Parliament needs to find the courage to stand up for Canadians’ fundamental freedoms instead of allowing Bill C-6 to trample them. While the intent of the bill to criminalize harmful practices under the banner of “conversion therapy” is right and good, the effect of the bill would go much further, devastating our fundamental freedoms, like…
Ableism - discrimination in favour of able-bodied people - is a poisonous rot that eats away at the roots of care and life-giving supports for the disabled
In my work with Christian Horizons, I regularly provide grief training and debriefing in times of significant loss for people close to those with disabilities. In these profound moments of remembrance and mourning, it is evident that the human passing from life to death should be one of the most social and interconnected experiences of…
Journalists eager to echo doomsday alarms about pandemic case numbers while ignoring the social devastation of lockdown policies
It has long been accepted both within and without the world of journalism that negative news trumps developments of a positive nature pretty much every time. Much may have changed in how news is delivered to people but the old cliches – “if it bleeds it leads” and “newspapers don’t report when airplanes land safely”…
Canada urged to rethink Middle East sanctions that make daily life a struggle just to get daily bread
“Economic sanctions that afflict the poor must be lifted. I stress the word ‘poor,’” Archimandrite (head of a monastery) Georges Masri said in an e-mail from his home base in Syria. He was responding to my request for his views on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in his country, and whether sanctions have exacerbated it. “The…
No one has a moral obligation to obey COVID-19 lockdown orders. Therefore civilly disobeying them is justified
Lockdown orders are not justified. There is, consequently, no moral obligation to obey them. Let me explain. In the wake of SARS and H1N1, Public Health Canada drafted the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness guideline (CPIP). Although we failed to meaningfully operationalize this guideline it nevertheless maintains that, “when considering restrictive measures, it is important to balance…
Former Mountie Sean Murphy is calling for a Criminal Code amendment to protect conscientious objections to MAiD
Sean Murphy has what he considers a clear way through the tangle between the House of Commons and Senate over Liberal government legislation to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). The former veteran Mountie and coroner says the bill’s status would be clarified if all Canadians understood that MAiD means homicide. A logical outcome he…
Our First World sensitivities were not prepared for the consequences
Last year was one of shaken realities. The news from Wuhan, China was of an unknown virus claiming lives in unprecedented numbers. But China is across the world so the West continued the reality of our usual daily tasks of work, school, activities. Meanwhile, a virus was infiltrating the globe, silently leaping from one person…
The use of euphemisms such as "assisted dying" rather than “euthanasia” or “assisted suicide” is putting our most vulnerable at risk
By Andre Schutten and Anna Nienhuis ARPA Canada Action inspires action. This is often positive, as people’s activities motivate others to engage in positive service too. But there are times when action inspires deadly action. As the Senate continues its review of Bill C-7’s dramatic expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAiD), possibly proposing amendments…
A Canadian family helped solve the mystery of a teenage girl’s life and death at Auschwitz
Hana Brady could be another Anne Frank except she did not leave a diary. But the suitcase that 13-year-old left behind when she died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp continues to teach millions of children around the world the importance of respect, empathy and compassion. It bears silent witness to the agony…
Cancel culture slaughters reputations, leaving its victims to endure financial uncertainty, isolation, bewilderment and pain
The riot that produced the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump has its analogue in the cancel culture rampaging through North American institutions. Neither cancels the other, of course. Both are horrid, each in its especially hideous way. The Jan. 6 attack on America’s federal Capitol destroyed institutional property, mobbed and halted the democratic…