2020 made rampant the demolishing of monuments. Gavin Miller warns iconoclasm is more than vandalism: it threatens civil life.

Although the Vatican did say that the statues were brought into the Synod “without idolatrous intent”, who’s to say that they weren’t lying? If the higher-ups in the Church can cover up abuse and stealthily promote liberal moral laxity, they are certainly capable of lying Closer attention to the ori...

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One Man’s Reading List

Calum Anderson

December 30, 2020

Calum Anderson offers his “great” alternatives to what he considers the weak fare pushed by too many universities. Do Convivium readers agree? We’d love to see your alternative reading lists. Send them to convivium@cardus.ca.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt link climbing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among university students to three “great untruths” that contravene modern psychology and ancient wisdom: ...

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Hope Born Anew

Peter Stockland

December 24, 2020

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 Yet it’s here that the story turns from the particular pain of the faithful in Montreal to the universal joy and ho...

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Santa Serves the War-Torn, Too

Susan Korah

December 21, 2020

Saint Nicholas lives in the spirit of all who give gifts and life to those in the darkness of violence and poverty, Susan Korah writes.

So, if little Mariam—who fled from Syria to Lebanon in the wake of the ISIS genocide of Christians and other minorities, or little Anahit, now facing a bleak, lonely Christmas in Yerevan after her home in Artsakh was bombed to rubble — asked me the question today, what would my answer be? And he was...

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Newspapers Must Face the Facebook Music

Peter Menzies

December 14, 2020

Print journalists’ pleas for the government to keep social media from eating their lunch are as fact-free as claiming the Pyongyang Times is a bulwark of democracy, Peter Menzies argues.

Jeff Elgie of Village Media, an online startup in Canada, calls the notion that Facebook or Google should pay for his content “laughable” because in reality they provide “massive free distribution And yet, writes Heather Bakken of Ipolitics, not only the craft of journalism for which we are all so g...

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Baby Steps to Push Back Polarization

Josh Nadeau

December 11, 2020

Josh Nadeau reports on a study showing families becoming crucibles for toxic political contempt when they could be sources of pluralistic tolerance for divergent views.

So just what can be done? How can families invested in their political or religious identities maintain their positions without contributing to an increasingly hostile and polarized culture? While the three authors of the report don’t venture to suggest a solution, it’s clear from their research wha...

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Your Child is Not Your Go-Go Gadget

Rev. Dr. Cole Hartin

December 9, 2020

Diminished expectations during COVID Christmas make it the perfect time to remember, as Rev. Dr. Cole Hartin writes, that our children are not instruments for parental self-fulfillment.

In this latter case, save from the tragic experience of infertility that still painfully persists, children were a kind of mysterious given, a fact of life When children are a given, a normal expectation of family life, one deals with them accordingly Whether the idealization of family is at the beh...

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Saying “Non” to Potpourri Pluralism

Robert Joustra

December 7, 2020

There’s much wrong with increasingly closed secularism in France and Québec yet both societies understand diversity requires strong ground rules, Robert Joustra argues.

A game without clear boundaries breaks down fast, and a pluralism in politics that rewards diversity without asking for a common good, a common set of ground rules – rules for speaking and knowing each other across our epistemic chasms,  boundaries for our habitation - breaks down just as quickly Ne...

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