Justice

The Secular Servants of Abstraction

Peter Copeland and Andrew 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.

When it comes to the social and political spheres, the dominant secular vision of the social good is a utilitarian or egalitarian one. In the case of the former, the collective good is an aggregate of individual pains and pleasures. We ask – what does the g...

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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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Charting Educational Justice

Brett Fawcett

April 21, 2021

Brett Fawcett argues Alberta charter schools should be free to operate on religious grounds to meet the just vision of Canada’s founding constitutional vision.

What does a just education look like?

We talk a lot about what it means to provide a quality education to our children, but perhaps we’ve forgotten that you can’t have a good education without it also being a just education. In virt...

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A Plan to Unmake MAiD

Peter Stockland

February 18, 2021

A former veteran Mountie and local coroner has a sure-fire way to protect health care workers from being made to administer MAiD. So why won’t anyone answer Sean Murphy’s call? Peter Stockland reports.

Sean Murphy has what he considers a clear way through the tangle between the House of Commons and Senate over Liberal government legislation to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

The former veteran Mountie and coroner says the bill’s status w...

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The HandMAiD’s Toll

André Schutten and Anna Nienhuis

February 9, 2021

As the Senate studies Bill C-7’s dramatic expansion of medical assistance in dying, Anna Nienhuis and André Schutten warn of a MAiD copycat effect on those tempted to suicide.

Action inspires action. This is often positive, as people’s activities motivate others to engage in positive service too. But there are times when action inspires deadly action. As the Senate continues its review of Bill C-7’s dramatic expansion of medical ...

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Hope Born Anew

Peter Stockland

December 24, 2020

In the darkness that can envelop even the Christian Church, Peter Stockland writes, the season Christmas reminds us that Christ’s hope, faith, and truth illuminate the world.

On the eve of Advent, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal released a devastating report on its own horror-show ineptitude regarding a sexually abusive priest named Brian Boucher.

Even in a year free of the disaster of COVID-19 church closures,...

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Justin Trudeau's Words to the Wise

Peter Stockland

November 4, 2020

The Prime Minister got it right the first time on the limits of free speech. His mistake was backing down in the face of vociferous criticism, Peter Stockland writes.

As a Westerner who’s lived in Quebec for 20 years, one of my great challenges is using the proper noun Trudeau and the adjective “correct” in the same sentence.

It was so with the father. So it is also with the son. Yet right is right. It must be sai...

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Memories of Mosul Must Spark Action

Susan Korah

June 17, 2020

Six years after the fall of Iraq’s second largest city to ISIS terrorists, religious persecution goes on while the world has moved on, Susan Korah writes.

It was a crash of catastrophic consequences that reverberated around the world. Six years later, many of its survivors are still picking up the debris of their shattered lives, and appealing to the world for help.

It was the summer of 2014 and on Ju...

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COVID in a Lifeboat

Chantal Huinink, and Jasmine Duckworth, Keith Dow

May 19, 2020

Chantal Huinink, Jasmine Duckworth, and Keith Dow consider the ethics of disability in a time of pandemic crisis.

“Pandemic ethics.” This might not have been a phrase you expected to be familiar with only a few short months ago. As with lifeboats and “lifeboat ethics,” pandemics are not situations we expect to find ourselves in. Now, however, it’s popping up in news ...

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The Invisible Persecution of Religious Women

Janet Epp Buckingham

April 22, 2020

Violent subjugation inflicted on women of faith is a global iniquity that rarely counts because it differs from the persecution of male religious leaders, Janet Epp Buckingham reports.

In March, The UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom issued a report on gender-based violence in the name of religion, which it said occurs everywhere in the world.

“Gender-based violence and discrimination is being perpetuated both in the publi...

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Engineering SNC Lavalin’s Number

Peter Stockland

March 8, 2019

Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland examines the scandal besetting the Prime Minister’s Office and finds the government’s defence just doesn’t add up so far.

It’s understandable that attempts to dig out the truth from the SNC-Lavalin uproar have produced more questions than answers. Invariably in these matters, the different players go on offence and defence producing action-reaction, assertion-deflection, appar...

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Corruption's True Cost

Peter Stockland

February 20, 2019

The SNC-Lavalin scandal is about much more than bad actors on the political stage. It’s a showcase for corruption’s intrusion into the very way we think, argues Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland.

A key thing that makes the SNC-Lavalin contretemps such a showcase for corruption is its utter confusion about who did what to whom.

Since the uproar erupted two weeks ago as a major scoop on the front page of the Globe and Mail, it has beco...

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God in the Chaos

Samantha Dignam

February 6, 2019

Overcoming her doubts about the mission, though not the message, of the Church, the University of Ottawa’s Samantha Dignam discovers at the Urbana18 conference how acknowledging the faults of Christians is key to carrying the Gospel to the world.

I first heard about Urbana, a triennial global students missions conference, in 2015 when I was a first year International Development student at the University of Ottawa. I heard about it mostly in passing and honestly, I d...

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God in the Chaos

Samantha Dignam

February 6, 2019

Overcoming her doubts about the mission, though not the message, of the Church, the University of Ottawa’s Samantha Dignam discovers at the Urbana18 conference how acknowledging the faults of Christians is key to carrying the Gospel to the world.

I first heard about Urbana, a triennial global students missions conference, in 2015 when I was a first year International Development student at the University of Ottawa. I heard about it mostly in passing and honestly, I d...

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Just Imperfect Justice

Raymond J. de Souza

September 20, 2018

Recent sexual scandals have ensnared those who might be legally innocent but they are just desserts of a time when too many guilty walked free, Father Raymond de Souza writes.

How should allegations for sexual abuse, harassment or assault be handled outside the criminal justice system? That question is dominating the news, and will have a serious impact on our common life together.

This week the American Senate is debating...

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Trial Promises

Peter Stockland

February 15, 2018

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has been criticized for intervening in the manslaughter trial of a Saskatchewan farmer. Convivium’s Peter Stockland argues the real damage will come if judicial reforms she’s promising have already been rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Aggressive denunciations of Canada’s legal system following the Gerald Stanley acquittal remain deeply troubling even as they are emotionally understandable.

At the practical level, Stanley’s point-blank shooting of young Colten Boushie in a Saskatch...

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Fighting the World’s Oldest Oppression

Deborah Rankin

February 7, 2018

In the second of two parts, Convivum contributor Deborah Rankin talks with front line warriors against human sex trafficking. Despite tough laws passed by Canada in recent years, the battle in the street is far from over.

Joy Smith runs a registered charity in Winnipeg that supports and provides funds to front-line organizations across Canada to rescue and rehabilitate victims of human trafficking.

The former Conservative MP for Kildonan-St. Paul has dedicated much of...

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Justice For The Global Poor

Ed Wilson

December 19, 2017

While the world’s impoverished people need food, water, clothing and medicine, they also need the safety that comes from living in truly just societies, says Ed Wilson, executive director of International Justice Mission in Canada.

Convivium: International Justice Mission has rescued more than 40,000 people from violence and oppression. Today, your work is helping to protect 21 million people globally from violence. Where did the vision for IJM begin?

E...

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Faith and Belonging

Anna Vogt

September 18, 2017

If Convivium is about building community, Anna Vogt is the embodiment of the convivial ideal. A Canadian who now calls Colombia home, her Mennonite tradition and partnership with the Mennonite Central Committee - MCC make her a welcome voice for a lifelong, faith-fueled journey of building shared space between people.

I was born on the Prairies, but spent most of my growing up years in the Yukon, on the outskirts of Dawson City, a tiny, touristy gold mining town of 1800 people, on Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in territory. While growing up, I didn’t even know that other Canadians woul...

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Time to Bury the Bulls of Donation

Douglas Farrow

January 20, 2017

Writer Douglas Farrow offers comment and critique on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

From Tierra del Fuego to Ungava Bay / the history of betrayal continues to today / the spirit of Almighty Voice, the ghost of Anna Mae / call like thunder from the mountains – you can hear them say / It's a stolen lan...

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Defending a Foundational Freedom

Andrew Bennett

January 10, 2017

Andrew Bennett, Canada’s former Ambassador for Religious Freedom and now Cardus Senior Fellow, argues for the need to recognise the foundational nature of freedom of religion and conscience in our society and its link to our common life.

If we are to share a common life in Canada, freedom of religion and conscience must be foundational. It is the freedom that enables us to live fully as we are, and as we are called to be. It bears witness to the truth that human beings have a metaphysical...

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A Balance of Rights

Christian Vandergeest

June 8, 2015

Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin once wrote that "a multicultural, multireligious society can only work if people of all groups understand and tolerate each other." But when one party's rights start to bump up against another's in that society...

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The Fraught Line Between Faith and Politics

Peter Stockland

April 17, 2015

As with any judgment that must walk the fraught line between faith and politics, there are some findings that should properly raise warning flags. But in general, it seems very much of a piece with the Court’s laudable work in last month’s Loyola case.

Before the Supreme Court’s Saguenay decision becomes shorthand for assaults on religious freedom in Canada, the point needs making that is a thoughtful, fair-minded, and overall welcome ruling.

As with any judgment that must walk the fraught...

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Total Victory?

Naomi Biesheuvel

March 20, 2015

“It’s a total victory for the school, for parents and for the [education] ministry because it upholds the full society’s value,” said John Zucchi, an appellant in the case and father of a former Loyola student. “It took seven years but I can say I never lost faith, never lost hope.” . .

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in favour of Montreal’s Loyola High School, finding the Quebec government violated the Jesuit institution's Charter-protected freedom of...

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