Government

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.

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 can the Ontario government learn from the last 17 months?

For starters, the government needs to accept that huge, ind...

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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 two Trudeaus are the only father-son federal prime ministers in Canada’s brief history. Each in their time, father Pierre and son Justin, led the Government of Canada into record ...

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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.

Ray's Cardus Insights newsletter strives to “connect the dots” among faith, business, and public life. Read a sample and sign-up for Cardus Insights.

The first day of Canada’s ...

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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.

Afghanistan’s religious minorities are facing nothing less than a genocide but the Canadian government has yet to make a firm commitment to protect some of the most vulnerable among them, say Canadian human rights activists.

Hazaras and Christians – ...

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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.

The 2021 Canadian election has begun, and that means that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is talking about abortion. This isn’t primarily a tactic to rake in new votes; Trudeau’s team knows that solidly pro-abortion voters are already voting Liberal, and the ...

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Fourteen Days of State Surveillance

Inkar Nación

August 13, 2021

As writer Inkar Nación tracked her family’s two weeks of COVID quarantine absurdities, she understood that beneath the liberty to tell the truth lies the nucleus of human freedom.

Bad law makes us all into liars, or we believe our own lies and make them truth. Such is my family’s experience with Canada’s Quarantine Act following a trip to the United States on compassionate grounds.

Day One. We cross back into ...

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Digital Chill and Frost Burned Freedom

Peter Menzies

August 12, 2021

Former CRTC Vice-Chair Peter Menzies warns the federal government’s so-called online harms bill, Bill C-36, leaves the Charter rights and liberties of Canadians out in the cold.

Canada did not build protection of certain rights and freedoms into its Constitution because, as some might think, they are saucy symbols of pop virtues. They are there because serious people understood that without the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the na...

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We Cannot Abandon Lebanon

Susan Korah

August 4, 2021

Susan Korah reports on the desperate state of the former Mediterranean oasis one year after the blast that decimated Beirut.

One year ago today was a night of splintering glass and splattering blood.

On August 4, 2020, as the last hours of pre-sunset daylight illuminated Beirut’s skyline, a cataclysmic explosion shook the city like the blast of an atomic bomb. It turned o...

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COVID and the Fearful State

Anna Farrow

July 28, 2021

In her review of a 2021 book by British journalist Laura Dodsworth, Anna Farrow highlights disturbing evidence of governments using our primal panic response to push pandemic policies.

Long before David Attenborough brought his soothing voice to the explication of animal behaviour for the BBC Life series, the North American television public had been introduced to the majesty and oddities of the natural world through Mutual of Om...

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Unmasking the Match Lighting Mob

Don Hutchinson

July 23, 2021

Don Hutchinson asks who has fuelled church burnings across Canada, and notes Indigenous leaders from coast to coast have been most stalwart in condemning the two dozen arson attacks.

Mainstream media lit a fuse, and churches are burning. Nearly two dozen to date and a greater number have been vandalized with graffiti, paint-dipped handprints, and splatter.

Some congregations have accepted acts of vandalism as a visual lesson on t...

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Putting Aside Pandemic Mistrust

Tim McCauley

July 13, 2021

We must not let the stresses and fear of the COVID crisis seep into suspicion and crowd out mercy, Father Tim McCauley writes.

Recently, I was participating in an online training course to volunteer with Ottawa Inner-City Ministries. The facilitator asked us to begin by sharing something for which we are grateful during this pandemic. People responded with various answers such as r...

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Indigenous Women Ascending

Peter Stockland

July 9, 2021

Peter Stockland sees the appointment of Mary Simon as GG, the election of RoseAnne Archibald as AFN National Chief, and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s political courage as hope for Canada.

Thursday’s fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female National Chief of the Assembly of First...

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A COVID Cold Shoulder for Refugees

Susan Korah

July 8, 2021

Susan Korah reports on the plight of global millions fleeing persecution unnoticed while our attention is fixed on the pandemic.

They are the wretched of the earth (to use Haitian writer Franz Fanon’s phrase), the world’s homeless wanderers.

Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated recently in his official Twitter account that during the past year when the pand...

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The Devil in the Lack of Details

Daniel Dorman

June 25, 2021

Deliberately ambiguous bills such as Ottawa’s C-10 and C-6 are the political deceiver’s plaything, Daniel Dorman argues.

John Milton’s Paradise Regained (the poem which followed his great English epic, Paradise Lost) expands and interprets the gospel narrative of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4). In one particularly potent scene Jesus accosts ...

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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.

For two evenings this week, my Cardus colleagues and a panel of expert guests have engaged an in-depth discussion on YouTube on Canada’s post-COVID future.

They cov...

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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 statue of a priest whose Indigenous students were originally taught in Cree, and who fought forced removal of Indigenous children from their parents, is slated for removal from a Saskatchewan cemetery.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina has...

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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.

Not long after I ended my decade at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) I began writing about communications issues.

Pretty geeky stuff, I guess, but now my views are apparently so in demand that Convivium.ca wants ...

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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...

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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.

Born and raised in Halifax, I currently live in Munich, Germany. I have been monitoring the Nova Scotian response to the pandemic from abroad by reading the news and by keeping in touch with family and friends.

I write this article to lend some persp...

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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.

Ears of a certain vintage had to hear echoes of Elijah in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s emphatic “no” this week.

The reverberation’s source was the late Indigenous politician Elijah Harper rather than the Biblical prophet Elijah. The latter, of course, over...

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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.

Our political discourse is a demoralizing spectacle. In most public forums, and particularly in the House of Commons, we generally listen to what can’t (in any serious sense) be called ‘debate.’ Most of it is mere partisan verbiage.

Character assault...

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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.

In the year before the pandemic, Jody Wilson-Raybould served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s worst headache.

In a speech she gave on Wednesday, the former justice minister and attorney-general showed why she could become the PM’s worst nightmare....

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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.

A friend recently joined the growing group of Canadians who take issue with the moving goalposts of the declared as life-or-death (not-really-a) game of pandemic response. Another compared the relationship between science advisors and politicians t...

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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.

Read part one of Peter Stockland's two-part series on Bill C-10.

Debate over the federal government’s updating of the Broadcasting Act has l...

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