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.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Bottom Billion
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Reaffirming ethical medical research
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.
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.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Muslim attack on Maclean's
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.”
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.”
Saturday, December 01, 2007
New Life Matters
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."
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."
Saturday, November 17, 2007
An egregious case of parental abuse
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.”
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.”
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