Denying the Reality of Independent Schools

Joanna DeJong 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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Marking Your X With Neighbourly Love

Don Hutchinson

September 2, 2021

Don Hutchinson offers a primer on how to let Christian precepts guide voting choice.

The first I will call Christian political idealism―the idea that a political party has the potential to form a government that will govern based on Biblical principles The second is based on American theologian Reinhold Niehbuhr’s concept of Christian realism―identifying the available political opti...

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COVID Lessons for the Education System

David Hunt

September 1, 2021

The flexibility and responsiveness of Ontario’s independent schools during the pandemic prove the advantage of humanized education in small, family-centric schools, David Hunt writes.

For starters, the government needs to accept that huge, industrial-scale schools (typical in the public system) are pretty weak at responding to crises like a pandemic As Ontario’s public schools struggle to accommodate students in a new school year amid what could be a fourth wave of COVID-19, what...

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Pierre’s Vision Begot a Justin Society

Don Hutchinson

August 27, 2021

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 culminating work of Pierre Trudeau’s designs for a just society is found in the Constitution Act, 1982, which features the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (sections 1 to 34, the Charter), and recognition in section 35 of “existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of...

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Will Canadians Stick With Justin the Changemaker?

Ray Pennings

August 25, 2021

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.  

Although Prime Minister Harper had the opportunity to appoint seven justices to the Supreme Court during his decade, many conclude that his appointments have not collectively amounted to any significant change in direction for the court The day after Stephen Harper won a minority government in 2006,...

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Canada Fails Afghan Religious Minorities

Susan Korah

August 24, 2021

Human rights workers tell Susan Korah it’s inexplicable Canada hasn’t prioritized the rescue of Christians and minority Muslims.

At the media conference, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan and Minister for Women and Gender Equality Maryam Monsef (an Iranian-born Afghan Canadian) announced that Afghan refugees that Canada intends to resettle will include women leaders, human rights...

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When Pro Choice Meets No Choice

Jonathon Van Maren

August 20, 2021

The abortion question Canada’s federal leaders should address is why so many women feel they have no viable alternative, Jonathon Van Maren argues.

Have you ever noticed that pro-abortion politicians simply assume there are many unwanted babies, but no unwanted abortions? The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada—run by Joyce Arthur, who could not be more extreme on the issue if she tried — published a paper in 2018 titled “Why Women Have Abortio...

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COVID Can’t Cancel Church in Ottawa Park

Matthew Boardman

August 17, 2021

Despite fines for congregating contrary to COVID rules, an open air church in an inner-city park flourishes by serving society’s marginalized, writes Matthew Boardman.

Media focus has been on how those in Dundonald Park negatively affect the local neighbourhood and, on the positive side, how more community supports are needed But when I moved into the area to share the Gospel message of love of neighbour, I quickly saw how even those involved in drugs and violence...

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