It was a gathering of priestly pro-life stalwarts at Campaign Life Coalition’s national headquarters in Toronto recently. Father Tony Van Hee (left) has kept a constant vigil for the unborn on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for years, reminding federal legislators of the gap in legal rights for the unborn. Asked to sum up the situation in Canada (prior to the election) in [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to support Oregon legislation that allows physician-assisted suicide. Euthanasia opponents are now fearing that the door is now open for other states to allow euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The court ruled that the federal Controlled Substances Act does not allow the U.S. attorney-general to prohibit doctors from prescribing regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicides. Justice [...]
Why the silence about studies that show a link between oral contraceptives and cancer? What’s the difference between taking hormones for menopause and taking hormones as a contraceptive? If you’re the Canadian Cancer Society, you’ll warn of the cancer risks of one, but not the other. For more than a year, the society has cautioned women that hormone replacement therapy – a [...]
Interim Staff The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition remains concerned that a bill to legalize euthanasia and/or assisted suicide is still capable of passing through the newly elected Parliament, even though the Conservative Party won a minority. The election of a Conservative minority may not have changed the configuration of support for euthanasia or assisted suicide enough to create a climate where a bill [...]
Marielle Houle has been given a sentence of three years’ probation for assisting her son Charles Fariala to die. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will be asking the new minister of justice, once named, to review the Houle’s sentence. EPC said it understands the health condition of Houle, but it recognizes that if there is no deterrent for the act of assisted suicide, [...]
As he was Kim Campbell’s former campaign manager and a frequent guest at Toronto’s gay pride parade observances, it was always clear that Ontario PC leader John Tory was no friend of social conservatives (or social democrats like myself). Nevertheless, Tory confirmed his disdain for pro-family activists during the past federal election campaign. With less than two weeks left in the campaign, [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear the case of Chris Kempling, in what family supporters and free-speech advocates are calling a serious threat to democratic freedoms. Kempling, a teacher and school counselor in Quesnel, B.C., was disciplined in 1997 by the B.C. College of Teachers for writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper denouncing teaching on homosexuality. [...]
The Liberal Party has moved from attacking Conservatives on gay “marriage” to a full-out attack on pro-life issues. In a platform speech in Toronto during the election campaign, former Prime Minister Paul Martin accused Conservative leader Stephen Harper of planning to take away women’s abortion “rights.” “Members of Mr. Harper’s party have promised right-wing Conservative groups that if they are elected, they [...]
A study conducted for the Canadian federal Justice Department has recommended that Canada ditch its laws banning polygamy. “Criminalization does not address the harms associated with valid foreign polygamous marriages and plural unions, in particular the harms to women,” the report states, as reported by the Canadian Press, which obtained data through the Access to Information Act. “The report therefore recommends that [...]
Pro-life cause makes gains, marriage situation uncertain Despite a desperate and cynical 11th-hour attempt by Prime Minister Paul Martin to use abortion as a wedge issue, Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party won a plurality of seats on Jan. 23 and, more significantly, the number of pro-life MPs increased. What this means in terms of introducing and passing pro-life and pro-family legislation remains to [...]
From the editor's desk Covering elections is difficult in the best of circumstances. The best circumstance, in my mind, is that of a daily paper with dozens of reporters, dozens more editors, and a multi-million-dollar budget – the type that can afford the $3,500-a-day price tag for a media bus ticket that the campaigns charge. Less than ideal circumstances are two-writer/editor outfits [...]
Throughout the course of the winter campaign, then-prime minister Paul Martin frequently taunted Stephen Harper about his supposed “hidden agenda.” Such rhetoric jeopardizes deliberative debate - it prefers innuendo and suspicion to facts and arguments, it is used to scare voters and it panders to their misplaced sympathies and irrational fears. But it is also shrewd. Martin’s rhetorical campaign against the Conservatives [...]
Canada Peter Merrifield, an RCMP officer who sought the Conservative Party nomination in Barrie, Ont., was punished for his political views after it was discovered that his campaign material was deemed hate literature for defending traditional marriage. The RCMP said it "would be in the best interest of the RCMP ... if he was assigned to other duties, not related to politics," [...]
While Canadians went to the polls to bring in Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government, U.S. pro-lifers converged – at least 100,000 strong – on the Washington Mall. More and more, the annual Marches for Life in Ottawa and Washington are being represented by the young, who have survived an entire generation of abortion. The Syracuse Post Standard newspaper reported that the overwhelming [...]