Peter Stockland
Peter Stockland is a Cardus Senior Fellow and Publisher of the Catholic Register.
Bio last updated April 4th, 2022.
Articles by Peter Stockland
When Calls to Service Call Us Back
By Peter Stockland
March 15, 2021
The Cardus Religious Freedom Institute’s Diakonia Project moved its two researchers to faith-based service themselves, Peter Stockland reports.
Matthew House was one of eight service organizations across Canada that Bennett and Lewis looked at in depth and, more, created space on the CRFI website so workers within the faith-based groups could tell their own stories as well When Father Deacon Andrew Bennett and researcher Johanna Lewis began planning the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute’s Diakonia project last year, their aim was to tell the stories of Canadian faith-based services
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Readers Respond to Sean Murphy
Peter Stockland
March 5, 2021
We asked our readers to let us know what they think about Sean Murphy’s initiative to amend the Criminal Code and make it an offence to compel anyone to participate in the act of non-culpable homicide that is currently called medical aid in dying. Here are some responses.
Health Care should be about saving lives, and in my view the moment Canada made Physician Assisted Suicide law they infringed on the rights of Canadians who feel life from conception until natural death is sacred It seems to me the government is more interested in investing in ending lives through a...
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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.
Given that most people don’t go into health care to commit even non-culpable homicide against the vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled, or the mentally ill – as the Senate amendments would allow – a consequence could be far fewer hands willing to inject death into their fellow citizens’ veins What ...
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Cancel That Cancellation
Peter Stockland
February 11, 2021
Desecration of the U.S. Capitol and undermining of North American institutions are both being rebuked by those willing to stand up for reason and sanity, Peter Stockland writes.
Late last month, in the later stages of a long and respected career, Douglas Farrow was subjected to an open letter from students in the Religious Studies department In late January, Kay published a superb piece of journalism on the cancel culture malice and cowardice at the heart of former CTV real...
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COVID in the Courts
Peter Stockland
January 25, 2021
Peter Stockland speaks with lawyer John Carpay, of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, about looming legal battles on pandemic-driven infringements of Charter rights.
Establishing the right is why Carpay and the JCCF are going to court to argue governments should heed their own data when they decide to “do something” about COVID Carpay is prepared to do the talking in court as he and the JCCF press ahead with legal challenges in five provinces to the shutdowns, l...
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Protecting Freedom From COVID-19
Peter Stockland
January 18, 2021
There’s no question the pandemic is real and really deadly but we must never forget that liberty, too, can suffer the painful demise of simply being forgotten, Peter Stockland argues.
The last time Quebecers were subjected to State control of the hours they could be on public streets was 50 years ago during the declaration of the War Measures Act by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau during the 1970 October Crisis I don’t even mean it as being free from annoying smart phone bla...
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MAiD Muscles In
Peter Stockland
January 8, 2021
Staff layoffs and eviction of B.C.’s Delta Hospice Society from its facility outside Vancouver show MAiD advocates’ power to impose their will on those who don’t want it, Peter Stockland writes.
In the case of DHS, it met with officials from the local Fraser Health Authority and explained its constitutional predicament: its bylaws banned MAiD and to adhere to the government order would put it in violation of its standing under the provincial Society’s Act government or its local Fraser Heal...
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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 Yet it’s here that the story turns from the particular pain of the faithful in Montreal to the universal joy and ho...
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Progress Against MAiD
Peter Stockland
November 19, 2020
Catherine Frazee, a long-time disability Rights activist and Ontario’s former Chief Commissioner of Human Rights, talked to MPs about pending MAiD expansion recently. It wasn’t enough to make her give up hope, Peter Stockland reports.
As a member of the Equality Rights Committee of the DisAbled Women's Network Canada (DAWN), Frazee primarily sought during her Commons committee appearance to get MPs to understand how MAiD and its expansion undermine the equal standing of those with pronounced physical and mental vulnerabilities Li...
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MAiD to be Vulnerable
Peter Stockland
November 11, 2020
Laval University bioethicist Cory Labrecque argues the debate over medically assisted death ignores the reality we all face risk just by being human, Peter Stockland reports.
For his part, Labrecque ascribes a great deal of the nominal support for MAiD to calculated neglect of the reality of human vulnerability in end-of-life discussion and debate We allow ourselves to believe, as Labrecque himself experienced in the comments of his former med school colleagues about his...
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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.
Elghawaby notes that French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has made clear a principal aim of the current crackdown is to “send a message” to French citizens who are Muslims that they are being watched even if they have nothing to do with jihadi, of even criminal, activity In one of the best (albe...
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How MAiD Expansion Mangles Medicine
Peter Stockland
October 28, 2020
Palliative care expert Dr. Leonie Herx is one of 750 doctors publicly urging the Trudeau government to deep-six its new “death on demand” legislation, Peter Stockland reports.
The willingness of the political class to transfer palliative care dollars into billable hours for medically administered lethal injections is an irrefutable marker of the power shift to MAiD from what Canadians prior to 2016 understood as medical care Adding the pressure of Bill C-7’s “death on dem...
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Crescendo of Critics Denounce MAiD Legislation
Peter Stockland
October 22, 2020
Experts in law, medicine and disability advocacy are joining the chorus calling for the withdrawal of the Liberal government’s bill to expand medically administered death, Peter Stockland writes.
No longer limited to hastening death, Bill C-7 embraces MAiD as means of terminating an otherwise viable life – but only the life of someone with an illness or disability for whom death is rendered an appropriate therapeutic response to suffering,” the lawyers’ letter says “Suddenly, a lethal injec...
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Faith Leaders Fight Back Against Expanding MAiD
Peter Stockland
October 15, 2020
The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-7 has drawn multifaith ire across Canada and a sharply-worded public call to immediately halt the legislation, Peter Stockland reports.
More than 50 leaders across the faith spectrum warn the Liberal government’s changes to Medical Aid in Dying legislation will pressure vulnerable Canadians to opt for “lethal procedures” over living with illness or disability ...
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Blueprints for God’s Hotels
Peter Stockland
September 7, 2020
Raymonde Gauthier, co-curator of a current exhibit at Montreal’s Hôtel Dieu museum, explores with Peter Stockland how the 19th century partnership of Bishop Ignace Bourget and architect Victor Bourgeau shaped the city’s spiritual landscape.
What is known is that over the course of his years crafting churches at Bourget’s behest, Bourgeau gained such architectural stature in Montreal that he was ultimately able to spurn the Bishop’s greatest commission The succeeding 36 years constituted a whirlwind of ultra-montane Roman Catholic expan...
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The Everlasting G. K. Chesterton
Peter Stockland
September 4, 2020
Retiring this summer after 46 years as editor of the Chesterton Review, Father Ian Boyd tells Peter Stockland why the great Christian journalist has such enduring appeal and importance.
“(George Bernard) Shaw said that the world Chesterton was interested in was in the future rather than the past,” Father Boyd says The confession draws surprisingly little surprise from Father Ian Boyd, the world’s leading expert on the great Catholic apologist, and founding editor of The Chesterton ...
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Sharing Memory Matters
Peter Stockland
September 2, 2020
Energy wasted defending or toppling statues should instead power a national conversation about what, why and how we collectively commemorate our pluralistic pasts, Peter Stockland writes.
For her book Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland, Elisabetta Viggiani mapped 157 publicly visible sites of Troubles commemoration in Belfast “The first casualty of peace is often the memory of war,” Ulster historian Jane Leonard writes in an essay publis...
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Can We Talk?
Peter Stockland
August 25, 2020
Will the strong showing of Leslyn Lewis in the Tory leadership race revitalize a socially conservative conversation in Canada? Peter Stockland isn’t placing a bet on it.
That means bye-bye-birdie from the federal scene for MacKay, who set off the leadership race last year by criticizing Andrew Scheer for allowing social conservative issues to “hang around his neck like a stinking albatross” during the 2019 campaign Theoretically, that should in turn leave room for a...
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The Cardinal’s Diplomatic Dressing Down
Peter Stockland
August 20, 2020
Quebec’s mistreatment of faith groups during the COVID lockdown drew a Cardinal’s ire in words high on diplomacy and inspiring, says Canada’s former ambassador to the Vatican. Peter Stockland reports.
The whole of the statement is a relentlessly polite evisceration of the Quebec government’s ill-mannered and anti-democratic exclusion of the Church, yes, but also all faith communities in planning, executing and communicating around the COVID crisis But Father Piotr’s words were also a localized ma...
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Bidding Loyola a Long Goodbye
Peter Stockland
August 13, 2020
Paul Donovan’s retirement as president of Montreal’s Loyola High School ends his 39-year association with the historic Catholic institution, which included a major religious freedom victory in the Supreme Court. Peter Stockland reports.
Paul Donovan, the recently retired president of Montreal’s Loyola High School, stands by the graduating class photo that contains his father Kevin, who was also a student at the storied Jesuit high school When he was promoted to president from principal of Loyola five years ago, in the aftermath o...
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Hospice Stands Firm Against All-Out Assault
Peter Stockland
July 29, 2020
The current board of the Irene Thomas Hospice in Delta, B.C., is fighting to stay true to its Christian roots and remain “an authentic palliative care facility,” writes Peter Stockland.
The board of the Irene Thomas Hospice hoped faith alone could stop the onslaught of MAiD at the 10-bed palliative care facility on Vancouver’s southeast edge In fact, Angelina Ireland adds, it’s been clear for months the whole goal of a social media-driven membership campaign was to build the number...
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Deciphering WE and Democracy
Peter Stockland
July 17, 2020
What questions didn't get asked, wonders Peter Stockland, when a 36-member cabinet assessed a $900 million plan with a mega-charity linked to the Prime Minister and his family?
Or else what? Do you really want a collision with Daddy? It’s has the ring, at least, of being a Canadian political reminder that, to borrow Anne Applebaum’s phrase, “sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe the bull – it’s to make people fear the bully Wilson-Raybould, of course, is the for...
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Getting the Anti-Racism Agenda Right
Peter Stockland
July 3, 2020
There’s no question Canadians must call out systemic bigotry, Peter Stockland says, but he cautions we must also be systematic in making sure we call the right things by that name.
The original complaint against him for disputing the claim of “genocide” exploded into a cherry picked “uncovering” of virtually every word he’s published during the past 20 years either at C2C or in his days as editor of the Byfield family’s unabashedly conservative Alberta Report All of which cons...
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Dignity That Illuminates Community
Peter Stockland and Andrew P.W. Bennett
June 19, 2020
Convivium Editor Peter Stockland talks with Rev. Deacon Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute, about regaining the light of shared humanity in this time of pandemic and racial protest.
But we also have to recognize that as a human community, we fail a lot of the time to recognize the dignity of all people PS: Where will those new voices of community come from in a time when we all seem so fragmented from each other? Black Lives Matter no longer trusts that the communities outside ...