Canada
Based on estimates as of Oct. 1, 2007, Statistics Canada says the country’s population topped 33 million for the first time, reaching a total of 33,091,200. Immigration drove the increase. The only province or territory with a replacement-level fertility rate is Nunavut … In a 400-page report, Quebec’s chief electoral officer Marcel Blanchet proposed that the province examine proportional representation and urged the legislature to replace the current 125-riding National Assembly with one that has 127, 50 which would be apportioned proportionately. He would also make it law to have women at the top of party lists for the “compensation seats” … Former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry, a prominent supporter of the gay-rights agenda, was named to the Order of Ontario, as was William Thorsell, an open homosexual who was editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail and whom fab! magazine said played “an important role in shaping the way Canadians view homosexuality” … Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory is fighting for his political life, after an organized campaign to have a leadership review and rejection of his leadership was launched just before Christmas. Despite unanimous, but tepid, support from the party’s caucus, former Ontario PC president Reuben Devlin and former Niagara Falls MPP Bart Maves launched Grassroots PC, calling for a new leader for the party, blaming Tory’s lacklustre campaign for the party’s failure to unseat the Liberals last October. Meanwhile, REAL Women has reiterated that Tory, by not providing Ontarians with a principled, socially and fiscally conservative alternative, led his party to defeat and warned that if he remains at the helm, the Progressive Conservatives will likewise come up short in four years’ time … A 35-year-old St. Thomas, Ont. father who sexually abused his four-year-old daughter live online in 2006 has been sentenced to 20 months in jail. While announcing the sentence, Ontario Superior Court Justice John McGarry called it a “gross case, a sickening breach of trust.” Crown lawyers were asking for five years on top of his time served.
United States
Senators Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, traded barbs over who would best protection abortion in America. Clinton attacked Obama for voting “present” seven times as a state senator when abortion legislation was before the Illinois legislature, instead of taking a yes or no position. Wendy Frosh of Planned Parenthood in Northern New England panned Clinton’s criticism of Obama, saying, “Clinton’s last-minute smears won’t protect the right to choose, but as president, Barack Obama will” … As a state senator, Obama opposed a law to require survivors of abortion be given medical treatment … The homeschool movement is divided over former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination and who won the first caucus in the nation in Iowa. The Home School Legal Defence Association Political Action Committee has endorsed Huckabee, despite his support as governor for a 1999 law that placed onerous restrictions on homeschool parents, which the HSLDA-PAC opposed at the time. The Information Network for Christian Homes supports former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon, saying Huckabee’s record as governor and his rhetoric on the issue are inconsistent … St. Charles, Mo. city officials are considering a ban on swearing, profane music and table dancing. City councilman Richard Veit says he is responding to complaints of rowdiness in town and is providing police officers with additional tools to combat the problem … The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that after a decline in HIV incidence in gay men, the rate is increasing again. In New York City, new diagnoses of HIV among gay men under 30 rose by 32 per cent from 2000 through 2005 and, among gay youth under 20, the rate doubled.
International
When Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who returned to her homeland in October, was assassinated in December, few in the media reported her pro-life views. And while Hillary Clinton called Bhutto a feminist leader, she conveniently forgot how the two were on opposite sides of the life issue at the Beijing UN conference on women in 1995. There, Bhutto had criticized the practice in many parts of the world of mothers abetting their husbands “in abandoning or aborting that innocent, perfectly formed child” because it is a daughter, rather than a son. She was the rare leader who stood up against forced abortions of girls and for unborn life … A bill in the British House of Commons to end the official religion status of the Church of England was coincidentally numbered 666 … Two months before a Spanish general election, more than 1.5 million Spaniards marched in Madrid to demonstrate in support of the family and against same-sex “marriage” and divorce. “These atheist, irreligious governments want to make us believe that our life has no meaning and that isn’t true,” said Kiko Arguello, the march’s organizer.
