Canada
The Ryerson Student Union unanimously rejected an application by Students for Life for club accreditation. Students for Life said they were informed that the RSU is against groups that “promote misogynist views toward women and ideologies that promote gender-inequity.” RSU president-elect Cormac McGee told The Ryersonian that the club could be accredited if it met certain unnamed conditions … The Parole Board of Canada has lifted Robert Latimer’s out-of-country travel restrictions saying that making the convicted child murderer “adhere to the condition would be unfair” because they’ve deemed the former Saskatchewan farmer not a risk to re-offend … In Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General) the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that parents have the legally protected right to form educational institutions to pass their religious faith onto their children. In 2008, the Quebec Ministry of Education required all schools to teach the Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum, which was challenged by Montreal’s Loyola High School. The majority of the Supreme Court ruled that requiring Loyola to teach Catholic doctrine and ethical beliefs from a neutral perspective violated the religious rights of members of their community and that “a secular state respects religious differences, it does not seek to extinguish them.” Bruce Clemenger, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said the “decision in Loyola is a strong affirmation of religious freedom and fair balancing of the interests of the province in setting curriculum outcomes while defending the freedom of religious schools to teach the curriculum from their unique religious perspective” … In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s euthanasia decision, Leonid Sirota wrote in National, the official periodical of the Canadian Bar Association, that justices are not beyond scrutiny: “Judicial independence is not a reason to withhold criticism,” because “any exercise of power should be scrutinized, and sometimes criticized, because any exercise of power — even of judicial power — is corrupting and liable to abuse” … Pro-life and pro-family activist Bill Whatcott has announced he is moving to the Philippines for “healing and resting” after 15 years of activism. “I’m not happy with the direction Canada has taken,” although he said he might return some day … Despite the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act – the federal government’s anti-prostitution law — becoming law in January, the National Post reports that Victoria, B.C., Vancouver, Regina, Sask., Montreal, and most cities in Ontario are not making prostitution-related arrests and that in Montreal the “massage parlour” trade is flourishing with police turning a blind eye to the problem. In Ontario, Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur is completing a report for the Kathleen Wynne government on the law’s constitutionality … Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti said that Canadians are “complacent about abortion access and blind to the distance that still needs to be travelled before every woman in the country has safe, affordable, legal service that is her right.”
Sex-ed
Former deputy education minister Ben Levin pleaded guilty to three charges: making written child pornography, counselling a person to commit a sexual assault, and possession of child pornography. Four related charges were dropped. He will be sentenced in April … Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Education Minister Liz Sandals insist that Levin did not write the sex-ed curriculum, even the one released in 2010 when he was still at the Ministry. However as the Toronto Sun reported, the job of deputy minister of education includes oversight of curriculum and columnist Joe Warmington said Levin sent emails acknowledging his responsibility in overseeing curriculum development … Federal MPs Parm Gill (Brampton-Springdale) and Larry Miller (Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound) both spoke out against Ontario’s early sex-ed curriculum, a rare occasion when federal Conservatives have addressed a provincial matter. Miller told Bayshore Broadcasting News in Owen Sound the age-inappropriate content was “wrong and grossly irresponsible” and if it were up to him his three granddaughters would not be going to public schools. Gill stood up in the House of Commons to note parents are “outraged by the Liberal Party policies that attack our family values,” noting the Ontario government is “determined to introduce a new sex-ed curriculum … with graphic and explicit sex education for children starting in Grade 1” … Arshad Mahmood, who is running for a Mississauga city council seat in a by-election, opposes Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum, saying “parents have the choice about what their children are taught” and he is advising parents to have their children opt-out of health classes on sex-ed … Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership hopefuls, federal MP Patrick Brown (Barrie) and Monte McNaughton (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex), continue to speak out against the Liberal government’s sex-ed curriculum, but despite indicating she opposed it during an Ottawa debate, Christine Elliott (Whitby-Ajax) has been silent on the issue.
