Harley Price, an occasional Interim contributor, has an outstanding piece on his blog about free love. He notes that there is nothing "free" about modern libertinism: Free love has been free only in that its proponents and practitioners have gotten away with it, imposing upon everyone else the burden of paying its enormous social costs. But that’s how social democracy works. The [...]
After denying a pro-life group official club status in 2010, Carleton University’s student union is proposing a referendum to ban pro-life groups from the campus altogether. The question asks: “Are you in favour of banning groups such as Lifeline, the Genocide Awareness Project, Campaign for Life Coalition and other organizations that use inaccurate information and violent images to discourage women from exploring [...]
Canada Campaign Life Coalition launched a national TV advertising campaign on Sun News focused on the B.C. court challenge to Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide restrictions. It asks Canadians to write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to urge them to invoke the notwithstanding clause if necessary to uphold the prohibition on killing vulnerable people ... The Supreme [...]
A provincial cold-snap did not prevent a pro-life youth group from handing out over 20,000 pamphlets on Jan. 14 to homes across the province. The pamphlet called upon taxpayers to unite in demanding that the government cease using tax dollars to fund an elective procedure that kills babies. “The polls show that people just don’t know about abortion and [...]
Americans United for Life released its seventh annual “Life List,” a ranking of all 50 states based on a comprehensive list of life issues, from abortion to euthanasia. For the second time in three years, Louisiana tops the list, followed closely by Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Arkansas. The least life-affirming states were Washington, California, Hawaii, Vermont, and Montana. The five states rated [...]
On Dec. 15, CTV News in British Columbia launched a sting operation against the South Fraser Pregnancy Options Centre in Surrey, B.C., with what Option’s Centre executive director Laura Lansink said was “the hope that our peer-counsellor would give false or biased information.” The Pregnancy Options centres are associated with the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services (CAPSS), a national, non-political, registered [...]
The Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care highlighted the problem of elder abuse in its landmark report released on November 17, 2011. The report, Not to be Forgotten, a result of the committee’s consultations with stakeholders across the country, makes policy recommendations in the areas of disability issues, elder abuse, suicide prevention, and palliative care. The report identifies elder abuse as [...]
Grassroots Liberals: Organizing for Local and National Politics by Royce Koop (UBC Press, 212 pages, $29.95 paperback) There has been much talk in the past few years about renewing the Liberal Party by focusing on its structure, from the federal executive and the provincial wings of the federal party down to the constituency associations at the riding level. Indeed, reform of their [...]
In the movie version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, there is a scene in which the captain of the book-burning squad makes off-hand comments on some of the books that are about to be incinerated. In his view, philosophy books are the most pernicious. He pulls down a book from the shelf and cradles it in his hands for a moment [...]
If you were incurably ill and facing impending death, would you want your medical team to continue with aggressive and painful medical treatments in the hope of a miracle cure? Or would you prefer to be placed in palliative care to help you through the inevitable dying process? Most people would opt for palliative care. However, sometimes, close family members of [...]
Former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae, a vocal abortion advocate, is not fondly remembered for his “Rae Days” that introduced the unpopular, controversial public sector wage cuts he implemented in the ‘90s. As interim leader of the federal Liberal Party, Rae gleefully greeted Lise St-Denis, former Shawinigan federal NDP member who defected to the Liberal federal caucus because the late NDP leader, [...]
When I was a reporter, I would do anything for a scoop. I wonder, though, whether the effort was misplaced. A scoop is an exclusive story. But now that inclusiveness is in fashion, exclusiveness may be on the way out. I hope not. Being first with the news was more fun than gossip. To avoid excluding women, our academic and media [...]
I spent one night of my holidays watching the new Bluray re-issue of Meet Me In St. Louis, a film that might be the pinnacle of the MGM colour musical, and is very probably the zenith of Judy Garland’s career. I enjoyed it even more than the last time I saw it, but like almost anything from what’s called Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” [...]
As I write my first column in 2012, and I’d like to introduce a new term, a new concept into the dialogue, the narrative of the Canadian body politic and public conversation. It’s this. Shut up! Yes, I know I sound a little rude, but there we are. As someone who has laboured in the media trenches for some years now, [...]
An editorial in the Jan. 16 Canadian Medical Association Journal written by Dr. Rajendra Kale, the interim editor-in-chief, advocates for measures to curb sex-selective abortion of girls. “Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups,” he wrote [...]