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
Drawing the Stranger Near
By Peter Stockland with Anika Barlow
September 4, 2018
Anika Barlow, hospitality coordinator at Vancouver’s Kinbrace Refugee Community Society, talks to Convivium about the power of faith to bring new arrivals and hosts alike closer to encountering God.
It gives me the ability to relate to many of the families who arrive at Kinbrace whether they're Muslim or Christian or otherwise AB: I can think of specific interactions I've had with people when they've been in a pretty dark place of heightened anxiety and uncertainty about what the future will hold: when their hearing date will be, if they'll have a positive decision, and if not, then what? There have been conversations I've had with people that have led us either into prayer together or at least into a conversation about prayer Perhaps our value of prayer, which is a core piece of the Kinbrace identity, in some way helps open a space for people who are in a fog of uncertainty, anxious about lives they’ve left and what their new lives may become C: Do the families of faith show concern to make sure the children get religious instruction and, time for prayer and religious practice etc It seems to me refugee claimants live a kind of bi-polar existence—balancing great expectations of "Canada" – opportunity, prosperity, hope –with the despair of all that’s been lost – home, family, identity
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Pigskin Crossing Pattern
Peter Stockland with Rodd Sawatzky
August 31, 2018
As the Calgary Stampeders prepare for their annual Labour Day Classic against their CFL rivals from Edmonton, team chaplain Rodd Sawatzky’s role is to help the team’s strong cohort of Christian players remember true victory is in Christ. The director of pro ministries for Athletes in Action spoke recently with Convivium’s Peter Stockland.
When I'm dealing with the spiritual things, what happens is because I was an athlete, because I am a coach, because I love people and I'm clear on the critical Christian mindset character, what Christ called us to be and live and understand and hold to be true, all of that melds into conversations t...
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When Politics Goes Wrong
Peter Stockland
August 17, 2018
Convivium publisher Peter Stockland argues recovery of genuine political conversation requires that we start asking the right questions about our political differences.
It’s the slow suffocation of the very possibility of political conversation, Smith says The outstanding question, however, is whether the words were in fact wayward, and if so, why? Here is a veteran member of Parliament raising a matter of public policy which, it’s worth remembering, is what we pay...
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New Catholic Hymnal is Nothing to Sing About
Peter Stockland
August 1, 2018
We tend to treat music like entertainment breaks from the serious phases of our church services, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland. But music ought to be so much more. Today, Peter defends the core of music: to lift our hearts, and our voices, towards God's love.
My entire understanding of music rests on three years of junior high school band, which was only possible after the first month because the school authorities so deeply feared letting me take shop class as an alternative Proof that the Church has no shyness about irony is affirmed in word that Canad...
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The NDP’s Anti-Labour Paradox
Peter Stockland with Brian Dijkema
July 27, 2018
Cardus’ director of Work and Economics made waves on Canada’s West Coast this month with a report critiquing the B.C. government’s move to let only unionized construction companies bid for major infrastructure projects. But, Brian Dijkema tells Convivum, the policy will cost taxpayers billions, punish workers, and risk damage to democracy itself.
By picking and choosing one labour model, they have given a leg up to companies that use that labour model, and in so doing have given a preferential option to certain types of capital, which is not what you would typically expect from a government that is pro-labour The reality is there's been trem...
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Canada Missing in Action on Religious Freedom
Peter Stockland with Andrew P.W. Bennett
July 26, 2018
Top cabinet ministers from more than 80 countries are in Washington D.C. today planning global action against religious persecution. Rev. Andrew Bennett, Director of the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute, is there and tells Convivium he’s hearing widespread disappointment over Canada’s absentee leadership on the critical issue.
They’ve invited various countries to represent themselves at the foreign minister level for an intensive couple of days of conversation about how we do more than just talk about defending religious freedom They have embedded in the statute different mechanisms within the State Department, and there'...
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Exactly Where You Are
Peter Stockland
July 23, 2018
In a world caught up with the noise surrounding one man having his moment in the spotlight, Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland calls us to ease back from the glamour we perceive in everything beyond us – and see the majesty right at our front door.
Few tables were free on the terrasse of Café des Cévennes that hot July Sunday, so naturally we were stuck beside a voice braying in American English about Donald Trump We talk about, hear about, fill our minds and social media feeds with hourly jot and tittle updates about Donald Trump because… bec...
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Mentors, Manipulators And Making It New
Peter Stockland with Jamil Jivani
July 6, 2018
In late June, Convivium’s Peter Stockland engaged in public conversation with lawyer, teacher and community activist, and author Jamil Jivani, 30, about his new book Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. In this third installment of three parts, Convivium will serialize an edited transcript of the discussion so readers who weren’t able to attend might experience Jivani’s remarkable story and wisdom
When I learned how to read about these people who were so similar and so different at the same time, I started to get a sense of what the distinction is between the mentors and the manipulators How do we compete? How do we offer a more compelling identity? A more compelling narrative? How do we give...
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A Life Saved by Tears
Peter Stockland with Jamil Jivani
July 5, 2018
In late June, Convivium’s Peter Stockland engaged in public conversation with lawyer, teacher and community activist, and author Jamil Jivani, 30, about his new book Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. In this second installment of three parts, Convivium will serialize an edited transcript of the discussion so readers who weren’t able to attend might experience Jivani’s remarkable story and wisdom
They treat young people and young men in particular as if they are necessary for a Hollywood-esque shift for our species that young men who commit to these ideas and this understanding of a faith can be the difference maker in where the world goes next It’s an Islam that becomes a stand-in for polit...
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Getting There From Here
Peter Stockland with Jamil Jivani
July 4, 2018
In late June, Convivium’s Peter Stockland engaged in public conversation with lawyer, teacher and community activist, and author Jamil Jivani, 30, about his new book Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. Over the next three days, Convivium will serialize an edited transcript of the discussion so readers who weren’t able to attend might experience Jivani’s remarkable story and wisdom.
That, to me, is an almost clinical description of people that I've known and experienced in life, of an environment where exactly the kind of things that you're addressing, the rage, that sense of crisis, that sense of identity, unfold The difficulty that men generally have, and certainly younger me...
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Free Not To Speak
Peter Stockland
June 27, 2018
Its purpose is to launch more legal challenges on purely business grounds to the Canada Summer Jobs attestation requirement, and to raise awareness of what spokesperson Tamara Jansen called “shocking overreach” by the federal government “Similarly, the right to freedom of thought, belief and opinion...
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Saving the Idea of Faith
Peter Stockland
June 22, 2018
At a yearly gathering of big-thinking Canadians, Cardus’ Ray Pennings challenges attendees to examine their own ideas about the critical place of religious faith in our common life.
But Pennings identified two key outlooks of long-established Canadians that he contended do a disservice to the reality of religious life in the country, and imperil its foundation of tolerance We’re in the midst, he said, of an attitudinal shift that is flattening out the existing bell curve on whi...
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The Graying Of Cohabitation
Peter Stockland with Peter Jon Mitchell
June 21, 2018
Senior Researcher Peter Jon Mitchell talks with Convivium about a new report from Cardus Family on data showing a doubling of the number of middle-aged Canadians choosing to cohabitate rather than marry. There are risks, Mitchell says, for the couples and for society.
Convivium: What needs to be done then to help people understand that the choice between cohabitation and marriage can have a real effect on their lives in the years when they need to be preparing for old age? In other words, if you're still doing this when you're in your 50s, tick, tick, tick, right...
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Re-ordering The Relationship
Peter Stockland
June 19, 2018
Today, Convivium is sharing a video sampling of the speech delivered by the Hon. Jason Kenney on May 18, 2018 as well as the fascinating panel discussion that followed between Kenney, Pat Nixon, founder and CEO of Calgary’s Mustard Seed ministry for the socially disadvantaged, and journalist Jen Gerson.
Gerson expands the discussion to include the Church and the role of faith in the dichotomy between State and society ...
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MAiD and Modern Medicine
Peter Stockland
June 18, 2018
Two years ago, on June 1, 2016, federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was escorted to her seat in front of Canada’s Senate to explain her government's rationale for Bill C-14, a legislative concoction with a name from a high school chemistry class and the full power to transform Canadian society forever.
Provincial foot-dragging on plans to expand palliative care services substantially is actually denying patients the very choice that was promised in the shift to MAiD, and making it increasingly problematic to discern which patients truly wanted to have a doctor deliberately end their life, Dr “The ...
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Trinity Western Loses
Peter Stockland
June 15, 2018
Trinity Western University has lost its legal battle to have graduates of its proposed law school accredited by law societies in Ontario and B.C.
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The Liberty To Dissent
Peter Stockland
June 12, 2018
Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland argues that freedom itself, not just the subset of religious freedom, is at stake in Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding Trinity Western University.
Of course, the specifics of the Trinity Western case centre on religious freedom Beyond even the religious freedom arguments it has made, that liberty of dissent is what Trinity Western is insisting it must be left free to have, to hold, and to live ...
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Religion, Freedom, Citizenship
Peter Stockland with Andrew P.W. Bennett
May 22, 2018
In early May, Cardus hosted launch events in Ottawa for its Religious Freedom Institute. Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, CRFI’s director, spoke with Convivium's Peter Stockland about the kickoff and what’s to come for the new institute.
AB: We're here to speak on behalf of, and to support in whatever way we can, all faith communities, and people of no particular religious faith who desire to speak in the public square about what they believe, to live out that public freedom What I saw here in Ottawa was just a tremendous sense of e...
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Fulmination Fantasies
Peter Stockland
May 16, 2018
Recent attacks on a Conservative MP’s factual declaration push Canada closer to the dangerous edge where wishes and truth are one and the same, writes Convivium’s Peter Stockland.
In 1989, in the immediate aftermath of Morgentaler, the government of the day introduced in the House of Commons legislation re-asserting the federal prerogative to control abortion through the Criminal Code For where, facing such a legislative fact, would the “right” to abortion have been had C-43 ...
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Getting Education Right
Peter Stockland with Ray Pennings
May 2, 2018
In a recent talk to a group of conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings challenged those present to re-think their approach to educating Canadian kids. Too often, he tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland, the Right offers more problems than solutions to what ails our schools.
The result is that we have a public school system operating as a monopoly with a monopoly mindset protecting their monopoly and resistant to innovation.So, we have a robust sense of public education, we have meaningful choice, not based on private/public but of different sorts that parents right acr...
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Stopping to Look at L'Arche
Peter Stockland with Randall Wright
April 30, 2018
Randall Wright’s cinematic close up of L’Arche, Jean Vanier’s community for people with mental disabilities, opens today in theatres across Canada. The British documentary maker spoke with Convivium’s Peter Stockland about the powerful change that followed acceptance of Vanier’s invitation to see humanity itself in an entirely new light.
I would have liked to have had more in the film of the one thing Jean values very highly, which is to give people back their past If we want to change the world, if we want peace, we have to be prepared to meet people who are from another group, who people unknown to us, maybe even our enemies Somet...
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Reaching Millennials With Religious Education
Beth Green with Peter Stockland
April 20, 2018
Beth Green, program director for Cardus Education, talks to Convivium’s Peter Stockland about new research showing the benefits of religious education for members of the “lost in transition” Millennial generation.
Until the Cardus Education Survey (CES) came along there wasn't an awful lot of data about the role of the school sector and education in this conversation about the religious and spiritual lives of teenagers Peter Stockland: Cardus Education has just released a research paper looking at the Millenn...
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Springing the Debt Trap
Peter Stockland with Brian Dijkema
April 11, 2018
This week, Cardus Work and Economics gave municipalities in Ontario data-driven advice about handling new powers over the debt trap that is the payday loan industry. Convivium’s Peter Stockland spoke with program director Brian Dijkema about helping cities help the working poor.
If it is under-utilized advertising space anyway, why wouldn’t municipalities make a deal with credit unions and alternatives to market this product? Why not help them cover one of the major overhead costs? Some libertarians don't like this idea because they think it interferes with the market, but ...
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Fool's Gold?
Peter Stockland
April 6, 2018
Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland finds in this week’s International Golden Rule Day a reminder that alluring dross has become the substitute for Christian culture.
It’s the second of Christ’s two great commandments, following indivisibly from the first: to love God with all heart, soul, and mind On its surface, International Golden Rule Day appears to be a point somewhere between solemn religious feasts and munching a burrito Why? Because, despite its many mer...