Paul Tuns: From the Editor’s Desk As usual I will utilize this column to bring to your attention some stories that did not quite grow up to be full articles in the paper. Sometimes this is because of space or time limitations, sometimes because there is not much more to say about the topic. But it reminds me of something that Jim [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 5, the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released data on the country’s fertility rate, revealing that it has fallen to its lowest rate since such figures began being collected in the 1930s. The total fertility rate -- the average number of times a woman will give birth in her lifetime -- fell to 1.64 births per [...]
Paul Tuns British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Sandra Wilkinson ruled on April 26 that the name of a second mother must be included as one of three legal parents on the birth certificate of a two-year-old boy, finding that the provincial legislature “did not contemplate polyamorous families” when it amended the Family Law Act (FLA) in 2011. Wilkinson said all three members [...]
Paul Tuns A new report from the Cardus think tank, “Look Before You Leap,” says the federal government of Justin Trudeau is dramatically underestimating the cost of creating a national daycare plan modeled on Quebec’s $10-a-day plan, leaving provinces on the hook for a much larger share than federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland suggests might be the case. The authors conclude, “the [...]
By Paul Tuns On March 4, Manitoba MLA Nahanni Fontaine (NDP, St. John’s) introduced for the third time in six years a private member’s bill, No. 207, The Abortion Protest Buffer Zone Act, which, if passed, would make the province the seventh in Canada to restrict the free speech rights of pro-lifers within the vicinity of an abortion facility. Fontaine told the [...]
Paul Tuns There are many unhyphenated conservatives in both the Conservative Party in Canada and Republicans in the United States, that is citizens who are both socially and fiscally conservative. I hope to write about conservatism and libertarianism in a future issue of the dead tree edition of this paper. For now I want to bring attention to Ben Woodfinden's fine essay [...]
Paul Tuns A few weeks ago, Amazon abruptly stopped selling When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T. Anderson and refused to provide a reason why, although few doubted that it was because it questioned the transgender ideology. That suspicion has been proven correct. The Wall Street Journal reports: Amazon. AMZN -1.40% com Inc. said it recently removed a three-year-old book [...]
By Paul Tuns I hope you are both informed and entertained by our large feature, “20 ways COVID is changing society.” Without getting into it too much, I want to point out that most, if not all of the changes, in society are the result of the anti-pandemic measures taken by governments around the world in response to the outbreak, rather than the [...]
Paul Tuns The Equality Act passed in the House of Representatives last week amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" as protected classes under federal nondiscrimination statutes. There has been a great deal of criticism that by adding special protections for transgenderism, the law could undermine or erase women's rights by opening female institutions from [...]
BY PAUL TUNS Republican President Richard Nixon referred to the “silent majority” in 1969, but it was a liberal Hollywood producer who gave it voice in a sitcom that would dominate television for a half-decade in the 1970s. Norman Lear created All in the Family after hearing about, but not seeing, the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part. The British show [...]
BY PAUL TUNS In his under-rated and under-appreciated sociological treatise, Passion and Social Constraint, Ernst van den Haag, notes that “though the culture of each society differs from that of others, some institutions are needed in all societies to perform, in however varied ways, functions essential to any social life.” He observed that “all societies that have offspring have the institution of [...]
BY PAUL TUNS In advance of an expected hearing date this year, the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) announced that it had six affidavits in support of Fr. Tony Van Hee’s constitutional challenge to Ontario’s Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, the “bubble zone” law that outlaws pro-life speech near facilities that commit abortions. Among the affidavits were ones from Christian Elia, [...]
I saw online that Kathy Shaidle passed away on Jan. 9, after a long battle with cancer. She wrote her own obituary, which appeared on her blog Five Feet of Fury and that of her partner Arnie’s, Blazing Cat Fur. In it she wrote: “Contrary to cliche, Kathy did not conduct herself with particular ‘grace,’ ‘dignity’ or ‘courage’ in her final months. She [...]
BY PAUL TUNS Campaign Life Coalition premiered a 90-minute documentary on Canada’s pro-abortion foreign policy on Jan. 17. Obsessed: Canada’s Obsessed Coercive Diplomacy, is a professionally produced program that examines the Justin Trudeau government’s international abortion advocacy and features an in-depth and eye-opening conversation between former Canadian ambassador to China, David Mulroney, and African pro-life leader, Obianuju Ekeocha. CLC said in a [...]
BY PAUL TUNS The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do it Again by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, $44, 465 pages) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, $27, 580 pages) Twenty years ago, Harvard professor Robert Putnam made a splash with an essay and [...]