Over the past three months, pro-life activists have been physically assaulted by abortion supporters, a sign, pro-lifers say, that their message is hitting a nerve. In Thunder Bay, Ont., in June, the New Abortion Caravan saw a man berate three pro-life activists as he poured chocolate milk over them. A few days later in London, Ont., a group of pro-abortion activists confronted [...]
On June 13 Bill 33, a private members bill in the Ontario legislature that would add “gender expression” and “gender identity” to the Ontario Human Rights Code and give special legal protection to people who self-identify as transgender and transsexual, passed with all-party support in an unrecorded vote. Opponents of Bill 33 and similar bills at the federal level have called the [...]
Provinces across Canada are seeking to adopt anti-bullying legislation after a series of high-profile cases in which bullied students committed suicide. In light of these recent developments, a new report by the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada evaluates the overall effectiveness of anti-bullying legislation. “The limits of anti-bullying legislation” by senior researcher Peter Jon Mitchell warns that lawmakers are introducing such [...]
Mark Donnelly’s rendition of the national anthem at the launch of The New Abortion Caravan drew criticism from a Yahoo! Sports columnist. Donnelly is a Vancouver opera singer who is well-known for singing the anthem at NHL hockey games for the Vancouver Canucks. While acknowledging that Donnelly is a practicing Catholic and his brother is a priest, Harrison Mooney, the Yahoo! [...]
Problem Gambling in Canada by Lorne Tepperman and Kristy Wanner (Oxford, $21.95, 240 pages) The Ontario government recently announced its plans to overhaul the provincial gambling system. According to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, this would increase revenue and job opportunities. The overhaul would include a new casino in the Greater Toronto Area, an expansion in lottery ticket sales and slot machines, and [...]
After a two year hiatus, Campaign Life Coalition returned to the United Nations on April 23-27, 2012, to attend the Commission on Population and Development in the 45th session of the UN’s Economic and Social Council. The theme of the meeting addressed “Adolescents and Youth.” Together with other pro-life non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children [...]
But religious school system still flirts with gay activism The Waterloo Catholic District School Board will not establish gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in its schools. after a controversy flared up following Catholic trustee Anthony Piscitelli’s introduction of a motion on April 23 asking trustees to consider creating GSAs. He received support from one other Catholic trustee, Janek Jagiellowicz. The chair of the board, [...]
A new report recommending the installation of three “safe-injection sites” in Toronto and two in Ottawa is setting off a public debate. The findings of the four-year study, Toronto and Ottawa Supervised Consumption Assessment, were released on April 11 by researchers Ahmed Bayoumi (at St. Michael’s Hospital’s Centre for Research on Inner City Health) and Carol Strike (at the University of Toronto’s [...]
On March 19, over 2,000 people joined the protest in front of the Alberta legislature in Edmonton regarding the Progressive Conservative government’s proposed Alberta Education Act (Bill 2), which is now shelved due to the election. Albertans, including homeschooling families and Christians, were concerned about the provision in Section 16 of the bill requiring all instructional materials in schools, including private and [...]
The premise of the documentary The Other F Word is that there’s something outlandish, even implausible, in the spectacle of a man who’s made his living and his name as a punk rock musician taking on the role of a father. It’s an idea made visible by the image on the film’s poster and DVD packaging, of Lars Frederiksen from the punk [...]
What is the proper role of a judge in a constitutional democracy? Prior to the 1970s, there was no dispute over this issue within the legal professions of Canada and the United States: Almost all lawyers, law professors and judges agreed that, in essence, a judge should interpret and apply established legal principles, while respecting the exclusive authority of elected [...]
On Feb. 15 of last year LifeSiteNews announced, much to the shock of our readers, that LifeSiteNews and five of its staff are the subject of a $500,000 lawsuit from a self-professed ‘pro-choice’ Quebec Catholic priest, Fr. Raymond Gravel. Fr. Gravel, a former Member of Parliament, who was forced by the Vatican to leave politics, argued that LifeSiteNews’ coverage of some of [...]
The Conservative government is creating an Office of Religious Freedom to shine a light on religious persecution abroad with the hope of defending religious minorities. Before looking abroad though, the Canadian government would do well to attend to the country’s own problems in enshrining freedom of relgion, conscience, and expression for Christians at home. Perhaps the most obvious threat to the [...]
Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government has pushed an equity and inclusivity initiative on all Ontario publicly funded schools, which has Christian groups and concerned parents worried about the ability of Catholic schools to remain faithful to the teachings of the church. Those concerns were proven correct, says Campaign Life Catholics, when the government introduced Bill 13, an anti-bullying bill entitled The Accepting [...]
There has been a great deal of discussion in Ontario recently about a radical and intrusive sex education curriculum being proposed by the province’s Liberal government. The entire campaign to indoctrinate young people into a gratuitous and obscene version of sexuality has been enormously damaging not only for children, but for parents as well. But what is sometimes forgotten in all [...]