Rev. Brent Hawkes “It’s like a David and Goliath story, right from the start,” said the wife of the complainant. Only, this time Goliath won. She was reacting to the Jan. 31 acquittal of Rev. Brent Hawkes, senior pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, on historical sexual assault charges from the mid-1970s when he was a teacher and coach. [...]
McNaughton reminds party it is a broad coalition Monte McNaughton says Ontario PCs must build a coalition that includes social conservatives. When Patrick Brown ran for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2015, he vowed to have open nominations. Recently, that commitment has been called into question. The Toronto Star reported in December that numerous candidates have been disqualified from seeking [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman For the past year, headlines across Canada have tracked a shocking increase in deaths from overdoses of illicit opioids. The final count for 2016 in British Columbia could reach close to 900; that is up more than 70 per cent over 2015 and twice the annual death toll in the province from traffic accidents. For Canada [...]
A new report outlines the abuses rampant in the American abortion industry. Unsafe: How the Public Health Crisis in America’s Abortion Clinics Endangers Women is the title of a new, 200-page study by Americans United for Life that documents numerous investigations over the past eight years in hundreds of abortion facilities in 32 states. In total, there were 754 documented violations, 34 [...]
There’s a story my family likes to tell about the only time my mother’s photo ever appeared in a national newspaper. She had been invited to the offices of the Toronto Star with several other women, where the paper had apparently set up a test kitchen. Several dishes were baked, interviews were conducted, and photos were taken of the women. When the [...]
You thought that war was hell; that trudging through mud in the trenches for months on end, and then going over the top into the teeth of enemy fire, was the worst sort of physical and psychological torture a human could endure. Think again. On today’s university campuses, safe zones can hardly cope, apparently, with the sufferers of a burgeoning epidemic of [...]
McNaughton reminds party it is a broad coalition Monte McNaughton When Patrick Brown ran for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2015, he vowed to have open nominations. Recently, that commitment has been called into question. The Toronto Star reported in December that numerous candidates have been disqualified from seeking the PC nomination for the 2018 general election. Brown spins the [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Society never becomes more tolerant, but merely shifts the target of its intolerance. At various times in history, and in various places, the authorities have sought to crush anti-slavery speech, anti-Communist speech, and a multitude of religious doctrines deemed to be heretical. Censorship always stems from the same impulse: the authorities are firmly convinced they have [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman Who would have thought that it might take a crass narcissist like United States President-elect Donald Trump to curb the greatest moral catastrophe in the history of the United States: namely, the deliberate, mass slaughter in the womb of more than 50 million babies over the past 40 years. Trump has got off to a promising [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Pity the poor legislators. Increasingly, Big Brother watches their every move. Well, not just Big Brother, Big Sister, too. Being constantly watched is intimidating. Having what you painstakingly put together repeatedly taken apart is demeaning. But that’s the fate of legislators under a judicial dictatorship. From time to time, I’ve called Big Brother/Sister, also known [...]
On Nov. 29, former MP Pierre Lemieux entered the Conservative Party leadership race, and less than two weeks later he released a video calling for a “respectful debate” on sex-selective abortion. The former Glengarry–Prescott–Russell MP said that “in a democracy such as ours, there should be no debate that is closed.” He said that sex-selective abortion was an issue that should be [...]
Lawyer Clayton Ruby questions victim’s memory Editor’s Note: The story below contains colloquial and graphic details of an alleged sexual assault. Also, the decision in the historic sexual assault trial of Rev. Brent Hawkes, originally scheduled for Jan. 18, was postponed till after The Interim went to press. Because Associate Chief Judge Alan T. Tufts needed more time, the matter was adjourned until [...]
Q: The allegations date back to the mid-1970s. Some leaders fear that even after retirement somebody disgruntled somewhere will bring up a complaint out of nowhere. Why do we even prosecute historic sexual assault? A: Regardless of whether they’ve held authoritative roles, most observers would recognize that allowing minors to drink in one’s home would be most unusual for a teacher and [...]
Limited space permits just a brief consideration in these pages of the Institute for Catholic Education’s Catholic lens of the controversial 2015 Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum document for Ontario schools. For a detailed treatment visit www.viewyourenvoymediasite.ca. When the controversial 2015 HPE curriculum for Ontario schools was released, parents with children in the Catholic school system were reassured by bishops, trustees, [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Campus free speech hits a temporary road block in October, wih an Ontario court ruling against Students for Life at Ryerson. Since 2013, these pro-life students have been denied their right to set up a campus club by the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU). Without status as a registered campus club, the students cannot set up a table on [...]