Canada

The Hard Truth About Reconciliation

Andrew P.W. Bennett

October 7, 2021

Healing wounds inflicted on Indigenous people by Canada and its churches means facing what’s wholly true, not what’s politically appealing, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

Let’s discuss truth and reconciliation in their fullness. How do we tell the truth, the fullness of the truth? How do we achieve true reconciliation? Both are two-way streets.

Firstly, what is truth? Pilate’s question to Christ at his passion rings d...

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Truth and Justin Trudeau

Peter Stockland

October 5, 2021

Even as Canadians auto-correct for political falsehoods by expecting and accepting them, the Prime Minister’s fib on Truth and Reconciliation Day reveals a worrying pattern, Peter Stockland writes.

George Orwell would likely have caught his breath at news of a prime minister caught in a flagrant fib on a day dedicated to capital T Truth.

Orwell, of course, spent his journalistic career ferreting out and castigating the incessant political lying...

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Denying the Reality of Independent Schools

Joanna DeJong VanHof

September 23, 2021

Policy confusion inflicted on alternative schooling during COVID shows why Ontario needs urgent discussion of an education system that reflects the province’s diversity, Joanna DeJong VanHof argues.

Recent controversy over the provincial government’s provision of rapid tests to independen...

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Canada’s Disconnect on Religious Freedom

Susan Korah

September 21, 2021

Our country of newcomers gives scant political weight to global affairs and forgets that for billions worldwide faith is essential to identity, Susan Korah writes.

In Canada, the battle of the ballot box is seldom fought and won on the intricacies of the country’s role in international affairs— and the latest election was no different.

Despite the catastrophe in Afghanistan, which has direct consequences for Ca...

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A Liberal Dose of Compulsory Confusion

James Bryson

September 17, 2021

In the dizzying dash for vaccine mandates, James Bryson asks, what happened to the liberal/Liberal claims of “my body, my choice” that justified abortion and MAiD?

By throwing their weight behind vaccine mandates, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have picked a strange hill to die on in the run to Canada’s snap election next week.

The Liberal support of vaccine mandates represent a 180 degree turn ...

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An Election Exercise in Media Conformity

Peter Menzies

September 16, 2021

The shared-bathwater insularity of Parliament Hill’s media elite has made the 2021 campaign an adventure in safe and narrow thinking, Peter Menzies argues.

The words of Jody Wilson-Raybould are as good a place as any to begin an assessment of media coverage of Canada’s 44th federal election.

“In Ottawa, the political culture, which includes the media, lives in a world of its own construction, quite divo...

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Separating Sheep From Scapegoats

Peter Stockland

September 14, 2021

Peter Stockland reports on writer Charles Eisenstein’s work to identify a force even more dangerous than contagious public stupidity.

American writer Lance Morrow recently identified our current moment as the golden age of stupidity.

No evidence exists that the author of America: A Rediscovery and Second Drafts of History was peeping across the border watching the...

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Taking a Jab at Religious Freedom

Don Hutchinson

September 10, 2021

Despite contrary claims, sincerely held faith is a Charter-protected justification for declining to take the COVID shot, Don Hutchinson reports.

John Longhurst’s provocatively titled column Religious leaders should make it clear faith ...

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Marking Your X With Neighbourly Love

Don Hutchinson

September 2, 2021

Don Hutchinson offers a primer on how to let Christian precepts guide voting choice.

The 2021 federal election has resulted in plentiful social media pleas for citizenship assistance!

Some people are jaded because of the behaviour of politicians. They challenge us to convince them they should, first, care, and second, vote.

O...

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Pierre’s Vision Begot a Justin Society

Don Hutchinson

August 27, 2021

This just in: the current prime minister is steadfastly refusing to follow his father’s footsteps, especially on human rights and justice. Don Hutchinson traces the divergent path.

The two Trudeaus are the only father-son federal prime ministers in Canada’s brief history. Each in their time, father Pierre and son Justin, led the Government of Canada into record ...

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Will Canadians Stick With Justin the Changemaker?

Ray Pennings

August 25, 2021

In his latest Cardus Insights newsletter, Executive Vice President Ray Pennings argues this election is about deciding whether to continue Prime Minister Trudeau’s transformation of Canada.

Ray's Cardus Insights newsletter strives to “connect the dots” among faith, business, and public life. Read a sample and sign-up for Cardus Insights.

The first day of Canada’s ...

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Canada Fails Afghan Religious Minorities

Susan Korah

August 24, 2021

Human rights workers tell Susan Korah it’s inexplicable Canada hasn’t prioritized the rescue of Christians and minority Muslims.

Afghanistan’s religious minorities are facing nothing less than a genocide but the Canadian government has yet to make a firm commitment to protect some of the most vulnerable among them, say Canadian human rights activists.

Hazaras and Christians – ...

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Fourteen Days of State Surveillance

Inkar Nación

August 13, 2021

As writer Inkar Nación tracked her family’s two weeks of COVID quarantine absurdities, she understood that beneath the liberty to tell the truth lies the nucleus of human freedom.

Bad law makes us all into liars, or we believe our own lies and make them truth. Such is my family’s experience with Canada’s Quarantine Act following a trip to the United States on compassionate grounds.

Day One. We cross back into ...

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Digital Chill and Frost Burned Freedom

Peter Menzies

August 12, 2021

Former CRTC Vice-Chair Peter Menzies warns the federal government’s so-called online harms bill, Bill C-36, leaves the Charter rights and liberties of Canadians out in the cold.

Canada did not build protection of certain rights and freedoms into its Constitution because, as some might think, they are saucy symbols of pop virtues. They are there because serious people understood that without the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the na...

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We Cannot Abandon Lebanon

Susan Korah

August 4, 2021

Susan Korah reports on the desperate state of the former Mediterranean oasis one year after the blast that decimated Beirut.

One year ago today was a night of splintering glass and splattering blood.

On August 4, 2020, as the last hours of pre-sunset daylight illuminated Beirut’s skyline, a cataclysmic explosion shook the city like the blast of an atomic bomb. It turned o...

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The Spiritual Solution to Residential Schools

Jonathon Van Maren

July 26, 2021

From a profound Christian faith, Residential School survivor Chief Kenny Blacksmith believes true healing will come not from politics but from paying our debt to God, Jonathon Van Maren reports.

Even before I spoke with Chief Kenny Blacksmith, I suspected Canadians were talking past each other on the subject of residential schools.

After speaking with him I was convinced of it, primarily because Chief Blacksmith speaks directly from inside t...

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Unmasking the Match Lighting Mob

Don Hutchinson

July 23, 2021

Don Hutchinson asks who has fuelled church burnings across Canada, and notes Indigenous leaders from coast to coast have been most stalwart in condemning the two dozen arson attacks.

Mainstream media lit a fuse, and churches are burning. Nearly two dozen to date and a greater number have been vandalized with graffiti, paint-dipped handprints, and splatter.

Some congregations have accepted acts of vandalism as a visual lesson on t...

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Putting Aside Pandemic Mistrust

Tim McCauley

July 13, 2021

We must not let the stresses and fear of the COVID crisis seep into suspicion and crowd out mercy, Father Tim McCauley writes.

Recently, I was participating in an online training course to volunteer with Ottawa Inner-City Ministries. The facilitator asked us to begin by sharing something for which we are grateful during this pandemic. People responded with various answers such as r...

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Indigenous Women Ascending

Peter Stockland

July 9, 2021

Peter Stockland sees the appointment of Mary Simon as GG, the election of RoseAnne Archibald as AFN National Chief, and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s political courage as hope for Canada.

Thursday’s fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female National Chief of the Assembly of First...

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The Complex Web of Indigenous Diversity

Peter Stockland

July 2, 2021

The Assembly of First Nations is a national voice on issues like reconciliation and residential schools, but its July 7 leadership vote tests the strands that link Indigenous people, Peter Stockland reports.

Updated July 6th, 2021

In its 40th year, the Assembly of First Nations is in the throes of a seven-candidate race to select its National Chief next Wednesday.

But with skeletons of children being rediscovered by the hundred...

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MAiD in the COVID Shade

Peter Stockland

June 24, 2021

Peter Stockland reports on how the pandemic’s overshadowing of legislation radically expanding medical assistance in dying might reconfigure Canada’s future.

For two evenings this week, my Cardus colleagues and a panel of expert guests have engaged an in-depth discussion on YouTube on Canada’s post-COVID future.

They cov...

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Questions Unasked About Indigenous Deaths

Peter Stockland

June 4, 2021

Peter Stockland brings a journalist’s mindset and hometown origins to his analysis of media coverage around the finding of Indigenous children’s bodies in Kamloops, B.C.

Melissa Mollen-Dupuis and I don’t know each other but we appear to share similar thoughts on the journalism around Kamloops, B.C. and the discovery of an unmarked grave containing remains of Indigenous children.

In an interview with Montreal’s Le...

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Intimations of Constitutional Crack Up?

Peter Stockland

May 28, 2021

Peter Stockland reports on the week’s political signs that the past might be coming back to haunt Canada’s future much sooner than we dreamed.

Ears of a certain vintage had to hear echoes of Elijah in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s emphatic “no” this week.

The reverberation’s source was the late Indigenous politician Elijah Harper rather than the Biblical prophet Elijah. The latter, of course, over...

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A Rude Awokening for Justin Trudeau?

Peter Stockland

May 21, 2021

Peter Stockland reports on the political implications of a speech the former justice minister gave this week castigating the Prime Minister’s “hypocrisy” on Indigenous issues.

In the year before the pandemic, Jody Wilson-Raybould served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s worst headache.

In a speech she gave on Wednesday, the former justice minister and attorney-general showed why she could become the PM’s worst nightmare....

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