Paul Tuns I have a "Houses of Worship" column in the Wall Street Journal about "The Burning of Canada's Churches." It begins: It has been a difficult summer for Canada’s Christians. Over five days in late June, four Catholic churches and an Anglican church were burned to the ground, the first churches to be set ablaze or vandalized to begin a summer of [...]
Joanna Alphonso Michelle Cohen published an article in the April edition of The College of Family Physicians of Canada, “Medical abortion is an essential service during the pandemic,” in which she argued that there has been an increase in calls to the Sexual Health and Rights hotline but that because of “new barriers to contraception and abortion in the wake of the [...]
From the editor’s desk: Happy anniversary to me! August 8 will mark the 20th anniversary since I became editor of this paper, meaning that I have been at the helm for more than half of The Interim’s life. It has been a remarkable privilege to serve the pro-life community as editor of this paper, and one that I am thankful to Jim [...]
Richard Dur While businesses and ordinary Albertans are increasingly feeling the pinch from wave-after-wave of government lockdowns, many of those in the public-sector, whose salaries are assured and whose pensions remain untouched, appear increasingly out-of-touch with the rest of us. Many Albertans feel abandoned, forgotten, left-behind, and alone. The names of those who have unfortunately died with COVID-19 are read aloud like [...]
Donald DeMarco The task of the commencement speaker is a curious one. After all, what more can students learn inside of an hour that they have not learned over the long haul of four years? However, the show must go on in spite of its rich potential for inducing boredom. Humorist Garry Trudeau has stated that, “Commencement speeches were invented largely in [...]
Joanna Alphonso: Ontario New Democrat MPP Terence Kernaghan (London North Centre) introduced Bill 259, the Viewer Discretion Act (Images of Fetuses) on March 8. Bill 259 directly targets the efforts of pro-life groups such as the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR), which uses abortion victim photography in “Choice Chains” in high-traffic locations, but also distributes the images in residential mailboxes. The [...]
Johnny Tzoganakis: Despite all the focus on COVID-19, in Canada there has recently been an uptick in another disease: syphilis. Saskatchewan has been recently struck with an outbreak of the disease, with 903 reported cases in 2020 and 537 so far in 2021 (as of May). While the other provinces by and large have not had any recent outbreaks (excepting Alberta), the [...]
Paul Tuns: At its annual meeting in Nashville on June 15, messengers (voting members) at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted for a resolution opposing abortion and calling for maintaining the Hyde Amendment which prohibits federal funding for abortion. The SBC said the Hyde Amendment is necessary to “to prevent taxpayers from being complicit in the moral evil of abortion” and the [...]
Andrew Lawton: In our pluralistic society, it has become common to find some rights seemingly butt up against each other. Transgender rights and women’s rights, gay rights and religious freedoms, and so on. As these conflicts fit into the ongoing culture wars, I take comfort in knowing the two most important rights, those to life and to free speech, are never in [...]
Paul Tuns On June 17, 73 per cent of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted during their annual spring meeting to draft a position paper on the “meaning of the Eucharist,” with an eye to reiterating the Church’s position that politicians who dissent from key moral teachings such as abortion should not present themselves to receive Holy Communion during Mass. [...]
Rory Leishman In a pastoral letter issued on May 1, the Archbishop of San Francisco, Cardinal Salvatore Cordileone, has spelled out with admirable clarity why no faithful Christian cleric should allow a politician who aids and abets in committing the evils of abortion to take part in Holy Communion. Having earned a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in [...]
John Carpay: Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters Sixteen months into lockdowns, governments continue to restrict our basic Charter freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, religion, conscience, travel, and movement. Meanwhile, our economy lies in ruins. Our children and grandchildren will need to repay hundreds of billions of dollars of lockdown debt. What started out as a reasonable, precautionary response [...]
Johnny Tzoganakis: COVID-19 may not be the only immediate threat to public health: measures to combat it may prove very deadly as well. There are a number of opinions on the medical efficacy of one of the main measures being taken across Canada—lockdowns—but there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that they may result in untold deaths that are not [...]
Paul Tuns: Senate debates C-6 On June 22, the House of Commons passed the Trudeau government’s Bill C-6, the so-called conversion therapy ban, in a 263-63 vote. Independent MP Derek Sloan (Hastings—Lennox and Addington) joined 62 of his former Conservative colleagues voting against the bill, which was supported by the Liberal, NDP, Bloc, and Green caucuses and nearly a third of the [...]
Interim Staff: On June 29, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) announced “that the Federal Court has struck down a discriminatory federal government decision against Mill Stream Bible Camp, operated by BCM Canada International.” The JCCF represented Mill Stream Bible Camp in court in April, challenging the Trudeau government’s denial of the children’s summer camp’s application for Canada Summer Jobs Program [...]