Paul Tuns: On June 17, the British House of Commons voted 379-136 for an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would end prosecutions of women who obtain abortions. In 1967, the Abortion Act permitted abortion up to 28 weeks if approved by two doctors under supposedly limited circumstances such as to protect the health of the mother. The law was [...]
Paul Tuns The Conservative Party’s 2026 national convention, scheduled to be held in Ottawa, has been moved to Calgary following a vote by the party’s national council. The convention, to be held Jan. 29-31 will also serve as the location for a party constitution-required leadership review. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost his own seat despite improving the party’s seat and vote [...]
Kesiah Beere: On May 20, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Pandemic Agreement after three years of development and negotiations. Started in December 2021, the Agreement was proposed to implement strategies to “make the world safer from – and more equitable in response to – future pandemics,” according to the WHO. On the surface, such an international agreement may seem appealing [...]
Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia Malise Ruthven (Verso, $46, $368) BBC editor Malise Ruthven has written an expose of Saudi Arabia, the Unholy Kingdom, the alliance between the House of Saud – the royal family that ruled modern Saudi Arabia since its founding – and extremist imams who he labels a “sectarian Islamic cult.” Their extreme Wahhabism has become [...]
The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin Lucy Ash (Icon Books, $36, 384 pages) Journalist Lucy Ash has written a broadside attack on the Russian Orthodox Church and its relationship with Moscow, which inevitably focuses on how the Church provides ideological backing for Vladimir Putin’s regime. Ash, who has worked as a foreign correspondent in Russia for three [...]
Interim Staff: On May 15, the Supreme Court of Canada announced it would not hear the case of Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee Mike Delgrande’s challenge to the TCDSB’s censure over his opposition adding gender identity and gender expression to the board’s code of conduct. In November 2019, during debate on amending the code of conduct – in contravention of Church [...]
Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, The Wickedest Man in Europe John Callahan (Princeton, $48, 315 pages): Bernard Mandeville was a self-exiled Dutch writer who found his work on the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Banned Books). The libertarian writer is most famous for The Fable of the Bees, a book which stood trial in 1723 in Middlesex [...]
Kesiah Beere: On May 26, Alberta’s Minister of Education and Childcare, Demetrios Nicolaides, announced in a press conference that Alberta intends to establish “clear policies and guidelines for all school divisions to follow,” regarding the inclusion of sexually-explicit books in school libraries. This message was delivered in response to four “coming-of-age” novels found in Calgary and Edmonton school libraries, according to Jack [...]
Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre Mark Bourrie (Bibliosis, $28.95 paperback, 437 pages): Anyone wanting to know why Pierre Poilievre lost the 2025 federal election need go any further than Mark Bourrie’s Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, which could be more accurately titled Ripper: The Making and Unmaking of Pierre Poilievre. While Bourrie has a clear and admitted anti-Poilievre bias, and [...]
Samara Douma: On May 18, eligible Polish voters headed to polling stations to cast their vote in the Polish presidential election. When votes had been counted, none of the thirteen candidates had the majority needed to win the presidency. The top two candidates, Rafal Trzaskowski, with 31.4 per cent of the vote, and Karol Nawrocki, with 29.5 per cent of the vote, [...]
Paul Tuns: Conservative MP Tamara Jansen (Cloverdale-Langley City) introduced a private member’s bill, Bill C-218, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying). In 2021, Parliament passed Bill C-7 broadening Canada’s euthanasia law, with one of the provisions being expanding Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying regime to patients suffering solely from mental illness. Other so-called safeguards that were lifted [...]
Interim Staff: In March, Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe introduced Bill 43, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, to add “gender expression” to the province’s human rights law. The law, if passed, would amend the Manitoba Human Rights Code and Wiebe said it would “cover anything from behavior or appearance, such as dress, hair, makeup, body language and voice,” and that the [...]
John Carpay: In Latin, the word secular simply means “of this world,” and neither affirms nor denies any “religious” doctrine as such. Over time, the word secular has come to mean “non-religious.” After more than four centuries of loyal devotion to Catholicism, Quebecers in the 1960s began the process of ejecting the Church from schools, universities, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, unions, orphanages, [...]
Josie Luetke: The mistake was in believing Pierre Poilievre was our political saviour. From the sense of crushing disappointment amongst friends and family members in the wake of the 2025 federal election, you’d almost think the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is pro-life. Almost. April 28 was disappointing to me for another reason. At the Waterloo Catholic District School Board [...]
Paul Tuns: Long-time Interim columnist Frank Kennedy has died at the age 97 on May 14. Frank Kennedy, along with his wife, Ileen, was active in their North York, Ont., parish, Blessed Trinity, and the pro-life movement. Frank Kennedy served as a columnist for The Interim from the mid-1980s to 2014 and as the paper’s Queen’s Park correspondent for many years. In [...]