I accuse. The various federal and provincial human rights commissions of discrimination. Against me. Because, for years now, I have spoken out against same-sex “marriage,” the excesses of the gay community and Muslim extremism in my column as well as on my television show, watched by 250,000 people. Good Lord, I’ve even made speeches on these issues, addressing thousands of people. I [...]
In a headline story on Nov. 8, the New York Times reported that, by voting to ban federal funding for abortion from the major health-care reform bill under consideration in the United States Congress, the House of Representatives “has energized the opponents of abortion with their biggest victory in years.” Quite so. The $1.1 trillion House health-care reform bill proposes [...]
A few months ago, I found myself having to defend a major entertainment corporation while a guest on a national TV show – not the sort of position any critic relishes. A critic’s credibility is a fragile thing, but you’re always safe defaulting to the contrarian, lone wolf stance much beloved of politicians on the election trail, young rock bands with a [...]
How I made it into the inner recesses of the White House remains a mystery to me, but there I was in the War Room of the CIA Office of Political Disinformation. I had to hurdle a number of obstructions that would have stopped dead any spy getting in and ended up standing before a tall, imposing gentleman with dark glasses who [...]
If Christmas means anything, it is surely expressed in Matthew 4:16: “The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light and, to those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light has dawned.” How marvelous that divine light, encased in human flesh, has shone, shines now and will shine for endless days. It is [...]
Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values by Brian Lee Crowley (Key Porter, $34.95, 360 pages) In an important new book, Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values, Brian Lee Crowley persuasively argues that the future prosperity of Canada depends on a revival of marriage and the family. For Crowley, this is a new understanding. Until [...]
On Sept. 23, the Madam Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein of the Supreme Court of British Columbia quashed polygamy charges against Winston Blackmore and James Oler. The legal reasoning is rather technical and narrow – the defense claimed and the justice agreed that former Attorney General Wally Oppal had gone “special prosecutor shopping” – but that doesn’t change the reality that the decision will [...]
In early October, a former Roman Catholic bishop, Raymond Lahey, was charged with the possession and distribution of child pornography. Whether he is guilty or not is yet to be decided, but the case does look extremely bad. Beyond what he is accused of having had on his laptop computer recently, it is also alleged that he was seen in [...]
There are two rituals at the onset of every fall television season; in the first, someone looks over the crop of failed shows from the last season and announces some venerable genre – the three-camera sitcom, the police procedural – as being creatively dead, followed by the unexpected success of a show that singlehandedly revives it. The cycle’s tedious regularity is just [...]
Titus Brandsma was a small, gentle, bespectacled man. He spent years working with the Dutch underground movement to smuggle Jewish people out of the Netherlands and away from the threat of the Nazi murderers. As a monk, he rejected violence and so would not, could not, pick up a gun to use against the oppressors of goodness and all he [...]
“Where are you going, Frank?” asked my wife. “Ottawa, my dear, to interview a BQ MP.” “I thought it was only Liberals you enjoyed torturing?” “No, I’m just trying to change the course of history.” “Good luck, dear.” The next day, after arriving in Ottawa, I inquired: “Is this the office of Francine Lalonde, the BQ member for La Pointe-de-l’Ille?” “Yes, what [...]
The sign outside the fire hall in Malton, just near Toronto’s Pearson airport, read “Remember 9-11.” It was just a couple of days since the 8th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but I was pleased – and somewhat surprised – that someone was still making the effort. I was in my late thirties on the [...]
In a classic 20th-century treatise entitled The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek observed that the hallmark of a free country is the subordination of ruling authority to the fundamental principles of the rule of law. He explained: “Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government, in all its actions, is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand -- rules which [...]
Agronomist who helped double agricultural production dies at 95 Norman Borlaug, one of the most important people of the 20th century, has died at the age of 95. Borlaug is often referred to as the “father of the green revolution” – the new processes and techniques in agriculture that brought food to hundreds of millions of starving people and helped lower the [...]
On Sept. 11, a lone gunman shot James Pouillon twice, killing the long-time pro-life activist in front of Owosso High School in Owosso, Mich., near Flint. Pouillon, 63, was holding a sign with a newborn child and the word “Life” embossed on it. The same morning, Mike Fuoss, 61, owner of a local gravel pit was found murdered. Police arrested [...]