Latest

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  MAiD in the COVID Shade

  Peter Stockland

  June 24, 2021

  Peter Stockland reports on how the pandemic’s overshadowing of legislation radically expanding medical assistance in dying might reconfigure Canada’s future.

  But the thing is, in the pandemic year just past, with Parliament shut down, Canadians locked down, and our most vulnerable population ravaged by COVID in care homes, we rushed through legislation expanding MAiD availability That fundamental conception endured for 133 years until the Supreme Court r...

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  Downing a Fighter for Indigenous Kids

  Alan Hustak

  June 18, 2021

  Alan Hustak reports on the removal of a statue honouring the 19th-century priest who suffered a nervous breakdown battling Ottawa over its abusive residential school system.

  The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina has agreed to relocate the statue of the 19th century Oblate missionary Father Joseph Hugonard following complaints from the Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indians that it is a “distasteful” emblem of the residential school era When the Dominion governm...

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  Reality in Truth and Reconciliation

  Cristino Bouvette

  June 16, 2021

  In this homily, Father Cristino Bouvette says the enduring faith of his Indigenous grandmother shows the real peace of Christ heals even the torments of residential schools.

  While interviewing Cardinal Collins last weekend, Rosemary Barton of the CBC suggested that the failure of the Catholic Church to turn over unnamed and unspecified “documents” that are allegedly missing prevents truth from being known and thereby halting efforts at reconciliation Perhaps it could be ...

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  Caught in the Bill C-10 Spotlight

  Peter Menzies

  June 14, 2021

  Convivium contributor, journalist, and former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies has been centre stage fighting off the federal Internet control bill. Fortunately, he says, fame is fleeting.

  All was going swimmingly for Guilbeault and in mid-April, having caught wind of his next act – an online harms bill creating a new Guardians of the Public Good speech regulator – I wrote what I considered to be a last chance warning The next week I co-authored a commentary with former CRTC chair Kon...

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  Enduring Patience for Lasting Peace

  Susan Korah

  June 11, 2021

  Despite the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Susan Korah reports, undaunted groups seek just solutions that benefit both sides.

  A just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine seems as illusory as a mirage in the desert, particularly since the recent outbreak of violence following expulsion of 40 Palestinian families from Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem to make room for Israeli settlements ...

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  London Murders Wound Us All

  Andrew Bennett

  June 10, 2021

  The killing of a Muslim family in the southwestern Ontario city demands empathy for the victims, but also renewed commitment to freedom of faith, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

  Motivated by their faith, Ismaili Civic has corralled the efforts of its volunteers to create partnerships with seventy organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, Kids Help Phone, the United Way, and the Terry Fox Foundation How much room do we make in our hearts and minds for public expressions...

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  COVID’s Cost in Liberty Lost

  James Bryson

  June 8, 2021

  Theologian James Bryson surveys the historical landscape of Munich and finds troubling harbingers vis-a-vis his home province of Nova Scotia’s authoritarian response to the pandemic.

  To offer a striking example of the kind of culture this new form of authoritarian government encourages, consider a piece published in the Chronicle Herald, our local paper, last year, written by a student of Citadel High School, in which he all but names teachers who, in his view, were in violation...

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  Questions Unasked About Indigenous Deaths

  Peter Stockland

  June 4, 2021

  Peter Stockland brings a journalist’s mindset and hometown origins to his analysis of media coverage around the finding of Indigenous children’s bodies in Kamloops, B.C.

  In an interview with Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper yesterday, Mollen-Dupuis was sharply critical of media response to last week’s shocking news that ground-penetrating radar has revealed the bones of up to 215 of those children at the site of the former Indian Residential School near the south-cent...

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  Canada’s Common Spiritual Hunger

  Ray Pennings

  May 31, 2021

  After last week’s online National Prayer Breakfast, Cardus Executive Vice President Ray Pennings reflected in his weekly Insights newsletter on how to pray in public – and pluralistic – spaces. Convivium reprints his text.

  What sort of prayer should be offered on such an occasion? Similarly, when invited to speak in the context of worship of a faith tradition other than your own, how do you address the audience? I’ve spoken both in a synagogue and a gurdwara during official Jewish and Sikh services, and felt challenge...

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  Intimations of Constitutional Crack Up?

  Peter Stockland

  May 28, 2021

  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.

  That said, incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, combined with the specifics provision of Bill C-15 itself, opens the door to a very different Canada than even the Meech Lake Accord envisioned, or that the crisis-stasis-crisis dynamic of the past 30 yea...

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  Yes, We Can Understand Each Other

  Daniel Dorman

  May 27, 2021

  Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.

  I propose that there are three evident necessary conditions for productive (truth-seeking) debate: (1) trust in reason, (2) trust that language is a plausible (if often imperfect) vehicle for truth, (3) trust that our opponents, by nature of their humanity, are capable of sympathy and reason Is it a...

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  Grave Men Facing A Grave Faith

  Jonathon Van Maren

  May 25, 2021

  Jonathon Van Maren reports on a series of leading serious intellectuals who recognize the need for Christianity’s resurrection but can’t quite bring the faith to life in themselves.

  What we do know is that he thought Christianity was in many ways the soul of Western civilization, and that the uniquely Christian concept of forgiveness was utterly indispensable to its survival Their intellectual siloes were a refuge from faith because they didn’t want Christianity to be true ...

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  A Rude Awokening for Justin Trudeau?

  Peter Stockland

  May 21, 2021

  Peter Stockland reports on the political implications of a speech the former justice minister gave this week castigating the Prime Minister’s “hypocrisy” on Indigenous issues.

  “This practice, this hypocrisy, the affirmation of Charter rights… but denial of Indigenous rights is, in my opinion, the most insidious and prime example of systemic racism rooted in the legacy of colonialism that remains pervasive at the highest levels of government and underpins the relationship ...

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  The Moving Goalposts of COVID Response

  Don Hutchinson

  May 17, 2021

  Faced with pandemic “certainties” that quickly turn out to be up, down, and all around, Don Hutchinson cautions that science can provide estimates but not ultimate truth.

  ...

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  When Politics Trumps Meaning

  Peter Stockland

  May 14, 2021

  The very wording of the federal government’s updated Broadcasting Act means language itself is being subordinated to the State’s political purposes, Peter Stockland argues in the second of two parts examining Bill C-10.

  Why, for example, must the class of conventional broadcasters operate under different rules from the “distinct class” of Internet, errr, uhhh, broadcasters? Why does the “distinct class” need to be a distinct class at all? Why is the distinction allowed – and it will be characterized as an allowance...

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