The killings demand empathy for the victims, but also renewed commitment to freedom of faith
The news from London, Ont. regarding a murdered Muslim family is horrifying. It is chilling even to write about a driver deliberately ramming his pick-up truck into a father, mother, grandmother, daughter, and son – leaving only the young boy alive but bereft of his family. The police-reported motivation behind the crime should make it…
Would require that Indigenous peoples receive free, prior and informed consent for anything that affects their lands or rights
Canada’s Senate or an election are the only things that could amend or end a badly-worded and contentious bill that seeks to harmonize federal laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Bill C-15 has received third reading in the House of Commons and now goes to the Senate for…
Supreme Court: “persons who are not Canadian citizens and who do not reside in Canada can exercise an Aboriginal right”
The Supreme Court of Canada has begun to repair the hundreds of years of friction between Indigenous people and European settlers. The court recently ruled that “persons who are not Canadian citizens and who do not reside in Canada can exercise an Aboriginal right.” Many people are thinking long and hard about the implications. Imagine…
If someone decides against vaccination, their decision should be respected
Vaccination passports are being touted as the answer to getting our travel industry and other businesses up and running again after the COVID-19 pandemic. You would simply produce their papers and airline tickets could be purchased, access gained to restaurants, hockey games, etc. Why would anyone object to such a sensible proposal? Because the idea…
Freedom of religious expression is a human right
According to the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practise, worship…
Canadians believe in equality and compassion; we don’t believe in pitting one group against another
Canada has always prided itself on being one of the most open and least racist countries in the world. This view may not have always been true, particularly when it comes to our past immigration policies, which only became colour neutral in the 1960s. But since then, and continuing today, the vast majority of our…
Canadian elites accepted the old-world model of political and social organization based on identification with racial groups
Columnist and author Richard Gwyn wrote that the 1950s was a time “when Canadians came to realize and believe that a ‘new nationality’ could be political rather than ethnic, or composed of values and attitudes, rather than races.” Gwyn, author of Nation Maker – Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, a biography of Canada’s first prime…
And leads to extremism
Censorship is a slippery slope, especially when there are no clear guidelines. The idea of cancel culture, where one is ostracized because of a stance on an issue determined as taboo by current cultural trends, is very dangerous. One is judged in the popular media and the conversation is over. And while people on the…
Imagine what the Nazis would have done if they had access to today’s social media platforms
I recently showed Steven Spielberg’s classic film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, to a group of students. Watching Nazi soldiers terrorizing and murdering Jewish people, I thought to myself that on some level they had to have known that what they were doing was wrong. Yet they seemed to be unaffected. Were they impacted at…
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…