The 21st National March for Life, marking the liberalization of abortion by Pierre Elliott Trudeau on May 14, 1969, took place on May 10. Matt Wojciechowski, spokesman for March organizer Campaign Life Coalition, said that there was “a lot of joy in the air,” even with the ongoing discrimination the Canadian pro-life movement has been enduring. Catherine Glenn Foster, president of Americans [...]
Maybe it’s some remnant of our tribal past, but it’s hard for us to leave behind some impulse to fear and vilify whoever lives one village over, beyond the river or in the next valley. We might think we’re sophisticated, cosmopolitan people, but this nascent tribalism is never far from the surface, and I saw it re-emerge with a roar during recent [...]
Despite evidence to the contrary, population control advocate Paul Ehrlich maintains that the Earth cannot support 7 billion people. This month marks the 50th anniversary of biologist Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, in which he famously and incorrectly predicted it was a “near certainty” that humanity faced imminent demise because over-consumption of resources would result in “hundreds of million of [...]
On June 7, voters in Ontario will have the chance to replace Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne by electing a new NDP or Progressive Conservative government. Technically, this is not one election, but 124 simultaneous elections, one in each riding across the province. In Canada, voters do not directly elect a government or premier, but rather members of federal or provincial parliaments that [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke March 10 was quite the emotional roller coaster. The widely-anticipated release of the Ontario PC leadership election results was delayed. Rumours swirled that Tanya Granic Allen had placed in third, and Doug Ford and Christine Elliott were neck and neck and battling it out in the backrooms. Then, out of Saskatchewan: News that Brad Trost had [...]
Law Matters John Carpay On March 19, the University of Alberta held a public event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Vriend v. Alberta. In 1998, the court ordered Alberta to add “sexual orientation” to its human rights legislation. When pondering the Vriend ruling, it is important to remember that, during the 1990s, activists across Canada were [...]
In one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, a character identifies the two ways he went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.” For decades, pro-lifers have been raising the alarm about the gradual, subtle, but ultimately disastrous effects that the legal acceptance of pre-natal infanticide has on culture, all under the spurious banner of “choice.” Pregnant mothers in dire situations are deprived of the ability [...]
Critics say Trudeau government is ideologically pushing women into workforce Finance Minister Bill Morneau focused on gender issues in his budget and a month later said he will begin looking at Canada's competitiveness. Despite facing economic uncertainty from the on-going threat of the United States withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement and competitive pressures from the U.S. after [...]
Doug Ford wins Ontario PC Leadership. On March 10, following a whirlwind six-week leadership campaign during which frontrunner Doug Ford courted pro-life and pro-family voters after Tanya Granic Allen entered the race, Ford was crowned the new Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leader. Ford was declared the winner late on the Saturday evening after party officials kicked out more than [...]
Stephanie Hallihan "Memorial for Unborn Life" by Martin Hudáček" Editor’s Note: Stephanie Hallihan of Tillsonburg, Ont., (St. Mary’s Catholic High School, Woodstock) won third prize in the Fr. Ted Essay contest sponsored by Niagara Right to Life. The contest asked participants to reflect on a work of art and what it said about life. The essays of the first- and [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman Following a much-publicized campaign to obtain medical assistance in dying, Aurelia Brouwers, a 29-year-old, Dutch psychiatric patient, killed herself on Jan. 26, by drinking a lethal potion served up by a physician affiliated with a roving Dutch death squad, the Levenseindekliniek (an end-of-life clinic) in The Hague, the Netherlands. Brouwers was not terminally ill. Neither was [...]
Henry VIII One of the differences between a free society and a repressive regime is the right to remain silent. In the 20th century – the darkest in human history – Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and other tyrants required citizens to display their support for the regime or its ideology. In contrast, a free country does not compel its citizens [...]
My first glimpse of Jordan Peterson was almost a decade ago, when he appeared on TVO’s current affairs show The Agenda with Steve Paikin alongside my friend, the writer Kathy Shaidle. She was on the show arrayed against a dismal group of evangelical atheists, including then-United Church minster Gretta Vosper – the God-botherer against the God-deniers, a hard hour of media labour [...]
Tanya Granic Allen While not part of the official Manning Networking Conference, the Blue Committee.org, a not-for-profit group that seeks to grow Canada’s conservative movement, hosted an event at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa, examining how the Conservative Party could win in urban centers. Joseph Ben-Ami, founding director of BlueCommittee.org, asked how Conservatives can win ridings by appealing to socially [...]
Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Law, said culture is about our common life, which itself is bound in the common good, about which state institutions cannot be neutral. Despite some grumbling from social conservatives before the Manning Networking Conference Feb. 8-10, at least five panels examined issues of interest to Canadians on the right concerned with life, family, and [...]