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 [...]
Tears of the Fisherman: Recovery for Men Wounded by Abortion by Kevin Burke (Priests for Life, 183 pages) Kevin Burke, co-founder of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries, new book, Tears of the Fisherman, begins by recalling the family background of Simon Peter and Andrew, two of the first disciples of Jesus, and how Jesus chose Simon whom he called Peter, knowing his strengths and [...]
Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen (Yale University Press, $39, 225 pages) Works about the bankruptcy of current day liberal ideology are a fairly common subgenre in traditionalist or conservative writing. Nevertheless, Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed stands out in this field. Deneen, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, traces liberalism’s errors back to its founding thinkers, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
My Child, My Chance: Guarding and Guiding Your Child’s Identity In the Chaos of Culture and Sex Education by Susan Zuidema (242 pages, $18.87) A Christian, public elementary school teacher, with assistance from an employee in the health care industry, has published a timely book in response to Ontario’s controversial sex ed curriculum. Written by Ontario educator Susan Zuidema with editorial assistance [...]
Tanya Granic Allen was declared the winner of the Feb. 15 Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership debate on TVO after she took on the legacy of former leader Patrick Brown, focused on policies, and directly challenged the record of presumptive frontrunner Christine Elliott. Punditis declared Tanya Granic Allen the debate winner because she articulated a clear vision of her agenda and spoke [...]
Evangelist Billy Graham Evangelist Billy Graham passed away Feb. 21, with no cause of death officially disclosed. Born in a Charlotte, North Carolina farmhouse in 1918, William Franklin Graham would become the most famous Christian evangelist in the world, preaching to hundreds of millions of Christians in the United States and abroad beginning in the 1940s. Over six decades – [...]
Tanya Granic Allen Tanya Granic Allen, a 37-year-old mother of four children and former president of the parents’ rights group Parents As First Educators, announced on Feb. 8, that she intended to run for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership. In an email to PAFE supporters, Granic Allen resigned from the parental rights group in order to run. “I’m stepping [...]