Seventy-five years ago, an English poet described what he called “the modern problem:” that is, “of living in a society in which men are no longer supported by tradition without being aware of it.” The individual who “wishes to bring order and coherence” into his mental life and inner experience must therefore do “for himself what in previous ages had been done [...]
Paul Tuns: As everyone knows, the price of housing -- both renting and buying a place to live -- is skyrocketing across the country. The issue has seized politicians with the Trudeau budget introducing no less than 17 budget measures to address housing affordability and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland saying during her budget speech that out-of-control housing prices is an “intergenerational injustice.” [...]
Donald DeMarco, Commentary: Tuesday, March 8, 2022 was International Women’s Day. It was incumbent on America’s 46th president to salute women throughout the world and to offer them something encouraging and uplifting. He told half the population on the planet that women cannot “live up to their God-given potential” without abortion-on-demand. The inclusion of a reference to God is curious since hardly [...]
The mainstream media has parroted a Democrat talking-point in labeling a Florida parental rights law a “don’t say gay” prohibition in the classroom. Florida House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act was passed in the state house in February and the state Senate in early March, and was set to be signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. The move [...]
Interim Staff: The Jason Kenney government announced that women on Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) or income support will be eligible for a new prenatal benefit beginning in May. On March 10, Premier Kenney, along with Jason Luong, Minister of Community and Social Services, announced eligible women will be able to receive $100 per month starting in the second trimester [...]
Rory Leishman: Then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau promised that the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would enhance the constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms of Canadians. Instead, the opposite is true: Canadians today are demonstrably less free than they were 40 years ago. As evidence, consider the unprecedented, freedom-stifling provisions of Bill C-4, the notorious legislation adopted in December by Parliament with [...]
Commentary By Donald DeMarco: An important factor that has been ignored in the ongoing discussion concerning the constitutionality of abortion is the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble. While this important statement is part of the Constitution, it does not specify on how the government should operate, but it does allude to its goals thereby providing a context for what the Founding Fathers were aiming [...]
Paul Tuns: I began my review of Ted Byfield’s 1999 collection of columns, The Book of Ted: Epistles from an Unrepentant Redneck: “The American columnist George Will once said that before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, before there was Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was William F. Buckley … The Canadian equivalent [...]
Paul Tuns: Pope Francis created a bit of a stir after he briefly commented about people who have pets instead of children. It was two sentences in a longer address on Jan. 5 about adoption and predictably the media reaction missed the forest for the trees. CNN ran a column by Alistair Currie who complained, “The Pope’s suggestion that failing to have [...]
Let us dissent from the orgy of praise for House of Commons and Senate passing the odious conversion therapy ban, Bill C-4, without any debate or hearings, a parliamentary manoeuvre that requires unanimous consent. When private companies agree to cooperate, it is called collusion; when politicians agree to cooperate, it receives hosannahs as bipartisanship. Politics is an arena in which ideas are [...]
Donald DeMarco Commentary In ancient Rome, the father dominated the family. As “paterfamilias” (head of the family), he had absolute rule over his household. If his children angered him, he had the legal right to disown them, sell them into slavery, or even kill them. Sons were preferred. The birth of a female, could be her death warrant. The father came first, [...]
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality Helen Joyce (One World, $34.95, 311 pages) Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality delivers exactly what the subtitle promises, juxtaposing the trans ideology with biological facts. Joyce begins her examination of gender identity in Weimar Germany where the discredited Institute of Sexual Science, founded by the gay Jewish drag queen Magnus Hirschfeld, offered hormones and surgery [...]
Paul Tuns Last month, Cardus, a Hamilton-based think tank, released a Family Policy Brief by Jon Peter Mitchell and Andrea Mrozek that examined “policy options to better serve families.” Mitchell and Mrozek note that “strong, stable families are irreplaceable and are foundational to a healthy society,” and that “our best social policies do not replace or attempt to replicate the family but [...]
Paul Tuns The centerpiece of the Liberal government’s spending plans over the next five years is a $30 billion commitment to child care. It is a relatively small amount among the $614 billion in program spending in 2020/2021, which is schedule to fall to $475.5 billion in 2021/2022 before levelling off in the vicinity of $430 billion in the years afterwards. But [...]
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 [...]