The Need for A Stable Influence

Don Hutchinson

December 17, 2021

Christians who cherry-pick Scripture for particular purposes, like the politicians who abuse Parliament by rushing through legislation, need to consider what they’re celebrating, Don Hutchinson writes.

Thus, on December 8, the explosive Bill C-4 became both the first legislation passed in Canada’s 44th Parliament and the first to receive royal assent at the hand of Governor General Mary Simon Conservative MP Rob Moore (Fundy Royal, NB) surprised the House (including members of his own party who we...

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What To Do After the Deluge

Daniel Dorman

December 14, 2021

Daniel Dorman argues each of us has an obligation, as soon as it’s safe, to assert individual freedoms lost to the pandemic.

In Lewis’ dream the owners’ response to this irrational infringement is both comical and heroic: “What? Lose our freedom and not get security in return? Why, it was only for security we surrendered our freedom at all… And the owners with one accord took everyone one of the emergency petty officers b...

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The Irreplaceable Place of Parents

Peter Jon Mitchell

December 10, 2021

Marking the 30th anniversary of Canada ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Peter Jon Mitchell examines how much it has put the State between children and their families.

Writing during the height of debate around the CRC in the mid-1990s, father and son lawyers Bruce and Jonathan Hafen argued that the United Nations showed its hand when a UN publication guide lauded the CRC as offering a “new concept of separate rights for children with the Government accepting the ...

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Chief Concern With Conversion Therapy Law

André Schutten

December 8, 2021

Drawing on history and imagination, André Schutten “interviews” former Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker about Conservative Party failure to properly oppose the new legislation.  

In reflecting on the past week, one of my thoughts is how far the leadership of this conservative party has fallen from more principled days in opposition, like those of the Right Honourable John Diefenbaker In less than 30 seconds, a bill that will profoundly impact religious communities and member...

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Christian Women Doubly Vulnerable to Persecution

Susan Korah

December 6, 2021

On a day that will live in infamy to mark violence against Canadian women, Susan Korah reports on a global study of gendered religious persecution.

“There are many Christian women who suffer sexual violence because they are Christian – but we don’t believe the UN quite appreciates this,” Shiner said in the same interview “The research suggests that in the countries under review (Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Iraq and Syria and others), among minori...

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True Progress Moves Us To God

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 3, 2021

As Advent foreshadows the Christmas narrative, Peter Copeland and Father Deacon Andrew Bennett write that our end is not in restless secularism but the peace of union with the Father.

For, Christianity is not an empty philosophy, but a way of life – truth, goodness and beauty are not meant merely to be articulated, but to be shown in a life lived in love of God All the more reason, then, to live an integrated life, where the distinction between love of God, neighbour, and one’s f...

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The Secular Servants of Abstraction

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 2, 2021

As Advent leads us to Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett map Christian clarity of the common good against secular confusions of equity and equality. Part two of three.

If equity were instead recognized as it ought to be, as the flourishing of the person in all their beautiful uniqueness and difference; and if equality were conceived as equal inherent dignity, not in wealth, possessions, talents, abilities, or interests, then a hierarchically differentiated society...

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The Christian’s Progress

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 1, 2021

As Advent moves us toward the promise of Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett chart the Christian progressive vision against its static secular form. Part one of three.

How can one become courageous, loving, kind, and merciful without practice? Instead, we sacrifice the fruits that come from the long pursuit of virtue for fleeting ‘authentic feeling’? How can anyone cultivate the disciplines that make actions into habits, and habits into the virtuous life? How can ...

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Shouting Myself Hoarse for Life

Peter Menzies

November 26, 2021

Peter Menzies is in the house to watch Canada beat Mexico and suddenly a dream comes true to trump eighteen nightmarish months that included – oy! – taking up camping.

I enthusiastically got my first and second vaccines when the world shut down for the second time (the first as I recall was “just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and, don’t be silly, masks aren’t required) and I was again alone in an empty, hollow workplace Outside of family occasions, life h...

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Monsters, Mobs and Me

Don Hutchinson

November 24, 2021

Don Hutchinson writes that whether we have unwittingly become card-carrying members of monsters at work or mobs inc. is best revealed by a look in the bathroom mirror.

The rash rush of mandatory vaccination policies didn’t start with vaccine availability in March, but five months later following a Nanos poll showing a majority of Canadians favoured mandatory vaccination, and subsequent electoral posturing by a sitting prime minister who declared that all federal p...

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Follow the Political Science

Travis D. Smith

November 22, 2021

In the second of two parts, Travis Smith argues that our responses to the pandemic reveal a Canada progressively squeezing out its commitment to liberty.

According to Hobbes in particular, people have no moral obligations to anybody in the state of nature; it’s indistinguishable from a state of war and individuals there may be treated accordingly Whereas modern political theory asserts the natural freedom of all human beings everywhere, classical pol...

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The COVID Golden Calf

Travis D. Smith

November 19, 2021

In this first of a two-part essay, Travis Smith teases out the new ersatz religiosity of our political, clinical and social pandemic responses.

We are now seeing heterodox health care professionals threatened and sanctioned, placed on leave or their licences suspended—defrocked, as it were—for refusing to comply with mandates, for expressing concern about adverse events, for granting exemptions, or otherwise hesitating to swear by the vacci...

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Climate Change Making Eden a Wasteland

Susan Korah

November 17, 2021

Yesterday, Peter Stockland queried the usefulness of the COP26 conference. Today, Susan Korah reports on the urgency of saving the Garden from climate calamity.

With voices amplified by the world’s focus on COP26, religious leaders have joined activists, scientists and humanitarian organizations in calling on prosperous countries like Canada to address climate change as a global issue that affects populations far beyond their own borders In the run-up to CO...

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Laugh or Cry After COP26

Peter Stockland

November 16, 2021

Peter Stockland notes theopoetics of Christian leaders and 277 Canadian delegates at the recent Glasgow climate conference equal bupkas unless we tackle climate change profitably.

The debate has been sparked by calculations showing that the combined cost of global damage from climate change can actually produce future savings if we avoid it in the first place As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, there’s vigorous debate, among climate economists, and so cause for real...

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Is Canada Worth Our Sacrifice?

Robert Joustra

November 11, 2021

On the day Canadians remember those who died fighting for freedom’s sake, Rob Joustra challenges us to name what we would give up, here and now, for our country.

This may sound like a Canadian debate – certainly peace, order, and good government is a very Canadian trinity – but it’s not But where does Canada sit? What is Canada worth? Is it just another bureaucratic behemoth, take it or leave it, that manages our taxes, paves our roads, and buys our vaccinat...

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