Government

  • Humanitarian Crisis Adds to Burdens of Afghan Religious Minorities

    Media attention may have shifted away from Afghanistan, but suffering families and religious minorities remain in the country. On-the-ground relief efforts are in dire need of support, writes Susan Korah.

    For Fawzia Shah, (not her real name), a middle-aged Hazara (Shia Muslim) woman from Central Afghanistan, the words “democracy”, “freedom,” and “women’s rights” mean nothing. 

    Those were the stirring slogans with which political leaders in Canada, the...

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  • Why So Vindictive, Mr. Mandate Man?

    The increasingly heated rhetoric towards the unvaxxed is designed to assuage the feelings and retain the confidence of the vaccinated. At least, so argues John Jalsevac, a FAST Fellow and PhD student at the University of Toronto, who is concerned the current trajectory will not end well.

    "The unvaxxed, I really feel like pissing them off," said French President Emanuel Macron a few days ago. "And so we’re goi...

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  • Defining Canada?

    In his most recent Insights newsletter, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings emphasizes the need to recover a sense of vision and national purpose as Canadians, especially as we think about the future of young Canadian leaders.

    Ray's Take is part of a weekly Saturday morning newsletter written by Ray Pennings designed to inform and provide perspective to Christian leaders. Read a sample and sign-up here...

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  • Time to Challenge and Comply

    When it comes to Canada’s recently passed ban on “conversion therapy," Don Hutchinson argues that it’s bad legislation, not good faith religious counselling, that should be put on trial.

    The provisions of Bill C-4, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy), will be incorporated into the Criminal Code as law effective January 7, 2022. It may be poorly...

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  • The Need for A Stable Influence

    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.

    Newscasters were almost giddy introducing coverage of Canada’s social-distancing, mask-wearing, elbow-touch-greeting prime minister gliding across the House of Commons’ floor to hug and handshake with members of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Canadians cou...

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  • What To Do After the Deluge

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

    “What? Lose our freedom and not get security in return? Why, it was only for security we surrendered our freedom at all.” 

    – C.S. Lewis, A Dream

    “T...

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  • The Irreplaceable Place of Parents

    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.

    Children have always lived in an adult-centric world. Spend only an hour or two in an airport and ask yourself, “For who was this space designed?” Air travel is taxing at any age, but children are a secondary thought in these busy spaces. 

    Children’s...

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  • Chief Concern With Conversion Therapy Law

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

    On December 1st, I watched in stunned disbelief as the Conservative Party of Canada proposed, and then unanimously supported, a motion to expedite the Liberal’s Bill C-4, an act to amend the criminal code in order to ban conversion therapy. In less than 30 ...

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  • Follow the Political Science

    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.

    Part One: The COVID Golden Calf

    “The passion to be reckoned upon is fear.” 

    – Thomas Hobbes, Leviat...

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  • The COVID Golden Calf

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

    Part Two: Follow The Political Science

    The ongoing campaign against COVID-19 has several religious attributes and analo...

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  • The Tyranny of Pragmatism

    Ominous State expansion under cover of the COVID crisis isn’t a sign of future despots at work but the consequence of a culture in which outcome trumps process, Robert Joustra argues.

    The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only...

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  • Picture Parliament Without Parties

    Peter Menzies argues the salvation of Canadian democracy lies in our two youngest political jurisdictions where consensus government, not leadership whip cracking, prevails.

    Six years and three elections ago, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was about to become Prime Minister. Deficits were to be modest and temporary, Canada was going to “be back” as a global player, ways were to be sunny, transparency would blossom like flowers i...

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  • Nightmare Lives of Lebanon’s Children

    Susan Korah reports on the grim toll the country’s collapse inflicts on its young while Canadian kids return to post-pandemic trick or treating.

    “For every act of violence against children that creates headlines and cries of outrage, there are many more that go unreported.”

    Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive Director

    As we approach the first post-pandemic Halloween, ...

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  • Doctor's College Needs Political Attention

    Ottawa lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos says the regulatory body for Ontario physicians and surgeons has a serious Charter abuse habit and requires Premier Doug Ford’s immediate intervention.

    The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (“CPSO”) has spent hundreds of thousands in legal fees to limit Charter-protected rights of Ontario physicians and citizens. The Ontario government must act. It must stop the CPSO’s attack on Ch...

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  • Defending Artur Pawlowski’s Dissent

    Don Hutchinson says the recent court order compelling a Calgary street preacher to reference science in his sermons about COVID is offensive and has to be appealed.

    Politically determined public health guidelines during the covid-19 pandemic have come with a cost. 

    Governments have defined essential and non-essential services, ostensibly to ensure Canadians have access to food. Not all can afford essential servi...

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  • Deadline Looms to Save Hospice Society

    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.

    Although it’s only autumn, Angelina Ireland hopes and prays October 22 will be a very good Friday for the Delta Hospice Society.

    The date is the cut-off for new members to join the Society and help turn the tid...

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  • The Politics of Red Team! Blue Team!

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

    Once upon a time in Canada, we knew where we’d be on Sunday mornings and what would hold our attention on Saturday nights. For some, Sunday faith and Saturday fandom were effortlessly exchangeable.

    For today’s Canadian fans of team sports, it’s the b...

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  • Truth and Justin Trudeau

    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.

    George Orwell would likely have caught his breath at news of a prime minister caught in a flagrant fib on a day dedicated to capital T Truth.

    Orwell, of course, spent his journalistic career ferreting out and castigating the incessant political lying...

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  • The Path Back to Trust

    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.

    A photo in Monday’s public prints brought the good news of people dancing in La Grande Motte, France as evidence la République appears on its way out of its COVID crisis.

    Alas, the photo was taken last July, which seems a lifetime in pandemic days, o...

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  • A Liberal Dose of Compulsory Confusion

    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?

    By throwing their weight behind vaccine mandates, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have picked a strange hill to die on in the run to Canada’s snap election next week.

    The Liberal support of vaccine mandates represent a 180 degree turn ...

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  • An Election Exercise in Media Conformity

    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.

    The words of Jody Wilson-Raybould are as good a place as any to begin an assessment of media coverage of Canada’s 44th federal election.

    “In Ottawa, the political culture, which includes the media, lives in a world of its own construction, quite divo...

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  • Taking a Jab at Religious Freedom

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

    John Longhurst’s provocatively titled column Religious leaders should make it clear faith ...

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  • Pushing Back Against Vaccine Bullying

    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.

    This is part two of a two-part series from Tara Vreugdenhil. Click here to read part one: "A COVID Shot in the Dark" 

    The point is made frequently that hospita...

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  • Marking Your X With Neighbourly Love

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

    The 2021 federal election has resulted in plentiful social media pleas for citizenship assistance!

    Some people are jaded because of the behaviour of politicians. They challenge us to convince them they should, first, care, and second, vote. 

    O...

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