Rory Leishman.com

Publicly Funded CBC Censorship

2010-12-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

Catholic Insight|
Most Canadian academics and journalists are so in thrall to a perverse system of value relativism that they can no longer tolerate even the expression of public support for the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality. And nowhere is this malign censorship more evident than in the mass media.

Take the CBC, for example. In an article published on its website It Gets Better: Trevor Ritchie on coming out (November 1), the author, a third-year student and gay activist at the University of British Columbia, advises "queer teens" that they have little to fear from publicly affirming their homosexuality. Ritchie assures: "Positive portrayals in popular culture, as well as individuals in the community providing positive role models, have made the rest of society understand that we are not that different, save for who [sic] we are attracted to...."

That's typical of the CBC. Day in and day out, our national broadcaster serves up an unrelenting drumbeat of propaganda for homosexual acts, promiscuity, abortion and a range of other perversions. Of late, the corporation has even started slanting its news broadcasts in favour of legalized prostitution.

In response to the broadcasting of this corrupt propaganda on CBC television and radio, there is little that concerned viewers and listeners can do beyond firing off letters of complaint to CBC management and their local MP. However, in response to articles published on the CBC website, readers are invited to submit their comments for on-line publication. In a set of guidelines for these submissions, the CBC urges: "Tell us your story, be a part of the team. CBC.ca wants you to participate in online comments, video uploads and photo submissions."

The guidelines also stipulate that while comments must be "civil" and avoid "racist, sexist and offensive language," readers should not shy away from controversy: "We want your perspective. Probe, analyze, inform. Challenge, advocate, debate. Inspire, entertain, enjoy. Your contributions make our website and on-air programming richer, the conversations more lively and diverse."

Kevin G. McDonald, a CBC reader, listener and viewer in Halifax, has taken up this invitation. In response to Ritchie's article, he emailed a comment to the CBC, suggesting that: "Catholic youth struggling with same-sex attraction may want to consider the advice of the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

In a quotation from paragraph 2357 of the Catechism, McDonald wrote: "Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."

McDonald also cited the provision in paragraph 2358 that people with deep-seated homosexual tendencies "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided."

By any reasonable interpretation, McDonald's remarks clearly fall within the written guidelines of the CBC. Yet the corporation has refused to publish his comment. McDonald does not give up easily. He has submitted numerous other similar comments citing the moral objections to homosexual sexual behaviour by Protestants, Jews and Muslims. He has also attempted to draw the attention of CBC readers to the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization backed by an array of distinguished psychiatrists that offers assistance to people struggling with an attraction to homosexuality.

McDonald reports that none of these comments or anything like them by other readers have been published by the CBC. He has filed complaints about this patent discrimination against Canadians with reasonable concerns for the health and well-being of vulnerable homosexuals to the CBC ombudsman, the executive director of CBC News, and CBC President Hubert Lacroix. All to no avail.

Coming from a public broadcaster that gets more than $1 billion a year in taxpayers' subsidies, such censorship is completely unacceptable. What will the Harper government do about this scandal? Evidently, nothing. In reaction to a query from McDonald, Heritage Minister James Moore, the cabinet member responsible for the CBC, conveyed no response except that he does not get involved in "day-to-day operations at the CBC."

Media ignores Islamist extremism

2010-09-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

The National Post
By Rory Leishman

The following column was scheduled for publication in The London Free Press on Sept. 11. The editor in chief declined to run it because the author refused to eliminate the sentence citing the participation by two prominent local imams in a lecture series at the London chapter of the Muslim Association of Canada -- a national organization dedicated to promoting the Islamist ideology of Hassan Al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The editor insists that the imams should have been given space in the column to defend their collaboration with MACLondon.
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Following the arrest of three more Canadian citizens on terrorism charges last month, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews warned: “We are not immune from international or home-grown radicalization. I have said this before: The threat is real and we cannot be complacent.”

Consider the evidence: The great majority of suspected terrorists arrested in Canada in recent years were either born and raised in Canada, or had spent most of their formative years in this country. And the same is true of all 11 of the Toronto 18 suspects who were convicted of conspiring to storm Parliament Hill and set off a series of devastating truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

That’s not all. An Environics poll conducted three years ago found that 10 per cent of a representative national sample of Canadian Muslims admitted to feeling that members of the Toronto 18 were completely or somewhat justified to plan their attacks. How can that be? How could tens of thousands of Muslims living in Canada sympathize with Islamist terrorists who were plotting the greatest mass slaughter of civilians in Canadian history?

Part of the answer can be found in some mainstream Muslim publications in Canada. For example, in July, Al Bilad, a monthly newspaper published in Arabic and English in London, Ontario, featured a poem that glorifies an Islamist homicide bomber who pleads to her mother:
“Yumma, tell my son that I did not abandon him, never!
I did it for his freedom and our peoples (sic) right to be able to live free, forever!
Yumma, tell my husband that he will always be my all,
I know he understands and he knows why I took that call.”

Following the publication of this ode to terrorism in Al Bilad, all Canadians alert to the peril of home-grown radicalization should surely boycott the newspaper. Yet the current issue includes advertisements for Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party; Irene Mathyssen, NDP MP for London–Fanshawe; Khalil Ramal, Liberal MPP for London-Fanshawe; Jim Chahbar, Conservative candidate for London–Fanshawe; and Ed Holder, Conservative MP for London-West.

Home-grown Islamist extremists are also liable to draw inspiration from groups like the Muslim Association of Canada, a fundamentalist organization with chapters in 11 Canadian cities. MAC leaders state on their national website: “MAC adopts and strives to implement Islam … as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Banna was one of the prime advocates of violent jihad in the 20th century. In Islam`s Predicament: Perspectives of a Muslim Dissident, Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, notes: “Banna preached a dangerous mix of religion and violence.... He is not just the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he is also the source of modern fundamentalist politics in the Arab-Muslim world. His teachings evolved and mutated into the politics and terrorism of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.”

Banna has also helped to inspire the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), a terrorist organization banned in Canada. The Hamas Charter lauds Banna as “The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory” and commends his incendiary declamation: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

One might suppose that moderate and peaceful Muslim leaders would repudiate the Muslim Association of Canada as well as all other organizations inspired by Banna. Yet among the speakers in a recent series of lectures presented by the London chapter of MAC were Sheikh Jamal Taleb, Imam of the London Muslim Mosque, and Dr. Munir El-Kassem, Muslim chaplain at the University of Western Ontario and Imam for the Islamic Centre of Southwestern Ontario.

Toews is right: Home-grown radicalization is a real threat. It is confined mainly, but not entirely, within the Muslim community. Surely, Parliament should shake off its complacency and conduct urgent national hearings into how all loyal and law-abiding Canadians can best combat this serious and growing menace to our national security.

Postscript:

Ruscitti advised me that he would publish this column, if I were to eliminate the sentence referring to Imams Taleb and El-Kassem. Ruscitti wrote:

Hello Rory,

As you might imagine for the time it has taken me to send this, I've put a good deal into reconsideration, as promised.

So as not to bury the lede, and but for one stumbling block that may yet scupper things (though I hope not), I'm prepared to run the thing.

It comes after much reflection over the content itself, your arguments and a small bit of consultation with colleagues.

While I'd like to think I do my best (and will continue to do so in this new role) to stand firmly behind free speech, the marketplace of ideas, and time-tested distinctions between opinion/columns and news reporting, there is another important distinction to be made, and that is the one that brings us to the stumbling block: the distinction between the roles of a local or community newspaper and a national or international one.

Let me get more directly to the point: Under the banner of free speech, I can comfortably defend (though I may not entirely agree with) your taking to task of Al Bilad and the politicians advertising in it as well as your drawing down of the Muslim Association of Canada when the inevitable calls come.

Where I will run into trouble is when Sheikh Jamal Taleb and Dr. Munir El-Kassem phone.

The rule, at least at The Free Press for as long as I can remember, is if you're taking someone to task whether by direct call-out or inference and that person is local (by that I really mean within arm's length of The Free Press circulation area), then that person has a right to a phone call to defend or otherwise their actions, column or not.

There are exceptions, of course -- I'm thinking in general of politicians who act for the public and etc -- but it's a reminder I've given many times, for example, to [Free Press columnists] Ian Gillespie and Morris Dalla Costa.

Maybe it's just my rule, I don't know, and I may not be able to mount a winning argument that such a rule does not round off the edges of the principles of free speech, but feels too much like ambush by pen and not so unlike gossiping behind someone's back, only in public, if that makes any sense.

In short, if you'll agree to leave out the second sentence of the penultimate paragraph ("Yet among the speakers . . . of Southwestern Ontario."), I'll agree to run the column this weekend.

I'm afraid that's the best I can do.

And, incidentally, I want you to know I generally agree with the main thrust of the column -- bit of a rarity, but there you go.

Sincerely,

Joe

I responded as follows:

Hi Joe:

I regret to say that we have evidently arrived at an impasse: I cannot imagine any valid arguments that Taleb and El-Kassem could advance to justify their indisputable collaboration with the Muslim Association of Canada. Besides, given the limited space I have in a 700-word column, I could not do justice to whatever defence they might offer. For these reasons, I have concluded in consultation with others that you should publish the column as is and give Taleb and El-Kassem an opportunity to publish a rebuttal. Only in this way can Free Press readers weigh for themselves the opposing viewpoints on this vitally important and intensely controversial issue as presented by both sides.

Best wishes,

Rory

Ruscitti disagreed and refused to publish the column. That was disappointing. Even more disturbing is the failure of the Free Press newsroom to follow up on the information in my aborted column: The paper has not published any news report on the poem glorifying an Islamist homicide bomber in Al-Bilad or the collaboration of Imams Taleb and El-Kassem with the local chapter of a national Islamist organization.

What accounts for such complacency? The London chapter of MAC is well known to Free Press editors. On September 4, the newspaper published a letter to the editor stating:

Certainly the London imams and other Muslim leaders I know are concerned not only for the souls of their people, but also for their civic duty as citizens of London and of Canada.

While some young folk may be influenced by radicalism disseminated on the Internet from around the world, anyone who has had teenagers, or worked with them, knows their primary influence is usually their friends. That's why the Muslim Association of Canada has established a youth centre in London where young people can gather under reliable adult supervision.

I shared a Ramadan iftar (meal) at a wonderful, warm, friendly gathering in the youth centre last Sunday evening.

Surely, the Free Press should inform its readers that the Muslim Association of Canada is dedicated to propagating the ideas of a radical Islamist, Hassan Al-Banna.

The Free Press is not alone in neglecting this story. Neither the National Post nor The Globe and Mail has carried a single report on the Muslim Association of Canada. The Toronto Star, CBC and CTV have at least each published an occasional puff piece on MAC, but none has reported its alarming links to Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Macleans magazine stands out as a commendable exception in its coverage of the Muslim Association of Canada. Over the past two years, Macleans has published several stories citing the link between MAC and Banna. As recently as September 10, Macleans foreign correspondent Michael noted that Bloc Quebecois MP Meili Faille had gone off last year on a $6,000 junket to the United Arab Emirates that was paid for by the Muslim Association of Canada. Petrou wrote:

The MAC, according to its website, “adopts and strives to implement Islam, as embodied in the Qur’an, and the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. MAC regards this ideology as the best representation of Islam as delivered by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).”

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the primary foundation movements of modern political Islamism. Hamas is a spin-off franchise. Although it has become more moderate in recent decades, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ultimate goal is not to promote the practice of Islam within parliamentary democracies, but to create Islamic states. It is a powerful and spreading movement, and I suppose one could make the argument that Canadian MPs should learn more about it. But I’m especially uncomfortable with a group that champions Hassan al-Banna’s illiberal and anti-democratic agenda footing the bill for one of our elected representatives’ flights and hotel rooms.

In a column "Canadian takes on Islamist movement" that was published on April 17 in the Toronto Sun and also, to its credit, in the London Free Press, Mansur reported:

Point de bascule, or the tipping point, is a Montreal-based French language webmagazine. It is dedicated to explore and expose Islamist activities in our midst, particularly in Quebec.

Point de bascule is the creation of Marc Lebuis, a remarkable French-Canadian with a passionate interest in global affairs and a deep concern about the dangers of Islamism to his country.

Last Thursday, Point de bascule held a press conference open to the mainstream media and public to discuss the latest lecture tour of Tariq Ramadan in Montreal and Ottawa sponsored by Islamist organizations, such as the various chapters of the Muslim Association of Canada, for fundraising purposes.

Mansur's conclusion is worth underlining:

Marc Lebuis and Point de bascule are truly the David in this mighty difficult contest with the Goliath — the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] and their petrodollar support — that would not be the case if the mainstream media and our political representatives were doing their job.

Scandalous neglect of the mentally ill

2010-08-14T21:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

We Canadians like to think of ourselves as an especially compassionate people, but you would never know it from the way so many of our fellow Canadians with a severe mental illness have been shamefully neglected.
Following the development of anti-psychotic drugs in the 1950s, Canada followed the lead of the United States in the mass eviction of patients from psychiatric hospitals. The intent was both to save billions of dollars in hospital expenditures and improve the lifestyle of these patients, by empowering them to live productively in the community.
The first of these aims has been amply achieved, but not the second. To this day, tens of thousands of Canadians with a severe mental illness have been abandoned in the community without adequate psychiatric care. Many go off their medications and get in trouble with the law. Countless others languish in dingy and noxious flophouses.
Granted, mental patients who have been diagnosed as a danger to themselves or others can still be hospitalized. And Canada is blessed with many outstanding psychiatrists who have dedicated their lives and careers to helping these severely ill and often demanding psychiatric patients.
However, there simply are not enough of these committed psychiatrists to meet the need. To some extent, that is understandable. The marvel is that so many psychiatrists are willing to get up in the middle of the night to help deal with some deranged psychotic who has gone berserk on an acute-care mental ward when they could live a much quieter and easier life counselling the “worried well” from nine-to-five in a cozy office.
In 2004, the Ontario Ministry of Health undertook to improve acute psychiatric services, by providing the London Health Sciences Centre and other eligible hospitals with millions of dollars in additional annual funding “to enhance the remuneration of physicians providing psychiatric services in hospitals and to attract psychiatrists to work in hospitals.” In a contractual agreement with hospital administrators, the Ministry specified: “Please note that this funding is to be directed towards the payment for physician psychiatric services.”
Last October, 12 psychiatrists employed by the LHSC sent a letter to David Caplan, then Ontario Minister of Health, stating their belief that the extra money given to their hospital under this 2004 agreement to increase their stipends for psychiatric services had been misallocated. Copies of the letter were also sent to the Ontario Attorney General and Auditor General.
Having received no response, the 12 physicians sent a follow-up letter on February 26 to the current Ontario Minister of Health Deb Matthews, Liberal MPP for London North Centre. An official investigation is now underway. According to legal counsel for the Ontario Attorney General, the health ministry has commissioned PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP to conduct “an audit of the Psychiatric Stipend funding allotment provided to LHSC to ascertain compliance with the eligibility criteria and the other terms and conditions of the funding.”
Matthews should make the results of this audit public. And if the allegations of the 12 psychiatrists are substantiated, she should undertake to assure that the hospital administrators responsible for the misallocation of enhanced funding for the provision of acute-care psychiatric services are justly censured.
Alas, the allegations of administrative malfeasance in this instance are not unique. There have been numerous other complaints about maladministration within London Mental Health Hospital Services. In an ongoing law suit, another psychiatrist, Dr. Gamel Sadek, charges that agents of St. Joseph’s Health Care London wrongfully ended his employment at the hospital and engaged in a “malicious and vindictive attempt” to embarrass and discredit him “in the event he ‘blew the whistle” on their deliberate mismanagement of the psychiatric care program, and the mishandling of doctors, forcing a mass exodus.”
Sadek’s allegations have not been proven in court.
Matthews can be counted upon to monitor the Sadek case closely. She deserves strong public support in all her efforts to assure adequate administrative and financial support for all the dedicated psychiatrists who care for many of the sickest and neediest of our fellow Canadians.

No amount of foreign aid can offset corruption

2010-07-31T20:58:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Over the past 30 years, Angola has developed into one of the world’s major oil producers, yet it still ranks among the world’s most impoverished countries. What has gone wrong?
Paul Collier has addressed this issue in Plundered Planet: Why We Must – And How We Can – Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. As Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, he is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on the intractable economic problems besetting the world’s least developed countries.
In Angola, most oil production is managed by four major players – ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Total. Some critics might suppose that these conglomerates have somehow contrived to siphon off most of the country’s oil-export revenues, while leaving little for the government and the people of Angola, but that is simply not the case.
Foreign multinationals could easily plunder the natural resources of less developed countries during the colonial era. Today, these same companies and their successors are usually confronted by independent governments with ready access to an array of international banks and law firms that are eager to help auction off natural resources on the most favourable terms.
In this respect, Angola is typical. In the 1970s, the Angolan government established a national oil-company monopoly, Sonangol, with a mandate to manage the country’s oil resources and acquire a 51 per cent interest in the subsidiaries of every foreign oil company operating in Angola. Since then, Sonangol has garnered huge revenues. Collier notes that in 2008, Angola took in more than twice as much in oil revenues than all the foreign aid dispersed to the world’s least developed countries.
Nonetheless, the United Nations Human Development Report for 2009 lists Angola at 143rd in the world, just three levels higher than Bangladesh. Correspondingly, the Institute for Democracy in Africa reports that while Angola has a GDP per capita of about $4,400(US), “some 70 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.”
Clearly, some people in Angola are getting hugely rich from oil revenues while the majority of the population subsists in dire poverty. And the main reason for this tragedy is also evident: crooked government.
Most of the billions of dollars paid to Sonangol by ExxonMobil, BP and other foreign companies for the right to produce and export oil from Angola has ended up in the bank accounts of the country’s dictatorial President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his military and government cronies.
The oppressed people of Angola have no choice but to put up with this transparent plundering of the nation’s oil wealth by the country’s own corrupt politicians and bureaucrats? Dos Santos will not brook any effective opposition. He assures that elections are fixed, the media are censored and public protests are severely curtailed.
A few years ago, some intrepid members of Angola’s generally tame Parliament used to denounce government corruption. But even most of this parliamentary opposition to the regime fell silent after dos Santos started paying members $10(US) for every favourable vote,.
Angola is not uniquely bad. Most other least developed countries are also are ridden with corruption. To combat this evil, former British prime minister Tony Blair began the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, an international organization that promotes the voluntary disclosure of the payment, receipt and management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries.
While most of the major multinationals in the West have agreed to go along with this initiative, Chinese companies have not. And neither has the government of Angola. In 2004, China’s Eximbank extended a $2 billion loan to Angola for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, but so far, most of this money has disappeared without a trace.
The sad conclusion is inescapable: Judging from experience in Angola and elsewhere, no amount of foreign aid or natural-resource revenues can eradicate poverty among the hundreds of millions of people trapped in countries, where corrupt rulers enrich themselves at the expense of their deeply impoverished fellow citizens.

Progress in reducing poverty in Canada

2010-07-10T20:54:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada’s record on poverty as “among the worst of developed countries – and slipping.” That’s appalling, if true. But is it true?
Citing the low-income measure (LIM) of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Conference Board observes: “With more than 12 per cent of the working-age population living in poverty, Canada is in 15th place out of 17 countries, ahead of only Japan and the United States.”
Perhaps so, but these figures are misleading, inasmuch as they apply only to Canadians of working age. The OECD reports that for all age groups, Canada actually has a lower rate of overall poverty than Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Korea, Ireland, Japan and the United States.
Besides, LIM is only a relative measure of poverty based on the supposition that a person is poor if he or she is living in a household with an income that is less than half of the average income for all households of similar size in the country. By the LIM measure of relative poverty, almost all impoverished people in Canada would rank among the wealthiest in most low-income countries.
Note also that by the LIM standard, many, if not most, medical students in Canada are impoverished, because they are living in households with below average incomes. Is it reasonable for the Conference Board to include these medical students and others like them with temporarily low incomes in an indictment of Canada’s poverty record?
Given the limitations of relative measures of poverty like the LIM or Low-Income Cutoffs (LICO) devised by Statistics Canada, Chris Sarlo, an economist at Nipissing University, has developed a poverty standard based on the number of people living in households with insufficient income to cover all basic needs including a nutritious diet, satisfactory housing, clothing, health care, public transportation, household insurance and telephone service.
Sarlo reports that by this basic-needs measure, 4.9 per cent of Canadians were living in poverty in the mid-2000s, down from 6.8 per cent 10 years earlier. Also, during this same period, Canada’s child poverty rate declined to 5.8 per cent, down from 9.1 per cent.
Clearly, Canada does not have an exceptionally bad and ever worsening poverty problem as contended by the Conference Board of Canada. Yet it is also evident that there are millions of impoverished people in Canada who struggle with not enough income to cover all basic needs.
What can be done to help these genuinely impoverished Canadians?
John Richards has addressed this issue in a report published last month by C. D. Howe Institute, “Reducing Lone-Parent Poverty: A Canadian Success Story.” He points out that provincial work incentives for employable welfare recipients initiated by the conservative governments of Alberta and Ontario in the 1990s have proven enormously successful in persuading and empowering millions of impoverished Canadians to move from chronic welfare dependency to productive employment.
As a result, even by Statistics Canada’s LICO measure of relative poverty, the proportion of impoverished Canadians living in lone-parent families was reduced to 20 per cent in 2007, down from 50 per cent in 1996.
Nonetheless, the poverty rate remains four time greater for lone-parent families than for two-parent families with children. This is one among many good reasons for the federal and provincial governments to encourage Canadian couples to get married and to stay married.
In the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of welfare dependants in Canada were employable adults. In Ontario and some other provinces, most are now classified as unemployable “persons with disabilities.”
Richard explains: “A high-profile category is the urban homeless, most of whom combine mental illness with abuse of drugs or alcohol.” Many of these poor are victims of the cruel policy adopted by the provinces in the 1970s of deinstitutionalizing psychiatric patients without providing them with adequate support in the community.
Alleviating the misery of these neediest of impoverished Canadians will not be easy or inexpensive, but should get top priority in Canada’s ongoing struggle against the evils of real poverty.

Dutch show the way in immigration reform

2010-06-19T20:51:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In an epochal parliamentary election last week in The Netherlands, Geert Wilders led his recently formed, anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) to a significant breakthrough that could have reverberations throughout Western Europe.
Wilders’ party came in third with 15.5 per cent of the national vote. That was 1.8 percentage points more than the centrist Christian Democratic Party (CDA) headed by former prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende. The conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) finished first with 20.4 per cent of the popular vote.
Wilders is a demagogue who plays upon widespread fears of Islamist extremism and elevated crime rates among Muslim youths in The Netherlands. Among his more bizarre policy proposals is an outright ban on the Koran and an annual excise tax on head scarves of 1,000 euros.
These are plainly frivolous suggestions intended to stir up public controversy. Given the proportional system of representation used in The Netherlands, Wilders stood no chance of winning a majority government. He also knows that there is no likelihood of any other parliamentary party supporting such radical, not to say absurd, policies.
However, there can be no doubt that there is considerable public support among the Dutch for Wilders’ proposals to close radical mosques, ban preaching in any language other than Dutch and impose a five year moratorium on immigration by non-Western foreigners as well as on the founding of new mosques and Islamic schools.
Many commentators outside The Netherlands have dismissed Wilders as a right-wing extremist akin to the neo-fascists in Austria, Italy and elsewhere. That is incorrect. There is better reason to believe that he is a sincere democrat, an exponent of gay rights and a stalwart champion of Israel who genuinely deplores racism and admires former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
On most social issues, Wilders has run well to the left of the CDA and VVD. For example, while both parties proposed to cut pension costs by increasing the retirement age to 67 from 65, he resolutely opposed the idea.
Nonetheless, on the day after last week’s election, Wilders announced that he had dropped his objections to increasing the retirement age. In a transparent bid to join a coalition government led by the VVD, he said: “We want to work together and make compromises.”
Meanwhile, Wilders is already having a considerable impact on public policy in The Netherlands, by persuading other parties to amend their immigration policies. During the election campaign, Mark Rutte, the leader of the VVD and most likely next prime minister, promised: “Everyone who comes to our country to contribute is welcome. But we need to put a stop to the influx of disadvantaged migrants who come here only to end up dependent on social security.”
To this end, the election platform of the VVD included a draconian pledge to bar immigrants from receiving social assistance during their first 10 years in The Netherlands. Any such policy would contravene the equality rights of immigrants as decreed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but that is of no account to Rutte: He says The Netherlands should circumvent the court, if need be, by opting out of “antiquated European conventions" that inhibit restrictions on unproductive immigrants.
Canada faces a similar dilemma. Thanks to the calamitous ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1985 Singh case, all foreigners who arrive in Canada, including phoney asylum seekers with false documents, are now entitled to the same health and welfare benefits as Canadian citizens.
Herbert Grubel, emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, estimates the annual net cost to Canadian taxpayers of government benefits for immigrants amounted in 2002 to a monumental $18.3 billion.
That’s absurd. Following Rutte’s example, Canadian parliamentarians should invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to enact laws that both bar welfare benefits to immigrants for at least a few years and curtail appellant rights against deportation orders so that foreigners who break the law or pose a serious security threat can be expedited out of the country.

Thatcher was right on the euro

2010-05-29T20:49:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

As a strategic political leader, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was often right – never more so than in her prediction 20 years ago that adoption of the euro would lead to a political and economic disaster.
Thatcher, of course, was not alone in foreseeing this calamity. Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist, took the same view. In a recent column for The New York Times, he wrote: “I remember quipping, back when the Maastricht Treaty setting Europe on the path to the euro was signed, that they chose the wrong Dutch city for the ceremony. It should have taken place in Arnhem, the site of World War II’s infamous ‘bridge too far,’ where an overly ambitious Allied battle plan ended in disaster.”
Ideologically, Thatcher and Krugman are poles apart: She is a consistent conservative, while he is a doctrinaire liberal. But on the euro, they independently arrived at the same conclusion: The euro could not be sustained without the creation of a strong, central European government that can impose fiscal discipline upon the member states.
At the summit of European leaders in 1990 that approved the euro, Thatcher was the lone dissident. She insisted that Britain would retain her sovereignty and the pound sterling. Upon returning to Britain, she declared to the House of Commons: “What is being proposed now --economic and monetary union -- is the back door to a federal Europe, which we totally and utterly reject.”
Thatcher paid a stiff price for this firm stance on principle. Geoffrey Howe, her deputy prime minister and a Europhile supporter of the euro, promptly quit the cabinet and helped provoke a backbench revolt among Conservative MPs that forced Thatcher to resign as prime minister.
Today, the euro is in a state of crisis brought on by years of profligate deficit spending by the Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish governments. On April 27, Greek government bonds were finally reduced to junk status with the result that the socialist government of Greece could no longer borrow enough money to cover essential operational expenditures and interest payments on the national debt.
Speaking to the Commons in 1990, Thatcher foresaw that eventually, “there would have to be enormous transfers of money from one country to another” to sustain the euro. Again, she was right. To stave off default by Greece and to reassure bankers about the financial stability of Italy, Portugal and Spain, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have come up with a $900-billion plan to defend the Euro at the expense mainly of taxpayers in France, Germany and the United States.
Furthermore, as Thatcher and Krugman also predicted, the German and French governments are now calling for much tougher centralized controls to prevent any more members of the euro-zone from running up unsustainable budget deficits. Meanwhile, the Greek government is struggling with savage spending cuts imposed by the EU and IMF as a condition for bail-out assistance.
In February, Greece already had an unemployment rate of 12.1 per cent. That proportion is bound to go much higher as the government’s spending cutbacks take effect.
This, too, is as Thatcher predicted: “If we have a single currency, the differences come out substantially in unemployment or vast movements of people from one country to another,” she said. “Many people who talk about a single currency have never considered its full implications.”
Quite so. Now Krugman predicts that for Greece, not even a $900-billion bail-out will suffice. To revive economic growth and curb unemployment, the Greek government will soon be compelled to abandon the euro and re-establish its own hugely devalued national currency.
Will Italy, Portugal and Spain be next? That remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, given the international economic and financial turmoil brought on by the euro crisis, it’s evident that every major industrialized and trading country in the world is paying a huge price for the failure of EU leaders to heed the timely warnings by Thatcher, Krugman and others about the disastrous consequences of the euro.

Progressive sex education

2010-05-08T20:46:00.002-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Under intense public pressure, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may have withdrawn his government’s revised curriculum guidelines on sexual education for a “serious rethink,” but this battle is far from over.
Proponents of ever more explicit sexual education for young school children have been quick to mount a concerted counterattack. They commend the revised curriculum for proposing to normalize homosexuality in Grade 3, instruct youngsters on vaginal lubrication in Grade 6 and warn boys in Grade 7 to avoid “anal intercourse without a condom.”
Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s medical officer of health, was one of the first to urge reinstatement of the new curriculum. “Kids need clear, unbiased, age-appropriate information,” he said. “Research shows that when young people have good sexual health knowledge, they postpone sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy, and they practice safer sex when they become sexually active."
Is that right? For more than 20 years, youngsters in the secondary schools of Ontario have been bombarded with propaganda about how the consistent use of condoms can prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STIs). It has all been for naught. As even McKeown acknowledges, “Rates of sexually transmitted infections are increasing.”
In this respect, Canada is not alone. Dr. Stephen Genuis, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta, pointed out last year in a peer-reviewed article in Acta Paediatrica: “Despite more than two decades of relentless condomania, rates of HIV⁄ AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have skyrocketed. In the UK and Canada, for example, rates of some STIs have doubled or tripled over the last 20 years despite ubiquitous safe-sex education.”
Genuis emphasized: “Numerous large studies have demonstrated that concerted efforts to promote condom use have consistently failed to control rates of STIs, even in countries with advanced sex education programmes such as Switzerland and Sweden – nations sometimes considered paragons in progressive sexuality instruction.”
Regardless, reputed experts like McKeown insist that what we need is even more of the same failed safe-sex education starting with instruction of children in Grade 1 on the correct anatomical name for their sexual organs.
At least, the McGuinty Liberals and their expert advisers in the education ministry have stopped short of the approach taken by International Planned Parenthood Federation in a pamphlet entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot: A young person’s guide to their Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV.” According to the experts who put together this guide, “Young people living with HIV have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose their HIV status.”
That goes even for sexual partners. The guide suggests that people in long-term relationships have a right not to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partner if they have reason to “fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.”
Pity the victims of this deadly advice.
Sex education on the post-secondary level in Canada is not much better. According to the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 13 of Canada’s leading universities currently offer “Queer Programs.”
Last semester, for example, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario featured an undergraduate course in “Sex, Sexuality and Desire; Cross Cultural Explorations of Queer Lives.” In an outline of the course requirements posted on the department’s website, Associate Professor Douglass St.Christian (dr.d.) [sic] indicated that students must submit a photo essay on “the living history of your sexual selves.”
“Hmm,” dr.d commented, “you’re thinking – he wants amateur porn? Not quite but then again, maybe a pornographic gaze is something you will want to explore.”
Having assured that acceptable photos might be “accidental, staged, public or private, funny or dangerous and so on,” dr.d concluded: “Have fun, use your imagination, take chances, learn. It won’t hurt, honestly. I know these things.”
Who would challenge this assertion? The expert, dr. d, has spoken: He knows that taking even dangerous photos of one’s personal sexual experiences won’t hurt.
One wonders: Are there any limits to the depravity that can pass for acceptable instruction at Western?

Overhauling Canada's failed refugee system

2010-04-17T20:44:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has moved quickly and effectively to improve Canada’s grossly inept refugee system. However, there remain several other fundamental reforms to Canada’s lax immigration procedures that are urgently required to safeguard national security.
When Kenney took over as immigration minister in October, 2008, close to half of the refugee claimants pouring into Canada were coming from just two countries – Mexico and the Czech Republic. That was plainly ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of these asylum seekers were economic migrants with no valid claim to refugee status.
So why did they come to Canada under the pretence of seeking asylum? The answer is evident: Word got around in Mexico and the Czech Republic that Canada’s screening system is so slow and cumbersome that it takes years – up to 10 years in come cases – from the time a bogus asylum application is made until the culprit is deported.
Meanwhile, asylum seekers are entitled to free legal counsel to process their claims as well as full health and welfare benefits. The estimated average cost of failed asylum claims to Canadian taxpayers is close to $50,000.
In 2008 alone, Quebec received close to 6,000 asylum seekers from Mexico at a cost to Quebecers of $171 million. According to the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), 90 per cent of these claims were bogus.
That did not sit well with the Quebec government which demanded that Kenney take action to stop this scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money. He responded last June, by imposing visa requirements on all visitors from both Mexico and the Czech Republic with the result that refugee claims from these countries have slowed to a trickle.
Most of Canada’s immigration lawyers protested. They benefited hugely from the old system that allowed more than 10 times the number of asylum seekers per capita into Canada than into the United States.
Some church groups and other non-governmental organizations that assist in the resettlement of refugees in Canada have also decried Kenney’s crackdown on bogus asylum seekers. The leaders of these organizations would do better to concentrate their efforts on helping genuine refugee claimants from oppressive countries like Iran and the war-torn regions of Africa who have suffered terribly and face a real threat of persecution, torture and/or death should they be forced to return to their home country.
Imposing visa requirements on the Czech Republic and Mexico was only a stop-gap measure. Now Kenney has followed up with a comprehensive plan for overhauling the refugee system that aims to give quick protection to genuine asylum seekers while discouraging bogus claimants from relatively safe countries and expediting the removal of migrants who worm their way into Canada under false pretences.
It remains to be seen how effective the new system will be. Of primary concern is the threat of terrorism. The vast majority of the thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers who enter Canada every year from terrorist-producing countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco are not screened for criminality or security.
In the current issue of C2C – Canada’s Journal of Ideas, James Bissett, former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, contends: “All prospective immigrants of the Muslim faith should be interviewed to determine if they hold extremist views and if so, they should be refused entry. The politically correct criticism that such a policy would be racist or religious profiling should be set aside in the interests of public safety.”
Currently, Canada annually takes in more than 250,000 immigrants and asylum seekers. Bissett points out that “the volume of immigration is so high, the practice of individual interviews and counselling of immigrants has been carelessly abandoned. This, in itself, is a confession that immigration in the past 25 years has become primarily a question of numbers at the expense of all else -– including the safety and security of Canadians.”
The conclusion is inescapable: To safeguard Canadians, the Harper government must either vastly increase the resources available to screen immigrants and asylum seekers; or substantially curtail the number of people migrating to Canada from terrorist-producing countries.

Benedict a leader in fighting sexual abuse

2010-03-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a rare display of political courage, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defied public opinion in Britain, by reiterating his firm opposition to the legalization of euthanasia.

In England, as in Canada, the law now clearly provides that anyone who aids, abets or counsels another person to commit suicide is guilty of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to 14 years. In Britain, a recent poll found that more than 80 per cent of the people believe this law should be amended "to allow some people such as doctors and/or close relatives to assist a suicide in particular circumstances."

Brown disagrees. In an article in The Daily Telegraph on Feb. 24, he noted that many people who support assisted suicide are misinformed. They do not understand that a patient already has a right in law to refuse any medical treatment and that the law as applied by the caring professions "supports good care, including palliative care for the most difficult of conditions."

Having worked with his wife as a volunteer in a hospice, Brown attested: "I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society to provide the skilled and loving care that makes it possible; and to use the laws we have well, rather than rush to change them."

Granted, the quality of palliative care in Britain, as in Canada, is sometimes woefully inadequate. Brown warns that legalizing assisted suicide is not the answer: It would "fundamentally change the way we think about mortality.

"The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded. And the inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious."

Over the past 80 years, the British Parliament has many times considered and, after thorough consideration, rejected proposals to legalize assisted suicide. That does not sit well with Debby Purdy, a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis. In an attempt to do an end run around Parliament, she appealed to the courts for a ruling that she has a human right to know that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her to kill herself by traveling to a legal euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.

In the similar Rodriguez case in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada came within one vote of striking down the Canadian law on assisted suicide on the grounds that handicapped Canadians have an equality right to assistance in killing themselves. The British courts are not so high handed: In a ruling last August for the Lords of Appeal in Purdy, Lord Hope of Craighead stated: "It must be emphasised at the outset that it is no part of our function to change the law in order to decriminalise assisted suicide. If changes are to be made, as to which I express no opinion, this must be a matter for Parliament."

Nonetheless, Lord Hope ordered Keith Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, to clarify the guidelines governing the prosecution of persons who assist in a suicide. In compliance with this order, Starmer issued a new set of guidelines last week that were welcomed by Purdy but stopped well short of providing her with the assurance she was seeking.

That's as it should be. Crown prosecutors have no more right than the courts to fail to uphold the law as enacted and intended by Parliament in compliance with the Constitution.

Brown is heading into an inevitable general election within the next few weeks. Win or lose, he can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that in dealing with the vital issue of euthanasia, he exercised his best judgment about what is right and best for the British people rather than allow his conduct to be governed by the latest vagaries of misinformed public opinion.

British PM repudiates euthanasia

2010-03-06T20:40:00.000-05:00

Mounting attacks on freedom of religion

2010-03-01T12:22:00.000-05:00

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman

Faithful Catholics should brace themselves and their children for tougher times ahead as atheistic politicians become ever bolder in their attacks on freedom of conscience and religion.

In England, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour government recently introduced a sweeping, new Equality Bill that subjects churches to a wide-ranging ban on discrimination in employment. Speaking on behalf of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff denounced the proposed law on the ground that it could be construed by the courts as requiring the Church to hire women, practising homosexuals and transsexuals as both priests and lay employees.

John Sentamu, the Anglican Archbishop of York, likewise objected to the legislation. During debate in the House of Lords, he observed: "Noble Lords may believe that Roman Catholics should allow priests to be married; they may think that the Church of England should hurry up and allow women to become bishops; they may feel that many churches and other religious organisations are wrong on matters of sexual ethics. But if religious freedom means anything, it must mean that those are matters for the churches and other religious organisations to determine in accordance with their own convictions."

On January 25th, the House of Lords amended the Equality Bill to exempt churches from the ban on discrimination in employment. Then, on February 1, Pope Benedict XVI weighed in on the controversy, urging the English and Welsh bishops to maintain their opposition to legislation that imposes "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

That was enough for Brown. On February 2, his office disclosed that the government would not attempt to ram the original Equality Bill through the Commons over the objection of the House of Lords.

Meanwhile, freedom of religion is likewise under systematic attack in Canada. In 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal held that Christian Horizons, an evangelical Christian organization that cares for handicapped persons, had no right to fire an employee for entering into a lesbian relationship in violation of her promise to uphold the agency’s morality code.

Now, Catholic schools are under pressure. In a memorandum on June 24, former Ontario education minister Katherine Wynne, a lesbian, advised all publicly funded school boards in the province, Catholic and secular, that each "board’s workforce should reflect the diversity within the community." She made no reference to the historic right of Catholic Boards to favour committed and practising Catholics in hiring teachers -- a policy that is currently the subject of a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal by a non-Catholic teacher who was refused employment by the Wellington Catholic District School Board.

Wynne also summoned all Ontario schools to "discuss and address" homophobia, and to assure that "everyone in our publicly funded education system – regardless of background or personal circumstances – must be welcomed and accepted."

Faithful Catholics do not need any admonition from Wynne to oppose unfair discrimination against homosexuals. In a statement issued in 2004, the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops deplored the higher rates of suicide among homosexual students and underlined “the right of each student to be free of harassment, violence or malice in speech or action."

Of course, the Catholic schools are also supposed to affirm that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered." Does imparting this teaching of the Church conform with Wynne's decree that all students, including sexually active homosexuals, "must be welcomed and accepted" in all publicly funded schools?

That, to say the least, is open to doubt. Wynne made no reference in her memorandum to the provisions in the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Constitution of Canada that are supposed to guarantee the right of Catholic schools to govern themselves in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

In a cabinet shuffle on January 25, Ontario's nominally Catholic Premier Dalton McGuinty removed Wynne from the education ministry and replaced her with Leona Dombrowsky, a Catholic with seven years of experience as chair of a Catholic school board. Let us hope and pray that Dombrowsky proves to be more supportive of the aims of Catholic education than her secular predecessor.

Canada's fiscal advantage

2010-02-13T11:30:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

According to the latest governmental estimates, Canada is heading toward a record federal budget deficit of close to $56.9 billion. That's disturbing, yet Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has good reason to insist: "This country looks so great compared to most of the other western industrialized countries."

Consider, for example, the United States. President Barrack Obama is projecting a gargantuan budget deficit of $1.56 trillion deficit in 2010. That amounts to 10.6 per cent of the country's entire economic production, far higher than the corresponding Canadian ratio of just 3.8 per cent.

Flaherty projects that as the economy recovers and government revenues increase, the government of Canada will be able to eliminate the federal budget deficit over the next five years without having to resort to tax increases or any major spending cuts. While some experts consider that view unduly optimistic, no one thinks that Canada is in serious fiscal trouble.

The same cannot be said for the United States. The Economist magazine has warned: "Mr. Obama’s budget reveals a road-map to fiscal catastrophe." Correspondingly, in a news analysis headlined "Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power," the New York Times reported: "By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years... His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water."

Britain is in even worse shape as the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is running up a government deficit of no less than 14.2 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, after years of reckless deficit spending, the socialist government of Greece is hovering on the brink of outright bankruptcy.

What accounts for Canada's relatively good fortune? The Liberals deserve much of the credit. In 1998, former Liberal finance minster Paul Martin ended 27 consecutive years of deficit spending, by means of a series of major tax hikes and spending cuts. In doing so, he set the basis for 10 straight years of budget surpluses that lifted Canada out of the kind of serious debt crisis now confronting the United States and Britain.

However, it was those same Liberals that got Canada into fiscal trouble in the first place. When Pierre Trudeau took over as prime minister in 1968, he inherited a budget surplus. But when he left office in 1984, his government ran up a record peacetime budget deficit of close to nine per cent of GDP.

The Mulroney Conservatives made only a half-hearted attempt to rein in deficit spending. Even so, the opposition Liberals made matters worse, by strenuously objecting to any major spending cuts that the Conservative government might propose.

Martin was more fortunate. In his struggle to eliminate the deficit, he got considerable support from Reform Party leader Preston Manning, who kept urging the Liberals to slash spending.

The current Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has been less consistent. Just a few months ago, he was admonishing the Harper Conservatives to increase deficit spending even further as a means of stimulating the recession-bound economy. Yet now, he decries the size of this year's federal budget deficit.

Last week, Ignatieff announced that a Liberal government would introduce a national child-care system. "We will find the money, because it seems to me an excellent investment," he promised. "I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice."

We have heard that line before from Trudeau as well as big spenders in the United States, Britain and Greece. In all cases, such folly has led to a debt crisis that compels major cutbacks, not increases, in government spending on social programs.

It will be interesting to see how Ignatieff reacts to the new federal budget due next month. Should he decide to bring down the Harper government on the ground that it is not proposing to spend enough on new social programs, he could lead the Liberals to a calamitous setback in the ensuing federal election.

The twisted morality of godless academics

2010-02-01T11:56:00.001-05:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

Why are most pro-life activists Christians?

Udo Schuklenk, professor of philosophy and Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics at Queen’s University, thinks he knows the answer: The pro-life position is so irrational that it is only likely to be espoused by fanatics who look to the Bible as the ultimate authority on all questions of faith and morality.

Schuklenk is an atheist. He rejects God and dismisses the Bible as an irrational product of “the human imagination dating from pre-scientific and often barbaric eras.”

Like most atheists, Schuklenk bridles at the suggestion that there is no reason to be good without God. In the introduction to a recent collection of essays, 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, he writes: “The absence of God does not mean that we are lost at sea as far as living a meaningful life – a life that is worth living – is concerned. Secular ethics has much to offer to those of us who have chosen to live an ethical life.”

Perhaps so, but Schuklenk begs the central question: Why should anyone chose to live an ethical life without God? No atheist has come up with a satisfactory and compelling answer.

Christians have always read the Bible in the light of reason. Guided by both reason and revelation, they have rationally and logically concluded down through the centuries that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death.

In support of the atheist position that reason alone is a sufficient guide for people who chose to live an ethical life, Schuklenk cites Practical Ethics by Peter Singer, the notorious atheist and professor of philosophy at Princeton University. Yet Singer commits numerous outrages in this book, including the suggestion that the mother of a handicapped baby should have no compunction about killing her baby before or after birth.

In defence of this proposition, Singer argues that “birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line.” He adds: “Neither the fetus nor the newborn infant is an individual capable of regarding itself as a distinct entity with a life of its own.”

On both of these points, Singer is right. But, alas, he fails to draw the only reasonable conclusion: that regardless of cognitive ability, all human life is sacred.

Instead, Singer advances the diabolical argument that there is nothing inherently wrong with either abortion or infanticide, because preborn and newborn babies lack “characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness.”

Schuklenk likewise argues that the value of human life is a function of cognition. In 50 Voices of Disbelief, he chides Christians for opposing death-dealing embryonic stem-cell research on the ground that embryos “have no central nervous system, no brain, no capacity to suffer.”

Within a few weeks after conception, the developing human being has acquired all these characteristics, but that is of no account to Schuklenk. He supports abortion. In his opinion, not even pain-suffering babies in the womb have a right to life.

Schuklenk sometimes seems almost unhinged in his implacable hostility to Christianity. He charges: “To organized Catholic Christianity, fetuses are of greater value than real people. I never understood how organized Christianity justifies discarding adult women’s lives during birth, if there is a conflict.”

That, of course, is complete nonsense. The Catholic Church does not regard fetuses as of greater value than so-called real people. Moreover, in those vanishingly rare circumstances such as some cancers of the uterus where a physician can only save the life of a pregnant woman by a procedure that will kill her baby, the Catholic Church holds in accordance with the traditional principle of double effect that the physician who acts to save the life of the mother does not commit an abortion.

As the Ontario Chair in Bioethics at Queen’s University, Schuklenk should be aware of such basic moral distinctions. His woeful ignorance of the pro-life position is a disgrace.

Schuklenk rails against churches for allegedly supporting "special rights for religious health care professionals in law." He says: "A consequence of this view has been that the personal preferences of individual professionals are prioritized over the needs of individual patients to receive professional services.”

As it happens, Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of conscience and religion to all Canadians, not just health care professionals. By clear implication, Schuklenk suggests that the laws and the Constitution of Canada should be amended to require all nurses and physicians, regardless of their religious and moral convictions, to assist a patient in perpetrating an abortion.

Schuklenk also denounces churches for opposing physician assisted suicide. “This is surprising,” he writes. “If at the end of a decently lived life we would go to heaven and enjoy eternal life, why are they fighting our earthly death so vigorously?”

Such a puerile argument would be unworthy of a high-school essayist. Yet Schuklenk is held in such high esteem by his academic peers that the Royal Society of Canada has chosen him to chair its “Expert Panel on End-of Life Decision Making.”

The panel is supposed to advise the public on the “various pros and cons of decriminalization of physician-assisted death from well-reasoned ethical and legal standpoints.” With the group headed by Schuklenk and stacked with other like-minded intellectuals, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Such is the twisted morality of godless academics who presume to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To paraphrase William F. Buckley, Canadians would surely be better off governed by the first 1,800 people in the Ottawa phone book than by the 1,800 members of the Royal Society of Canada.

Changing the law from the bench

2010-01-23T11:26:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a two-to-one ruling on January 15, the British Columbia Court of Appeal held that Parliament has no constitutional authority to prohibit drug addicts from injecting themselves with illegal drugs in a public health clinic. With this bizarre decision, the Court has undermined the entire bans on drug possession and drug trafficking in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The immediate focus of the case is Insite, a notorious health clinic in the drug-infested, east side of downtown Vancouver, where nurses and paramedical staff help drug addicts to inject themselves with heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs. According to the trial judge, "No substances are provided by staff. It goes without saying that the substances brought to Insite by users have been obtained from a trafficker in an illegal transaction."

The British Columbia Ministry of Health established Insite in 2003 as an experiment in the supervised injection of illegal drugs, the first of its kind in North America. To enable the clinic to operate, the minister of health in the Liberal government of Canada at the time granted Insite a temporary exemption from the federal bans on illegal drug possession and trafficking.

Former Conservative health minister Tony Clement served notice in 2007 that he planned to terminate the exemption. "Allowing and/or encouraging people to inject heroin into their veins is not harm reduction," he said. "We believe it is a form of harm addition." He insisted that instead of fostering the injection of dangerous and illegal drugs, the medicare system should save the lives of addicts by concentrating on drug treatment and rehabilitation.

Backers of Insite fundamentally disagree with this policy. Having failed in their political efforts to maintain the exemption for Insite, they appealed Clement's decision to the courts, and won.

In a ruling on May 27, 2008, Mr. Justice Ian Pitfield of the British Columbia Supreme Court overturned Clement's policy. He continued the exemption for Insite on the ground that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act violates the right to "life, liberty and security of the person" in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the extent that the bans on drug possession and drug trafficking prevent addicts from safely injecting illegal drugs in a public health clinic.

Now the British Columbia Court of Appeal has likewise upheld a continuing exemption for Insite. In reasons for the Court, Madam Justice Carol Huddart opined: "A supervised drug injection service does not undermine the federal goals of protecting health or eliminating the market that drives the more serious drug-related offences of import, production and trafficking." In a concurring opinion, Madam Justice Anne Rowles similarly argued that application of the provisions on drug possession and drug trafficking in the federal narcotics law to Insite "would have the effect of putting the larger society at risk on matters of public health with its attendant human and economic cost."

In dissent, Madam Justice Daphne Smith pointed out that if other provinces take advantage of the immunity granted to Insite in this case, "supervised injection sites could be opened in every city across Canada. The creation of 'enclaves' where illicit drugs may be brought for intravenous drug use, without the potential for prosecution, could eviscerate the efficacy of a criminal law validly enacted by Parliament that seeks to address the broader context and consequences of illicit drug use across the entire supply chain."

Note that instead of discussing the principles of the law and the Constitution, all of these judges are debating the wisdom of the policy adopted by the Harper government to uphold the comprehensive ban on the possession and trafficking of illegal drugs in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Upon further appeal, will the Supreme Court of Canada likewise maintain the exemption for Insite and amend the federal narcotics law? That remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that our appeal courts are still infested with arbitrary judicial activists who have no compunction about changing the law to suit their personal policy preferences.

The evil politics of envy

2010-01-02T11:21:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

George Gilder persuasively argues in his latest book The Israel Test that the central issue of our time is not any clash of civilizations or dispute over environmentalism, but a more fundamental moral divide. He explains: "On one side, marshaled at the United Nations and in universities around the globe, are those who see capitalism as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor and the environment: Every gain for one party comes at the cost of another. On the other side are those who see the genius and the good fortune of some as a source of wealth and opportunity for all."

A primary focus of these clashing viewpoints is the state of Israel. Quoting Caroline Glick, an astute columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Gilder sums up: "Some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel"

The enviers also hate the Jews, and for much the same reason: Collectively, the Jews have been far more successful down through the centuries than any other people.

Gilder points out that Jews currently comprise fewer than one-third of one per cent of the world's population, yet over the past 60 years, they have won more than 30 per cent of the Nobel Prizes for literature, chemistry, physics and medicine.

Jews have also been outstandingly successful as entrepreneurs and financiers. Ludwig von Mises, the distinguished Austrian economist, estimated that at least two thirds of the top 1,000 entrepreneurs in Austria during the 1930s were Jews.

Hitler, alas, was not alone in his pathological envy and hatred of the Jews. A great many Austrians applauded his campaign to rid the country of Jews, despite the devastating economic consequences for Austria. Out of about 250,000 Jews who resided in Austria in 1938, only 216 survived the Second World War without fleeing abroad.

Von Mises was one of the lucky Jewish survivors. He escaped to the United States, where he concluded his brilliant career at New York University. In this case, as in so many others, the United States gained from Europe’s loss of outstanding Jewish talent.

Gilder describes General Leslie Groves, the officer in charge of the ultra-secret Manhattan Project during the Second World War, as a "stiff and conventional military man and a Christian of the sort most disdained by intellectuals." Like Hitler, Groves might have failed what Gilder calls "the Israel test:" That is to say, he could have envied the Jews and refused to employ them on the Manhattan Project.

Instead, Groves chose two Jews to head the organization, Robert Oppenheimer as director and John von Neumann as senior adviser. With the collaboration of Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence and other brilliant gentiles, the talented Jews recruited by Groves enabled the United States to obtain nuclear weapons before Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Here, then, is a singular triumph of success over envy. The Jews and gentiles who worked together on the Manhattan Project literally saved Western civilization.

For 20 years following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians likewise tried peaceful cooperation with Israel. The result was an outburst of mutually beneficial economic growth. Gilder notes that despite a tripling of the Palestinian population, per capita income in the West Bank and Gaza rose to $1,706 in 1987, up from $80 in 1967.

Since 1987, Palestinian militants have periodically sent homicide bombers and Katyusha rockets into Israel. For the Palestinian people, the inevitable consequence has been ruin, especially in Gaza, which remains desperately impoverished despite having received more foreign aid per capita than any other territory on earth.

Of late, Israel and the Palestine Authority on the West Bank have reverted to peaceful cooperation for the mutual economic benefit of Jews and Arabs on both sides of the border. The same opportunity is open to the people of Gaza. But first they must get rid of a terrorist government consumed with a pathological hatred and envy of the Jews.

(PS: In case any reader is wondering, Gilder is a Christian of British ancestry.)

Ringing declaration of Christian principles

2010-01-01T11:54:00.000-05:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

On November 20, Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical leaders in the United States set a splendid example for their counterparts in Canada, by issuing the Manhattan Declaration -- a ringing statement of resolve to resist the growing subversion of the moral order and the suppression of freedom of religion by secular zealots in legislatures, governments and the courts.

Included among the 178 dignitaries who have signed this historic document is virtually every major, theologically orthodox Catholic and Evangelical leader in the United States from Most Rev. Timothy Dolan, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, to Chuck Colson, the Evangelical founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries. While avowing that "the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention," the signatories jointly affirm: "We are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions."

These problems, of course, are no less acute in Canada. Thanks to the arbitrary ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in Morgentaler, 1988, Canada, to its shame, is the only democracy in the world where an abortionist can legally kill a baby in the womb for any reason and at any time during a pregnancy right up to the last second before birth.

Currently, secular ideologues in the Parliament of Canada are pressing for the legalization of euthanasia. It's difficult to imagine any legislation that would pose a more severe threat to the lives of elderly and disabled Canadians.

In December, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench overturned a ruling by the province's human rights tribunal that fined former pastor Stephen Boissoin $5,000 for expressing his views on homosexuality in a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate. Nonetheless, faithful Christians should beware: The oppressive provision in the Alberta human rights code that was at issue in this case remains in effect and could still be used against anyone who dares to insist that all sexual intercourse outside of marriage between a man and a woman is sinful.
Besides, the freedom of Canadians to act on their Christian convictions is under even greater threat than their freedom to speak. In an outrageous submission to the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Ontario Human Rights Commission has warned: "A physician’s denial of services or refusal to provide a woman with information relating to contraception or abortion, for example, would be discriminatory based on sex."

With this statement, the Commission has served notice that pro-life physicians in Ontario who refuse on principle to participate in the commission of an abortion could be fined by the Commission and ultimately jailed by the courts for allegedly discriminating against women on the basis of sex.

With the praiseworthy exception of Calgary Bishop Fred Henry and a few other outspoken stalwarts, most Catholic and Evangelical leaders in Canada have had little to say in public about the mounting attacks on freedom of religion and the traditional moral order. In splendid contrast, their counterparts in the United States have have not only reaffirmed their commitment to religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and marriage as the God-ordained conjugal union of man and woman, but have also solemnly stated in the Manhattan Declaration: "We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty."

J. I. Packer, the distinguished, theologically orthodox Anglican professor of theology at Vancouver's Regent University, has signed on to the Manhattan Declaration. Would that all of the faithful leaders among Canadian Catholics and Evangelicals would issue a similar declaration of Christian conviction for Canada.

Misinformed Atheists

2009-12-10T11:18:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Is there still any reason to worship God at Christmas?

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think not. In their view, Darwinian science has done away with any rational basis for belief in God, let alone the divinity of Christ.

Dawkins and Hitchens are the authors, respectively, of The God Delusion and God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. They not only mock a caricature of the Christian faith, but also reject the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality.

This is not to suggest that Dawkins and Hitchens are amoral nihilists. Nothing, it seems, offends them more than the suggestion that there is no reason to be good without God.

A. J. Ayer, the celebrated British philosopher and atheist, once debated the scholarly Catholic Bishop Christopher Butler. Hitchens recalls: "The exchange proceeded politely enough until the bishop, hearing Ayer assert that he saw no evidence at all for the existence of any god, broke in to say, ‘Then I cannot see why you do not lead a life of unbridled immorality.’

"At this point," adds Hitchens, "‘Freddie,’ as his friends knew him, abandoned his normal suave urbanity and exclaimed, ‘I must say that I think that is a perfectly monstrous insinuation,’ Now, Freddie had certainly broken most commandments respecting the sexual code as adumbrated from Sinai. He was, in a way, justly famous for this. But he was an excellent teacher, a loving parent, and a man who spent much of his spare time pressing for human rights and free speech. To say that his life was an immoral one would be a travesty of the truth.”

Note that according to Hitchens' account, Butler did not accuse Ayer of immorality: The bishop only said he could not see why an atheist does not lead a life of unbridled immorality.

Hitchens' book is rife with such sloppy thinking and misinformation. And Dawkins' book is no better. In a devastating critique for the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton wrote: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the British Book of Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”

Granted, there are some excellent books that disparage Christianity from an atheistic perspective. One of the best is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski, a gripping murder mystery that has been much lauded as the greatest of all novels.

The late Susan Sontag, a prominent atheist intellectual, praised The Brothers Karamazov as "the novel I reread most often and love best." She must have appreciated the atheistic arguments of
Ivan, the most brilliant of the three Karamazov brothers.

However, like Bishop Butler, Ivan famously holds that if there is no God or immortality of the soul, there is no reason for virtue. Rakitin, an atheistic seminarian, dismisses this theory as a fraud. In his view: "Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity."

Dimitri Karamazov agrees with his brother Ivan. Both maintain that even idealistic atheists end up employing utilitarianism as a "social justification for every nasty thing they do!"

The third and youngest Karamazov brother, Alyosha, stakes his life on the truth of Christianity. How, though, can he know that God and immortality exist? Father Zossima, Alyosha's saintly mentor at the local monastery, explains: "There's no proving it, though you can be convinced of it. By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul."

Here, then, is an ideal Christmas present for any reader. However, atheists should beware: After reading and pondering The Brothers Karamazov, they, too, could end up with a reasonable and firm belief that the darkness shall never, ever overcome the true light that came into the world at Christmas.

Pro-life gains in the United States

2009-12-01T11:49:00.000-05:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

In a headline story on November 8, The New York Times reported that by voting to ban federal funding for abortion from the major health-care reform bill under consideration in the United States Congress, the House of Representatives "has energized the opponents of abortion with their biggest victory in years."

Quite so. The $1.1 trillion House health-care reform bill proposes to extend insurance coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans, by subsidizing health-care premiums for everyone who earns less than the equivalent of $88,000 for a family of four. Under terms of an amendment sponsored by Congressman BartStupak , a pro-life Democrat from Michigan, no money authorized by this bill can be used to offset any of the costs of an insurance plan that covers abortion, except in the case of rape, incest or risk of death to the mother if the pregnancy continues.

The vote on the Stupak amendment was not even close: 240 Congressmen, including 64 Democrats, voted in favour, while 194, all of them Democrats, were opposed.

Meanwhile, the United States Senate is devising a health-care reform bill of its own that is also likely to ban federal funding for abortion. Even the courts will probably go along with the ban. In 1980, the United States Supreme Court held in Harris v. McRae that there is no constitutional right to federal funding for abortion.

Pro-abortion activists in the United States are alarmed. Diana DeGette of Colorado, co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, had decried the Stupak amendment, saying it "sets a terrible precedent and marks a significant step backwards." Laurie Rubiner, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood, has pointed out that private insurance companies are bound to cease coverage for abortion in order to qualify for the proposed federal subsidies and remain competitive.

Passage of the Stupak amendment in the House is just the latest in a series of legislative measures over the past 20 years to curtail abortion. The Hyde Amendment, an annually renewed provision introduced by pro-life Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, forbids federal funding for abortion under the Medicaid program for the poor, except in cases of rape, incest or some physical condition that would endanger the life of the mother if the pregnancy were to continue. A similar legislative ban on abortion funding applies to insurance plans for federal employees and the military.

President George W. Bush signed into law the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002 and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003. Meanwhile, numerous state legislatures have also adopted funding restrictions and informed consent laws for abortion. For example, in 2006, the Michigan legislature enacted the Ultrasound Viewing Option, a law that requires an abortionist to give the mother an opportunity to view an active ultrasound image of her growing baby.

There can be no doubt that these laws have been effective in reducing abortion. In a comprehensive recent study of the consequences of enacting and quashing laws restricting abortion in various states, Michael J. New, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alabama and an associate of the Harvard-MIT data centre, concluded that public funding restrictions and informed consent laws have had "the largest and most statistically significant impact" in reducing abortion.

The Guttmacher Institute, which serves as the “research arm” of Planned Parenthood in the United States, has found that restrictions on funding in the Hyde Amendment alone have cut the abortion rate among Medicaid recipients by 25 per cent. If the expanded ban on federal funding for abortion in theStupak amendment is finally enacted into law, it's certain that many, many more babies will be saved from death by abortion.

In recent years, the abortion rate in the United States has steadily declined to 19.4 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2005. While that's still appallingly high, it's down 34 per cent from the peak of 29.3 per 1,000 women in 1980.

Canadian pro-lifers should take note: There is reason to hope that a concerted effort to promote the enactment of informed consent laws and restrictions on public funding for abortion within Canada would likewise result in a substantial reduction in the death rate from abortion.

Courts have no role in foreign policy

2009-11-21T11:06:00.002-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The key issue before the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Omar Ahmed Khadr versus The Prime Minister of Canada is straightforward: Who has ultimate responsibility for Canadian foreign policy -- unelected and unaccountable judges in the courts or elected representatives of the people in the Government and Parliament of Canada?

For the past seven years, Khadr, a 23-year-old Canadian, has been held without trial in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of murder in the death of a United States soldier who was killed with a hand grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan. In 2003 and 2004, agents of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Department of Foreign Affairs interviewed Khadr in Guantanamo Bay and shared the resulting information with the United States, although they knew Khadr had been subjected to sleep deprivation.

On this basis, the majority on the Federal Court of Appeal held in a two-to-one ruling on August 14 that the government of Canada was complicit in the torturing of Khadr and had thereby violated his right to life, liberty and security of the person as guaranteed in section seven of the the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As a remedy for this violation of Khadr's Charter rights, the Court ordered the government of Canada to request the government of the United States to return Khadr to Canada as soon as practicable.

The Supreme Court of Canada should have no hesitation in overturning this ludicrous judgment on appeal. In a compelling dissent in Khadr, Mr. Justice Marc Nadon of the Federal Court of Appeal observed that there is no link between the allegedly inappropriate interviews and the remedy of repatriation.

Furthermore, Nadon maintained that the courts have no constitutional authority to issue such an order that directly interferes with the conduct of Canadian foreign policy. He explained: "How Canada should conduct its foreign affairs, including the management of its relationship with the U.S. and the determination of the means by which it should advance its position in regard to the protection of Canada’s national interest and its fight against terrorism, should be left to the judgment of those who have been entrusted by the democratic process to manage these matters on behalf of the Canadian people."

That's exactly right. Let us hope that the majority on the Supreme Court of Canada exhibits similar judicial restraint in upholding the fundamental separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers under the Constitution of Canada.

Meanwhile, United States Attorney-General Eric Holder announced last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several other al Qaeda operatives will be put on trial in New York City federal court. Khadr is not part of this group: He and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be put on trial in a military tribunal.

Why this difference in treatment? Holder has explained that he decided upon a military tribunal for Khadr and others because the United States government does not have sufficient evidence to assure their conviction in a civilian court.

In Khadr's case, it seems that much of the evidence against him is based on statements he made to United States and CSIS officials after undergoing sleep deprivation. These statements cannot be used in a civilian court, but they might be admissible under the rules of the United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, provided “the totality of the circumstances renders the statements reliable and possessing sufficient probative value” and “the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statements into evidence.”

The Obama administration has good reason to put Khadr on trial in a military commission. Correspondingly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is right not to request Khadr's immediate return to Canada and the Supreme Court of Canada should not presume to interfere with this key foreign-policy decision.

It is in the interests of both Canada and the United States that Khadr is brought to trial before a United States military commission -- the kind of institution that is best equipped to deal with war crimes and suspected terrorists.

Economist rediscovers marriage

2009-11-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

In an important new book, fearful symmetry: the fall and rise of Canada’s founding values, Brian Lee Crowley persuasively argues that the future prosperity of Canada depends on a revival of marriage and the family.

For Crowley, this is a new understanding. Until last year, he was living in a casual, common-law relationship. It was only during a recent stint as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at the federal Department of Finance that he finally came to realize that common-law relationships, single-parenthood and rampant marital breakdown are jeopardizing the economic and social well-being of Canadians.

In the preface to his book, Crowley relates that during his stint at the Finance Department: “I quickly began to realize that I couldn’t think about Marriage and Family on a grand scale without also thinking about marriage and family for myself, and the critical things I had to say about the decisions Canadians had made in this regard over the past few decades applied just as much to me as to anyone else. I asked Shelley to marry me in February, 2008, and we are about to celebrate our first anniversary as this book is being prepared for the printer…. My only regret is that it took me so long to get around to it; my great joy is that Shelley would have me in spite of everything.”

Good for Crowley. He can now testify first-hand about the incomparable joys of a good and solid marriage.

Crowley insists: “Marriage matters because husbands and wives matter to each other in ways that cannot be exhaustively enumerated and that are demonstrably different from the way that unmarried cohabiting partners, for example, matter to each other. On the whole, married people like and trust one another and are committed to each other. And because getting married involves an enactment of that commitment, a visible public exchange of promises and mutual commitment, it helps to increase the likelihood that those promises and that commitment will be honoured.”

Indeed, this is so. Despite the lamentable rise in divorce rates since the Trudeau Liberals reformed Canada’s divorce legislation in 1969, marital unions in Canada are still far more enduring and stable than common law relationships.

A good marriage is not only a blessing to husband and wives: It is also vital to the well being of children. Crowley summarizes in his book the wealth of social-science evidence that children thrive best under the care and guidance of their mothers and fathers united in the bond of marriage. He wryly notes that this evidence would have impressed our grandmothers “as perfectly self evident.”

Our grandparents also took for granted the traditional values of productive employment and self-reliance rather than subsistence on handouts from the state. Crowley laments that in our generation, “we had to abandon tradition for its value to become self evident.”

In recent years, Crowley has devoted much of his research to the impending crises posed by Canada’s rapidly aging population. He points out that if current trends persist, there will only be about two workers per retiree in Canada by 2030, down from 3.25 workers per retiree today. Moreover, this dwindling proportion of workers will be saddled with tens of billions of dollars in additional annual costs just to maintain existing medicare and pension benefits for the vast numbers of baby-boom retirees.

Crowley warns that no conceivable increases in worker productivity and immigration can solve this problem. He estimates that even if Canada were to admit one million immigrants per year for the next 50 years, the proportion of elderly people in the Canadian population could still surpass 22 per cent in 2059, up from 13.2 per cent today.

What, then, can be done? Crowley asserts: “The key fact … is that Canadians do not have nearly enough babies to replace the current population (a national birth rate of just over 1.5 per women of child-bearing age…, versus a replacement rate of 2.1).”

This is no just an economic problem. Crowley observes: “A self-confident Canada that believes life here is good, that our institutions are robust, and that we want to be force for good in the world must at least be ready to ask itself … whether our self-image as a great country with much to offer the world can be reconciled with the reality that Canadians are unwilling to replace themselves, to bring enough children into the world to ensure that Canada continues to grow, to thrive, and to be a beacon of tolerance and civility to the world.”

Our grandparents would have been mystified by the collapse in Canadian birth rates. They took it for granted that children and grandchildren are an immense blessing.

Crowley cites opinion poll data indicating that even today, many potential Canadian mothers would love to have more children and to care for them in the home, but are reluctant to do so. This problem has little to do with lack of economic incentives. Our ancestors got by on a much lower standard of living and without any child tax-benefits or day-care subsidies, yet they had plenty of children.

Experience in Quebec, France, Sweden and elsewhere indicates that generous tax benefits for children can foster only a small rise in birth rates that is not nearly sufficient to sustain the population.

Crowley concludes that far more than tax breaks and incentives for mothers to have children, “we need to learn to love and trust each other better and be more committed to each other and to put the needs of our most vulnerable, our children, ahead of the desires of adults.”

As it is, many Canadian women first attempt to establish themselves in a solid career before getting pregnant, because they fear that the father of their children might abandon them to a life of impoverished single-parenthood. Such concerns are well founded. Even among married mothers, the risks of abandonment to single-parenthood are far higher today than 40 years ago. Crowley concludes that the erosion of marriage stability is one of the principal reasons for the collapse in Canadian birth rates.

Crawley also draws the obvious conclusion: No-fault divorce is calamitous for mothers and children. To safeguard both, he urges Parliament to amend the divorce act so that no spouse can unilaterally dissolve a marriage with children before the youngest child reaches the age of, say, sixteen. He would allow exceptions only for an aggrieved spouse who can prove that the other marriage partner is guilty of some grievous fault such as mental cruelty or physical abuse.

Divorce reform would be a good start to strengthening marriage and encouraging child birth. It’s easy to imagine other similar initiatives, such as refocussing spousal benefits on married couples as an inducement for common-law couples to reconsider the advantages of marriage.

However, giving preference to marriage would run afoul of the provisions in Canada’s modern-day human rights codes that forbid discrimination on the basis of marital status. Those provisions should be rescinded. In view of the overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact of casual common-law unions upon spouses and children, Parliament and the provincial legislatures should have no compunction about specifically shoring up the institution of marriage.

The most glaring omission in Crowley’s otherwise fine book is any acknowledgment of the calamitous impact of legalized abortion. As a compassionate man, he should pity all the grieving mothers who have been duped into thinking of abortion as an easy way out of a difficult pregnancy. And as an expert on the perils of population aging, he should especially deplore the deaths by induced abortion of more than three million Canadian children since 1969.

Abortion is truly a national tragedy. Crowley has come a long way in recognizing the enduring importance of marriage and the family. Let us hope and pray that he and other intellectuals like him will soon also come to understand that of all the founding values of Canada, there is none more vital, none more fundamental, and none more urgently in need of revival than respect for the inalienable right to life of all innocent human beings, young and old.

Courageous Muslim Democrat

2009-10-31T11:02:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Among post-modern multiculturalists, it’s commonplace to suppose that all cultures are of equal moral worth. Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, emphatically disagrees. In an illuminating collection of essays entitled Islam’s Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim, he maintains that Islam is afflicted with “a terrible malady” which “reflects the irreparable breakdown of the civilization’s centre … which at one time in history was co-equal, if not briefly superior, to Christendom.”

Paraphrasing William Butler Yeats, Mansur contends that Islam is in the grips of a “rough beast” that has let loose anarchy upon the world. He traces the problem back to the earliest days of Islam, when perverse Muslim rulers renounced the peaceful teachings of the Quran, by slaughtering each other in a bloody struggle for political power following the death of the Prophet in 632.

“The Prophet’s immediate family members were the most conspicuous massacre victims,” writes Mansur. “Ever since those early blood-lettings, Muslims have been the primary victims of Muslim violence.”

That’s still all too evident in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Within the past week, Islamist suicide bombers have killed more than 240 Muslims in three massive blasts – the first two in Baghdad and the third in Peshawar.

Mansur charges that while Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network are “the modern faces of the beast” set loose in Islam, “Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders such as Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh al-Qaradawi serve the beast as apologists and propagandists.” That’s disturbing.

Qaradawi is no minor figure. Mansur explains that for Sunni Muslims, he is “the face of institutionalized Islam. He is the closest to what might pass for a titular head of Muslims akin to the Pope. Qaradawi’s words, now broadcast by television network al-Jazeerah, are taken as authoritative pronouncements of Islam.”

In a sermon broadcast earlier this year on the Arabic network of Al-Jazeerah, Qaradawi declaimed: “Oh Allah, take the Jews, the murderous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people…. Oh Allah, do not spare one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”

Ramadan is hardly less prominent than Qaradawi. A Swiss-born Arab Muslim academic, he has taught at the University of Fribourg, Oxford University and Erasmus University in Rotterdam. In 2004, he was offered a tenured position at Notre Dame University, but could not take up the post because he was barred entry to the United States.

On August 18, Ramadan was fired from his posts as a professor at Erasmus and an “integration advisor” for the city of Rotterdam, because he continued to host a show Islam and Life on Iran’s Press TV despite the shooting down of protestors in the streets of Tehran in June. In a joint statement, the city and university said Ramadan had "failed to sufficiently realize the feelings that participation in this television program, which is supported by the Iranian government, might provoke in Rotterdam and beyond."

In the face of Islamist terrorism, Mansur deplores the “appeasement mentality” of liberal-left multiculturalists in the West as well as the “deafening silence of Muslims, except for lonely voices of feeble opposition.” He likewise denounces the “double-speak” of Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders in mosques who say “contrary things in English or French and then in Arabic, or Farsi or Urdu.”

Mansur, of course, is a courageous exception: No Muslim has been more outspoken than he in unequivocally denouncing the Islamist terrorists who defame Islam.

As a Muslim, Mansur laments: “We keep assuring ourselves and others that Muslims who violate Islam are a minuscule minority, yet we fail to hold this minority accountable in public. We regularly quote from the Quran, but do not make repentance for our failings as the Quran instructs, by seeking forgiveness of those whom we have harmed.”

Mansur starkly concludes: “We Muslims are the source of our own misery, and we are not misunderstood by others who see in our conduct a threat to their peace.”

Self-serving Canadian twaddle

2009-10-10T10:56:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Brian Lee Crowley is apprehensive about the future of Canada. In a remarkable new book, fearful symmetry: the fall and rise of canada’s traditional values, he decries those politicians and intellectuals have been telling us for the past 50 years that “Canada is one of the top countries in the world; that we are nicer, kinder, and gentler than Americans; that we have shed an up-tight colonial past and have entered a brave new world of equality and freedom guaranteed by big government.

“Too bad,” says Crowley, “this message is self-serving twaddle."

Really? Is it not true that over the past 50 years, Canada has maintained much more generous unemployment insurance and welfare benefits than the United States?

That, indeed, is correct. As a young socialist in the 1970s, Crowley applauded the decisions of the Trudeau Liberal government to liberalize unemployment insurance, increase welfare benefits and greatly expand the size and impact of government on the Canadian economy.

Looking back 40 years later, Crowley now realizes that no matter how generous and kindly meant, these Liberal initiatives have had a disastrous national impact, not least upon the poorest and most vulnerable Canadians.

Take the case of unemployment insurance. The reforms adopted by the Trudeau Liberals in 1971 radically reduced eligibility requirements and increased benefits. The result, notes Crowley, was overnight creation of the “UI ski team.” Under the cockeyed provisions of the new system, employable people in areas of high unemployment could work just two weeks and live off UI for the rest of the year.

While ski bums may have benefited from these UI reforms, many other Canadians were not so fortunate. Crowley observes that there is widespread agreement among economists that the Liberals’ misguided UI reforms fostered an increase of two percentage points in the difference between unemployment rates in Canada and the United States.

Increased welfare benefits have been no less pernicious. Crawley recalls that by the early 1990s, more than 10 per cent of the population of Ontario, then the richest province, was reduced to morale-destroying dependence on welfare handouts.

That was too much even for former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae: His debt-ridden government could not afford the province’s soaring welfare costs, so he, a socialist, initiated the first rollbacks in welfare entitlements -- a policy that was continued and extended by the government of his Conservative successor, former premier Mike Harris.

The result, notes Crawley, “has not been impoverishment and misery.” Rather, the great bulk of people who were removed from welfare gained both employment and higher incomes.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Canadians languish in what Crawley calls “pseudo-work;” that is to say, unproductive jobs financed by government. Among several examples, he cites the featherbedding at CN. As a crown corporation, it ended up with a workforce of some 36,000, but a few years after privatization, “that number was down by half to 18,000, while profitability and efficiency were way up.”

Crawley warns that once the current economic recovery picks up pace, Canada will enter upon an era of ever more acute labour shortages. At the root of the problem is the collapse in Canadian birth rates.

Crowley projects that within 20 years, there could be only two workers for every retired person in Canada, down from a ratio of 3.25 to one. No conceivable influx of immigrants can prevent the inexorable aging of the Canadian population. Somehow, a proportionally diminished labour force will have to finance the huge costs of medicare and pension benefits for vast numbers of retired baby boomers.

Crowley concludes that Canadian taxpayers can simply no longer afford the costs of sustaining millions of Canadians in pseudo work or chronic dependence on welfare and employment insurance. He warns that if Canada is to remain “a force for good in the world,” we must resurrect Canada’s founding values including “personal responsibility and autonomy;” “a strong individual work ethic;” and “marriage and family,” that “vital traditional social institution” which is essential to sustaining the national population.

Judicial suppression of the rule of law

2009-10-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

In a classic, 20th century, treatise entitled The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek observed that the hallmark of a free country is the subordination of ruling authority to the fundamental principles of the rule of law. He explained: “Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand -- rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one’s individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge.”

By this standard, Canada is no longer a free country. The problem is due to Canada’s federal and provincial human rights commissars. In a spate of recent rulings, they have wilfully abandoned fixed legal rules in favour of completely arbitrary and contradictory rulings.

Consider, to begin with, the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) in Warman v. Beaumont on October 26, 2007. The adjudicator, Athanasios Hadjis, found that Jessica Beaumont, a 21-year-old retail clerk in Calgary, had expressed hatred and contempt for blacks, Jews and homosexuals in violation of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. For these offences, he ordered her to pay a $1,500 fine as well as $3,000 in compensation to the complainant, Richard Warman.

Less than a year later on September 2, Hadjis, handed down a ruling for the CHRT in Warman v. Lemire. As in the case of Beaumont, Hadjis found that Marc Lemire had expressed hatred and contempt for homosexuals in violation of section 13 of the Human Rights Act. However, instead of censoring and fining Lemire as he had Beaumont, Hadjis let him off on the ground that section 13 violates the guarantee of freedom of expression in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to an extent that cannot be justified in a free and democratic society.

What, then, is it? Are the censorship powers conferred upon the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in section 13 valid as Hadjis decided in Beaumont or invalid as he declared in Lemire? No one can no. There is no certainty that the unprecedented ruling by Hadjis in Lemire will be followed by any other human rights tribunal or upheld by the courts.

For Rev. Stephen Boissoin, this is a matter of more than academic interest. He is the author of a controversial letter to the editor “Homosexual Agenda Wicked” which was published in the Red Deer Advocate and on the website of Concerned Christians Canada, an organization headed by Craig Chandler. Acting on a complaint by Rob Wells, a homosexual activist in Edmonton, the Canadian Human Rights Commission held that in republishing Boissoin’s letter, Chandler had expressed hatred and contempt for homosexuals in violation of section 13.

Ezra Levant, Canada’s premier human-rights lawyer, was outraged by this attack on freedom of expression. He courageously defied the Commission by republishing Boissoin’s letter on his own website.

Wells then filed a complaint against Levant. But did the Commission follow the Chandler precedent? No. After subjecting Levant to an extensive investigation and tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs, the Commission concluded in a complete reversal on November 17 that he had a legal right to republish Boissoin’s letter.

Meanwhile, the Commission has also dropped vexatious and costly complaints filed by Wells against Fr. Alphonse de Valk of Catholic Insight Magazine and Ron Gray of the Christian Heritage Party for expressing their Christian convictions on the sinfulness of homosexual sexual relations. Boissoin is not so fortunate: He is currently appealing a ruling by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal that he expressed hatred for homosexuals in his letter.

Parliament and the provincial legislatures are responsible for this oppression. Beginning in the 1980s, they enacted Canada’s perverse human-rights provisions. It’s up to them, not the courts, to quash these oppressive laws.

At a Conservative policy convention in Winnipeg last November, every Conservative MP, including Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, voted to repeal section 13. The Harper Conservatives should promptly follow through on this commitment in Parliament. In this way, Canadians could at least get to know prior to the next election who among our MPs supports the revival of freedom under law in Canada.

2009-09-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The Quebec Liberal governments did well to allow a few thousand rabid separatists to mark the 250th anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham with a public reading of the hateful manifesto issued by the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) during the October Crisis of 1970.

This is not to suggest that the CBC was right to have broadcast the entire manifesto in English and French on October 8, 1970, at the demand of the FLQ kidnappers of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. As usual, appeasement failed: The criminal gang went on to kidnap and murder Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte.

Evidently, this tragedy is of small account to the Quebec separatists who gathered last weekend for a 24-hour marathon of readings in Quebec City’s Battlefields Park. They cheered two recitations of the FLQ manifesto.

Consider some extracts: “We will always be the diligent servants and bootlickers of the big shots, as long as there is a Westmount, a Town of Mount Royal, a Hampstead, an Outremont … We will be slaves until Quebeckers, all of us, have used every means, including dynamite and guns, to drive out these big bosses of the economy and of politics, who will stoop to any action however low it may be, the better to screw us.”

Quebec Justice Minister Kathleen Weil might have threatened to charge the narrator of this document under Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada, which prohibits the wilful promotion of hatred “against any identifiable group” upon pain of imprisonment for up to two years.

Instead, Weil prudently chose to allow recital of the FLQ manifesto to the gathering in Battlefields Park. In so doing, she alerted Quebecers to the persistence of a small number of separatist extremists. And she exposed the cynicism of Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois and former PQ premier Bernard Landry, who participated in the readings despite the FLQ recitations.

Even some federalists took part, including a Montreal playwright who read from an essay by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. That was a mistake. All decent Quebecers should have boycotted the event. They should also applaud the Quebec government for having denounced the spectacle and withdrawn $20,000 in funding upon learning of the planned readings of the FLQ manifesto.

In dealing with the FLQ in October, 1970, Trudeau was faced with an entirely different situation; namely, an apprehended insurrection that could have resulted in the loss of many lives. While there was no provision on hate-propaganda in the Criminal Code at that time, there was also no need for such a law: Trudeau used the War Measures Act to suppress all FLQ propaganda.

Under the circumstances, use of the emergency powers in the law and Constitution of Canada was justifiable. Today, there is no national emergency. There is no risk that anyone will act on the incitements to violence in the FLQ manifesto. There is no reason to ban declamations of this or any other similar, hate-filled political diatribe.

In a landmark opinion for the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1936 Alberta Press Bills case, Chief Justice Sir Lymon Duff noted that parliamentary institutions derive their efficacy from “the freest and fullest analysis and examination from every point of view of political proposals.” He also acknowledged that freedom of political speech can be, and often is, “gravely abused.”

Nonetheless, Duff insisted that within legal limits regarding such matters as defamation, sedition and incitement to violence, abusive political speech should be tolerated. He explained: “It is axiomatic that the practice of this right of free public discussion of public affairs, notwithstanding its incidental mischiefs, is the breath of life for parliamentary institutions.”

In recent years, Parliament has enacted the hate-propaganda restrictions in the Criminal Code as well as parallel provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act. As Lyman foresaw, these freedom-stifling laws have served to curb both legitimate and abusive speech. They repress the breath of life for our parliamentary institutions. They should all be abolished.

Godless immorality in the schools

2009-09-01T11:39:00.000-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

At the beginning of another school year, the parents of children in the public schools of Canada might well earnestly reflect upon what their children are likely to be taught about the vital issues of faith and morality.

Fifty years ago, there was little reason for concern. Parents could have confidence that teachers in the publicly funded Catholic and non-denominational public schools would teach their students to respect the fundamental principles of Judeo-Christian morality that have underpinned the survival and flourishing of Western civilization.

Today, of course, parents can have no such confidence. Thanks to the 1988 ruling of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Zylberberg vs Sudbury Board of Education, God was banished from the public schools of Ontario.

Prior to Zylberberg, every school day in Ontario began with recitations of the Lord’s Prayer and readings from sacred Scripture. From time to time, students were also instructed to respect the rules of morality summarized in the Ten Commandments and ordained by God for our well-being.

At the request of parents, students were exempted from the classroom during these explicitly religious exercises, but that is not good enough for the judicial activists who have dominated public policy in Canada for the past 25 years. First in Ontario, but soon in all other provinces, these overweening judges decreed that the longstanding practice of offering optional religious exercises in the public schools violated the guarantee of freedom of religion in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Those rulings are entirely illegitimate. There is nothing in the language or the history of the Charter to suggest that it was intended to banish God from the classroom.

Nonetheless, our elected legislators have gone along with this judicial distortion of the Charter. As a result, instead of expounding the principles of Judeo-Christian morality, teachers in the public schools are now required to try to teach their students to be good without God.

That’s fine with atheists like Richard Dawkins. In his bestseller, The God Delusion, he asks: “Is it always wrong to put a terminally ill patient out of her misery at her own request? Is it always wrong to make love to a member of your own sex? Is it always wrong to kill an embryo?”

Dawkins thinks not. “Fortunately,” he writes, “morals do not have to be absolute.”

In the past, teachers in the public schools would have disagreed. They could have been counted upon to explain to students that it is always wrong to kill deliberately an innocent human being or to indulge in sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage between a man and a women.

Today, any teacher who insists on teaching such moral truths to students in the public schools would be fired.

Not even the publicly funded Catholic schools can still be relied upon to uphold the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality as expounded in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The problem is that all too many teachers and supervisors in the Catholic schools have been imbued at university with essentially the same value relativism as their counterparts in the secular public schools.

Moreover, it’s not just our publicly funded schools and universities that have been morally debased. Today’s young people are also steadily bombarded with immoral exhibitions on prime-time television and through the internet.

What, then, can be done? Tens of thousands of Catholic and Protestant parents have abandoned the publicly funded schools in favour of providing their children with a morally enlightened and comprehensive education at home.

Other parents have resorted to private Christian schools while many seem to hope that regular attendance at Sunday School will counteract the pervasive influence of value relativism. Neither of these approaches is sufficient.

Homeschooling in at least the fundamental tenets of Judeo-Christian morality is essential to providing today’s children with a solid grounding in moral truth. Instead of relying entirely on the church and the schools, parents must provide systematic instruction in the home on the basic tenets of both faith and morality if they are to have any reasonable hope that their children will grow up with the vital protection of a clear understanding of the difference between what is right and what is wrong.

2009-08-29T10:48:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

United States President Barack Obama has touched off a lively and informative debate over the best way to reform health care, but in Canada, no politician of any party is willing to do the same. Why is that? Why is there so little support for major medicare reforms in Canada.

After all, it’s plainly evident that the Canadian system is far from perfect. In a recent international survey, the Commonwealth Fund found that the proportion of adults with chronic health problems who had to wait four weeks or longer for elective surgery was 33 per cent in Canada, but only eight per cent in the United States.

Among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada ranks fifth in total health care expenditures per person, yet lags in advanced medical technology. For example, Canada has just 6.7 magnet resonance imaging (MRI) units per million population, far below the OECD average of 11.0 and the record 25.9 MRI units per million in the United States.

Given Canada’s shortcomings in medicare services and equipment, it’s hardly surprising that the five-year survival rates for cancer are significantly lower in Canada than the United States.

Granted, the U.S. health-care system is also beset with serious problems. Costs are out of control. Over the past 15 years, total U.S. health care spending has more than doubled to $7,290 per person. That’s almost twice the Canadian level and much the highest in the world.

Some 47 million Americans do not have even basic health insurance, while millions more fear they could also end up with no coverage if they lose their jobs or contract a serious illness. That’s scandalous.

To remedy these defects, Obama initially proposed a comprehensive public-sector medicare plan to compete with private medical insurance. However, he seems to be backing away from this “public option” under pressure from critics who apprehend that it would be ruinously costly and lead to the imposition of a Canadian-style medicare monopoly.

In a recent column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman, the left-wing, Nobel-prize winning economist, pointed out that a public option is not the only route to universal coverage. As an alternative, he speculated that Obama might endorse the Swiss medicare system, which relies entirely on private insurance companies to provide affordable medical care for everyone under strict government regulation.

The Swiss model requires every resident to purchase a basic medicare policy from one of several competing private insurance companies. To assure affordability, the government subsidizes premiums for the needy and requires the health insurers to offer basic coverage to all applicants at a uniform rate, regardless of age or medical history. The additional expense of insuring higher-cost clients is offset through a system of reinsurance.

Unlike Canadians, the Swiss are allowed to contract with private insurance companies for supplementary benefits beyond the basics required by the government. Yet on an age-adjusted basis, the total costs of medicare in Switzerland are no higher than in Canada.

This Swiss model works. It provides the Swiss people with superior medicare services without the long waiting times, shortages of medical technology and other chronic deficiencies that plague Canada’s grossly inefficient, public-sector, medicare monopoly.

Krugman is not alone in taking note of the Swiss success. After extensive study, the Dutch Parliament decided in 2006 to replace the Netherlands’ inefficient and unresponsive mixture of public and private medicare with an all-private system on the Swiss model. The Dutch health ministry boasts that the new system delivers “more choices for customers, more competition and guarantees of affordability.”

Let us hope the Obama administration likewise embraces the Swiss model of medicare that relies on competing private insurance companies to provide efficient and affordable coverage for everyone under strict government regulation. Perhaps eventually, even Canada might do the same.

The Dutch health ministry persuasively argues that there is no alternative to competing private insurance companies as a means of ensuring “better quality of care, greater cost consciousness, better affordability and more tailor-made care through greater influence by customers.”

Effective compassion for the needy

2009-08-08T10:24:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press,
By Rory Leishman

Anyone who dares to present a reasonable challenge to some received nostrum of conventional thinking should beware: They are liable to come under vicious personal attack.

Dambisa Moyo is well aware of the problem: Instead of rationally evaluating the thesis of her compelling book Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, many critics have maligned her as a cruel, grasping and heartless conservative.

Among Moyo’s fiercest detractors is Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics at Columbia University and consultant on economic development to the United Nations Secretary General. In the left-wing Huffington Post on May 24, he derided Moyo as “an African-born economist who reportedly received scholarships so that she could go to Harvard and Oxford but sees nothing wrong with denying $10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net.”

That criticism must have stung. Moyo is a former student of Sachs’s at Harvard. In a polite and measured response to his personal attack, she explained that she has rejected an aid-based strategy that “hurts more than it helps” in favour of working towards “a sustainable solution where Africans can make their own anti-malaria bed-nets (thereby creating jobs for Africans and a real chance for the continent’s economic prospects) rather than encouraging all and sundry to dump malaria nets across the continent (which incidentally, puts Africans out of business).”

Sachs was unimpressed. In another rejoinder, he charged that Moyo is “unmoved by the massive suffering” of Africans afflicted with malaria.

Coming from a leading academic like Sachs, such vitriol is disgraceful. It’s also false and malicious.

In the course of a brilliant career, Moyo has served as a consultant for the World Bank and as a senior executive with Goldman Sachs. But in no way can she be dismissed as a cold-hearted conservative. To the contrary, she has demonstrated her compassion for suffering humanity, by generously volunteering her time and money to charities.

Currently, Moyo serves as a patron of ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), an agency founded by a group of hedge-fund managers in 2002 that employs over 1,200 staff to provide health and educational services to needy children in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Moyo and her fellow patrons and directors of ARK contribute expert managerial advice to the agency and defray all of its administrative costs through their personal donations so that 100 per cent of all other donations go directly to ARK’s programming for children.

Moyo also serves as a director of Room to Read, another non-governmental and non-profit agency. Room to Read constructs schools, builds libraries, operates computer labs, provides scholarships and has donated literally millions of English-language and local-language books to some 10 million impoverished children in Asia and Africa.

Executive Director John Wood is a former Microsoft executive. He was moved to leave Microsoft and found Room to Read, after witnessing the pitiful resources of a Nepalese rural school while on a trekking vacation in 1998.

Room to Read has a savvy board of directors and an experienced management team that works in conjunction with 14 knowledgeable Asian and African nationals who are employed as regional and local managers. Together, the Room to Read staff have established an exceptional record for efficiency and effectiveness in helping impoverished students. According to the agency’s audited report for 2008, Room to Read devoted 85 per cent of total spending to programming, while allocating only 15 cents of every donated dollar to fund-raising and administration.

Moyo exemplifies the meaning of true generosity: Instead of clamouring for more government spending of other people’s money on failed foreign-aid programs, she donates her own time and money to non-governmental agencies with a proven ability to help the needy overcome their disadvantages.

By this standard, it’s evident that many of us – perhaps including Sachs – are a lot less generous, compassionate and effective in helping the needy than Moyo.

(Canadians can make tax-deductible donations to Room to Read Canada through the online charity CanadaHelps.org)

The calamitious impact of foreign aid

2009-07-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a candid address to the Parliament of Ghana last Saturday, United States President Barack Obama pointed out to the oppressed people of Africa: “Development depends on good government. This is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places for far too long.”
With reference to the corrupt rule of Robert Mugabe, the longstanding Marxist dictator of Zimbabwe, Obama observed: “The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade.”
Dambisa Moyo disagrees. She is a former consultant to the World Bank who was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, and holds an earned doctorate in economics from Oxford University. In her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, she persuasively argues that African dictators like Mugabe would not have been able to maintain their prolonged grip on power, if their grossly incompetent governments had not been propped up with hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.
Altogether, the United States, Canada and other donor countries have handed out close to $1 trillion in foreign aid to Africa. Most of this well-meant assistance has been wasted. Moyo points out: “Africa’s real per capita income today is lower than in the 1970s, leaving many African countries at least as poor as they were 40 years ago.”
Half of the 700 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa get by on less than a dollar a day. Life expectancy in the region averages only around 50 years.
Meanwhile, many less-developed countries on other continents have achieved rapid and sustained economic growth. China is a case in point. Despite having had a lower standard of living than most African countries just 30 years ago, China now has an annual income per person of close to $6,000: That’s more than three times greater than Ghana, Kenya and almost all other African countries.
Moyo asks: “Why is it that Africa, alone among the continents of the world seems to be locked into a cycle of dysfunction? Why is it that out of all the continents in the world Africa seems unable to convincingly get its foot on the economic ladder? … What is it about Africa that holds it back, that seems to render it incapable of joining the rest of the globe in the 21st century?”
She explains: “The answer has its roots in aid.”
Granted, not all foreign aid is bad. Moyo acknowledges that the equivalent of $100 billion in today’s funds which the United States dispensed under the Marshall Plan to the war-ravaged countries of Western Europe was hugely successful. Why, though, has almost $1 trillion in aid to Africa so failed to benefit the people of Africa?
Moyo argues that among many social, cultural and economic factors, one key element was that recipients of assistance under the Marshall Plan realized the program was only temporary. They knew they had better make good use of the aid, because they would soon have to get along without it.
In contrast, leaders in Africa have learned to look upon foreign aid as a permanent handout. Instead of using the assistance to promote self-sustaining economic growth, most African rulers have diverted the proceeds to enrich themselves and prop up their corrupt governments.
Obama told the Ghanaian parliamentarians that his administration will increase assistance to African countries that have established democracies, uphold the rule of law and are determined to curtail corruption.
Moyo thinks this approach is inadequate. She calls upon the United States, Canada and other donor countries to liberate Africa from a stifling dependence on foreign aid, by announcing their intention to phase out virtually all aid to Africa over the next five to 10 years.
Will leaders of the donor countries pay heed to this advice? Let us hope so. Moyo pointedly notes: “one would expect Western moralizers to adopt policies which help those in need rather than hinder them in the long run and keep them in a perilous state of economic despair.”

The sobering reality of immigration

2009-07-04T08:07:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

As the baby-boom generation begins to retire, the ratio of Canadians over age 65 to those of working age (the old-age dependency ratio) is set to increase so rapidly that the costs of sustaining Canada’s retirees threaten to reduce the rate of growth in Canada’s national standard of living.
What can be done? Robin Banerjee and William Robson of the C. D. Howe Institute have addressed this issue in an illuminating report released on Thursday: “Faster, Younger, Richer? The Fond Hope and Sobering Reality of Immigration’s Impact on Canada’s Demographic and Economic Future.”
It might be supposed that immigration will offset the growing burden of Canada’s aging population. This year alone, Canada is expected to take in an additional 245,000 immigrants. With the exception of Australia, Canada maintains much the highest ratio of immigrants to population in the industrialized world.
Nonetheless, Banerjee and Robson estimate that even if the extraordinarily high current rate of net immigration into Canada is retained, the old-age dependency ratio will more than double to 46.3 per cent in 2057. That’s up from 21.5 per cent this year and less than 15 per cent in 1977.
Is even more immigration the answer? Definitely not. Banerjee and Robson project that if Parliament were to rely on an increase in the current pattern of immigration to stop population aging, Canada would have to take in such a colossal number of additional immigrants that the total national population would reach 210 million in 2058.
That’s out of the question. No conceivable amount of immigration can prevent a rapid and burdensome growth in the aging of Canada’s population.
An increase in the age of retirement would help. Most Canadians at age 70 are no less fit today than were most Canadian workers at age 65 a few decades ago.
Banerjee and Robson conclude that a gradual increase in the normal retirement to age 70 would significantly reduce the rise in the old-age dependency ratio; but only temporarily. It’s likely that within 15 years, the proportion of elderly dependants would resume a steadily upward trend.
There can be no lasting solution to the multiplying difficulties posed by Canada’s aging population short of dealing with the fundamental underlying problem – namely, the devastating collapse in the national fertility rate over the past 40 years. In 2005, the average number of children per woman in Canada was just 1.54 -- far below the ratio of 2.1 that is necessary to sustain the population.
Banerjee and Robson have considered the combined effects of a gradual increase in both the age of retirement to age 70 and the national fertility rate to 2.1. The results are encouraging: Other factors remaining the same, the old-age dependency ratio would remain well below 30 per cent.
Banerjee and Robson do not suggest how Parliament and the provincial legislatures might encourage a rise in the national fertility rate. However, at least one part of the solution is obvious: A major reduction in the catastrophic increase in abortions over the past 40 years.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 28.3 induced abortions for every 100 live births in Canada in 2005, down from a peak of 32.2 in 1998. While that slight downward trend is encouraging, it’s hardly sufficient.
Sooner or later, our politicians will have to take decisive action to curb abortion. Few reforms could do more to eliminate a huge amount of suffering and death.
Moreover, as Banerjee and Robson point out, boosting fertility rates could also play a key role in holding down the rate of increase in old-age dependency that threatens the economic prosperity of Canadians.

Correction: In “Ontario should continue to fight menace of marijuana” (Free Press, June 27), I attempted to summarize my findings from a review of the literature on the harm produced by the recreational use of cannabis with the assertion: “there is overwhelming scientific evidence that cannabis is no less dangerous to life and health than alcohol and tobacco.”
That statement is incorrect. I very much regret the error.

Curbing drug abuse

2009-06-27T08:16:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

So far this year, London police and RCMP officers have conducted more than 80 raids on illegal marijuana growers within the city, and seized tens of millions of dollars worth of plants. Other municipalities across the province are in the throes of a similar law-enforcement struggle.
Is it time, then, to give up on the war on drugs? Should Parliament and the Ontario Legislature not frankly acknowledge that at least in the case of marijuana, prohibition for recreational use is plainly not working?
Most definitely not. Marijuana is not harmless. Despite the contrary claims of infatuated pot heads, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that cannabis is no less dangerous to life and health than alcohol and tobacco.
Perhaps so, some might argue, but alcohol and tobacco are legally produced and sold. Why not marijuana as well? Why should the Ontario government forgo the huge revenues it could gain by taxing and selling marijuana through government-controlled outlets like the LCBO?
The answer is, or should be, obvious: Addiction to alcohol and tobacco ruins the life and health of tens of thousands of Canadians every year. No legislator with a prudent regard for the health and wellbeing of Canadians would compound these problems by legalizing marijuana as well.
Granted, the suppression of marijuana production and consumption is a never-ending and expensive proposition. But the same is true of any major law-enforcement operation. The police expend vast resources in a perpetual effort to enforce the highway traffic act, yet no one would suggest that the Ontario Legislature should give up the struggle and legalize speeding, careless driving or any of the other all-too-frequent traffic infractions.
Besides, the aim of the police is not to eliminate crime altogether, but to curtail it at reasonable cost. By this standard, there is no reason for police, educational and health authorities to give up on the struggle to curtail marijuana trafficking, addiction and abuse.
Certainly, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino is not about to surrender in the war on drugs. On a recent radio call-in show, he maintained that Ontario police are doing a good job of holding down the number of marijuana grow-ops. Last year, his force dismantled 499 of them, seized 211,919 marijuana plants, removed more than $264 million drugs from circulation and brought 4,700 charges against 2,400 people.
Moreover, there is evidence that the combined efforts of health, education and law-enforcement officials to combat drug abuse is paying off. According to the latest data on drug use among Ontario students compiled by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the proportion of students in Grades 7, 9 and 11 who admitted to having used cannabis at least once in the past year was 22 per cent in 2007, down slightly from 23.9 per cent in 1997, but significantly below the peak of 29.1 per cent in 1979.
While the great majority of Ontario students use cannabis only occasionally or not at all, CAMH estimates that an alarming 10 per cent use the drug on a daily basis and may already have developed a problem with cannabis dependence.
Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic reduction in tobacco smoking among Ontario students. According to CAMH, the proportion who report that they have smoked tobacco in the past year was just 11 per cent in 2007, down from 27 per cent in 1997 and a peak of 35 per cent in 1979.
The McGuinty Liberal government deserves much of the credit. In 2005, it initiated a Smoke Free Ontario Campaign that featured tougher enforcement of the ban on tobacco sales to anyone under 19 as well as an unprecedented $50 million in funding for enhanced health and educational programs to combat tobacco smoking.
Clearly, this Ontario anti-smoking campaign has been a huge success. While continuing to discourage tobacco smoking, the Ontario government should now focus on a stepped-up campaign to combat the even greater menace posed by marijuana. At stake is the life and health of literally hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, in Ontario.

Misguided bailouts

2009-06-06T08:11:00.002-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

So far this year, the governments of Canada and Ontario have handed over $9.6 billion to the failing General Motors and Chrysler corporations. For the people of Ontario, that works out to more than $2,500 for every family of four.
In defence of these whopping corporate bailouts, Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty insisted on Monday that he and his government colleagues had no choice: “The auto sector sustains thousands of current jobs for Ontario families and supports the pensions of many of our retirees,” he said. “That's why we're partnering with the federal and United States governments to put the industry on a more sustainable footing for the long term."
There can be little doubt that without government support, GM and Chrysler would have closed down all their operations in Canada. As a result, many related car dealerships, auto supply firms and other companies would also have gone out of business. Ontario government officials peg the total job loss in the province at 85,000.
But is that a compelling argument for the bailouts? In April, there were 5,283,200 full-time workers in Ontario, down 184,500 from a year earlier. Yet the governments of Canada and Ontario offered no corporate bailouts to prevent any of these job losses. Why should the workers whose jobs depend on GM and Chrysler qualify for special treatment?
Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe is at a loss for an answer. Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, he pointed out that over the past two years, 50,000 jobs have been lost in the forestry sector in Canada, with half of those job losses in Quebec. Yet in this year’s federal budget, the Harper government has provided only $270 million for corporate handouts to the forestry industry.
Regardless, the federal Liberals and New Democrats support the Conservative government’s record auto-sector bailouts. And the reason is clear: Unlike the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats are all vying to win or retain seats in Ontario that include hundreds of voters who are employed in the auto industry.
This overriding political consideration also explains the abandonment by Prime Minister Stephen Harper of his promise to do away with corporate bailouts during the 2004 election campaign. At that time, he pointed out: “It doesn't matter how many millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a Liberal-NDP coalition will be willing to give the auto industry to win an election … their reckless use of taxpayers' dollars will make us less competitive.”
Quite so. Who would have thought that within five years, a Harper Conservative government would squander billions of dollars in corporate welfare on GM and Chrysler, alone?
Note also that as a condition for receiving $10.5 billion in additional handouts from the governments of Ontario and Canada, GM Canada has agreed to make an immediate payment of $4 billion toward the $7-billion shortfall in the company’s insolvent, gold-plated pension plan. How can that be? Are not all companies in Ontario required by law to keep their defined-benefit pension plans solvent?
Not exactly. During the recession of 1992, the Ontario New Democratic Party government of former premier Bob Rae helped sustain GM Canada, by granting the company an exemption from the full-funding requirement for its pension plan. With the support of the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW), that exemption has remained in effect ever since.
Even when GM Canada was racking up profits over the past 15 years, both management and union agreed to improve promised pension benefits rather than return the plan to solvency. For the Harper and McGuinty governments now to shore up that insolvent plan at a cost to taxpayers of $4 billion is entirely unjustifiable, especially inasmuch as three-quarters of private-sector workers have no pension plan.
Clearly, while it’s politics, not considerations of economics, equity or justice, that has dictated the billions of dollars in auto-sector bailouts, will taxpayers get at least some of that money back?
Harper says he is not counting on it. Neither should anyone else.

Gairdner on natural and moral absolutes

2009-04-25T08:00:00.002-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
For the past 40 years, most intellectuals have embraced moral relativism -- the calamitous notion that the difference between right and wrong is merely a matter of arbitrary personal tastes and historical circumstances.
William Gairdner, the best-selling author of The War on the Family and The Trouble with Canada, has addressed this issue in his latest dissertation The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals. In this extraordinarily wide-ranging and informative book, he presents a compelling argument for the truth that there are universal moral truths grounded in natural law that apply to all peoples, at all times, and in all cultures.
The contrary proposition -- that all moral values are relative -- is an ancient fallacy that was utterly discredited by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. Yet it keeps recurring. Gairdner traces the reemergence of moral relativism in modern form to Franz Boas, a cultural anthropologist at Columbia University.
During the 1920s, Boas was horrified by the rise of Nazi antisemitism and the eugenics movement which was backed by intellectuals like Margaret Sanger, the "Godmother" of Planned Parenthood, who advocated birth control for "racial regeneration" as well as feminist freedom. To combat these racist ideologies, Boas propounded the theory that the key determinants of human behaviour and social diversity are cultural factors, not race or biology.
Correspondingly, Boas also insisted that no culture or civilization is any better than any other. Inspired by his teaching, Margaret Meade, Ruth Benedict and a host of other prominent cultural anthropologists set out to prove, as Gairdner observes, that "all cultures are equally good and already fully civilized; that none are morally better or worse than others."
Meade gained international renown in the 1930s with her best-selling book, Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she depicted an idyllic Polynesian community where young men and women enjoyed casual sex before marriage. The accuracy of this portrait is now a matter of hot academic debate.
Gairdner underlines a more fundamental objection: Meade might not have been so tolerant of the prevailing moral code and cultural diversity in Samoa if she had observed that society before Christian missionaries and colonial rulers had persuaded the Samoans to renounce the evils of slavery, human sacrifice and cannibalism.
In addition to cultural relativism, Gairdner describes existentialism, structuralism, post structuralism, deconstuctionism, post modernism, post-post modernism and legal positivism. Running through all these trendy intellectual fads is the perverse notion that there are no knowable and universal principles of morality.
This is a novel doctrine within Western Civilization. Prior to the 1960s, it used to be generally understood in the English-speaking countries that there is a natural law knowable by reason that is the moral basis for valid laws. Thus, Sir William Blackstone explained in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England that "no human laws are of any validity if contrary" to the natural moral law.
Today, most lawyers and jurists subscribe to the theory of legal positivism -- the doctrine that the law is whatever the sovereign authority in a state says it is. By this reasoning, the Nuremberg jurists had no moral basis for condemning the Nazis who murdered millions of innocent people in conformity with the so-called laws of Nazi Germany.
That's preposterous. And so is the entire theory of moral relativism. Notwithstanding the pretensions of Boas and his followers, no society or culture has survived -- or could survive -- without moral constraints governing such matters as incest, adultery, lying, cheating, stealing and murder.
Typically, the transgressive proponents of moral relativism are inconsistent: While subscribing to moral relativism in theory, they would be quick to denounce in practice the immorality of a fraud artist who victimized them.
Such is the absurdity, but also the appeal, of moral relativism. As Gairdner explains, for all too many of us, moral relativism "is a very handy concept to keep in our knapsack because it helps us to dismiss all sorts of rules and absolutes for ourselves, without altogether denying the need to apply them to others."

An authentic Canadian hero

2009-04-04T08:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Ezra Levant, popularly known in some quarters as Ezra the Rant, has written an eloquent and powerful polemic Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name of Human Rights. The target of his righteous wrath is Canada's so-called Human Rights Commissions.
The very name of these commissions is misleading. They serve mainly to suppress and subvert the fundamental rights and freedoms they are supposed to safeguard and exhance.
Levant is one of the most famous victims. His troubles began in 2006, when Syed Soharwardy, the Islamist imam of a tiny mosque in Calgary, filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission (AHRCC), accusing him of inciting hatred for Muslims.
At issue was Levant's decision as publisher of The Western Standard to republish a controversial set of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad. In the letter of complaint to the Commission, Sohwardwari stated: "I am quite disturbed and mentally tortured by the cartoons." He also accused Levant of inciting "violence, hate and discrimination against me and my family."
Prior to enactment of Canada's so-called human rights codes, there would never have been any question about Levant's right in law to publish cartoons that might offend some readers. Likewise, there never would have been any legal dispute about the right of Maclean's newsmagazine to republish an extract from Mark Steyn's best-selling book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
Today, anyone in Canada who says or writes anything that might offend some privileged group in human rights law could be prosecuted. Levant notes that he is "the first journalist in the free world to be grilled by a government inquisitor about the cartoons. Not even the Danish cartoonists themselves were called in to answer for what they'd done. Nor had any of the newspapers throughout Europe that had republished the cartoons.
"I had the dubious honour of being a pioneer in the burgeoning field of Western Islamo-censorship."
Canada is also the only democracy in which anyone has been prosecuted for publishing extracts of Steyn's book. That's disgraceful. Canada, formerly one of the freest nations on Earth, now has the worst record in the free world for transgressing freedom of the press.
Granted, both Levant and Maclean's have been exonerated by the HRC's and tribunals that placed them under investigation. But that's hardly reassuring. As Levant points out, "the process is the punishment." During three stressful years of battling the Canadian and Alberta HRCs, he ran up several hundred thousand dollars in legal bills.
That's typical. The defendant before a human rights tribunal gets stuck with a legal bill that would financially ruin most Canadians, while all costs of the accuser are picked up by the prosecuting HRC.
Moreover, even the best counsel can do little to protect anyone who has been wrongly accused by an HRC, because the kangaroo courts run by our human rights tribunals routinely flout the fundamental rules of evidence and judicial procedure that have evolved over centuries to protect the innocent in a regular court of law.
On the advice of counsel, most innocent victims of an HRC complaint dare not even attempt to defend themselves. Levant is different. Instead of capitulating, he has stoutly resisted the petty tyrants in the HRCs.
Early in the cartoons affair, the Alberta commission tried to shake him down, by offering to drop the case if he agreed to publish an apology in his magazine and pay several thousands dollars to Soharwardi.
Levant summarily refused. He relates: "I replied that I would fight the AHRCC and their hijackers all the way to the Supreme Court before I did that -- and even if I lost there, I'd contemplate doing jail time for contempt of court before apologizing."
Levant is a hero. All Canadians should honour him for defending their rights, and support the growing national movement that he and Steyn have ignited to persuade our federal and provincial legislators to curb, if not altogether abolish, Canada's rights-destroying HRCs.

Open season on the Pope

2009-03-31T11:22:00.003-04:00

The National Post
By Rory Leishman

It seems to be open season on Pope Benedict XVI in the secular media. Last week, newspapers around the world mocked him for suggesting during a discussion of AIDS with reporters: "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Then, on Saturday, Agence France-Presse sensationally reported: "Pope Benedict used a nationally televised speech in Angola yesterday to reiterate the Roman Catholic Church's ban on abortion, even to save a mother's life."

According to the official Vatican text of the Pope's address, he made only one reference to abortion, stating: "How bitter the irony of those who promote abortion as a form of 'maternal' health care! How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health (cf. Maputo Protocol, art. 14)!"

On Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported that Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi "has clarified" the Pope's remarks on abortion, stating that the Church has always taught that "indirect" abortion is permissible if necessary to save the life of the mother. Lombardi added: "What the Pope said is that the concept of maternal health cannot be used to justify abortions as a means of limiting births."

Quite so. It is generally agreed among pro-lifers -- Catholic, Protestant and secular -- that induced abortion is a grievous wrong that can never be justified except if necessary to save the life of the mother.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the Pope's remark about condoms and AIDS continues. In an editorial, "The Pope on Condoms and Aids" (March 17), The New York Times contended: "Pope Benedict XVI has every right to express his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds, in accordance with the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. But he deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread of the AIDS virus."

In support of this argument, the Times editorial stated: "From an individual’s point of view, condoms work very well in preventing transmission of the AIDS virus from infected to uninfected people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites 'comprehensive and conclusive' evidence that latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are 'highly effective' in preventing heterosexual transmission of the virus that causes AIDS."

This statement is essentially misleading. Despite several decades of "safer-sex" propaganda, the great majority of sexually active persons do not use condoms "consistently and correctly." In an article published in The British Medical Journal (26 January 2008), Dr. Stephen Genuis, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta, observed: "In theory, condoms offer some protection against sexually transmitted infection; practically, however, epidemiological research repeatedly shows that condom familiarity and risk awareness do not result in sustained safer sex choices in real life. Only a minority of people engaging in risky sexual behaviour use condoms consistently. A recent study found that ... [e]ven among stable, adult couples who were HIV discordant and received extensive ongoing counseling about HIV risk and condom use, only 48.4% used condoms consistently."

What about Africa, in particular? Have the millions of free condoms that Western countries have distributed on this continent over the past several decades not at least served to reduce the scourge of AIDS among Africans?

Alas, no. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, is one of the leading authorities on AIDS. In an illuminating article "Aids and the Churches: Getting the Story Right," First Things (April 2008), he wrote: "Consider this fact: In every African country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex partner over the course of a year -— which is exactly what fidelity programs promote. The same association with HIV decline cannot be said for condom use, coverage of HIV testing, treatment for curable sexually transmitted infections, provision of antiretroviral drugs, or any other intervention or behavior."

Even The New York Times has grasped that condoms are not a cure-all for the AIDS epidemic. In its editorial chiding the Pope, the paper conceded: "The best way to avoid transmission of the virus is to abstain from sexual intercourse or have a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected person."

Pope Benedict could not have said it any better.

NB: Rory Leishman is a freelance columnist and member of St. George's Anglican Church in London, Ontario.

Speaking out against Islamist terrorists

2009-03-14T07:00:00.002-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
For the past week, events marking Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) have taken place at virtually every major university in Canada. Among the noteworthy exceptions are the University of Calgary and the University of Western Ontario. Students and faculty on these campuses have distinguished themselves, by unanimously refusing to take part in this festival of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism.
Israel Apartheid Week was initiated five years ago by the Arab Students' Collective at the University of Toronto. Since then, the annual hate fest has spread to universities in more than 40 cities around the world.
According to the IAW website, this year's events focus on "Israel's barbaric assault on the people of Gaza. Lectures, films, and actions will make the point that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli Apartheid. IAW 2009 will continue to build and strengthen the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement (against Israel) at a global level."
At the Muslim Al Quds University near Jerusalem, Israel Apartheid Week has been extended for a full month, during which the university's students' council is urging a boycott of Israeli goods on campus and seeking international support for the alleged right of Palestinian refugees to return in overwhelming numbers to Israel.
How ironical. Here we have students living in Israeli-occupied Palestine openly advocating a policy that would spell the end of Israel as an independent state. Imagine the fate of any Jew in Gaza who dared to speak out against Islamist terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.
Students, faculty and administrators at Al Quds are also clamoring for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. But, of course, they do not speak for all Arabs. Consider the contrasting views of Mohammad Al-Hadid, the distinguished president of the Jordanian Red Crescent Society and Chairman of the international Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Al-Hadid is a champion of peace in the Middle East and a leading proponent of humanitarian co-operation between Israelis and Arabs. He is justifiably proud of the key role he played as an Arab Muslim in persuading The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to admit both the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the equivalent Israeli national society, Magen David Adom, in 2006.
On Monday, Al-Hadid participated in a panel discussion at a national conference of the Canadian Academic Friends of Israel that took place at the University of Toronto. In his address, he lauded Magen David Adom for coordinating with the Jordan Red Crescent Society in coping with local natural and man-made disasters. And he commended his friend and fellow panelist, Dr. Jimmy Weinblatt, Rector, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for helping to foster a number of ongoing student and academic exchanges between Ben-Gurion University and the University of Jordan.
Incidentally, out of 15,000 students at Ben-Gurion, 1,000 are Arabs, including many low-income Bedouin on full scholarships. Is that the generosity one would expect of a government-funded institution in a real apartheid state?
Al-Hadid is outspoken in his denunciation of Islamist terrorists who deliberately target and kill innocent women and children. "These murderers do not belong to the human race and, above all, are the antithesis of Islam," he contends. "Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. And it is a sad fact of life today that in many people's minds Islam equates to terrorism, and Arabs and Muslims are stereotyped as potential terrorists."
Part of the problem is that so few other Muslims have excoriated Islamist terrorists in public. Prof. Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario and Tarek Fatah, a secular founder of the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress, are two courageous exceptions.
Widespread fear of Muslims is a serious problem in Canada. And it is bound to get worse, unless a lot more ordinary Canadian Muslims join with Mansur and Fatah in boldly speaking out in personal conversations, through letters to the editor and by all other available means against Islamist terrorists and their shameless apologists within the Canadian Muslim community.

Freedom of choice in education

2009-02-21T09:50:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
In preparation for an impending national election, British Conservative Party leader David Cameron has promised in a key policy paper that his government would extend full funding to secular and faith-based independent schools. Is this a sure formula for political suicide?
Many Canadian conservatives might think so. They recall how Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory led his party to crushing defeat in the 2007 provincial election, by promising that his government would restore just partial funding to independent, faith-based schools.
The idea made eminently good sense. After all, Ontario is the only province in the country that provides full funding for Catholic separate schools, but no funding at all for any other independent schools, faith-based or secular.
Nonetheless, Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty succeeded in scaring most voters into believing that the Conservatives’ plan for extending funding for faith-based schools would lead to “strife in the streets.” He said: "If you want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory."
Coming from McGuinty, the argument was hypocritical, inasmuch as he and his wife “sequestered and segregated” all four of their children in Catholic separate schools. Moreover, McGuinty did not – and could not – cite any evidence that children educated in a faith-based school are any more likely to engage in violence and ethnic strife than children consigned to the secular public system.
What, though, about Britain? Is Labour Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown railing against the Conservatives’ promise to expand full funding for faith-based schools? Is he insisting that these schools will foster religious strife?
Not at all, and for good reason: It was the previous Labour Party government under the leadership of former prime minister Tony Blair that initiated full funding for independent secondary schools in 2000. To qualify for funding, the schools, known as academies, must be run by non-profit organizations that charge no tuition fees and abide by national curriculum guidelines.
The Labour Party continues to support and expand this program. Already, the fully funded independent schools have proven strikingly successful in raising scores on standardized tests of academic achievement, especially among deprived, inner-city students.
What, though, about Muslim students? Are they now segregated and sequestered in hate-filled madrassahs run by fanatical imams and financed by the taxpayers?
Definitely not. Of the 6,850 publicly funded, faith-based schools in England, the large majority are Church of England or Roman Catholic. Only seven are Muslim.
The Labour government is intent on expanding the number of Muslim and non-Muslim faith-based schools, confident that under strict regulation by the government’s Office for Standards in Education, none has, or ever can, come under the control of hate-mongering, religious fanatics.
As for Cameron, he is simply proposing to put “rocket boosters” under Labour’s program for independent schools and “bust up” the state monopoly on education. And he vows, if need be, to fight “big battles with the forces of resistance” within the “education establishment.”
What ranks among the biggest of those forces of resistance? The teachers’ unions, of course. Currently, in Plymouth, the National Union of Teachers is crying havoc over a proposal by the local education authority to transform two failing state schools into independent, non-unionized academies, one run by the University of Plymouth and the other by the Exeter Diocese of the Church of England.
Meanwhile, in Ontario, both the McGuinty Liberals and the Tory Conservatives are now content with a publicly funded education system that offers parents no choice but to send their children to a school operated by their local public- or separate-school monopoly. As for the New Democrats, they would abolish even the separate-school alternative.
Thus, in England, all of the major parties favour the expansion of parental choice in education. In Ontario, none do. When oh when will Ontario’s hidebound political leaders finally recognize that increased competition is the key to improving the quality of education for all children?

A liberal Conservative budget

2009-01-31T08:48:00.003-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
With Tuesday’s budget, the Harper Conservatives have set quite a standard for fiscal extravagance by a supposedly conservative government.
As recently as 2006, the preceding Liberal government of former prime minister Paul Martin achieved a budget surplus of almost $14 billion. Who would have thought that within three years, a Conservative government would propose a budget deficit of almost $34 billion?
Granted, Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is not entirely to blame for this fiscal calamity. As he noted in the budget, the collapse in revenues and hike in expenditures caused by the recession would produce a $15.7-billion budget deficit next year, even if the Harper government were to retain all existing fiscal policies.
As it is, Flaherty has made matters much worse. By his own reckoning, the tax cuts and spending increases in his budget will produce an additional $18 billion in deficit spending next year and a cumulative $85 billion in total budget deficits over the next four years.
Like the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, the Harper Conservatives now maintain that a vast increase in deficit spending is necessary to revive job-creating economic growth. There is no evidence for this pretence.
Indeed, there is better reason to believe that most of the additional spending proposed by Flaherty will only prolong the recession and retard future economic growth. Consider, for example, the $4 billion in “repayable loans” for Canada’s troubled auto sector. Anyone who thinks that money is likely to be repaid is dreaming in technicolour.
While in opposition, Harper and Flaherty decried the billions upon billions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted on failed corporate handouts by the Liberals. Yet now that the Conservatives are in power, they are doing the same. Among the bizarre items in the budget is a proposal to lavish $1 billion on a so-called Southern Ontario development agency.
The international record on government handouts to failing corporations is clear: More often than not, the state-directed payments serve only to postpone bankruptcy and joblessness, while diverting scarce investment capital away from more efficient, job-creating production.
Of course, there are some special cases: No responsible government would allow a major financial institution to go bankrupt in a way that would undermine the financial stability of the entire economy.
That said, the general rule remains: Prudent governments leave investing in private companies up to private investors subject to competitive market forces.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper used to advocate both sound fiscal policies and a stricter separation of federal and provincial powers. Now, his government proposes to spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars on a host of provincial and local projects such as a Highway 39 truck bypass in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and the revitalization of the municipally owned Union Station in downtown Toronto.
On Jan. 22, the Bank of Canada projected that the Canadian economy will resume growth by the second half of this year, and continue to expand at a brisk annual rate of 3.8 per cent during 2010. Under these circumstances, there can be no economic rhyme or reason to the $85 billion in deficit spending planned by the Harper government.
What, then, is the real purpose of such fiscal improvidence? The answer is evident: By this means, the Harper Conservatives aim to bribe voters and win support for their minority government from the opposition Liberals.
And sure enough, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has indicated that his party will back the Conservatives on the budget -- a deficit-spending plan so extravagant that it could have been designed by the Liberals.
Meanwhile, Harper’s conservative base has good reason to be increasingly fed up. So far, his government has done little to curb the judicial usurpation of legislative power; has opposed every initiative to safeguard the lives of babies in the womb; and now has introduced the most reckless budget since the Progressive Conservative government of former prime minister Brian Mulroney presided over a record deficit of $39 billion in 1992-3.
Mulroney’s liberal Conservatives subsequently went down to a crushing electoral defeat. Harper should beware: History can be repeated.

Hamas responsible for Gaza casualties

2009-01-10T07:00:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
On Tuesday, an Israeli missile reportedly killed more than 40 people, including children, who had sought shelter in a United Nations school in northern Gaza. Who bears primary responsibility for this tragedy?
The answer is clear: It’s Hamas. With reference to the tragic deaths at the school, Canada's junior foreign minister, Peter Kent perceptively noted: “We know that Hamas has made a habit of using civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields for their terrorist activities, and that would seem to be the case again today."
It’s also clear that Hamas has brought on the entire conflict in Gaza by unilaterally renouncing a ceasefire with Israel on December 29 and unleashing hundreds of rockets on the tens of thousands of civilians residing in southern Israel. While few Israelis have been killed, who can blame the government of Israel for taking all necessary measures to stop this terrorism by rocket fire?
During a visit last July to Sderot, an Israeli town that has come under frequent rocket attack, president-elect Barack Obama observed: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."
Indeed, the Israeli Defence Forces are now battling Hamas forces in Gaza for the express purpose of quelling the rocket attacks. And in doing so, Israeli troops strive to avoid the kind of civilian casualties that occurred at the United Nations school. Otherwise, the civilian death toll in Gaza would certainly be vastly higher.
In contrast, Hamas forces have long boasted of their deliberate targeting and killing of Israeli civilians with rocket attacks and suicide bombings. And the Islamist militants in Hamas have likewise made no secret of their ultimate aim to wipe the state of Israel off the map.
As a result, Canada has joined the United States, the European Union and other countries in listing Hamas as “a radical Sunni terrorist organization.” Canadians who take to the streets in explicit support of Hamas during the current conflict would do well to note that it is an offence under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act for anyone “to knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group.”
To justify rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Hamas argues that it has no other means of opposing the economic blockade which Israel imposed on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas forces crushed the secular Palestinian Security Force in Gaza which served the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Like the Nazis, the Islamist extremists in Gaza had no sooner contrived to win power in a democratic election than they undertook to destroy all legitimate opposition to their dictatorial rule.
Regardless, it’s not just Israel that has placed an economic blockade on Gaza. Egypt has done the same, and for good reason: Like other secular Arab leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak recognizes that the Islamist extremists who have seized power in Gaza are a menace to peace and stability throughout the Middle East.
What, then, can be done? Writing in the Washington Post on Monday, John R. Bolton, former United States ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that Israel abandon the idea of a two-state solution to the Palestinian dilemma and return control over the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt. While there is much to be said for this proposal, there is little chance that it can succeed even with solid backing from the United States and the Arab League. The hard-pressed leaders of both Jordan and Egypt have made plain that they are no more eager than the Israelis to resume responsibility for governing the faction-ridden and violence-prone Palestinians.
The best conceivable outcome to the conflict is that Israel will drive Hamas from power and clear the way for restoration of the secular Palestine Authority in Gaza. Only in this way can the long suffering people of Gaza have any realistic hope of finally living in peace and freedom.

Socialist analysis of aboriginal dysfunctions

2008-12-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard are a pair of tough-minded socialist intellectuals. In a powerful new book, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, they dare to point that Canada’s hugely expensive aboriginal programs have served to enrich an aboriginal elite and their white advisers, while doing little to assist the needy.
Widdowson and Howard trace the failure of aboriginal policy to the 1967 Hawthorn Report, a federally commissioned survey of Canadian Indians by Harry Hawthorn. In conformity with the trendy, but absurd, doctrine that all cultures are of equal value, Hawthorn urged the government to hand over more funding to aboriginal political organizations and stop trying to compel an aboriginal person to “acquire those values of the majority society he does not hold or wish to acquire.”
Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau rejected this advice. In a White Paper on Indian Policy in 1969, he recommended elimination of the Indian Act and the transfer of responsibility for aboriginal social policies to the provinces so that all natives would be entitled to the same rights and benefits as all other Canadians.
That was a sound idea, but alas, Trudeau backed down. Under pressure from aboriginal political leaders, his government retained the Indian Act, increased funding for aboriginal lobbyists and initiated what has proven to be a monumentally expensive and perpetual land-claims process.
Widdowson and Howard observe the sorry results: “Privileged leaders live in luxury and are paid huge salaries, while most aboriginal people rely on social assistance. And yet, despite the obvious policy failure, the aboriginal leadership, governments, and the general public continue to accept the argument that land claims and self-government are the answer to aboriginal problems.”
Currently, the federal government alone expends more than $8 billion a year on aboriginal programming. That’s close to $30,000 for an aboriginal family of four. Yet most aboriginals still live in communities beset with the oppressive levels of crime, poverty and addictions.
What can be done? Widdowson and Howard persuasively argue that the first requirement is to eliminate the primary cause of aboriginal deprivation, which they identify as the widespread persistence among aboriginals of the dysfunctional features of a stone-age culture.
All too many aboriginals lack the skills and discipline required for productive employment, because they are still wedded to the superstitions, undisciplined work habits and closure to new ideas typical of pre-literate cultures. The authors write: “It is the persistence of these obsolete cultural features that has maintained the development gap, preventing the integration of many aboriginal peoples into the Canadian social dynamic.”
And it’s this cultural deprivation, not any lack of intelligence, which accounts for the calamity that fewer than 40 per cent of adult Inuit and Indians living on reserves have completed secondary school. That’s 50 percentage points below the national average.
To make matters worse, many schools run by aboriginal elites focus on “traditional knowledge.” Widdowson and Howard insist that instead of clinging to the shibboleth of aboriginal self-government, competent governmental authorities should intervene wherever necessary to assure that aboriginal children have the same access as all other children to quality schooling that upholds universal educational standards for reading, writing and arithmetic.
Of course, Widdowson and Howard are not alone in recognizing that ever more massive government handouts to aboriginal governments have manifestly failed to improve the lot of most aboriginals. Tom Flanagan, the conservative former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, made the same point eight years ago in his fine book First Nations, Second Thoughts only to have his ideas dismissed by progressive Canadians as “racist” and “right wing.”
Let us hope for the sake of Canada’s long-suffering aboriginal peoples that Widdowson and Howard get a more serious hearing. No open-minded reader of their treatise can fail to agree with their conclusion: “A real left-wing analysis of aboriginal policy requires a critical eye rather than a bleeding heart. Addressing the aboriginal question entails understanding its root causes, not glorifying the educational deficiencies, dependency, and dysfunction that currently plague the native population.”

Stout defiance of human rights oppressors

2008-11-29T03:56:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press

By Rory Leishman

Over the past 15 years, there has been scant public concern over the disposition of Canada’s human rights commissions to silence white racists, anti-Semites and obscure Christians. Only now are most Canadians finally beginning to grasp the danger that the freedom-stifling powers of these commissions could be turned on them.

Much of the credit for this awakening goes to Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. While most journalists have either condoned censorship or cowered in silence, Levant and Steyn have resolutely defied their human-rights attackers.

Steyn’s ordeal began last December, when the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal placed him under investigation for “The Future Belongs to Islam,” an excerpt from his best-selling book, America Alone, that was published in Maclean’s Magazine. The complainants in the case – all associates of the Canadian Islamic Congress -- insisted that Steyn and Maclean’s had no right in Canadian law to offend Muslims by publishing his honestly held convictions on the dangers posed by radical Islam.

The result was a national scandal. Many Canadians were shocked that such a flagrant attack on freedom of the press could happen in Canada.

In the face of this controversy, the Ontario Human Rights Commission was the first to back down. In a statement issued in April, the Commission denounced Steyn and Maclean’s for publishing an “explicit expression of Islamophobia,” but declined to proceed against them on the grounds that the Commission has no specific authority under the Ontario Human Rights Code to censor journalists and magazines.

Such a fine regard for the plain words and original understanding of the law is new to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. No such consideration inhibited the agency from prosecuting former London Mayor Dianne Haskett for refusing on principle to issue gay-pride proclamations.

In June, the Canadian Human Rights Commission followed the Ontario lead in the Steyn case, by announcing that it, too, had dropped its investigatiom. Four months later, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal also acquitted Steyn and Maclean’s on the ground that it had no authority in law to suppress political debate.

These rulings must have bemused Chris Kempling, a British Columbia man who was suspended from his post as a secondary school teacher in 2002 for expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage and other gay-rights projects in letters to the editor of his local newspaper. Kempling appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, only to have the country’s top court refuse even to hear the case.

Last year, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal likewise censured Stephen Boissoin, a part-time Baptist youth pastor, for publishing a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate in which he denounced a new program of teaching on homosexuality in the Alberta public schools. For this offence to the sensitivities of homosexuals, the Tribunal ordered Boissoin to apologize, pay $7,000 in damages, and refrain from any more “disparaging” remarks about gays and homosexuals “in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches or on the Internet.”

In protest against this flagrant attack on freedom of expression, Levant courageously republished Boissoin’s controversial letter on his own website with the addendum: “OK, you ‘human rights’ bullies. Come get me.” After much dithering, the Canadian Human Rights Commission announced last week that it would not take up Levant’s challenge.

Meanwhile, delegates to the recent Conservative policy convention in Winnipeg overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling for elimination of the censorship powers in section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. And earlier this week, Richard Moon, a law professor at the University of Windsor, made the same suggestion in a review of human rights law prepared for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

One key question remains: When oh when will our supposedly conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally summon up the political courage to authorize the introduction of a government bill to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its power to suppress the fundamental rights of Canadians to freedom of expression?

Honouring our Freedom Fighters

2008-11-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
This year’s Remembrance Day marks the 90th anniversary of the conclusion of the First World War -- a fitting time to ponder anew the significance of the supreme sacrifices of all the members of the Canadian Armed Forces who fought to defend our freedoms in that horrific conflict.
No one exemplified the heroic qualities of those soldiers better than Lt. Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon attached to the Canadian Expeditionary Force. It was during a break in the second battle of Ypres on May 3, 1915, that he penned his immortal poem, In Flanders Field.
The Germans opened the battle with a surprise poison-gas attack. While thousands of Allied soldiers fled in terror, British and Canadian troops promptly filled in the gaps and held their ground. The cost was horrific. During the first 48 hours of this battle, the Canadians incurred 6,035 casualties, including more than 2,000 dead.
McCrae was appalled by the slaughter, but undaunted. As he pondered the poppies blowing between the crosses of hundreds of his hastily buried Canadian comrades, he imagined the dead heroes urging from the grave:
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
Indeed, hundreds of thousands of other Canadians did take up the quarrel. Close to 418,000 Canadians served overseas in the First World War. Altogether, an appalling 56,638 died in action and another 141,000 were wounded -- more than twice the number of Canadians killed and wounded in action during the Second World War.
No one doubts the valour and prowess of the Canadian military. They rank among the best in the world. Andrew Roberts, the distinguished British historian, testifies in A History of the English-speaking Peoples Since 1900 that during the Second World War, the Canadian Armed Forces “more than earned [Gen. Dwight D.] Eisenhower’s (necessarily off-the-record) remark that man-for-man the Canadians were the best soldiers in his army.”
Most Canadians agree that the dreadful costs of the Second World War were well worth the benefit of defeating the Axis Powers. But what about the First World War?
Since the 1920s, most intellectuals have thought the First World War was pointless. Pierre Berton was no exception. In Vimy, his gripping account of the heroism of the Canadian soldiers who won the epic battle of Vimy Ridge, he concluded: “Was it worth the loss of thousands of limbs and eyes and the deaths of 5,000 young Canadians at Vimy to provide a young and growing nation with a proud and enduring myth?... The answer, of course, is no.”
That judgment was grievously wrong. Roberts persuasively argues that “far from being a futile, unnecessary conflict, Britain went to war in 1914 for the noblest possible ideal and best possible reason: her honour and self-defence.”
And the same was true of Canada. In an address to Canadians in December, 1914, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden warned: “If the militarist and autocratic ideals of the Prussian oligarchy can assert themselves in worldwide dominance, the progress and development of democracy will either have been stayed forever or the work of centuries will have been undone and mankind must struggle anew for ideals of freedom and rights of self-government which have been established as the birthright of the British people.”
The Canadians who fought in the First World War did not just leave us with “a proud and enduring myth.” They made a vital contribution to the defence of freedom. And the same can be said for their worthy successors in the Canadian military who have distinguished themselves in every succeeding conflict, including the war in Afghanistan.
Let us not break faith with our heroic dead in Flanders fields. Let us forever revere them and all the other valiant members of the Canadian Armed Forces who have fought -- and continue to fight -- to defend our freedom.

Inconclusive Federal Election

2008-10-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Going into this year’s federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had good reason to believe he would emerge with a solid majority government. As it is, he and his fellow Conservatives can count themselves lucky that they have come out with 143 seats, 12 short of a majority, albeit 16 more than they had in the last Parliament.
Conversely, the Liberals were heading toward an electoral calamity at the outset of the election campaign. According to some early polls, the party seemed likely to end up in fourth place, behind both the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrats as well as the Conservatives.
What, then, went wrong for the Conservatives during the election campaign? Part of the explanation has to be Harper’s uninspired performance in the leadership debates. However, a close study of the polling data will probably show that a far more important factor in the declining Conservative fortunes has been the sudden collapse in world-wide credit markets that threatens to plunge Canada and most other leading industrialized countries into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
No one in the Parliament of Canada foresaw this impending economic turmoil. Certainly, if Harper had done so, he would not have triggered an early election, because he would have known that rightly or wrongly, many, if not most, voters would pin much of the blame on the government.
In reality, the Harper government was not at all responsible for the international credit crunch that has crippled the world economy over the past few weeks. And the same goes for the preceding Liberal governments of former Prime Ministers Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.
The same cannot be said for the Republicans and Democrats in the United States. While the Republican
Bush administration relaxed collateral requirements for investment banks, Democrats in the Congress pressured mortgage lenders to multiply “Ninja” loans to people with no income, no jobs and no assets. Together, these risky policies have fostered the ruination of all of the big investment banks and mortgage lenders in the United States.
Meanwhile, in Western Europe, a similar failure of regulatory oversight has led to the bankruptcy of some of the region’s top savings banks. In contrast, Canada stands out in having a fundamentally sound banking system. And for that blessing, both Conservative and Liberal governments as well as a succession of prudent and well-informed advisors in the federal finance department deserve enormous credit.
Regardless, egged on by the Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois, many voters have blamed the Conservative government for the prevailing economic uncertainty. And that’s not altogether a bad disposition. In the long run, the country is likely to be better governed to the extent that voters judge politicians mainly on the basis of their past achievements in office rather than their promises of pie in the sky for the future.
Of course, the biggest losers in Tuesday’s voting were the Liberals, having retained only 76 seats with barely 26 per cent of the popular vote – the lowest percentage ever achieve in a general election by the Liberal Party of Canada. For this electoral setback, party leader Stephane Dion bears much of the blame: He not only failed to inspire many voters, but also should have known it was an act of political suicide to propose a “Green Shift” policy for raising carbon taxes at a time of record gasoline prices.
As a general rule, Canadians support the proposition, “Make the polluter pay.” But they are not so keen on the slogan when they are asked to pay for their own pollution in the form of higher home-heating and gasoline bills.
Be that as it may, Harper has ended back pretty much where he was before the election with a minority government facing a hostile opposition. This time, though, he and the opposition leaders had better resolve to work together to achieve a functional Parliament, because most voters are bound to be hugely upset with any politician who is responsible for precipitating another early election.

Human rights commission targets physicians

2008-09-27T08:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Canadian physicians who uphold the natural family and the sanctity of all human life should beware: According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, they have no legal or constitutional right to go on practising medicine in accordance with their moral and religious beliefs.

In a submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) on Feb. 14, the Ontario Human Rights Commission specifically warned that under the Ontario Human Rights Code: "A physician's denial of services or refusal to provide a woman with information relating to contraception or abortion, for example, would be discriminatory based on sex, as only women can become pregnant." And that's not all: The Commission also served notice that "the Code protections relating to sex also include gender identity and expression."

In June, the CPSO passed along this warning to its membership. In a draft statement on "Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code," the agency stated: "Physicians should be aware that decisions to restrict medical services … based on moral or religious belief may contravene the Code, and/or constitute professional misconduct."

The Ontario Medical Association took strong issue with this warning, alleging that it "does not adequately inform physicians that their right to freedom of religion is protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

The CPSO disagrees. In the final version of the policy on the Ontario Human Rights Code issued on Sept. 19, the Council of the CPSO still warns: "A physician who refuses to provide a service … on the basis of a prohibited ground such as sex or sexual orientation may be acting contrary to the Code, even if the refusal is based on the physician's moral or religious belief."

To illustrate the all-encompassing scope of the suppression of the conscience rights of physicians in the Ontario Human Rights Code, the CPSO states: "A physician who is opposed to same sex procreation for religious reasons and therefore refuses to refer a homosexual couple for fertility treatment may be in breach of the Code."

The CPSO is right. It is naïve of the leaders of the OMA or anyone else to suppose that the rights of physicians to practise medicine in accordance with their moral and religious beliefs are protected by the Charter.

In a series of rulings, judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada have eviscerated the purported guarantees in Section 2 of the Charter of "a) freedom of conscience and religion" and "b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression." In the advisory submission to the CPSO, the Ontario Human Rights Commission pointed out: "The Supreme Court of Canada recognized in the Trinity Western decision that providers of public services are expected to essentially 'check their personal views at the door" when providing their services."

At issue in Trinity Western was a decision by the British Columbia College of Teachers not to certify a teaching course at Trinity Western University on the ground that the Evangelical Protestant institution requires students to affirm that same-sex sexual relations are sinful. In overturning this ruling, Canada's top court ordained: "The freedom to hold beliefs is broader than the freedom to act on them." The Court added: "Acting on those beliefs, however, is a very different matter…. Discriminatory conduct by a public school teacher when on duty should always be subject to disciplinary proceedings."

The Ontario Human Rights Commission takes the view that provincial human rights codes apply no less to physicians than to public school teachers. Thus, under the laws and the Constitution of Canada, an obstetrician has a right to believe that abortion is a sin that can never be justified, but he has no right to act on that belief by refusing to perform an abortion on demand.

That's simply outrageous. What more graphic illustration could we have of the urgent need for Parliament and the provincial legislatures to revive genuine freedom under law in Canada, by eliminating all the coercive powers they improvidently conferred upon the country's totalitarian human rights tribunals.

McCain's compassion for the neediest

2008-09-06T08:00:00.003-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Just as most liberals like to think of themselves as more idealistic and compassionate than conservatives, so most Canadians fondly suppose that Canada is morally superior to the United States. Yet as recent political events on both sides of the border confirm, neither assumption is true.

Consider, first, the fate of Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act. This private-members’ bill introduced by Conservative MP Ken Epp would make it a criminal offence for any person to kill a child before birth during a criminal attack on the mother. Such laws are commonplace in the United States, but under existing Canadian law, a person who deliberately kills a child in the womb by kicking, punching, stabbing or shooting the mother can only be charged with murdering or assaulting the mother.

Epp’s Bill specifically states that his Unborn Victims of Crime Act would not apply to “conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented.” Nonetheless, most liberal and socialist MPs have joined with the so-called Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada in opposing the bill. In the words of New Democrat MP Alexa McDonough, these critics fear that the legislation “could become a thin edge of the wedge in the direction of recriminalizing abortion.”

To make matters worse, Conservative Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has acceded to these concerns. Last week, he proceeded, in effect, to kill Epp’s bill, by announcing plans for an alternative government bill listing pregnancy as an aggravating factor in the commission of an assault on an expectant mother. In explaining this point of this initiative, Nicholson said: “Let me be clear, our government will not reopen the debate on abortion.”

Here we see the implacable resolve of the leading Conservatives as well the great majority of Liberals and New Democrats: That Canada shall retain the ignominious distinction among the world’s democracies of having no law to protect the right to life of children in the womb.

Barack Obama, the Democrat with the most liberal record in the United States Senate, is no less callous. While serving in the Illinois legislature, he voted against a bill passed by the majority that banned horrific partial-birth abortions. He even went so far as also to vote against a bill that mandated physicians to provide medical care for living, breathing babies who survive a botched abortion.

In contrast, Republican Senator John McCain supported the enactment of both kinds of legislation on the federal level. And he has solemnly pledged: “As President of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”

In a recent radio address, McCain insisted that Obama’s “extreme advocacy in favour of partial birth abortion and his refusal to provide medical care for babies surviving abortion should be of grave concern to reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of this issue. There is a growing consensus in America that we need to overcome narrow partisanship on this issue for both women in need and the unborn. We need more of the compassion and moral idealism that my opponent's own party, at its best, once stood for.”

Quite so. But what about Canada? Is there a growing consensus among Canadians about the urgent need to revive compassion and moral idealism for the protection of both women in need and the unborn in our country?

Evidently not. It seems that most Canadians, like most of our politicians, have no compunction about abandoning women struggling with a difficult pregnancy to the guilt and pain of abortion. And none of our major party leaders shows any disposition to safeguard the lives of even viable babies either shortly before or immediately after birth.

Our ancestors, both Liberals and Conservatives, would be appalled by such moral indifference. They understood the truth that we all have a moral obligation to help and defend even the last and the least and the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings -- including babies in the womb.

Standing up to Russian aggression

2008-08-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Over the past week, Russian forces have invaded, occupied and, in effect, annexed one-fifth of neighbouring Georgia, but is that of any real concern to the Western democracies? Why should we care about the fate of a tiny country with a population of 4.4 million bordering on the Black Sea?

And eerily similar situation arose in September 1938, when the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler threatened to invade and annex the Sudetenland, a predominantly German-speaking region of neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Conservative British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain played down the crisis. Intead of rallying to the defence of democratic Czechoslovakia, he said: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is, that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."

Two days later, Chamberlain flew off to Munich; signed an agreement with Hitler to surrender the Sudetenland to Germany; and then returned in triumph to Britain, predicting "peace for our time."

Sir Winston Churchill knew better. To the dismay of most of his Conservative colleagues, he denounced the Munich agreement in the House of Commons as "a total and unmitigated defeat" for Britain and France.

Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, was no less outraged. He said: "We have seen today a gallant, civilised and democratic people betrayed and handed over to a ruthless despotism. We have seen something more. We have seen the cause of democracy, which is, in our view, the cause of civilisation and humanity, receive a terrible defeat."

This week, another brutal dictator, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has personally directed the invasion and occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two secessionist regions of Georgia. But this time, instead of cravenly betraying Georgia, the Labour Prime Minister of Britain, George Brown, and the conservative President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy are both stoutly insisting that Russia must implement an immediate ceasefire and respect the territorial integrity of democratic Georgia.

David Cameron, head of the British Conservative Party, is also backing Georgia. He maintains: "This is not some quarrel in a far-away land. What happens in Georgia directly affects us. For a start, it's about energy security. One million barrels of oil a day are delivered by the Baku-"Ceyhan oil pipeline. This runs right through Georgia, close to the areas affected by the conflict."

In Europe, as in North America, many leftists insist that the Georgian conflict starts and ends with oil. But that's nonsense. It is also about global security.

In underlining this point, Cameron explained: "History has shown that if you leave aggression to go unchecked, greater crises will only emerge in the future. Today, Russia says it is defending its citizens in South Ossetia. Where tomorrow? In Ukraine? In Central Asia? In Latvia?"

The leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Ukraine are alive to the danger. On Tuesday, they flew into Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to express their solidarity with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.

At a huge public rally in Tbilisi, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland exclaimed to the Georgian people: "Our neighbor thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no." President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine likewise admonished the crowd that "freedom is worth fighting for."

On Wednesday, Yushchenko' government followed up, by serving notice that ships attached to the Russian Black Sea fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian Port of Sevastopol and has been taking part in the Georgian conflict, will no longer be allowed to enter or leave Ukrainian waters without the permission of Ukrainian authorities.

Meanwhile, United States President George Bush has not only demanded the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia, but also ordered the United States navy and air force to land humanitarian supplies in Georgia and make sure they are distributed throughout the country.

Today, unlike 70 years ago, the leaders of most of the Western democracies seem resolved not to be weighed in the balance and found wanting in their determination to resist the aggression of a dictatorial European thug.

Student suppression of academic freedom

2008-07-26T08:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Academic freedom used to be a hallmark of the Canadian university system. Apart from a few fascists, communists and other cranks on campus, everyone recognized that the free and vigorous expression of controversial ideas is essential to the life of the mind and the pursuit of truth.

Today, academic freedom is under attack as never before. On all too many campuses, freedom of expression is trumped by the contemporary canons of political correctness.

Consider, for example, the suppression of debate on abortion and the sanctity of human life. Earlier this year, the Canadian Federation of Students, an organization that purports to represent over half a million students at more than 80 universities and colleges across Canada, expressed support for students’ unions that “refuse to allow anti-choice organizations access to their resources and space.”

In conformity with this resolution, a growing number of students’ unions from Memorial University in Newfoundland to the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, have barred pro-life student organizations from using student facilities. In defending the adoption of this policy at York University, Gilary Massa, vice-president for equity of the York Federation of Students, explained that students will still be allowed to discuss abortion in student space, provided they do so “within a pro-choice realm.”

Massa sees no room for the discussion of abortion from a pro-life perspective. “These pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they’re sexist in nature,” she insists. “The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing….Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women’s rights.”
That’s typical of campus censors: They are very sure that they have an infallible grasp of the truth.

But that’s no excuse for stifling opposing opinions. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill pointed out: “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still,” because it would rob both present and future generations “of the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court agreed. In his celebrated dissent in the Abrams case, he wrote: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition.”

Holmes added: “But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”

The thought police on campus, as in Canada’s so-called human rights tribunals, are bent on stifling the expression of all opinions that they deem liable to expose women, homosexuals, Palestinians or some other favoured group to hatred or contempt. Holmes decried such censorship. He warned: “I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”

Of course, it’s evident that pro-choice zealots have reason to fear that they cannot win in an open and uninhibited public debate on abortion. Now that ultrasound images of babies in the womb are readily available, the more people contemplate the sanctity of nascent human life, the more they are apt to grasp the self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; including the right to life.

Abolish human rights censorship powers

2008-07-05T08:00:00.001-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

While the Canadian Human Rights Commission has bowed to widespread public opposition to proceeding with a complaint against Maclean’s magazine brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress, less powerful and prominent Canadians should beware: For them, the threat of censorship remains.

Even Maclean’s remains under investigation by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in a parallel case initiated by Mohamed Elmasry, National President of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He has charged the magazine with expressing hatred and contempt for Muslims with the publication of an article by Mark Steyn on the escalating threat posed by radical Islam to democracy and freedom under law in Canada and other Western countries.

Elmasry has a low tolerance for criticism. In a newsletter published by the Canadian Islamic Congress, he has charged me and three other commentators with bearing primary responsibility for “today’s wave of anti-Islam vitriol” in Canada. And he has tried, but failed, to pressure President Paul Davenport of the University of Western Ontario into censuring Professor Salim Mansur for allegedly publishing columns "filled with hate-literature expressions" that "consistently denigrate Islam and Muslims.”

Ironically, it is not I, Mansur, Steyn or the editors of Maclean’s who are ill-serving Canadian Muslims, but Muslim leaders like Elmasry. By using Canada’s human rights tribunals to intimidate and silence their critics, these authoritarian Muslims are undermining the fundamental freedoms of all Canadians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Of course, more than a few non-Muslims also have scant regard for the historic rights of Canadians to freedom of expression. Recently, a gay rights activist threatened to denounce me to the Ontario Human Rights Commission for daring to suggest in a column published by The Free Press on Nov. 17, 2007, that same-sex couples do not have an equality right to adopt children. Specifically, I wrote: “Given that very few children raised by a homosexual couple have grown to adulthood, it is impossible to prove the competence of homosexuals as parents.”

In response to that statement, an array of intellectuals derided me as ignorant, malicious and ill-informed. But for all their bluster, no one could cite a single study to refute the experience of centuries which indicates that with rare exceptions, children thrive best under the care and guidance of their natural parents who are united in the traditional bonds of marriage between husband and wife.

However, truth is of no account in the censorship proceedings of a human rights tribunal. Typically, section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits the publication of even true statements that are likely to expose a protected person to hatred or contempt.

In general, the rules of evidence that have evolved over centuries to protect the innocent in a court of law do not apply in a human rights tribunal. Moreover, the federal and provincial human rights commissions pick up all the legal costs of complainants like Elmasry, but the accused can easily accumulate more than $100,000 in crippling legal bills.

Besides, the prospects for mounting a successful defence in a human rights tribunal are remote. With all the rules stacked against the defendant, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has never lost a case under section 13.

In the end, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, like its federal counterpart, will probably not dare to censure a powerful publication like Maclean’s for the publication of Steyn’s article. But let us suppose otherwise. If a human rights tribunal were to order Steyn to apologize for his article and to pay several thousand dollars in damages to Elmasry, would Steyn comply?

Not likely. And neither would any other self-respecting journalist obey such an oppressive edict. They would all prefer to end up in jail as a prisoner of conscience rather than obey a court order requiring them to apologize for upholding the truth as they are given to see the truth.

There is only one sure way to prevent such a travesty of justice in Canada. The censorship powers of our human rights tribunals must be abolished: The sooner, the better.

Mounting suppression of freedom in Canada

2008-06-03T08:51:00.001-04:00

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
Thanks to a recent ruling of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, faithful Christians are free to publish their opposition to same-sex marriage in an Ontario newspaper or magazine. However, that is not the case in some other provinces where anyone who publishes anything opposed to the ideology of gay rights could be convicted by a human rights tribunal for expressing contempt for homosexuals.
And much the same goes for the publication of anything that might offend the members of any race, nationality or other class of persons favoured in human rights legislation. The editors of Maclean's magazine are aware of the danger: They are under investigation by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for publishing a controversial article by Mark Steyn titled “Why the Future Belongs to Islam."
Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall of the Ontario Human Rights Commission would also like to punish Maclean's. In a bizarre statement on April 9, she derided Steyn's article as an “explicit expression of Islamophobia” that the Commission would have censored, except for the fact that the Ontario Human Rights Code “does not give the Commission the jurisdiction to deal with the content of magazine articles through the complaints process.”
Hall wistfully added: “Limits to freedom of expression under some other human rights legislation in Canada are broader.” Quite so.
For example, the British Columbia Human Rights Code prohibits the publication of any matter that “is likely to expose a person or class of persons to hatred or contempt because of the “race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or that group or class of persons.” The Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act includes a similar provision.
Canadians should be especially wary of stating anything in a newspaper or magazine published in Alberta or British Columbia that might offend some Muslim zealot, gay rights activist or a member of any other class of persons covered in the human rights laws of these provinces. Furthermore, Canadians in all provinces should beware of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits posting anything on the internet “that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt” by reason of that person or persons identification with 14 different prohibited grounds of discrimination, including race, religion and sexual orientation.
Note that one might lawfully publish an article in a newspaper or magazine in Ontario or some other province, yet run afoul of the Canadian Human Rights Commission if the newspaper or magazine republishes that same article on the internet. Thus, while Maclean's has been exempted from punishment by the Ontario Human Rights Commission for publishing the Steyn article, Muslim complaints against the magazine for posting the article on the internet are pending before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Correspondingly, the Canadian Commission has placed Catholic Insight under investigation, because a reader in Edmonton took offence at the republication on the internet of articles upholding Catholic teaching on homosexuality that are exempt from censure under Ontario law.
If Commissioner Hall had her way, the Ontario Legislature would amend the Ontario Human Rights Act to expand the censorship powers of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Let us hope that the majority of Liberals and Conservatives, if not New Democrats, in the province are not so besotted with political correctness that they would be willing to go along with such a freedom-stifling measure.
The powers of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal are already excessive. On April 25, it decreed that Christian Horizons, the largest provider of residential services for developmentally disabled adults in Ontario, must pay $23,000 plus two years' wages to a lesbian employee who had been dismissed for violating the Evangelical Christian agency's moral code which requires employees to uphold the basic tenets of Christian morality, including abstinence from sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.
The outrageous attack on Christian Horizons underlines the freedom-stifling propensities of all of Canada's human rights tribunals. They should be deprived of all their coercive powers. Until then, Canadians cannot be secure in their inalienable rights to fundamental freedoms of expression, association and religion.

In Praise of Deference

2008-05-21T16:57:00.001-04:00

The National Post
By Rory Leishman
With a compelling dissent in Wednesday’s five-to-four ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. D.B., Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein confirmed his distinction as one of the few appeal court judges in Canada who consistently respects the legislative authority of Parliament and the provincial legislatures under the Constitution of Canada.
At issue in this case was an appropriate sentence for D.B., a violent offender who had pummeled 18-year-old Jonathan Romero to death in a brawl outside a Hamilton shopping mall in 2003. Under a court order, D.B. cannot be named, because he was 17 years old at the time of the offence.
The altercation began when D.B. challenged Romero to a fight. Romero refused and looked away, whereupon D.B. knocked him to the ground with a devastating sucker punch.
Rothstein relates: “D.B. then continued the assault by jumping on top of Romero and punching him four more times on the face and neck. Romero was knocked unconscious and unable to defend himself.” By the time paramedics arrived, Romero was showing no vital signs. He was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead.
At trial, D.B. pleaded guilty to manslaughter, an offence punishable by a maximum youth sentence of just three years incarceration under the Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2002. However, in section 72, the Act authorizes the imposition of a stiffer adult sentence on a young offender aged 14 to 17 who has been found guilty of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, aggravated sexual assault or for a third offence that resulted in serious bodily harm.
Prior to sentencing D.B., the court was informed that he had a history of frequent fights and repeated suspensions from high school for “disruptive behaviour.” At the time of his assault on Romero, he was bound by two separate probation orders arising out of convictions for possession of stolen property and robbery, both involving threats and intimidation. While in custody awaiting disposition and sentence for manslaughter, he had engaged in several assaults with other inmates and staff members.
On this basis, the Crown asked the court to impose a stiffer adult sentence on D.B. Under terms of section 72, the onus was then on D.B. to persuade the court that a youth sentence would be more appropriate.
Counsel for D.B. argued that the reverse onus of proof in section 72 violates the right of violent young offenders to “life, liberty and security of the person” in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The trial judge accepted this argument and sentenced D.B. to the maximum three-year youth term. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the ruling.
Now the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada has definitively struck down the reverse onus of proof in section 72. In so doing, the Court has overturned the considered judgment of the Chretien Liberal government and the majority in the Parliament of Canada who backed enactment of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
During hearings on his appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, Rothstein promised to exercise due judicial restraint. He said: “The important thing is that judges, when applying the Charter, have to have recognition that the statute they're dealing with was passed by a democratically elected legislature; that it's unlikely the legislature intended to violate the Charter.”
Thus, in R. v. D.B., Rothstein held that in enacting section 72, “it was entirely appropriate for Parliament to consider the competing interests, on the one hand, of young persons to have their reduced moral blameworthiness taken into account and, on the other, of society to be protected from violent young offenders and to have confidence that the youth justice system ensures the accountability of violent young offenders. This balancing was a legitimate exercise of Parliament’s authority to determine how best to penalize particular criminal activity….”
While Abella, McLachlin and most other appellate judges have no compunction about rewriting duly enacted laws to suit their personal policy preferences, Rothstein respacts the separation of legislative and judicial powers. Would that we had more principled and democratic judges like him.

Court changes libel law for journalists

2008-04-12T16:50:00.002-04:00

The London Free Press,
By Rory Leishman
Under the traditional principles of the common law as affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, journalists are no less subject than other citizens to the law of libel. Is that fair and reasonable? Or should the law of libel include a special exception for journalists to further vigorous debate on issues of public interest?
Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada served notice that it will consider this policy of the law in the context of an appeal by the Ottawa Citizen of a defamation conviction for publishing false and defamatory statements about the participation of OPP Constable Dennis Cusson in rescue operations at the World Trade Centre following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Under the law of libel in Canada, the agents of the newspaper had only one line of defence: Like all other citizens in a similar libel action, they had to prove their defamatory statements were true.
As it turned out, the Citizen could persuade a jury in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that only some, but not all, of its defamatory allegations against the police officer were true. On this basis, the trial judge awarded Cusson $100,000 in damages against the newspaper.
Backed by lawyers for the Globe and Mail and the Canadian Newspaper Association, counsel for the Citizen maintained in arguments before the Ontario Court of Appeal that the existing law of libel as it applies to journalists is too strict. The media lawyers called upon the court to uphold the guarantee of freedom of the press in section 2 of the Charter, by following the unprecedented ruling of the British House of Lords in Reynolds v. Times Newspapers Ltd. (2001), which held that it is a sufficient defence for journalists in a libel action to show that although they had published a false and defamatory statement, they and their editors had taken reasonable steps to ensure that the story was fair and its contents were true and accurate.
In an unanimous ruling last year, a three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal accepted this argument. Instead of upholding the law of libel as defined in a long line of precedents of the Supreme Court of Canada, these three judges on the Ontario Court of Appeal presumed to impose responsible journalism in the public interest as a defence for journalists in an Ontario libel action.
On this basis, it might be supposed that the Citizen would get off scot free, but not so. The Court of Appeal did not so much as order a new trial for the newspaper. Instead, it upheld the conviction of the Citizen on the ground that the newspaper had violated the law of libel as that law stood, before the court changed it.
Here we have a clear example of judicial activism and its chaotic consequences: There can be no rule of law, or any certainty about the requirements of the law, in a country where judges take it upon themselves to make major changes in the law as seem most appropriate to them.
In reasons for the Court of Appeal in Cusson, Mr. Justice Robert Sharpe frankly admitted that the court was imposing a far-reaching change in the law. He said: “In my view, it is open to this court to modify Ontario’s common law of defamation by adopting this new and distinctive defence if that change would accomplish a more appropriate balance between the Charter values of protection of reputation and respect for freedom of expression.”
What comes next? Upon further appeal, will judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada also trespass upon the legislative powers, by presuming to impose yet another change in the law of libel as seems best to them?
That remains to be seen. In the meantime, regardless of what the elected representatives of the people in the Ontario Legislature might prefer, the Ontario Court of Appeal has decreed that there shall be one law of libel for journalists in Ontario, and another for everyone else.

The Duty of Faithful Anglicans

2008-04-01T17:01:00.001-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
On Feb. 13, the members of St. John’s Shaughnessy Church in Vancouver set a good example for all faithful Anglicans, by resolving to leave the Anglican Church of Canada rather than remain under the authority of a heretical bishop.
The vote was not even close. By the overwhelming margin of 475 to 11 (with 9 abstentions), the congregation formally renounced the authority of Michael Ingham, the Anglican Bishop of New Westminster. In his stead, they placed themselves under the oversight of Bishop Don Harvey, the theologically orthodox, former Anglican Bishop of Newfoundland who currently serves within the Province of the Southern Cone which includes the Anglican Churches in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru.
The theological differences between Harvey and Ingham are profound. While Harvey upholds the truth of Christ, Ingham subscribes to pluralism. In Ingham’s words, pluralism “does not deny God's self-revelation in Christ, nor in the Koran, nor in the Torah, nor in other sacred symbols. It asks us to hold them together, despite their obvious discrepancies, in the greater mystery of faith.”
Really? This doctrine can make no sense except, perhaps, to a theological practitioner of Orwellian double-think who is adept at simultaneously holding contradictory ideas in the mind and believing all to be true.
David Short, the rector of St. John’s Shaughnessy, is a theologically orthodox Anglican priest. Like Harvey, he upholds Sacred Scripture as the ultimate authority on all questions of faith and morality. Under Short’s inspiring ministry, St. John’s Shaughnessy is the largest and most flourishing Anglican congregation in all of Canada.
In sorry contrast, the Anglican Church of Canada and the diocese of New Westminster, in particular, are dying. Thanks to the uninspiring leadership of liberals like Ingham, this once thriving denomination has declined over the past 40 years by more than 50 per cent.
The United Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada and other liberal denominations are in a similar or worse state of decline. More and more members are leaving these churches, while their leaders ever more conform their minds to the current pattern of the world rather than uphold that good and acceptable and perfect word of God.
Regardless, church growth is not of primary concern to Short. “Even if preaching the Gospel meant we shrank,” he insists, “we would still have to be faithful.”
In 2002, Ingham broke faith with the Anglican church, by sanctioning the blessing of same sex unions within the diocese of New Westminster. In doing so, he also violated the plain teaching of Sacred Scripture and his solemn oath as a bishop to “banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word.”
As a result, Short, Packer and their ministerial colleagues at St. John’s Shaughnessy could no longer acknowledge the authority of Ingham as their bishop. And now, with the overwhelming support of their congregants, they have reluctantly quit the Anglican Church of Canada.
Meanwhile, the majority of bishops in the Anglican Church of Canada have sided with Ingham. For the past six years, they have failed to discipline him as repeatedly requested by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Moreover, while publicly professing to welcome a diversity of viewpoints within the church, some duplicitous bishops have been acting covertly to prevent Anglican parishes from recruiting and maintaining faithful priests who uphold the traditional doctrines and teachings of the Anglican church.
Under these circumstances, the duty of Anglican priests is clear: If their bishop formally repudiates the doctrines and teaching of the Anglican church on marriage or any other basic issue, they must follow the courageous example set by Short and other inspired Anglican priests who, at considerable risk to their financial security, have led their loyal congregants out of the Anglican Church of Canada and into communion with a church that is resolved to remain faithful to Christ and his commandments.
Correspondingly, the duty of Anglican congregants is also clear: They must do whatever they can to support a faithful Anglican priest; even, if need be, at the cost of giving up their comfortable pew and moving to another parish that is blessed with a prelate who can be counted upon to encourage the faithful in their devotion to Christ.

Encouraging news on abortion from Italy

2008-04-01T16:58:00.000-04:00

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
Over the past 40 years, pro-lifers in Canada have endured one defeat and disappointment after another. Yet the best have never despaired: Despite every setback, they have retained complete confidence that the truth about the sanctity of all human life must ultimately prevail.
Consider, in this respect, some encouraging news from Italy. With an Italian general election pending on April 13, the conservative Italian Opposition Leader and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi announced on Feb. 11 that he supports a proposal to have the United Nations adopt a non-binding resolution calling for an international moratorium on abortion. He said: “I think that recognising the right to life from conception to natural death is a principle that the UN could make its own, just as it (recently) did with the moratorium on the death penalty.”
In taking this stance, Berlusconi was following the lead of one of his former cabinet ministers, Giuliano Ferrara. Among Italian politicians, Ferrara is a singular character: He is a self-confessed atheist and former communist, who has transformed himself in recent years into one of Italy’s most prominent conservative journalists.
Currently, Ferrara is seeking election to parliament as leader of the “List for Life” party. He has come to understand and insist on the basis of reason alone that abortion is “evil and should be eradicated.”
In Canada, no leading politician, let alone a serious candidate for the office of prime minister, would dare to support a global ban on abortion. To do so would be the kiss of political death.
But not so in Italy. Even after disclosing his support for a United Nations moratorium on abortion, Berlusconi continued to lead in the polls. Moreover, he has also made plain that his government would not just limit its action on abortion to promoting resolutions at the United Nations.
Senator Maria Burani Procaccini, the spokeswoman on family issues for Berlusconi’s party, has announced that she will introduce legislation to tighten Italy’s abortion regulations if Berlusconi wins the election and forms a new centre-right government. Under Italy’s existing abortion law, abortion on demand is permitted during the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy; from the 13th to the 24th week, an abortion is only allowed if necessary to save the life of the mother or if the baby is seriously malformed; and after the 24th week, all abortions are absolutely forbidden.
Burani Procaccini has promised: “The new law will allow abortion only in really justified cases and within the time-frame already envisaged. There will be tough sanctions for doctors who modify their diagnosis in order to certify non-existent problems with the fetus."
There are, of course, no “really justified cases” for abortion. At least, though, Berlusconi and Burani Procaccini have indicated that they not only personally oppose all abortion, but also plan to introduce legislation to safeguard the lives of at least some babies in the womb.
Consider, in contrast, the sorry state of the politics of abortion in Canada: Both Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Opposition Leader Stephane Dion oppose any government legislation to restrict abortion: This, despite the scandalous fact that Canada is the only democracy in the world where abortion is legally permissible at any time and for any reason during a pregnancy right up to the last second before birth.
What’s wrong with Canada? Why are the leading centre-right politicians in Italy far more sensitive than any of their Canadian counterparts to the urgent need to enhance safeguards for the life of babies in the womb?
Among many contributing factors, a difference in clerical leadership stands out. In Italy, Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, was quick to speak up and commend Berlusconi for endorsing a global abortion moratorium. And on Feb. 25, Pope Benedict XVI followed up with a public statement, reaffirming his oft-repeated conviction that life should be respected “from its dawn” and “in every moment of its earthly development.”
Catholic leaders and pro-life Evangelicals in Canada should take note: By also speaking out more often and more emphatically in defense of the sanctity of all human life, they, too, could play a key role in finally persuading Parliament to place at least some curbs on abortion.

Shrewd Advice for Conservatives

2008-03-01T19:16:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
March 1, 2008

Beleaguered conservatives would do well to ponder the sage policy advice advanced by David Frum in his latest book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.

While Frum hopes and believes that future generations will render a positive judgement on the mixed record of the presidency of George W. Bush, he has no illusions about the current plight of the Republican Party. “Conservatives were brought to power in the 1970s and 1980s by liberal failure,” writes Frum. “Now conservative failure threatens to inaugurate a new era of liberalism.”

Among the more conspicuous shortcomings of the Bush administration has been failure to improve the living standards of low- and middle-income earners. Frum notes that while labour costs for employers have risen by close to 25 per cent during the Bush years, the entire increase has been absorbed by the soaring costs of health insurance.

A large part of the problem is perverse government regulations that mandate universal coverage for nonessential services such as acupuncture, marriage counselling and hairpieces. As a result, health insurance can cost as much as five times more in a highly regulated state like New Jersey than in low-regulation Kentucky.

Frum urges Republicans to come up with a plausible plan for holding down health care costs, while assuring universal coverage within the framework of a competitive health-care system. In particular, he commends the reforms initiated by former Republican governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts that make comprehensive and affordable private health insurance compulsory for all state residents.

Canada’s ruling Conservatives should take note: They, too, cannot expect long to remain in power, if they fail to satisfy the demands of voters for an end to the intolerable delays that plague Canada’s state-run, medicare monopolies.

Frum is also concerned about the failure of the Bush administration to reverse the decline in the United States fertility rate to a bare replacement level of 2.1 children per woman of childbearing age. He counsels the Republicans to promote larger families by means of a refundable tax credit of $1,000 per child indexed to inflation.

Canada confronts a much worse demographic crisis, having a fertility rate of barely 1.5. The Harper Conservatives should give priority in the next round of tax cuts to increasing the Canada Child Tax Benefit and transforming it into a non-taxable entitlement for children in all families regardless of income.

Frum maintains that to win again in the United States, conservatives should seize the initiative on environmental issues. To this end, he calls upon the Republicans to endorse a hefty tax of $50 per ton on carbon emissions that would fall mainly on oil, natural gas and polluting coal.

This new levy would serve to cut carbon emissions and reduce United States reliance on oil imports from politically unstable countries, while appealing to voters who are caught up in the global-warming hysteria.

In British Columbia, the province’s nominally Liberal, but in many ways conservative government has recently imposed a more modest carbon tax of $10 per tonne. Conservatives in other oil-importing provinces should consider the introduction of a substantial carbon tax in conjunction with an offsetting increase in child benefits.

Just a few months ago, the Iraq war was the most conspicuous failure of the Bush Administration. The United States-led coalition was making so little headway in combating the Islamist terrorists who prey on the people of that sorely oppressed country that the Democrats looked all but unbeatable in this year’s presidential election.

Today, the outlook for the war is much different. The belated decision of the Bush administration to authorize a surge of military force in Iraq has had remarkable success in curbing terrorist attacks and clearing the way for another free and fair Iraqi election in October.

As an early exponent of increased military force in Iraq, John McCain is the presidential candidate who inspires the most confidence on issues of national security. But to retain the White House for the Republicans, he will have to broaden his appeal, by also embracing the kind of sound and innovative domestic policies proposed by Frum.

Human Rights Commissions Target Christians

2008-03-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
Every federal and provincial human rights code in Canada prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, so why do not faithful Christians take advantage of these laws to protect themselves from anti-Christian discrimination?
To anyone who is at all familiar with human rights litigation, the answer is, or should be, obvious: Canada’s human rights codes are a two-edged sword that is much less likely to be wielded for than against Christians, especially those who affirm the plain teachings of Sacred Scripture on the sinfulness of sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman.
Let us recall some of Canada’s more notorious human rights cases. In 1997, Dianne Haskett, a lawyer and devout Evangelical Protestant who was then serving as mayor of London, Ontario, was convicted and fined by an Ontario human rights board of inquiry for refusing on religious principle to issue a gay pride proclamation.
In 2002, a three-judge panel of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice unanimously upheld the ruling of a human rights board of inquiry which found that Scott Brockie, a Toronto print-shop owner and sincere Christian, had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code, by refusing on religious grounds to print letterheads and other materials for an organization that promotes gay, lesbian, and bisexual lifestyles. Having already run up close to $100,000 in legal bills and standing little chance of winning upon further appeal, Brockie gave up and complied with the order of the tribunal that he must pay $5,000 in damages to the homosexual complainant in the case and never again refuse to print such materials for a homosexual client.
Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan, Hugh Owens was ordered by a provincial human rights board of inquiry to pay $1,500 in damages to each of three homosexual complainants for having hurt their feelings by publishing an advertisement in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix that featured a list of Bible verses condemning homosexual acts. Owens lost on appeal to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench, but won in 2006, in the provincial Court of Appeal, which found that his advertisement did not transgress the limits of freedom of expression permitted by the province’s human rights code.
In the aftermath of this court-of-appeal ruling in Owens, can faithful Christians rest assured that they have nothing to fear from Canada’s human-rights thought police? Most certainly not. In 2005, the British Columbia Court of Appeal held in the Chris Kempling case that a Christian teacher has no right to point out the risks of homosexual sexual behaviour in a letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper. How the Supreme Court of Canada might eventually settle these contradictory rulings is anyone’s guess.
In the meantime, while Christians have been losing case after case in human rights tribunals, the Canadian Jewish Congress has been going from victory in victory. The Congress is especially proud of having used the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the courts to expose Ernst Zundel as a holocaust denier and get him extradited to Germany, where he is serving a sentence of five-years imprisonment for incitement of hatred against Jews.
No one should have any sympathy for Zundel, but are his prosecution and incarceration really a victory for Canadian Jews? Ezra Levant, the former editor of The Western Standard and an Orthodox Jew, does not think so. He points out that prior to the prosecution for hate crimes, Zundel was only an inconsequential and obscure bigot. Levant charges: “The Canadian Jewish Congress, and its executive director, Bernie Farber, are the super-agents who turned Ernst Zundel into an international figure.”
Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, likewise opposed the prosecution of Zundel. In a recent interview with the Edmonton Journal, Borovoy said: "Nobody ever thought the commissions would have anything to do with expressions of opinion or the dissemination of news reports. I think it's awful that a law could be used to muzzle that kind of expression. That's the stuff of what democratic polemics are about."
Christians should heed Borovoy’s warning. And we should join with him and Levant in urgently calling upon Parliament and the provincial Legislatures to enact legislation to eliminate at least the censorship powers of Canada’s oppressive human rights commissions.

Who Really Cares?

2008-02-09T19:24:00.000-05:00

Mercatornet
February 9, 2008

The United States donates far less of its national income to official development assistance than any other industrialized country. At just 0.18 per cent of national income, the U.S. aid effort is less than half that of Britain, France and Germany, and more than five times less than Sweden, the world's most generous donor of official development assistance to needy countries.
Among the 30 relatively wealthy members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States also ranks last in the proportion of national income allocated to government spending on welfare and unemployment insurance. But does it follow that the people of the United States are singularly lacking in care and compassion for the less fortunate?
"After considering the evidence, it is clear that the stereotype of stingy Americans just doesn't hold up. The American government is not the only giver. When we look at the overall charity of Americans, we quickly see that we are an extraordinarily generous nation, by international standards."
Many critics think so. In 2001, Clare Short, the British International Development Secretary, went so far as to denounce the United States for allegedly "turning its back on the needy of the world."
There is no basis for such accusations. Like so many other left-wing critics, Short failed to appreciate that in the United States, government spending on the needy is supplemented by extraordinary private charity.
Arthur C. Brooks, a professor of public administration at the University of Syracuse, has examined this issue in his book, Who Really Cares?: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism. With regard to foreign aid, he points out that in 2002, the $10 billion which the United States contributed to official development assistance was augmented by $13 billion in other forms of government aid and an enormous $50 billion in private charity for less developed countries. Altogether in 2002, the people of the United States donated about $200 per person -- 0.5 per cent of their national income -- to international aid.
Americans are also remarkably generous in supporting worthy causes within their own country. Regardless, many people in Europe, Canada and other rich countries harbour the smug assumption that they are collectively far more generous than the people of the United States, although there is actually much better reason to believe that the converse is true - that the people of the United States are far more generous in volunteering their money, time and talents to help the needy both at home and overseas than are the people of any other industrialized country.
In a series of annual reports over the past several years on generosity in Canada and the United States, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute has consistently found that Americans donate much more money to charity than do Canadians. Specifically, in the latest of these reports, the authors state: "In 2005, Americans gave 1.77 percent of their aggregate personal income to charity, resulting in a total of US$182 billion in donations. This rate of giving is more than double that of Canadians, who gave 0.75 percent of their aggregate income (Cdn$7.8 billion in total) to charity in 2005."
The people of the United States are also far more generous than Europeans. Citing the best available data, Brooks relates: "Even accounting for differences in standard of living, average Americans gave more than twice as high a percentage of their incomes to charity as the Dutch, almost three times as much as the French, more than five times as much as the Germans, and more than 10 times as much as the Italians."
An international survey on volunteering in 1998 likewise found that the people of the United States are more generous than Europeans in volunteering their time for both religious and non-religious causes. And here, too, the degree of American exceptionalism is striking. While the survey reported that 41 per cent of the people of the United States volunteered annually for nonreligious causes, only 29 per cent of the population did so in Sweden, 24 per cent in Britain and a paltry 13 per cent in Germany.
Brooks sums up: "After considering the evidence, it is clear that the stereotype of stingy Americans just doesn't hold up. The American government is not the only giver. When we look at the overall charity of Americans, we quickly see that we are an extraordinarily generous nation, by international standards."
What accounts for the exceptional generosity of the people of the United States? Part of the explanation is political ideology: On the basis of his extensive research, Brooks discovered, to his surprise, that liberals and socialists who think that government should equalize incomes give less of their money and time to charity than do conservatives who are not obsessed with equality.
Within Canada and Europe, liberals and socialists predominate. Most of these people seem to think that charity begins and ends with voting for governments that promise to give away other peoples' money to help the poor.
Within the United States, there is a substantially larger proportion of conservatives than in other industrialized countries. These people understand that the mark of true charity is not to rely on the government, but to volunteer one's own time and money for worthy causes.
Regardless, in determining levels of private charity, a much more important factor than political ideology is religious conviction. Brooks cites a survey of the population of the United States in 2000, which revealed that religious people - defined as those who attend church nearly every week - were 25 percentage points more likely to give to charity (91 per cent compared to 66 per cent) and 23 percentage points more likely to volunteer (67 per cent compared to 44 per cent). Furthermore, while these religious people enjoyed exactly the same average annual family income ($49,000) as secular people, they gave away "about three-and-a-half times more dollars per year, on average ($2,210 versus $642). They also volunteered more than twice as often (12 times per year, versus 5.8 times)."
It might be supposed that religious people only appear to be more generous, because they have been browbeaten into pouring money into the collection plates at church on Sunday. But that is not the case. Brooks found that in comparison to secular people, religious people are 10 percentage points more likely to give and 21 percentage points more likely to volunteer for completely secular, charities like the United Way or a home-and-school board.
Religious people are also more apt to engage in random acts of kindness. For example, survey data indicate that if you drop your wallet on the sidewalk, you are far more likely to get it back if it is found by an observant Christian or Jew rather than a secularist.
Also, the generosity of religious people transcends differences in political ideology. Religious liberals give significantly more time and money to charity than do secular liberals, although religious liberals are not so generous as religious conservatives.
Brooks sums up: "Religious people are far, far more charitable than secularists, no matter what their politics. But while religious conservatives are extremely common, religious liberals are a fairly exotic breed. Liberals are far more likely to fall in the 'secular' category than the 'religious' category, which is one big reason why liberals tend to look uncharitable."
It's no coincidence that the United States is exceptional for both religiosity and generosity. Among the 32 countries which took part in a survey of religious behaviour and attitudes by the International Social Survey Programme in 1998, the United States proved to be far and away the most religious as no less than 23.4 per cent of the population indicated that they attended church at least two or three times a month. The corresponding proportion of regular church goers was 18.7 per cent in Italy, 11.7 per cent in Australia, 11.4 per cent in Canada, 7.8 per cent in Britain, 6.6 per cent in Sweden and 5.6 per cent in France.
Christians, of course, are not perfect. All have sinned and fallen woefully short of the divine perfection.
Nonetheless, Brooks has advanced compelling evidence to establish that in the United States as elsewhere, observant Christians are far more likely than secularists to volunteer their money, time and talents for worthy causes. And the reason for the exceptional charitableness of these Christians is obvious: People in the pews hear and respond to the admonitions of Christ that there is no better way to express our love for God than to serve others without counting the cost or expecting anything in return.

The Duty of a Cop

2008-02-09T19:14:00.001-05:00

The London Free Press
February 9, 2008

Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino has undertaken to set the record straight in an illuminating autobiography entitled: Duty: The Life of a Cop, which he wrote with the editorial and research assistance of Toronto writer and consultant Jerry Amernic.
That Fantino felt the need for such a book is understandable: In recent years, few public figures have been more frequently and viciously maligned than he.
In his book, Fantino recounts how he emigrated to Canada as a youngster from Italy; learned English as a schoolboy in Toronto; earned a high school diploma by correspondence; joined the Metropolitan Toronto police force at age 27; and rose rapidly through the ranks.
His baptism in the fires of political controversy came as a staff inspector in 1988, when he was asked by the North York Committee on Community, Race and Ethnic relations to gather information on the socio-economic status and race of persons charged with criminal offences in the Jane-Finch area. As requested, Fantino duely prepared a report detailing the high proportion of crimes committed by blacks in the violence-prone district.
Inevitably, the media obtained the supposedly confidential report. The result was an intense political controversy featuring Fantino as the fall guy. Any fair-minded commentator would have lauded him for doing his duty. Instead, he was widely maligned as a racist. Ontario Premier David Peterson led a chorus of politicians in demanding that the police stop collecting statistics on crimes by race.
Fantino was so deeply hurt by the North York controversy that he resolved to resign from the Toronto police force. However, he was persuaded to carry on and three years later, he was appointed chief of police in London, only to be vilified again for doing his duty.
This time the controversy focussed on his initiation of Project Guardian, a major investigation of child pornography and pedophilia by the London Police that came up with 62 complainants and 61 suspects. “If that’s not a ‘ring,’ I don’t know what is,” says Fantino.
He reports: “The ages of the complainants ranged from seven to 17 years with 50 per cent of them being 13 years of age or younger, while the average age of the suspects was 40.” The investigation resulted in 535 criminal charges, 39 per cent involving anal intercourse and 49 per cent fellatio. Moreover, the conviction rate for Project Guardian was 86 per cent, a proportion described by Fantino as “almost unheard of in the criminal justice system.”
Nonetheless, many critics contend that Project Guardian unfairly targetted homosexuals. In a nationally televised report on the investigation, the CBC referred to Fantino’s “perceived homophobia” and alleged failure to “distinguish between consensual gay sex and abuse.”
Naturally, Fantino resents such charges. He is proud, and rightly so, of his leadership in combatting the sexual exploitation of children. “I am not anti-gay or homophobic and never have been,” he avows. “However, I am very much against anyone who abuses kids or young people, and as long as I’m in law enforcement, I will go after these characters with everything I’ve got. You can bet on it.”
As commissioner of the OPP, Fantino now bears heavy responsibility for domestic security. He maintains that Canadians are far too complacent about terrorism. Having gained access to national and international intelligence on terrorist activities, he insists it is urgent for Canada to emulate more security conscious European countries like Italy, where police officers are authorized by law to conduct random checks on people right on the street.
As it is, Fantino warns: “We are sitting back, but the day will come when we’ll have to change our attitude. When the bombs go off, you just watch how things will go the other way and the knee-jerk reaction that takes place.”
Altogether, Duty: The Life of a Cop is a fascinating and informative account of the life and thinking of one of Canada’s most accomplished police officers. While Fantino might not always be right, his well-informed views on key issues of public safety deserve careful consideration.

Catholic Insight Under Attack

2008-02-01T19:20:00.001-05:00

Catholic Insight
February, 2008

In subjecting Catholic Insight magazine to investigation on baseless charges of homophobia, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is once again trampling upon the very human rights and fundamental freedoms it is supposed to uphold. The sooner this oppressive Commission and its provincial counterparts are abolished, the better.
Catholic Insight is the latest in a long line of publications to run afoul of Canada’s human rights commissions. Among the other victims are Maclean’s magazine, The Western Standard, the Calgary Herald and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. Some journalists have been so intimidated by Canada’s human rights thought police that they no longer dare to publish anything that might offend the sensibilities of Muslim zealots, homosexual activists or any other group that qualifies for special treatment in the freedom-stifling, federal and provincial, human rights codes that have sprung up over the past 50 years.
Yet it’s open season on the Catholic Church for anti-Catholic bigots. No Canadian human rights commission has ever reprimanded anyone for expressing hatred or contempt for Christianity. To the contrary, as the attack on Catholic Insight indicates, these commissions have specialized in attacking Canadians who uphold the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality.
In 2005, the Alberta Human Rights Commission placed Catholic Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary under investigation for opposing same-sex marriage in a pastoral letter and a column in the Calgary Herald. Following several months of harassment, the Commission dropped the case when the two complainants against him withdrew their charges.
Stephen Boissoin has not been so fortunate. After a five-year investigation, he was found on November, 30, 2007, by an Alberta Human Rights Panel to have expressed hatred and contempt for homosexuals in a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate that he wrote in his capacity as a Baptist minister. Among the statements held against Boissoin was his warning: “From kindergarten class and on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.”
Such rulings have sent a chill through faithful clerics throughout the country. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional affairs on July 13, 2005, Marc Cardinal Ouellet, the primate of Canada, said: “A kind of climate is developing in which people no longer dare say what they think. Even from the pulpit, we feel threatened if we recall the sexual morality of the Church. That is also part of religious freedom. Even in our churches, these words are troubling, and we feel accused of homophobia, hatred of or hurting homosexuals.”
Of course, not all clerics have reason to fear oppression by a human rights tribunal: Liberals who have embraced the gay rights ideology are quite safe. Indeed, some trendy clerics have abetted the human rights inquisitors in oppressing their faithful fellow Christians.
A notorious case in point is The Very Rev. Dr. Bruce McLeod, former moderator of the United Church of Canada. In 2001, he testified before the Ontario human rights tribunal against Scott Brockie, an Evangelical Protestant, who was subsequently found guilty of discriminating against homosexuals for having refused on religious grounds to print materials for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
It will ever be thus, it seems. Down through the centuries, faithful Christians have been persecuted by heretics who conform their thinking to the current pattern of the world rather than uphold that good and acceptable and perfect word of God as revealed in Sacred Scripture.
Father Alphonse de Valk, the editor of Catholic Insight, is made of stern stuff. He can be counted upon not to capitulate under pressure by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but to stand firm in upholding the truths of Christian faith and morality as authoritatively expounded by the sacred magisterium of the Catholic Church.
And in doing so, Father de Valk should have the solid support of all Canadians who affirm the inalienable rights of all people to freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. Certainly, conscientious Christians should never fail in their duty to defend and affirm the faith in public after the manner urged by Abraham Lincoln: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”

Suppression of Religion

2008-02-01T19:12:00.002-05:00

The Interim
February, 2008

For a striking illustration of the repression of freedom of religion and freedom of expression in Canada, consider the plight of Stephen Boissoin, an erstwhile Baptist minister in Alberta.
In a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate published on June 17, 2002, Boissoin denounced the indoctrination of children in the public schools by proponents of the notion that homosexuality is a safe and legitimate alternative lifestyle. In response to Boissoin’s letter, Darren Lund, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary, filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, accusing Boissoin of exposing homosexuals to hatred and contempt in violation of section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.
As evidence for the charge, Lund cited several passages from Boissoin’s bombastic letter, including the following: “From kindergarten class and on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators” with “repugnant and pre-mediated [sic] strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young children into their camps.”
The province’s chief human rights commissioner could have summarily rejected Lund’s complaint. Instead, in 2006, he referred the matter to a human rights panel.
Gerald Chipeur, one of Canada’s top constitutional lawyers, argued before this panel that by virtue of the guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of expression in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Boissoin has a constitutional right to publish the honestly held religious convictions on a matter of political debate expressed in his letter to the editor.
Barry Cooper, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Calgary, likewise told the panel that “reasonable people can disagree about whether homosexual practices are immoral and they can further disagree about whether the Bible is authoritative … [I]f activists use taxpayer dollars to promote homosexuality in public schools, then Christians have a right to stand up and say they do not think it is okay.”
Counsel for the secular Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) repudiated Boissoin’s opinions on gay rights, while defending his constitutional right to express them. In addition, the CCLA argued that the provinces have no authority under the Constitution of Canada to censor the publication of political opinions in a newspaper.
In one of the most dismaying aspects of the Boissoin case, the Attorney General for Alberta flatly disagreed with the defence of freedom of religion and freedom of expression mounted by Cooper and the CCLA. In an intervention against Boissoin, the province’s top law officer insisted that under the Constitution of Canada and the laws of Alberta, the human rights panel had both the authority and the responsibility to censure Boissoin for expressing hatred and contempt for homosexuals in his letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate.
With the Attorney General of the most conservative province in the country intervening against Boissoin, the outcome was virtually a foregone conclusion. In a ruling on 27 November 2007, the Panel Chair, Lori G. Andreachuk, QC, a family-law lawyer from Lethbridge, duly found that Boissoin had violated the ban on expressing hatred or contempt for a protected group in section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.
In support of her finding, Andreachuk argued: “Not taking jurisdiction would mean that inciting hatred would be acceptable up to the point that a crime occurs as a result of it. This cannot be the case, given the context of this being rural Alberta that is a matter of a local nature.” On the basis of such obtuse reasoning are the historic rights and freedoms of Canadians suppressed.
Meanwhile, under pressure from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a Calgary man, Craig Chandler, has apologized for having posted Boissoin’s letter to the editor on the website of Concerned Christians Canada, and has promised never to do so again.
What, though, is the point of such censorship? Most of Boissoin’s letter can be read in Andreachuk’s ruling. And the full text remains freely available on websites in the United States, where the courts still uphold the inalienable rights of all peoples to freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

The Bottom Billion

2008-01-19T19:11:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
Saturday, January 19, 2008

What’s wrong with sub-Saharan Africa? Despite billions upon billions of dollars in foreign aid over the past four decades, most of the people who reside in this region are sinking into ever more abject and pitiable poverty.
Paul Collier has addressed this tragedy in an illuminating new book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. As a professor of economics at Oxford University, Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, and a former director of research at the World Bank, Collier is exceptionally well qualified to discuss the intransigent problems of the world’s poorest countries.
Their plight is all the more poignant in that for the first time in history, the great majority of people no longer live in dire poverty. While close to one billion live in rich countries like Canada and Hong Kong, an additional four billion populate less-developed countries like China, India and Chile that have made the transition to rapid and, for the most part, sustained economic growth.
Meanwhile, one billion are stuck at the bottom. Most of them live in Africa and Central Asia. These people “coexist with the 21st century,” writes Collier, “but their reality is the 14th century: civil war, plague, ignorance.”
Many well-meaning liberals think rich countries could quickly and easily eradicate world poverty, by agreeing to a major increase in transfers of their wealth to poor countries through higher foreign aid and more generous debt relief. But if that is true, how can one account for a deeply impoverished, oil-exporting country like Nigeria that has garnered more than $350 billion in oil revenue over the past 40 years – a sum vastly greater than any conceivable amount of foreign aid and debt relief – yet still languishes within the bottom billion?
In some pathetic cases, foreign aid can do little or no good. Consider, for example, Chad. In 2004, a survey was conducted to track money dispensed by the Chadian ministry of finance for rural health clinics. Collier reports: “Amazingly, less than one per cent of it reached the clinics -- 99 per cent failed to reach its destination.”
Within all-too-many countries in the bottom billion, the evils of corruption are compounded by the catastrophes of war. Collier points out the obvious: There can be no hope of alleviating poverty in any country or region that is ravaged by virtually perpetual armed conflict.
In this respect, Afghanistan is a sorry example. For the past two years, Canadian troops have distinguished themselves in the front lines of the battle to defeat the Taliban and clear the way for poverty-alleviating economic growth in this profoundly impoverished country.
But do the purported champions of the poor among the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois in the Parliament of Canada solidly back this humanitarian effort? Alas no: Most are clamouring for the early withdrawal of Canadian forces from any combat role in Afghanistan.
Collier is exasperated by economically ignorant citizens in the rich world who think they can help the poor in the bottom billion by opposing freer trade. In reality, these would-be do-gooders are playing into the hands of villains in the bottom billion who profit from import barriers to enrich themselves at the expense of the needy.
Likewise, fair trade is no panacea. To the extent that this policy increases prices for primary products like tea, coffee and cocoa, it encourages people in the bottom billion, says Collier, to go on “producing the crops that have locked them into poverty.”
What, then, can be done for the bottom billion? Collier makes a compelling case for a concerted military and political campaign led by the rich countries to help the countries of the bottom billion to terminate warfare, establish law and order and curtail corruption.
Until all of these goals are achieved, no amount of foreign aid can eliminate the dire poverty that afflicts the bottom billion. That’s the hard, but inescapable truth that no amount of wishful thinking can circumvent.

2008-01-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

The Interim
January, 2008

On Jan. 28, 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down the most calamitous judgment in Canadian history – R. v. Morgentaler, 1988 SCC. As a result of this ruling, Canada is the only democracy in the world with the ignominious distinction of having no law to protect the life of a baby in the womb at any time during a pregnancy.
There was no legal basis for the 1988 Morgentaler decision. It was an exercise in raw judicial power. The seven judges who took part in the case came up with no fewer than four separate opinions.
On one disastrous point, five of the judges agreed: led by chief justice Brian Dickson and his successor, Mr. Justice Antonio Lamer, they resolved to strike down the few remaining restrictions on abortion which Parliament had retained in Section 251 of the Criminal Code in 1969, on the pretence that the law violated the right to life, liberty and security of the person in Section 7 of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In the opinion of Dickson and Lamer, the provisions in Section 251, which required the approval of a lawful abortion by a so-called “therapeutic abortion committee,” were so cumbersome as to violate the Charter right of a pregnant mother to security of the person. In a similar, separate opinion, justices Jean Beetz and Willard Estey contended that Section 251 could not pass muster with the Charter, because it outlawed all abortions in private clinics like those run by Henry Morgentaler.
In yet another separate, concurring opinion, Madam Justice Bertha Wilson went even further: she maintained that Parliament had no constitutional authority to restrict the overwhelming majority of abortions which occur during the first trimester of a pregnancy.
In support of this view, Wilson argued that a fetus is only a “potential life.” Yet, even in 1988, this was a manifestly absurd proposition inasmuch as it was already a well-established scientific fact that human life begins at conception. With reference to the cutoff point during a pregnancy, after which the state could intervene to protect the life of a baby, Wilson opined: “It seems to me that it might fall somewhere in the second trimester.”
In such various ways, the majority of the Court in Morgentaler, 1988, presumed to instruct Parliament on how it should restrict abortion. In a joint dissenting opinion, justices William McIntyre and Gerard La Forest took strong issue with such judicial arrogance. While conceding that the Charter had to some extent extended the function of the courts, they argued that it did not go so far as to “allocate to the courts the responsibility for designing, initiating or directing social or economic policy.”
In particular, McIntyre and La Forest contended that nothing in the Charter mandated unelected judges on the Supreme Court of Canada to define the parameters of an appropriate abortion law for Canadians. “The solution to this question in this country must be left to Parliament,” they insisted. “It is for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy. This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge, but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities – the exposure to public opinion and information – as well as the political power to make effective its decisions.”
In taking this stance, McIntyre and La Forest exercised judicial restraint, upheld the separation of legislative and judicial powers and reaffirmed the principles of democratic government. In contrast, the majority of the court usurped the legislative powers of Parliament by striking down Canada’s abortion law.
Today, 20 years and more than two million abortions later, Canada still has no law restricting abortion. While Parliament bears much of the blame for this shameful deficiency in the law, it is clearly the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in Morgentaler, 1988, which brought on this continuing national calamity.
Canadians can only wonder when our elected legislators in Parliament will finally summon up the resolve to enact a new law on abortion and exercise their indubitable constitutional authority to curb the lawless excesses of the judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada.

Reaffirming ethical medical research

2007-12-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
In the aftermath of the recent breakthrough in somatic cell reprogramming that has rendered embryonic stem cell research virtually obsolete, all of us – scientists and non-scientists alike – would do well to reconsider and reaffirm a cardinal principal of Western Civilization: Thou shalt not deliberately kill an innocent human being.
For the past several years, the practitioners of embryonic stem cell research have systematically violated this most basic of moral axioms, by killing human embryos for the purpose of extracting their pluripotent stem cells. Proponents of the procedure held out the promise, which was never fulfilled, that embryonic stem cell research might lead to cures for a variety of disabilities and diseases ranging from spinal cord paralysis to multiple sclerosis.
It happens that we all began life as a human embryo – that is to say, as a tiny, developing human being from fertilization to the end of the first eight weeks of gestational age. The hard and inescapable truth is that in harvesting human embryonic stem cells, researchers inevitably kill the donor human being.
As a proponent of the sanctity of human life, United States President George W. Bush cannot condone such death-dealing medical research, no matter how promising, so he announced in 2001 that his administration would restrict funding for human embryonic stem cell research to 60 already existing stem cell lines “where the life and death decision has already been made.” In response, many critics maligned Bush as a mindless Christian with a heartless lack of compassion for all of the patients who desperately hope for a cure derived from embryonic stem cell research.
Following an extensive debate on this same issue, the Parliament of Canada enacted legislation in 2004 which authorizes medical researchers to harvest human embryonic stem cells from so-called surplus human embryos produced for reproduction in an in vitro fertilization clinic. Given this precedent, one can only wonder what other human beings might next be designated as surplus to Canadian needs and consigned to death for the potential benefit of others.
Meanwhile, in November, two teams of researchers, one led by Shinya Yamanaka in Japan and the other by James Thompson in Wisconsin, confirmed that they have succeeded in reprogramming adult skin cells to behave like pluripotent embryonic stem cells that can be coaxed into growing into all the main tissue types in the body including muscles, neurons and heart cells. Dr. Robert Lanza, one of the foremost authorities on stem cell research, has hailed this achievement as “a tremendous scientific milestone – the biological equivalent of the Wright brothers’ first airplane.”
Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the secretariat for pro-life activities for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was no less enthusiastic: “It’s a win-win,” he exclaimed. “The scientists can get all the benefits they think they might get from embryonic stem cells, and the rest of us can applaud and support it.”
While it sometimes seemed that only theologically orthodox Christians and Jews were concerned about the fundamental ethical dimensions of the debate over embryonic stem cell research, that was not the case. Thompson says he, too, has always had concerns about killing human embryos. He told the New York Times: “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
Yamanaka, a father of two, concurs. Eight years ago, he first looked down a microscope at a human embryo in an in vitro fertilization. In recalling this revelatory experience, he said: “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”
Thanks mainly to Yamanaka and Thompson, we now know that, indeed, there is a better and easier way to acquire pluripotent human stem cells for medical research. It follows that there is no longer any scientific or medical excuse for continuing with death-dealing, human embryonic stem cell research. The sooner this morally debased line of scientific inquiry is stopped, the better.

Muslim attack on Maclean's

2007-12-08T15:55:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a flagrant attack on the historic rights of Canadians to freedom of the press, the Canadian Islamic Congress has filed three human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine and its editor-in-chief, Kenneth Whyte, accusing them of spreading “hatred and contempt” for Muslims, by publishing an article by Mark Steyn on October 23, 2006, entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam.”
The article in dispute is an excerpt from Steyn’s best-selling book “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.” Consider the implications: By the logic of the CIC’s attack on Maclean’s magazine, the owners and operators of Canadian libraries and bookstores could also be charged with violating the human rights of Muslims, by making not just Steyn’s article, but his entire book widely available to Canadians throughout the country.
In attacking Maclean’s magazine, the CIC is not acting alone. It has the support of the Ontario Federation of Labour. In a statement backing the CIC, OFL executive vice-president Terry Downey said: “We want to make sure there’s dignity and respect for all individuals in the province.”
That the leaders of the CIC and the OFL betray such contempt for freedom of the press is lamentable, but not altogether surprising. It might be supposed, though, that at least the human rights commissioners of Canada – the purported guardians of our historic rights and freedoms – would summarily reject the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s.
But not so. At a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Faisal Joseph, CIC legal counsel, confirmed that the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has accepted the CIC’s complaint and scheduled hearings in the case for June 2-6, 2008. Likewise, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has likewise accepted the CIC complaint, while the typically dithering Ontario Human Rights Commission has yet to decide whether it will pursue the matter or not.
What has gone wrong? How could such a gross violation of freedom of the press occur in Canada – a country that used to have one of the best records in the world for respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms?
The problem can be traced to the overweening powers of Canada’s human rights tribunals. Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, underlined the danger last year after the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada filed a human rights complaint against the Western Standard for republishing a set of Danish cartoons that many Muslims found offensive. In an article in the Calgary Herald, Borovoy wrote: “During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create (human rights) commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech.”
Borovoy explained that the restrictions on speech in the codes were intended to apply only to communications that fostered discrimination on such bases as employment or housing. Instead, human rights tribunals have adopted such expansive interpretations of these speech restrictions that a newspaper or magazine could get into trouble for publishing even a truthful article about conflict in the Middle East, Bosnia, Rwanda or elsewhere that is likely to expose at least one of the parties to contempt.
Such considerations evidently mean nothing to Canada’s power-grabbing human rights commissioners and they also have scant regard for the original understanding of the codes they enforce. Otherwise, the British Columbia Tribunal and the Canadian and Ontario human rights commissions would have promptly dismissed the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s as entirely without merit.
As it is, Maclean’s is standing by its right to freedom of the press. In a forthright statement on the issue, Whyte avowed that he would rather have the magazine go bankrupt than surrender to the CIC’s demand for equal space to respond to Steyn’s lengthy article.
Meanwhile, Tom Flanagan, professor of political science at the University of Calgary and former campaign manager for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has waded into the controversy. He urges: “All who write and speak in the public domain should rally to Mark Steyn’s defence. If so called human rights commissions can be used against him, they can be used against anyone who dares to express an idea worth debating.”

New Life Matters

2007-12-01T19:01:00.001-05:00

The Interim
December, 2007

In a remarkable article entitled "New Life Matters" which was published in the National Post on November 6, Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Law, Ethics and Medicine at McGill University, acknowledged: "The fetus is a new human life," and she added: "That matters ethically, and should matter legally."
Quite so. Somerville advanced this argument in the course of discussing criminal assaults on pregnant women. She noted: " In the past three years, at least five pregnant women, along with their babies, have been killed in Canada in violent attacks." Yet in every case, the offender could only be charged with killing the mother. There is no provision in the Criminal Code of Canada prohibiting the deliberate killing or injuring of a baby in the womb.
That does not sit well with most Canadians. In a recent Environics Poll, 72 per cent said they would support legislation making it a separate crime to kill or injure a fetus during a criminal attack on the mother. In this same poll, Canadians were asked: "At what point in human development should the law protect human life?" In response, 34 per cent of the women and 26 per cent of the men said from conception on. Altogether, 62 per cent said the law should protect babies at some time prior to birth.
As it is, thanks to the calamitous 1988 ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in Morgentaler, Canada has no law protecting human life in the womb from abortion. Canada also has no law prohibiting the killing or wounding of a baby in the womb by any means other than abortion, because, in conformity with the policy preference of the Supreme Court of Canada, Parliament has specified in section 223 of the Criminal Code that: "A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother."
One is reminded of the immortal words of Mr. Bumble: "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot."
Somerville observed in her article: "Seeing the fetus as an unborn victim of crime … causes us to see the fetus as what it is, an early human life. Those who support abortion must be able to square that fact with their belief that abortion is ethical in certain circumstances."
Somerville counts herself among those who believe that abortion is ethical in certain circumstances. It follows by her own logic, that she must also believe it is ethical in certain circumstances to kill an innocent human being.
That proposition is dead wrong. Our Judeo-Christian civilization is based on the principle: "Thou shalt not kill." And it follows that no circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being either inside or outside the womb.
As a medical ethicist, Somerville should champion the sanctity of all human life, but, like so many of her trendy academic colleagues, she fails to do so. At least, though, she supports an unborn victims of crime act as well as some restrictions on abortion, including the enactment of an informed-consent law stipulating that prior to consenting to an abortion, "the woman must be given information about the mental and physical health risks abortion poses."
Somerville also favours the adoption of a fetal pain awareness act requiring a physician to advise a woman who is contemplating a later-term abortion about scientific evidence indicating that after 20 weeks, an abortion causes the fetus to die "in excruciating pain." Somerville furthermore proposes that under this same law, the woman would "have to be offered anaesthesia for the fetus, which it would be her choice to take or decline."
The mind boggles. How can anyone suggest that the law should allow a mother to refuse anaesthesia to her baby prior to an abortion and thereby condemn the child to death in excruciating pain? Surely, Somerville will promptly reconsider this barbaric suggestion.
In concluding her article, Somerville underlined what should be an obvious truth -- that "having no law [on abortion] is not a neutral stance. It contravenes values that form part of the bedrock of Canadian society."

An egregious case of parental abuse

2007-11-17T20:33:00.000-05:00

The London Free Press,
By Rory Leishman

London author Dawn Stefanowicz has published a compelling memoir entitled Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting. In this important book, she presents an open and honest account of her anguishing experiences as a child growing up in a dysfunctional home dominated by a homosexual father and a submissive mother.
The book is well structured and beautifully written. In her acknowledgements, Stefanowicz expresses appreciation for the painstaking assistance of her editor, London Free Press columnist and award-winning playwright, Herman Goodden.
The resulting portrayal of Stefanowicz’s harrowing childhood should give pause to everyone from trendy journalists to know-it-all judges who blithely assume that sexually active homosexuals are no less competent to parent a child than are married heterosexuals. That assumption certainly does not accord with Stefanowicz’s experience. From early childhood, she was painfully aware that her compulsively promiscuous father was rarely available in the home to provide the care and guidance so desperately needed by his three children.
This is not to suggest that Stefanowic’s father was altogether negligent. One summer, he took the entire family to a cottage for a week-long vacation. Once there, however, he promptly disappeared. Stefanowicz, who was then nine years old, relates: “It hasn’t been work that has called him away, but pleasure. The hard truth that all of us struggle to understand is that Dad prefers the company of other men to that of his wife and children.”
Throughout Stefanowicz’s childhood, her father exposed the rest of the family to one transient boyfriend after another. She writes: “Though for a few months at a stretch it might appear Dad was settling into a monogamous relationship with just one other man, appearances were deceiving. In fact, Dad’s sex life was becoming ever more chaotic and reckless. He still had one-night stands with lovers he’d casually bring home any night of the week.”
Dawn Stefanowicz cannot be written off as just an embittered homophobe. To the contrary, she makes clear that, despite everything, she both loved and feared her father. And she also commends his last partner, Ron for standing by her father for 14 years and tending to him “in a tireless and selfless way” during the last agonizing months before he succumbed to AIDS at age 51.
Of course, all too many children have been neglected and abused by philandering heterosexual parents. Could it be, then, that Stefanowicz was just unlucky in having a homosexual father who was exceptionally promiscuous?
Consider the judgment of Mr. Justice James Nevins of the Ontario Court of Justice in Re K and B (1995). In this case, he amended the Ontario Child and Family Services Act to allow for the adoption of children by same sex couples on the ground that homosexuals have an equality right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to adopt children. In support of this policy, Nevins contended: “Despite stereotypical beliefs to the contrary, there is no evidence to support the suggestion that most gay men and lesbians have unstable or dysfunctional relationships.”
That assertion is patently untrue. Sex in America, reputedly the most scientifically rigorous survey of the sexual habits of the people of the United States, found that the average number of lifetime sexual partners is 4 for heterosexuals and 50 for homosexuals, while the percentage of monogamous couples who have been 100 per cent faithful to their spouse or partner is 83 per cent for heterosexuals, but less than two per cent for homosexuals.
Nonetheless, several studies purport to show that homosexual couples are no less competent to nurture children than heterosexual couples. These claims are not credible. Given that very few children raised by a homosexual couple have grown to adulthood, it is impossible to prove the competence of homosexuals as parents.
Meanwhile, there is reason to fear that the anguish experienced by Stefanowicz with a homosexual parent is not uncommon. In a prefatory note to her book, Dr. Michelle Cretella, Chair of the Committee on Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians in the United States expresses the hope: “May society heed Dawn’s courageous testimony and spare other innocents the suffering she and her siblings sustained. We must refuse to sacrifice our children on the altar of diversity.”

Conservatives succeed in curbing poverty

2007-10-27T20:40:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Liberals and socialists like to think of themselves as compassionate champions of the poor and the needy, yet over the past 20 years, they have introduced policies that serve only to aggravate and perpetuate the evils of poverty.
Consider, for example, the historical record in Ontario. Between 1986 and 1995, first the Liberal government of former premier David Peterson and then the New Democrat government led by former Premier Bob Rae attempted to alleviate poverty by increasing welfare benefits. The results were disastrous.
John Richards, a professor in the Graduate Public Policy Program at Simon Fraser University, points out in a commentary published by the C. D. Howe Institute that in the 10 years ending in 1995, the percentage of the Ontario population drawing social assistance benefits more than doubled. With a peak of close to 13 per cent of the population relying on the dole in 1994, Ontario had the highest level of welfare dependency in the entire country.
Meanwhile, in Alberta, Ralph Klein’s newly elected Conservative government proceeded to slash welfare benefits and restrict access to the program by persons deemed to be employable. The results were no less dramatic than in Ontario: By 1998, the percentage of the Alberta population relying on welfare had dropped 4.1 percentage points to barely three per cent, the lowest level in the country.
In 1996, the Ontario Progressive Conservative government of former premier Mike Harris followed the Alberta lead, by also cutting benefits and reducing eligibility for employable adults. Within five years, the proportion of welfare dependents among the Ontario population had dropped more than 7 percentage points to less than six per cent.
By comparing changes in welfare dependency in Alberta and Manitoba, whose welfare policies have remained quite steady over the past 20 years, Richards has demonstrated that the Klein reforms had a significant impact in reducing welfare dependency. The impact of the Harris reforms is more difficult to determine, because they came just two years before the Liberal government of former prime minister Jean Chretien introduced the National Child Benefit System, which has also made welfare dependency less attractive, by increasing the incomes of low-income adults who have children and are gainfully employed.
One point is clear: Richards has demonstrated that by acting together to reduce welfare benefits in relation to the after-tax income of workers in low-paying jobs over the past 10 years, the federal and provincial governments have persuaded many potentially employable welfare recipients to move off the dole and into the paid labour force.
Furthermore, as a result of lower rates of welfare dependency and higher rates of employment, there has been a sharp drop in poverty across Canada. Using Statistics Canada’s low-income cutoffs as a poverty measure, Richards notes that the poverty rate for all Canadians declined to 11 per cent in 2005, down from 16 per cent in 1996.
Richards has had a chequered career. As a New Democrat Party member of the Saskatchewan legislature and proponent of the party’s radical Waffle movement in the 1970s, he was one of Canada’s leading left-wing ideologues. Today, as a student of public policy, he has come to understand the perverse consequences of the well-meant anti-poverty policies that he used to advocate.
Would that all Liberals and New Democrats were so enlightened. Alas, many remain wedded to the failed policies of the past. For example, members of the Toronto Task Force on Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults have called upon Ottawa to introduce a negative income tax for low-income adults at an estimated annual cost of $7 billion. As Richards points out, this policy would once again reduce work incentives, increase welfare dependency and foster higher, not lower, poverty rates among employable, low-income adults.
Granted, more should be done for the poorest of the poor in Canada. Richards cites six priorities, including increased assistance for persons with a severe mental illness. Over the past 30 years, successive Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat governments have kicked most of these vulnerable patients out of mental hospitals and abandoned them to fend for themselves in the streets.
That’s shameful. It’s the alleviation of this kind of real poverty that should rank among the top priorities for every federal and provincial government in Canada.

John Tory is not a real Tory

2007-10-06T11:51:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
According to a recent poll, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory is trailing badly in his own riding of Don Valley West. For genuine conservatives this is good news.
Let there be no mistaking: Tory is neither a fiscal nor a social conservative. He is leading his nominally conservative party to defeat, by offering voters little more than a slightly watered-down version of the same liberalism espoused by the Ontario Liberals.
Consider the fiscal policies proposed by the two parties. While Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is promising to increase program spending to a whopping $96.6 billion in 2012, up from $82.2 billion this year, Tory says his government would increase spending to $96.3 billion, minus $1.5 billion in unspecified savings and efficiencies.
On the fiscal side, there is only one significant difference: Tory promises to eliminate the Ontario Health Premium Tax, which the McGuinty Liberals introduced, despite having repeatedly promised during the last provincial election that they would not impose any tax increases. Now McGuinty insists that the new health tax must be retained on the ground that the $2.7 billion in annual revenue which it generates is essential to boosting health-care spending and balancing the Ontario budget.
The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives also used to differ over Tory’s promise to extend public funding to all religious schools that agree to abide by the Ontario curriculum. Since the election campaign got underway, McGuinty has been successfully hammering away at this key Tory policy. And now, in the face of impending defeat, Tory has essentially scuttled his own proposal, by promising a free vote on the issue in the next Legislature.
On the most vital issue of all, there is no difference between McGuinty and Tory: Both favour unbridled abortion on demand. In the case of McGuinty, this stance is all the more disgraceful because he professes to know as a Catholic that all human life is sacred.
McGuinty and Tory also support same-sex marriage. However, earlier this year, Tory outdid even McGuinty in bidding for the homophile vote, by having himself declared an honorary “distinguished patron” of the Queer Youth Video Project at Toronto’s annual Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Granted, Tory does not represent all Progressive Conservative candidates. Many, including most of those in the London area, are genuine fiscal and social conservatives. Take, for example, Rob Alder in London North Centre and Jim Chapman in London Fanshawe. In response to an all-candidates’ questionnaire that was compiled and published on the internet by Citizen Impact Canada, Alder and Chapman have both indicated that they strongly oppose government funding for abortion on demand; support full disclosure of all relevant medical information to persons considering an abortion; and would direct all child-care subsidies directly to parents so they can freely choose the best available child care for their family.
Voters who are fed up with runaway government spending, ever-rising taxes, and misguided government policies should search out and vote for candidates like Alder and Chapman who stand the best chance of getting elected in their riding and making a difference for the better in the Ontario Legislature. These same voters should also hope that Tory is soundly defeated, quits politics and clears the way for the selection of a more inspiring leader for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.
In a referendum accompanying Wednesday’s Ontario election, voters will be asked to choose between retaining the province’s existing voting system or adopting a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system that would entail the creation of two classes of MPPs: 90 elected as they are now by a simple plurality in single-member constituencies and another 39 drawn from lists of candidates chosen by the political parties and elected essentially in proportion to each party’s share of the province-wide vote.
With MMP in effect, it would be practically impossible for voters to defeat any politician appointed near the top of the list for one of the major parties. For this reason alone, voters should reject MMP. It would be far better to stick with the existing voting system, despite its flaws, than to adopt a less democratic system of proportional representation that would give an array of party favourites a virtual lock on a seat in the Legislature.

The long-feared perils of public schools

2007-10-01T11:54:00.000-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
In a 19th century classic, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill admonished parents not to hand over the education of their children to the state. He warned: “A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.”
Consider, in this respect, the ominous decision of the British Columbia Education Ministry to introduce a radical new course on “social justice” for Grade 12 students in the public schools. Among the legally prescribed “learning outcomes” for the course is the requirement that all students must “describe social injustice based on characteristics including … marital and family status, religion and faith, sex [and] sexual orientation.”
In particular, the ministry’s guidelines suggest that teachers require their students to “analyse specific historical and contemporary examples of injustice in Canada” in relation to such matters as “reproduction rights” for women as well as “marriage, adoption [and] spousal rights” for “people who are LGBT” – that is to say, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. There is even the suggestion that teachers assign their students to “describe limitations on the scope of human rights legislation” in relation to “gender” and “sex-trade workers.”
Imagine that: Perhaps some Grade 12 student in British Columbia will get an “A” this year for a homework paper urging the Supreme Court of Canada to write equality rights for prostitutes and cross-dressing homosexuals into section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Parents all across Canada should beware: Given the steadily deteriorating moral standards throughout our country, a course of twisted propaganda that begins as an option for Grade 12 students in British Columbia could soon end up as compulsory in all public schools.
Not even the publicly funded Catholic schools of Ontario are immune to the moral degradation prevalent in the secular public schools. How otherwise can one explain the decision of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association to have Michelle Landsberg, the former columnist for The Toronto Star and shameless advocate of abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, serve as the keynote speaker at the union’s annual meeting in August?
In every province of Canada, all teachers and principals employed in the public schools, both secular and Catholic, must belong to an authorized teachers’ union. It’s the leaders of these unions together with like-minded ideologues in the provincial education ministries who set the moral tone for the public schools.
To an ever increasing extent, the state is also imposing its prescribed curricula on independent schools. For example, last year, the Quebec Ministry of Education warned independent Christian schools that they must provide their students with a government-approved course in sex education. Meanwhile, during the current election campaign in Ontario, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory is promising to extend funding to independent faith-based schools if they agree to “teach the Ontario curriculum.”
The whole point of an independent school is to teach the curriculum preferred by the parents for their children. The state should not interfere in this process unless there is reason to believe that the school is depriving its students of basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic or serving as a breeding ground for terrorists.
As it is, we Canadians have ignored Mill’s warning about the perils of a general state education. We have allowed most of our schools to come under the control of government bureaucrats and union bosses who exercise a despotism of the mind over the children in their care.
And as Mill predicted, that despotism of the mind is naturally leading to a despotism of the body. Sooner or later, some stalwart Christian in Canada who insists that sexual intercourse should be confined within marriage between a man and a woman will be convicted and fined by a human rights tribunal and, ultimately, jailed by the appellate courts for steadfastly defying the orthodoxy of gay rights as inculcated in our state-run schools.

Medical drama with a message

2007-09-29T14:18:00.000-04:00

Mercatornet
By Rory Leishman

Amid the vast wasteland of contemporary television, one of the few features that bears watching is House, a weekly medical drama originating with the Fox Television Network. The series stands out for the intelligence of the scripts, the brilliance of the actors, and, most remarkable of all, occasional flashes of genuine moral insight.
Until House became a popular hit, the star of the show, Hugh Laurie, was best known for his portrayal of Bertie Wooster in television adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse’s hilarious Jeeves and Wooster novels. In House, Laurie plays Dr Gregory House, a brilliant and cynical medical diagnostician modelled on Sherlock Holmes, who presides over a team of young medical residents at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. In each episode, House and his colleagues are presented with a patient whose symptoms have baffled other medical experts. The plots are intricate and intriguing. And the scripts have been commended by medical experts for their accurate portrayal of diagnostic dilemmas.
Correspondingly, the sordid private lives and moral outlooks of the physicians depicted in the series are all too plausible. In one episode, we learn that two of House’s young residents, Dr Allison Cameron and Dr Robert Chase, have taken part in some recreational sex. There is, of course, nothing unusual about such occurrences on television. What’s different about House is that in this instance, as so often in life, the indulgence in casual sex has painful consequences. Chase falls in unrequited love with Cameron. For weeks thereafter, he is a miserable and forlorn lover, while she is annoyed by his discrete but persistent invitations for another date.
The most arresting episode in the House series, entitled "Fetal Position", was first broadcast on April 3. In this case, the patient, Emma Sloan, is a pregnant woman and a famous celebrity photographer. While on a photo shoot, she suffers a stroke. After extensive investigation and several false leads, House and his team conclude that Emma is suffering from a rare condition, Maternal Mirror Syndrome, which designates an illness in the mother that is caused by an abnormality in the foetus. After having established that some undiagnosed problem with the foetus is causing Emma’s liver to fail, House advises her that the only way to save her life is to terminate the pregnancy.
Emma rejects this advice. She is single, 42 years old and childless. Having had several miscarriages and gone through the rigours of in vitro fertilisation, she fears that she might never again have another chance to give birth. Now in the 21st week of pregnancy, she urges House to find some way to keep her and the baby alive for at least another two weeks so the baby can reach the point of viability outside the womb. In exasperation, House warns Emma that she has only two days to live. Still, Emma resolutely refuses to consider an abortion.
In the face of this impasse, Dr Lisa Cuddy, House’s boss, takes over the case. As a single woman who has also been trying to conceive a child, Cuddy empathises with Emma. After further investigation, Cuddy recommends exploratory surgery on the baby in the womb despite the risk that Emma, in her fragile medical condition, might not survive the operation. Nonetheless, Emma readily agrees to the surgery and Cuddy persuades House to perform the dangerous operation. In the middle of the procedure, Emma suffers a serious heart attack. With House poised to cut the umbilical cord with surgical scissors, a measure that is sure to kill the baby and might save the mother, Cuddy quickly intervenes, grabs a defibrillator, warns House to step aside or be electrocuted, and tries to shock Emma’s heart back into a normal rhythm. Emma’s heart responds to the treatment and House continues with the operation.
Then, in one of the most dramatic scenes in contemporary television, the baby reaches a tiny hand up through the open womb and grasps House by the finger. House is momentarily stunned. He continues the operation, finds lesions in the baby’s lungs and removes them. The result is a happy ending: Emma and her baby live. And in the final scene, House, the arch-cynic and proponent of abortion, is depicted later that evening sitting at home in the privacy of his den, staring meditatively at his finger.
This episode in House is based on an actual incident that occurred in 1999 at the Vanderbilt Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee -- one of the leading teaching hospitals and medical research centres in the United States. The patient in this case was Samuel Armas, a 21-week-old baby undergoing corrective surgery for spinal bifida. In a famous photograph taken for USA Today, the tiny hand of Baby Samuel is seen reaching out of the womb and grasping a finger of one of the surgeons.
In mimicking this event, as in so many other ways, House reflects contemporary reality. With a content rating in the United States of TV-14 (suitable for older children), the series is one of the most popular television dramas in North America. While hardened cynics and amoral liberals find a soul-mate in House, others cherish the show as a rare example of intelligent television that occasionally dares to explore the continuing relevance of the universal moral truths revealed in Sacred Scripture and affirmed by reason.
Rory Leishman is a freelance journalist in Canada. He is the author of Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).

Ontario's mediocre public schools

2007-09-15T12:03:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
The Ontario Liberal Party proclaims in its official policy platform for 2007 that: “Education is our top priority.” More specifically, the Liberals pledge: “We will complete our drive to have 75 per cent of kids meet the provincial standard in reading, writing and math.”
Voters are entitled to regard this Liberal commitment with considerable scepticism. During the 2003 provincial election campaign, the Ontario Liberal Party likewise promised: “Our Excellence for All plan guarantees that within our first mandate, 75 per cent of our students meet or exceed the provincial standard on province-wide tests.”
What, though, do we find? At the end of the Liberals’ first mandate, the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office reports that only 64 per cent of Grade 6 students passed the provincial standard for reading during the past two years, while in mathematics, only 59 per cent passed this year, down from 61 per cent last year.
However, rather than apologize for this lamentable failure to achieve the Liberals’ supposedly guaranteed 75-per-cent pass rate, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty emphasizes that the province’s elementary students are now achieving higher test scores in reading, writing and math than under the previous Progressive Conservative government. In response, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory points out: “The McGuinty government has been quietly lowering education standards to make the standardized test scores look better.”
Nonetheless, on one point in the educational debate, Tory and McGuinty are agreed: In Tory’s words: “Ontario’s public school system is one of the best in the world.”
This contention is altogether wrong. Ontario public schools are not even the best in Canada. Over the past 25 years, students in Ontario schools have almost always done less well on standard tests of academic achievement than students in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
Why is that? Lack of funding is not the problem. Ontario spends approximately the same amount per student as Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
Likewise, Ontario parents cannot be faulted. They rank among the best educated in the entire country.
In one respect, the Ontario education system stands out from its counterparts in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec: namely, in lack of competition. This difference is crucial. In a study of school choice in Canada, the Society for Quality Education notes: “The high-performing provinces – Alberta, BC, and Quebec – have the most school choice … Unless defenders of the status quo in Ontario can refute decades of test results or prove that the children in some other provinces are intrinsically more intelligent than Ontario students, we must conclude that Ontario’s public schools are not teaching students as effectively as the schools in the provinces with more school choice.”
Regardless, the McGuinty Liberals are committed to maintaining the educational status quo. They adamantly oppose any increase in school choice for Ontario parents.
In contrast, the Progressive Conservatives promise to extend public funding to faith-based independent schools. Such a half-measure is insufficient. The government should offer all parents educational vouchers equivalent to the average cost per student in the publicly funded schools.
Some critics oppose educational vouchers on the ground that they could be used to finance schools run by apologists for Islamist radicals, Tamil terrorists and other extremists. But to deal with this threat, it is not necessary to deprive all parents of the right to school choice. Rather, the government should specifically shut down all subversive, hate-mongering schools and associated houses of worship, whether publicly or privately funded.
McGuinty defames the great majority of independent schools in Ontario, by charging them with undermining the province’s “social cohesion.” And in taking this stance, he boasts: “Teachers’ organizations support us.”
That’s hardly surprising. Thanks to the existing funding formula, the province’s strike-prone teachers’ unions have such a stranglehold over the publicly funded schools that they were able to extort a hugely expensive, four-year contract out of the McGuinty Liberal government that includes wage hikes of almost 10 per cent.
Ontario parents have no reason to share the unions’ enthusiasm. As the Society for Quality Education contends, the determination of the Liberals and New Democrats to oppose any initiative to increase school choice and school competition is bound to assure the continuing inferiority of the quality of education in Ontario schools.

From same-sex marriage to polygamy

2007-09-01T14:21:00.000-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

Time and again, the proponents of traditional marriage and the natural family warned that changing the legal definition of marriage to accommodate same-sex couples could also lead to the legalization of polygamy. Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler disagreed. He insisted that “the practice of polygamy, bigamy and incest are criminal offences in Canada and will continue to be.”

Alas, Cotler’s assurance was worthless, and he knew it. As a former law professor, he understands full well that over the past 20 years, Parliament has abjectly surrendered supreme legislative authority over controversial moral issues such as the legalization of polygamy to the courts.

Neither Cotler nor anyone else can foresee with certainty how the Supreme Court of Canada will deal with polygamy, because most of the judges on that Court have become a law onto themselves: They have no regard either for valid legal enactments or the court’s own precedents.
Richard Peck, a special prosecutor in British Columbia, has underlined the severity of the problem. In a report based on his investigation of allegations of misconduct against members of a Mormon sect in the community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia who practise polygamy as an article of religious belief, he has recommended that the provincial government should ask the courts for an advisory opinion on the current law on polygamy in Canada.
Peck wrote: "The legality of polygamy in Canada has for too long been characterized by uncertainty. The integrity of the legal system suffers from such an impasse.”
Peck is surely right. And the fault lies not with any ambiguity in statute law: Section 293 of the Criminal Code plainly states: “Every one who practises … any form of polygamy … is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”
In an earlier study funded by federal taxpayers and submitted to Cotler, three trendy law professors at Queen’s University took the view that the Supreme Court of Canada would, and should, strike down the legal ban on consensual polygamy as an unjustifiable infringement of the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion in section 2 of the Charter. In contrast, Peck argues: “There is a substantial body of scholarship supporting the position that polygamy is socially harmful. With great respect to those who have given opinions to the contrary, I believe that s. 293 may well be upheld by the courts as consistent with the Charter’s commitment to religious freedom.”
As for B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal, he opposes the legalization of polygamy. "My disagreement is based on the fact that I don't think Canadians would condone polygamy,” he said. “I think Canadians would find it abhorrent."

Perhaps so, but the judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada have no more regard for public opinion than for established law. Regardless of what the great majority of Canadians might prefer, these arrogant judges are all too likely to strike down the ban on polygamy in Canadian law.

In that event, would Oppal call upon Parliament to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution as a means of reinstating the legal ban on polygamy over the objections of the Court? Not likely. And the same goes for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the leaders of every other major federal and provincial party in Canada.

After the Supreme Court of Canada arbitrarily decided in M. v. H., 1999 SCC, to strike down the denial of spousal benefits to same-sex couples under the Ontario Family Law Act, the Ontario Legislature promptly capitulated. Instead of standing up to the Court, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats all colluded in rushing an omnibus bill through the Legislature that conferred spousal benefits upon same-sex couples under not only the Ontario Family Law Act, but some sixty-six other Ontario statutes.

In recent years, judicial activists have imposed everything from abortion on demand to the legalization of the vilest pornography. Voters who oppose these and other immoral judicial enactments, and who wish to revive genuine democracy and the rule of law in Canada, should resolve that from now on, they will only support a candidate, federal or provincial, who can be counted upon to oppose the judicial usurpation of legislative powers.

Customs union the solution for border delays

2007-08-25T12:14:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The Pont de l’Europe linking Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, used to straddle one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world. Today, cars and trucks whiz across the bridge without stopping: There are no border guards, no customs officials and no immigration officers to impede the free flow of goods and people between France and Germany.

Consider, in contrast, the supposedly longest undefended, border in the world between Canada and the United States. Thanks to tight border security, cars and trucks attempting to cross any of the major border points between these two countries routinely experience delays of an hour or more.

In reaction to the September 11 terrorist attack, the United States immediately closed the border altogether. No traffic was allowed to enter the United States by land, sea or air. And for days after the border was reopened, intensified inspections by United States customs officials caused trucking delays of 12-to-18 hours.

The result was a severe economic blow to employers and workers on both sides of the border. On average, some $1.4 billion worth of goods, services and investment income daily crosses the Canada/United States border. More than 100 million people cross that same border every year.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attack, all cross-border traffic was severely curtailed. Some plants such as those in the automobile sector that depend on just-in-time deliveries across the border had to shut down.

At this week’s summit in Montebello, Quebec, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George Bush discussed plans for keeping the border open during future emergencies. Meanwhile, on the provincial level in Ontario, Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield has disclosed that by the end of this year, her department will begin issuing new, more secure driver’s licences with imbedded citizenship information. She hopes that these licences will meet the requirements of a law enacted by the United States Congress that could require everyone seeking entry into the United States to present a passport or some other secure identification document as soon as next summer.

The introduction of easier documentation, more customs inspectors and other similar measures is all to the good, but cannot eliminate the underlying problem of chronic border costs. It has been estimated that brokerage fees, duties, customs administration and waiting times for shipments across the Canada/United States border routinely cost companies at least $10 billion a year.

Allan Gotlieb, Canadian Ambassador to the United States from 1981 to 1988, has long argued that there is only one sufficient remedy: namely, the elimination of all controls on the border between Canada and the United States. In his view, cars and trucks and goods and passengers should be able to sale across the Bluewater Bridge between Canada and the United States in the same way that traffic freely moves across the Pont de L’Europe between France and Germany.

Gotlieb is not alone in taking this view. In recent studies of cross-border trade, Danielle Goldfarb and William B. P. Robson of the C. D. Howe Institute and Alexander Moens of the Fraser Institute have come to the same conclusion.

Of course, eliminating border controls would be no simple matter. Among other measures, Canada and the United States would first have to harmonize their external tariffs, establish mutually acceptable procedures for preventing terrorists from infiltrating their countries, and reach agreement on common food and safety standards.

To the dismay of our more strident Canadian nationalists, some of these issues were discussed at the Montebello summit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was justifiably dismissive of the alleged threat to Canadian independence. He asked reporters: “Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize jelly beans?”

Instead of relying on half measures, Harper should propose an outright customs union and the eventual elimination of all border controls between Canada and the United States. With solid Canadian support, the idea should meet with a favourable reception in the White House and Congress. It stands to reason that the free and unimpeded flow of people and goods across the border between Canada and the United States would enhance the North American Free Trade Agreement which has proven hugely beneficial in boosting living standards for millions of people in both countries.

Our philanthropic neighbours

2007-08-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Compared to the people of the United States, we Canadians are far more generous in supporting the poor, the sick, the needy and other worthy causes, right?

Actually, that assumption is completely false. In a recent study of generosity in Canada and the United States, the Fraser Institute found that charitable donations amount to 1.67 per cent of aggregate income in the United States as compared to just 0.72 per cent in Canada.

This is not to suggest that Canadians are unusually stingy. In Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, reports that the people of the United States also give more than twice as much of their income to charity as the British and Dutch, almost three times as much as the French, more than five times as much as the Germans, and more than 10 times as much as the Italians.

As in Canada, so in every country of Western Europe, the percentage of personal income donated to charity is less than half the level in the United States. Why is that? Why are the peoples of Canada and Western Europe so much less generous than the people of the United States?

One prime factor is the extraordinarily high percentage of committed Christians in the United States. In a recent survey of attitudes in the countries of Europe and North America, the Pew Research Centre found that the proportion of the population for whom religion is “very important” amounts to 59 per cent in the United States as compared to just 30 per cent in Canada, 33 per cent in Britain, 27 per cent in Italy and a mere 11 per cent in France.

Brooks has found that there is a strong and specific correlation between religious faith and support for charity. He relates that: “All across Europe, we find that religious citizens are more than twice as likely to volunteer for charities and causes as secularists.”

In the United States, religious people who say they devote “a great deal of effort” to their spiritual lives are 42 percentage points more likely to contribute to charity than secularists who have little or no religious faith. Moreover, religious Americans do not just give to their churches: They are also significantly more likely than secular Americans to donate money and time to non-religious charities such as the United Way.

Brooks has also found a strong and specific correlation between political ideology and charity. In both the United States and Europe, conservatives who believe in limited government are far more likely to make charitable contributions than are liberals who think government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality.

Note the irony: Liberals who support the governmental redistribution of income are apt to deride conservatives as selfish, yet these liberals are far less likely than conservatives to donate their own time and money to help the poor and needy. Of course, there are subsets within both groups: For example, religious liberals are a lot more generous than secular conservatives.

Many of the liberals who give little or nothing to charity attempt to justify their selfishness on the ground that government is more effective than private charity at redistributing income. Perhaps so, but at what cost? When Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party government of Ontario increased welfare benefits in the middle of a recession at the beginning of the 1990s, the predictable result was a crisis of soaring welfare dependency that demoralized thousands of workers and disrupted their families.

Brooks persuasively argues that the combination of relatively small government and high rates of charitable givings has contributed to the extraordinary economic prosperity and relatively high living standards for all income classes in the United States. And he also contends that it’s no coincidence that unlike Canada and Europe, the United States, the world’s most Christian and conservative democracy, has avoided a calamitous drop in birth rates.

Canadians might well meditate upon Brooks’s findings: Perhaps, with more religious conviction and less reliance on big government, we, too, might also become more generous, more prosperous and less reliant on massive levels of immigration to sustain the population.

Recipients disgrace the Order of Canada

2007-08-01T12:24:00.000-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

Governor General Michaelle Jean outraged many Canadians on June 29, by announcing the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes to the Order of Canada. Hawkes is not only the longstanding pastor of Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church but also one of the foremost gay activists in Canada and a leading proponent of same-sex marriage.

Several critics of the appointment directed their ire at Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That was a mistake. In making appointments to the Order of Canada, the Governor General must act upon the recommendations of an independent advisory council headed by the Chief Justice of Canada.

In addition to the Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada, the advisory council includes five other ex officio members as well as five temporary members who are nominated by the ex officio members of the Council and appointed by the Governor General for a three-year term. Of the 11 persons currently serving on the Advisory Council, the great majority were chosen directly or indirectly by previous Liberal governments.

The appointment of Hawkes is not the only recent controversy engendered by the Order of Canada. In February, Jean conferred the honour on Michele Landsberg, a radical feminist, left-wing journalist and one of the most notorious proponents of abortion on demand in Canada.

Moreover, Jean and the Advisory Committee considered Landsberg worthy to serve not just as an ordinary Member, but as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Four years earlier, Landsberg’s husband, Stephen Lewis, the former leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, was appointed to the highest rank of Companion of the Order of Canada.

In the latest notice of appointments, both former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning have also been designated as Companions of the Order of Canada. In Manning’s case, the distinction is well deserved and most exceptional. Over the past 40 years, few of the social activists among the more than 5,000 Canadians who have been appointed to the Order of Canada have been social conservatives. The overwhelming majority have been liberals and left-wingers.

Notably missing from the ranks of the Order of Canada are such distinguished Canadians as Jim Hughes, leader of the Campaign Life Coalition; Gwen Landolt, National Vice-President of RealWomen of Canada; William Gairdner, author, professor, philanthropist and champion of the natural family; and Dr. L. L. (Barrie) deVeber, who, among a long list of distinctions, is President of The Euthanasia Coalition of Ontario, and Founding President of The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research.

It’s appropriate that many recipients of the Order of Canada are ordinary Canadians who have been recognized for “a lifetime of distinguished service in or to a particular community, group or field of activity.” Who, though, could better qualify for such a distinction than Joanne Dieleman, former director of Aid to Women, a crisis-pregnancy centre located next to an abortuary in downtown Toronto?

Despite having eight children of her own and caring for innumerable foster children, Dieleman found the time and energy over the past 25 years to provide counseling, emotional and financial assistance to women troubled by a crisis pregnancy. During 19 of these years, Dieleman served as the unpaid director of Aid to Women. Altogether, she is credited with helping to save the lives of 1,500 babies.

That Dieleman and others like her have not been named to the Order of Canada is scandalous. At the least, the House of Commons Government Operations Committee should bring McLachlin and her colleagues on the Advisory Council to account before an open hearing and grill them on their biased recommendations for Order of Canada appointments. Most especially, members of the Committee should admonish the Advisory Council to stop discriminating against distinguished Canadians who uphold the natural family and the sanctity of human life.

Given the dominance of transgressive liberals and leftists in Parliament, no such hearing is likely any time soon. Regardless, the failure of the Governor General to appoint principled Canadians like Dieleman to the Order of Canada in recognition of their outstanding service will in no way impair their heroic determination to go on fulfilling their duty to do the right as God gives them to see the right.

Worthy candidates for the Order of Canada

2007-07-14T12:22:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

On June 29, Governor General Michaelle Jean announced the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes to the Order of Canada. He is the pastor of Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church and one of the foremost proponents of same-sex marriage in Canada.

Earlier this year, Jean also invested Michele Landsberg into the Order of Canada, not as an ordinary Member like Hawkes, but with the higher rank of an Officer. Landsberg is a radical feminist, left-wing journalist and one of the most notorious proponents of abortion on demand in Canada.

Critics of these appointments should direct their ire not at Prime Minister Stephen Harper but at Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is the ex officio head of the advisory council that recommends Order of Canada recipients to the Governor General.

Jean has also recently designated former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning as Companions of the Order of Canada. In Manning’s case, the distinction is both well deserved and most exceptional. Over the past 40 years, few of the social activists among the more than 5,000 recipients of the Order of Canada have been social conservatives: The overwhelming majority have been liberals and left-wingers.

Notably missing from the ranks of the Order of Canada are eminent Canadians like Dr. L. L. (Barrie) deVeber, Professor Emeritus in Paediatrics and Oncology at the University of Western Ontario. He is also the former director of the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology program at the Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario.

DeVeber is an internationally recognized pioneer in palliative paediatric dare and currently serves as the President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario. He is also the Founding President of The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, an organization previously known as the Human Life Research Institute that was renamed in his honour in 1996.

As President of Alliance for Life Canada in May, 1975, deVeber presented a petition with more than one million signatures to Parliament, requesting legal protection for the life of the unborn. As a medical researcher, professor, clinician and community volunteer, deVeber ranks among the most accomplished of contemporary Canadians. Yet he holds no rank whatever in the Order of Canada.

Among the many other prominent social conservatives who richly deserve the Order of Canada is Salim Mansur, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. He is internationally renowned as an outspoken Muslim champion of freedom and democracy.

Mansur has frequently appeared on network television and written extensively for newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States, including National Review, the Middle East Forum and Frontpagemag. He is a founder of the Washington-based Centre for Islamic Pluralism; a member of the academic council for the Centre for Security Policy, also based in Washington, DC; and a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.

In February, 2006, Mansur teamed up with David Frum for a debate in Doha, Qatar, with two apologists for Hamas that was broadcast internationally on the BBC. Salim acquitted himself well, forthrightly denouncing the anti-Semitism and terrorism of Hamas. For his impartial advocacy of justice for both Arabs and Israelis, Mansur received a “Profile in Courage” award at a national meeting of the American Jewish Congress in Los Angeles in September.

Granted, not everyone admires Mansur. In a letter in November to UWO President Paul Davenport, Mohammed Elmasry, National President of the Canadian Islamic Congress, denounced Mansur for having allegedly published opinion-based columns that “consistently denigrate Islam and Muslims” and “are filled with hate-literature expressions.”

Elmasry is hardly in a position to level such charges. In 2004, he was subjected to a hate-crime investigation, (albeit never charged), by the Halton Regional Police for having stated on the Michael Coren television program that all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 are fair targets for assassination by Palestinian suicide bombers.

Like Mansur, deVeber also has his critics. Nonetheless, as exemplars of the courage, integrity and moral convictions that are essential to the peace, prosperity and very survival of Canada as a free and democratic county, both deVeber and Mansur clearly rank among the distinguished Canadians who eminently deserve the Order of Canada.

McGuinty flouts the Pope

2007-07-01T12:19:00.000-04:00

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
In an exchange with reporters on May 15, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty repudiated the admonition of Pope Benedict XVI that Catholic politicians are no less obligated than all other people to uphold the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. "I have a different constituency than does the Pope,” said McGuinty. “I am responsible for representing all kinds of people from all kinds of different backgrounds, different faiths, different cultures, different traditions."
McGuinty added: “There’s one particular aspect of myself that is in common with the Pope … I happen to be Catholic.” Is that right? How can anyone claim to be Catholic while defying the most solemn pronouncements of the Church on fundamental principles of morality?
McGuinty, of course, is not alone in taking this self-serving stance. Numerous other Catholic politicians have done the same. In a press conference on May 9, Pope Benedict singled out the Catholic politicians in Mexico who recently voted to legalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of life. Benedict noted that in approving this law, these legislators had excommunicated themselves, because “the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ.”
In response to this statement, McGuinty has, in effect, accused the Pope of violating the separation of church and state. The charge is groundless. The Pope has never issued any instructions to the legislatures of Mexico, Canada, Ontario or any other jurisdiction. He has simply reminded Catholic politicians of their Christian duty to oppose abortion and uphold the sanctity of human life.
McGuinty presumes to disagree. Notwithstanding the Pope’s instruction, he contends that he has an overriding duty as a politician to pander to the people even when their wishes violate the teaching of the Catholic Church on the most profoundly important moral issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Just how far, though, would McGuinty take this argument? Peter Singer, the notorious professor of ethics at Princeton University, argues that the law should permit a medical doctor to kill a severely handicapped newborn infant at the request of the child’s parents. According to McGuinty’s logic, if the majority of the people of Ontario were to embrace this perverse notion, he would be morally obligated as a political leader also to favour infanticide.
That’s plainly absurd. Surely, there must be some vitally important moral principles that McGuinty would not violate for the purpose of gaining and retaining political power.
On one point, McGuinty is right: He and the Pope have different responsibilities. While the Pope has a duty to expound the fundamental principles of the natural moral law, it’s up to legislators like McGuinty to translate those principles into state laws and public policy.
Instead, McGuinty has become a law unto himself. He flouts the fundamental moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II clearly spelled out the position of the Church on abortion in his definitive encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). In remarks directed specifically to legislators, John Paul stated: “When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.”
In Canada, only Parliament can outlaw abortion through an amendment to the federal criminal code. However, the provincial legislatures could at least limit the number of abortions by such measures as defunding the death-dealing procedure, introducing parental notification laws and requiring a mother to see an ultrasound recording of her baby in the womb before consenting to an abortion.
What, though, has McGuinty done to curb abortion on demand in Ontario? Absolutely nothing. He has not even made clear his absolute personal opposition to abortion both as a private individual and a public legislator.
That’s shameful. McGuinty might still be a Catholic, but according to no less an authority than Pope Benedict XVI, he and other likewise errant Catholic politicians are not entitled to approach the Eucharist until they sincerely repent for their complicity in the evil of abortion.

Violent dimensions of marital breakdown

2007-06-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The shocking death by murder suicide of two London police officers earlier this month has underlined once again that no Canadians are immune to the potentially violent consequences of a breakdown in marital relations. However, the extent of spousal homicide in Canada should not be exaggerated. The fact is that such tragic and deplorable crimes are rare, and getting rarer.

In a study published last year by Statistics Canada, Melanie Kowalskir eported that there were only 74 spousal homicides in all of Canada during 2004. Moreover, the rate of spousal homicides in 2004 was just 4.3 per one million spouses, down 16 per cent from 2000.

While most of the perpetratorswere male, fully 20 per cent were female. Common law spouses are especially at risk. According to Statistics Canada, they comprised just 13 per cent of spousal relationships, yet accounted forno less than 40 per cent of all spousal homicides between 1994 and 2004.

Of course, spousal homicide is only a small, albeit extreme, part of the overall issue of spousal violence. To get an accurate understanding of the full extent of the problem, Statistics Canada conducted a massive General Social Survey (GSS) on Victimization in 1999. This study, the most definitive ever conducted on family violence in Canada, was based on arandom sample of approximately 24,000 Canadian men and women aged 15 and over.

The results were startling. Although government and the mass media concentrated then, as they continue to do now, almost exclusively on spousal violence against women, Statistics Canada found in this study that men are hardly less likely than women to be victims of spousal violence. Specifically, Statistics Canada reports: “Results from the 1999 GSS found that eight per cent of women and seven per cent of men who were married or living common-law experienced some type of spousal violence in the past five years.” A follow-up survey in 2004 produced similar results, although the number of victims had marginally declined by about 47,000 among women and 4,000 among men.

The GSS surveys have also found that men and women vary in the kind of spousal violence they experience. For example, far more men than women say they have been kicked, bitten, hit or slapped by a spouse, whereas far more women than men say they have been beaten, choked or sexually assaulted in a spousal attack.

Women are also more likely than men to use a weapon in a spousal fight. However, given the superior physical strength of men, it’s not surprising that women usually come out the worse in spousal brawls. The 2004 GSS survey found that 13 per cent of the female victims of spousal abuse, compared to only two per cent of the men, said they had sought medical attention for aninjury inflicted in a violent altercation with their spouse.

This same survey also indicated that spousal violence is more than “twice as common among homosexual couples compared with heterosexual couples.” Studies in other countries have come to similar conclusions. In 2003, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported that a representative, cross-sectional survey of men and women in England and Wales had found that “38 per cent of the gay men and 31 per cent of the lesbians admitted having been physically attacked during the preceding five years.”

Altogether, the data from Canada and elsewhere indicate that people living in common law marriages and same-sex unions are far more likely than legally married couples to become embroiled in spousal violence. Why is that?

A large part of the explanation is that common law relationships and same sex unions are much more prone to breakdown than are legally married unions.It is during the period when an intimate sexual relationship is breakingapart that tensions between the couples tend to escalate and the risks of spousal violence become the most acute.

Here, then, is one among many good reasons for Canadians to avoid informal sexual liaisons outside of marriage: There is overwhelming statistical evidence to prove that legally married husbands and wives who fulfil their wedding vows to love and cherish each other in a sexually exclusive relationship are exceedingly unlikely to experience spousal homicide or any other form of domestic violence.

A user-pay solution to traffic congestion

2007-06-02T13:19:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Over the past 40 years, London, like every other city in Canada, has been on a road-building spree: Virtually every major artery has been significantlyexpanded, yet the traffic congestion is worse than ever. What can be done?

It’s evident that simply building and expanding ever more roads and streets in growing cities like London will not solve the problem. Experience from around the world suggests that no amount of road construction can keep pace with the rapidly increasing numbers of cars in countries that are blessed with sustained economic growth.

Some environmentalists contend that a hefty increase in gasoline taxes would eliminate traffic congestion, although there is no evidence to support this contention. Throughout Western Europe, many cities are plagued with massive traffic jams, despite modern roads and gasoline taxes that are more than two and three times higher than in Canada.

Many cities in Europe and North America have found that a combination of reduced fares and better service for mass transit can persuade some commuters to abandon their cars, but not nearly enough to end traffic jams. It’s a safe bet that even if mass transit were free, a large proportion of urban commuters would still prefer to travel directly to their homes,workplaces and other destinations by automobile despite the inconvenience of traffic jams.

Commuters are all the more likely to travel by automobile, when it’s not they, themselves, but the entire community that has to pay much of the costs for traffic congestion in the form of higher greenhouse gas emissions as well as expensive delays in moving people and merchandise. Moreover, these costs are not at all trivial. Transport Canada recently estimated that traffic delays cost nine large urban areas more than $3 billion annually.

What, then, can be done? Robert Lindsey, a professor of economics at the University of Alberta, commends the solution advanced by Ken Livingston, the socialist mayor of London, England, who is popularly known as “Red Ken.” In an illuminating commentary for the C. D. Howe Institute entitled “Congestion Relief: Assessing the Case for Road Tolls in Canada,” Lindsey points out that Livingston first invested in additional transit buses during his inaugural term in office and then, in February, 2003, levied a new system of road tolls called the London Congestion Charge on motorists driving into a 21-square kilometer area in the centre of the city between 7:00 am and 6:30 pm on weekdays.

Vehicles entering this core area are identified by cameras like those used on Toronto’s 407 toll road that automatically photographs the licence plates of passing vehicles. This efficient system is a considerable money maker. Under terms of the Greater London Authority Act, all of the revenues generated by the London Congestion Charge must be used to improve the city’s network of roads, streets and facilities for mass transit.

So far, Livingstone’s initiative has proven to be hugely successful. Both traffic congestion and automobile pollution have been considerably reduced. And virtually all in the city have benefited: Everyone who still drives into the heart of the city encounters fewer traffic jams, while all others enjoy the advantages of improved mass transit, including faster bus service on congestion-free roads and streets.

Of course, a system that works for a vast metropolis like London, England, might not be suitable for many smaller cities. However, Lindsey points out in his commentary that over the past 20 years, the Norwegian cities of Bergen and Trondheim – both less than half the size of London, Ontario –have also come up with systems for charging motorists entering into their downtown areas that have been successful in reducing congestion, cutting pollution and raising considerable revenues for improving urban transportation and financing environmental projects.

Lindsey makes a compelling case in his commentary for having Canada’s largest cities -- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – experiment with roadtolls. Politicians and city engineers in smaller cities like London, Ontario, should also give serious consideration to this idea.

Make the polluter pay is a sound principle. And there is no better way to make car drivers pay for their pollution than through a system of road tolls that are well calculated to cut greenhouse gas emissions and ease traffic congestion.

A significant pro-life judicial victory

2007-06-01T18:04:00.000-04:00

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
In a landmark, five-to-four ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart on April 18, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act which the Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003.
In reasons for the majority in Carhart, Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedy described partial-birth abortion (also known as intact dilation and evacuation) as a procedure in which an abortion doctor typically delivers all but the head of a living baby from the womb, before piercing or crushing the baby’s skull so the head can pass through the cervix.
Kennedy agreed with the finding of the United States Congress that: “Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." On this basis, he upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which makes it is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment for an abortion doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion, unless the procedure is “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”
The Parliament of Canada should take note: Thanks to the calamitous judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988, Canada is the only democracy in the world that has no law governing abortion. If a mother decides, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants her pre-born baby, it is lawful in Canada for an unscrupulous abortion doctor to kill that baby at any time during the pregnancy right up to just a few seconds before birth.
Granted, late-term abortions are very rare in Canada. But so is infanticide. It makes no sense for the Criminal Code to condemn the deliberate killing of a newborn infant, while doing nothing to curtail late-term abortions.
Carhart represents a small, but significant, step back from the 1973 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that initiated abortion on demand. In a torturous attempt to justify this decision, the majority of the Court in Roe argued that women have a right to abortion by virtue of the “right to privacy” contained in “penumbras formed by emanations” of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have repudiated Roe. In a concurring opinion in Carhart, they reiterated their view “that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.”
In a future case that deals directly with Roe, Chief Justice John Roberts and Mr. Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. -– both recent appointees of President Bush – are likely also to agree that Roe was wrongly decided, because there is nothing in the plain language or the history of Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits the legislatures of the states from constricting abortion.
Correspondingly, there is nothing in the plain language or the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that authorized the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down Canada’s abortion law. In a dissenting opinion in Morgentaler, Mr. Justice William McIntyre persuasively argued that even in the Charter era, it is “for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy.”
McIntyre explained: “This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities -- the exposure to public opinion and information -- as well as the political power to make effective its decisions.”
In Morgentaler, McIntyre exercised judicial restraint: He fulfilled his duty as a judge to uphold the law and the Constitution, while leaving legislating to legislators.
Alas, there is today no judge on the Supreme Court of Canada in the McIntyre mould. None can be counted upon to uphold the separation of legislative and judicial powers.
Our judicial rulers in Canada profess to be enlightened and compassionate, yet none shows any disposition to agree with judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the urgent need to curtail at least the horrors of partial-birth abortion. What a shame and what a pity.

Barbaric abortion procedure outlawed

2007-05-12T13:52:00.000-04:00

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a landmark, five-to-four ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart on April 18, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act which the Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003.

In reasons for the majority in Carhart, Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedydescribed partial-birth abortion (also known as intact dilation and evacuation) as a procedure in which an abortion doctor typically delivers all but the head of a living baby from the womb, before piercing or crushing the baby’s skull so the head can pass through the cervix.

Kennedy agreed with the finding of the United States Congress that: “Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." On this basis, he upheld the Partial-BirthAbortion Ban Act, which makes it is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment for an abortion doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion, unless the procedure is “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”

The Parliament of Canada should take note: Thanks to the calamitous judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988, Canada is the only democracy in the world that has no law governing abortion. If a mother decides, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants her pre-born baby, it is lawful in Canada for an unscrupulous abortion doctor to kill that baby at any time during the pregnancy right up to just a few seconds before birth.

Granted, late-term abortions are very rare in Canada. But so is infanticide. It makes no sense for the Criminal Code to condemn the deliberate killing of a newborn infant, while doing nothing to curtail late-term abortions.

Carhart represents a small step back from the 1973 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that initiated abortion on demand. In a torturous attempt to justify this ruling, the majority of the Court in Roe argued that women have a right to abortion by virtue of the “right to privacy” contained in “penumbras formed by emanations” of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have repudiated Roe. In a concurring opinion in Carhart, they reiterated their view “that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.”

In a future case that deals directly with Roe, Chief Justice John Roberts and Mr. Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. -– both recent appointees of PresidentBush – are likely also to agree that Roe was wrongly decided, because there is nothing in the plain language or the history of Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits the legislatures of the statesfrom constricting abortion.

Correspondingly, there is nothing in the plain language or the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that authorized the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down Canada’s abortion law. In a dissenting opinion in Morgentaler, Mr. Justice William McIntyre persuasively argued that it is not for the courts, but “for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy.”McIntyre explained: “This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities -- the exposure to public opinion and information -- as well as the political power to makeeffective its decisions.”

In Morgentaler, McIntyre exercised judicial restraint: He fulfilled his duty as a judge to uphold the law and the Constitution, while leaving legislating to legislators.

Alas, there is today no judge on the Supreme Court of Canada who can be counted upon to uphold the separation of legislative and judicial powers. While our judicial rulers profess to be enlightened and compassionate, none shows any disposition to agree with judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the urgent need to curtail at least the horrors of partial-birth abortion.

What a shame.