Justice

  • The Opposition's Might Suggests the Cause is Right

    The Opposition's Might Suggests the Cause is Right

    John Sikkema

    December 20, 2013

    While the rest of the country ponders what it means for a religious institution to be granted a public-serving law school, the news this week has been illustrated rather more personally for me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    This country is to have a new law school—one unlike any other existing accredited Canadian legal institution: On Wednesday, British Columbia's Minister for Advanced Education, Amrik Virk, announced that his department would follow ...

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  • Rob Ford, the Media, and the Three Cs

    Rob Ford, the Media, and the Three Cs

    Ray Pennings

    November 29, 2013

    Using my criteria, there is some evidence that Mayor Ford is a competent leader. However, the evidence is overwhelming that his character is wanting and his anti-institutional populism has never been my cup of tea. It seems clear that Mayor Ford should have resigned some time ago. His private-life behaviours morally disqualify him from earning the present respect of the citizenry and hence, will ultimately make him ineffective as a mayor. If he still believes political leadership remains an act of service, not an entitlement, then the right thing to do in the present cloud is to resign for the greater good.

    If asked for advice in evaluating candidates for political leadership, I usually reference three Cs—competence, character, and conviction—as useful criteria. Of late, though, it would seem that crack, cocaine, and cannabis are the more common focus of polit...

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  • Leadership Involves Loss

    Leadership Involves Loss

    Gideon Strauss

    November 27, 2013

    Gideon Strauss, a native of South Africa, where he served as an interpreter for the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Archbishop Desmond Tutu, writes on the way we remember Nelson Mandela's life.

    Editor's note: This piece was published yesterday in Fieldnotes Magazine, a publication of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. Rep...

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  • Caricatures and Blame Games

    Caricatures and Blame Games

    Ray Pennings

    November 15, 2013

    It's easy to say that community groups are more effective than government in delivering services to help our poor neighbours. But this can't mean that politicians can ignore the plight of the poor. And, indeed, I've just returned from a discussion in Washington where examples were plentiful of local initiatives making real differences.

    We need to find different ways to talk about poverty.

    It's easy to say that community groups are more effective than government in delivering services to help our poor neighbours. But this can't mean that politicians can ignore the plight of the poor...

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  • The Upside-Down Moral Economy

    The Upside-Down Moral Economy

    Phil Reinders

    November 11, 2013

    Toronto mayor Rob Ford promised to end the gravy train at city hall, but no one imagined a train wreck like this.

    Editor's note: This piece was originally published on the blog of Phil Reinders: Squinch.net. Reinders is the senior pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, and author of Seeking...

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  • Remembering How?

    Remembering How?

    Brian Dijkema

    November 11, 2013

    We can try to remember by way of the glory or the courage of war, or indeed by the horrors. We can remember viscerally—feeling the planes rumble overhead, hearing the cannons fired, seeing the veterans in their dwindling numbers. So how do we remember, as people living in a time vastly different from the great and tragic battles at Vimy, Amiens, Passchendaele, Dieppe, or Juno?

    Perhaps we seek to remember by means that are not helpful.

    We can try to remember by way of the glory or the courage of war, or indeed by the horrors. We can remember viscerally—feeling the planes rumble overhead, hearing the cannons fired, seeing th...

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  • Law Good, Virtue Better

    Law Good, Virtue Better

    Brian Dijkema

    November 8, 2013

    These, and not whether or not Toronto's image is going to suffer, are the questions that I'm asking as Canadians continue to wallow in the griping mire of news stories about a mayor who admits to smoking an illegal drug while in office, and yet will not resign. This refusal to resign is only the most egregious of host of other violations of political custom.

    What does the public do when the laws cannot do anything? What does the public do when there are, in fact, no laws relevant to the issue of the day?

    These, and not whether or not Toronto's image is going to suffer, are the questions that I'm asking a...

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  • Standing by Words at Home and Abroad

    Standing by Words at Home and Abroad

    Doug Sikkema

    November 7, 2013

    It is 1895. Oscar Wilde, the witty Irish socialite and notorious public flaneur, is embroiled in a public scandal over allegations of sodomy. The Victorian public is far less accommodating of Wilde's proclivities than we would be today, and the case quickly becomes a media frenzy as the sordid details of Wilde's private life become fodder for the gossiping masses.

    "He said, and stood . . ." —Paradise Regained, IV, 561

    It is 1895. Oscar Wilde, the witty Irish socialite and notorious public ...

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  • After the Scrutiny, What Good Remains?

    After the Scrutiny, What Good Remains?

    Dani Shaw

    October 28, 2013

    But institutions of faith are hardly unique in showing concern about their employees' off-duty conduct, or their students' sexual behaviours. And employees (or students) at such institutions are hardly the only ones who agree to restrictions on their personal autonomy.

    Considerable ink has been spilled and breath expended over whether or not faith-based institutions (Loyola High School; Trinity Western ...

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  • Contingency in Politics

    Contingency in Politics

    Brian Dijkema

    October 25, 2013

    Whether it is aimed at electoral success, control of the legislative process, or control of popular opinion, this way of framing issues is a means to acquire or maintain power. In each case, the morphing of a problem from a complex problem with a variety of different solutions to a binary choice between two options is motivated by questions of power.

    Politicians are masters at defining issues in black and white terms. As political operatives from Karl Rove to Brian Topp are aware, the ability to define an issue in a way that presents your party in stark contrast with the other (your party being on the s...

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  • Rasouli Case a Win for Patient Rights and Beliefs—And Cause for Concern

    Rasouli Case a Win for Patient Rights and Beliefs—And Cause for Concern

    Albertos Polizogopoulos

    October 18, 2013

    The case dealt with the issue of consent to medical treatment and, in particular, whether or not doctors require consent from a patient's substitute decision maker to remove a patient—in this case, Hassan Rasouli—from life support when the doctor believes such support is futile. I acted as counsel to The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, one of the interveners in the case.

    Today, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Cuthbertson v. Raso...

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  • Wendell Berry: Seeing the Earth as Sacrament

    Wendell Berry: Seeing the Earth as Sacrament

    Doug Sikkema

    October 11, 2013

    Yet it would be years that I was first introduced to a writer who undertook the task of clearly articulating how a love of the creation could inform and be informed by a love of the creation and its Creator. This Kentucky farmer and man of letters, Wendell Berry, made real for me the complex interplay of religion, literature, and agriculture in informing a holistic way of life—in other words, towards shalom.

    In the Christian community in which I grew up, the common approach to the environmental movement was to see everyone involved in it as a left-wing, tree-hugging, pot-smoking, nature-worshipping, hippie wannabe...

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  • Diminishing Religion

    Diminishing Religion

    Ray Pennings

    October 9, 2013

    In presenting their initial cases, there was a surface amount of overlap between the two arguments. Both speakers (there were others on the panel, too, but I will narrow my summary) agreed that civic literacy required that students have an awareness of the various religions they will encounter in a multicultural society.

    Last week, as my colleague Peter made note of yesterday, McGill University hosted a conference prompted by the...

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  • What's Under the Hat

    What's Under the Hat

    Peter Stockland

    October 8, 2013

    And with a single word, the Queen's Counsel who has made his legal reputation lecturing in the country's law schools and arguing before the Supreme Court reduced the op-ed, talk show, and water cooler verbiage poured out over the Charter to so much mush. That he did, though his delivery of the overview while dressed in full kilted Scottish regalia hinted that something broader and deeper was in the works.

    [caption id="attachment_2427" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Photo: Peter Stockland"] ...

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  • Assisted Suicide for All?

    Assisted Suicide for All?

    Derek Miedema

    October 3, 2013

    "Medical aid in dying." If that sounds like a euphemism, rest assured that it is. Bill 52 hearings are going on at Quebec's National Assembly from September 17 to October 10. The bill hopes to protect vulnerable people from pressure to die using four criteria. Patients must be of full age and "capable of giving consent to care." Secondly, their illness must be "incurable" and "serious." Thirdly, they must "suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability." And finally, they must be in "constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain, which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable."

    Editor's Note: This article was originally published last week by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. Reprinted by kind permission. Follow the IMFC on ...

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  • Christians in the Middle East: More than "Leaseholders"?

    Christians in the Middle East: More than "Leaseholders"?

    Paul S. Rowe

    September 30, 2013

    But will Christian response repeat errors of the twentieth century, or aim instead for a more productive movement?

    The violence that has befallen Christians in Egypt is a crisis that threatens the most important bastion of the faith in the region. It falls on the heels of crises that have forced massive emigration of Christians from Iraq and the Palestinian territories ...

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  • A Double-Edged Sword

    A Double-Edged Sword

    Brian Dijkema

    September 26, 2013

    Montreal itself—a beautiful and wealthy city—is in the heart of the province in Canada working hardest to move religion out of the public square and box it well into the private sphere.

    As I write this, I'm sitting in the McGill Faculty club in Montreal. McGill, of course, is the heart of the old evangelical establishment in Quebec, and it has plenty of wood paneling, paintings of men with mutton chops, and lovely crown molding to show for...

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  • At Least Quebec Is Honest About It

    At Least Quebec Is Honest About It

    Janet Epp Buckingham

    September 23, 2013

    The most recent volley is from the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The OHRC is updating its policy on "creed," which has generally been considered to prevent discrimination on the basis of religion.

    "Separation of church and state" is an American concept, intended to protect the state from religious interference. It's not technically applicable in the Canadian context. But might it be time for religious institutions in this country to adopt the concept...

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  • Two Postcards from Canada's Switzerland

    Two Postcards from Canada's Switzerland

    Peter Stockland

    September 17, 2013

    A) Wisdom from friend and Convivium magazine contributor Alisha Ruiss: B) A recent walkabout reflects my building sense of bewilderment:

    Two postcards from Canada's Switzerland, where "neutrality" now means the Québec government will employ its monopoly on the use of force to knock all hats off all heads almost equally.

    A) Wisdom from friend and Convivium magazine con...

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  • What Lies Beneath Public Discourse

    What Lies Beneath Public Discourse

    Brian Dijkema

    September 12, 2013

    Yet we should be wary of the notion that legislation on scarves, stars, or crosses is the only place where questions of religion matter. There are many more aspects of political discourse and policy making that relate to people's deepest convictions.

    The Quebec government's infamous new "charter of values" has placed religion at the centre of our national political discourse. Even the proposed charter is dangerous and annoying, it shows...

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