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.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Pro-life gains in the United States
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.
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.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Courts have no role in foreign policy
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.
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.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Economist rediscovers marriage
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.
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.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Courageous Muslim Democrat
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.”
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.”
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Self-serving Canadian twaddle
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.
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.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Judicial suppression of the rule of law
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.
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.
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