The Convention on the Rights of the Child Treaty was ratified in 1989 and remains the most universally endorsed human rights treaty globally. The CRC is specific about the legitimate right all children have to be protected from the use of illicit drugs. Four articles within the CDC speak directly to this: Article 3: “In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public [...]
For the past 16 years The Interim has been fighting climate change; not the fake kind allegedly impacting our planet, but rather the genuine intellectual pollution that brings on confusion and undermines true education, so crucial to the formation of an informed and honest citizenry. Our secular state, in the name of tolerance and modernization demands a secular approach toå education for [...]
Hamilton father of two Steve Tourloukis sued his school board to uphold his parental rights. He lost in 2016 and appealed the decision. The latest battle in the sever-year war between Steve Tourloukis and the Hamilton Wentworth public school board over what the father of two claims is his right to receive advance notice when and how his children will [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Marie-Claire Bissonnette Marie-Claire Bissonnette grew up pro-life. Her family has been involved in pro-life activism since she was a child, taking the kids along to LifeChain, the National March for Life, and Show the Truth. She jokes that part of her family tradition was to go to Show the Truth rather than summer vacation. In Grade 7, she gave a [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Alberta’s education minister has launched a formal inquiry into two Edmonton-area Baptist schools, ostensibly to ensure a “welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) students.” This inquiry has its origins in Bill 10, passed in a matter of hours, without public consultation. This new law requires every school [...]
University of Western Ontario Early this summer I attended a graduation party for a small, private Catholic high school where the children of several friends were saying farewell to classmates and teachers they had known for years – some of them since kindergarten. Many of these young men and women were babies when I first met them, so this pleasant [...]
John Carpay, founder of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The routine censorship of pro-life speech at Canadian universities has now expanded into a new realm. In early April, the Men’s Issues Awareness Society launched a court action against the Ryerson Students’ Union for having denied this student group official recognition as a campus club. Without official club status, MIAS cannot [...]
In a decision with potentially wide implications for freedom of speech on Canadian campuses, the British Columbia Court of Appeals has upheld the University of Victoria’s decision to ban a campus pro-life demonstration. The case goes back to 2013, when the University of Victoria’s student society had denied the pro-life club, Youth Protecting Youth, club status over its pro-life messaging. As a [...]
A pro-life club at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus is taking the student union to court for refusing to renew the group’s club status for the 2015-2016 school year. The court action against the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) was filed in the Superior Court on behalf of Students for Life by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms on [...]
CLCY's Alissa Golob (left) and Sarah MacDonald (right) with PEI MLA James Aylward. On Jan. 5, Abortion Access Now PEI issued a press release announcing it was suing the Prince Edward Island government to force it to provide taxpayer-funded abortions on the island. Last summer, newly elected Liberal Premier Wade MacLauchlan liberalized the province’s abortion regulations, making it simpler for [...]
Members of the executive of Ryerson's Students for Life. Calgary-based lawyer Carol Crosson argued before Ontario Superior Court Justice Elizabeth Stewart that RSU’s rejection of the Students for Life at Ryerson (SFLR) request for club status violated the university’s policy to protect freedom of speech on campus. She further asserted that the RSU’s decision denying the pro-life group official recognition [...]
Croatian sex-ed critic Karolina Vidovic Kristo recently spoke in Toronto. Karolina Vidovic Kristo, a respected Croatian television journalist employed with the state public broadcaster, was recently in Canada to talk about how she led the fight against sex education in her country by exposing Alfred Kinsey, his research, and its aftermath. Kinsey was an American biologist, and later sexologist, who [...]
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has released its latest annual report examining free speech on Canadian public university campuses. Issued on Oct. 28, the 2015 Campus Freedom Index assigns four grades (from A to F) per university. Each institution receives a grade for university policies, university practices, student union policies, and student union practices. Only eight As were awarded in 2015 [...]