Justin Trudeau must set a new standard for sexual propriety in great part because his father dismantled traditional values
It feels like good fortune to watch this full circle moment when the son must grapple with what the father wrought. Mere weeks ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke emphatically about his insistence on proper conduct between the sexes on Parliament Hill and, by extension, among Canadians generally. While North America grapples with the newest…
The Liberals’ latest decision means summer employment is now a testing ground for ideological adhesion, obedience and purity
It’s tough work to imagine two groups more radically different than the Canadian Council of Christian Charities and the gays rights network LGBTory. So when both join the rising chorus opposing changes to what should be among Ottawa’s most innocuous programs, it’s a signal something significant is going on. The Four Cs, as the council…
Contrition that’s merely on the lips changes nothing in the heart or, for that matter, around the waistline, within the workplace, inside troubled relationships
It’s traditional to head into a new year full of resolve fuelled by last year’s regret. Our commitment to renewed discipline, diets and dream-achieving over the coming 12 months is all too often driven by short-term overindulgence during Christmas festivities. More importantly, there’s a lingering sense of another year lost by not doing what we…
Universities should bring young people into the disciplines and rigours of an examined life, into the habits of careful thinking
While at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), I got to know a history teacher who was a passionate and self-proclaimed Marxist. She loved to talk about the inequality and injustices that plagued the city, the province, the country and, well, the cosmos. I asked her one morning if she wouldn’t mind splitting…
If we’re not careful, we may recognize too late how critical they are in dealing with the ever-shifting social stresses of modern life
If any one religious congregation disappeared from your city, would your community and city be better or worse off? There are Canadians who think it would be better if they did disappear, like old relics that have become burdensome, even embarrassing. The think-tank Cardus published the results of research that examined the question through The…
Quebecers find themselves taking sides in language squabbles their better judgment says are irrelevant to life outside the political bubble
Quebec’s anglophones, francophones and allophones should all be on their smart phones demanding to know what in the name of Saint René Lévesque just happened in the National Assembly. “We are not a small people,” the late premier, Lévesque, famously said after his victorious Parti Quebecois stunned everyone on election night in 1976. “We are…
Non-believers overwhelmingly believe every religious community in Canada, especially Muslims and evangelical Christians, hurt the country
Throughout autumn, the soup of our multicultural society has almost boiled over with questions about secularism and religion – of what is and isn’t allowed in contemporary public and common Canadian life. Efforts to relegate religious expression and thought to the margins have been ramped up. Those efforts, however, are out of step with broader…
Proposed amendments to Bill C-51 mean MPs understand that religious services and sacred spaces aren’t the same as any other public gathering
Sometimes Parliament works just the way the textbooks say it’s supposed to. Take for example the way the House of Commons justice committee dealt with Bill C-51, which aims to erase “outdated” parts of the Criminal Code. The committee held hearings. Government and opposition MPs listened to and questioned those who came to testify. Then…
The federal government needs to affirm the importance of freedom of religion and conscience by preserving Section 176
In June, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould tabled in the House of Commons omnibus legislation to amend the Criminal Code and Department of Justice Act. One of Bill C-51’s provisions should concern Canadians for what it proposes and says about the value we place on religious freedom and our understanding of sacred space. The bill would…
Subjecting parents choosing such schools for their children to extra costs is discriminatory
By Derek J. Allison Deani Neven Van Pelt and Beth Green Cardus You could call it a step forward in fairness for Canadians who send their kids to independent schools. The Toronto Board of Health recently recommended the extension of its student nutrition programs to qualified independent schools. That means more than 300 independent schools…
Home-schooling successes show that parents and kids can be far more responsible for decisions about their education than imagined
By Deani Van Pelt and Beth Green Cardus Back-to-school means different things for many of Canada’s five million school-age children. For an increasing share of students in almost every province, it means something other than attending a neighbourhood public school. Home-schooling, while still small in overall uptake – Manitoba has the highest share at 1.5…
If abortion is such a hard decision, as even advocates maintain, why aren't women allowed the time to make it?
There are Canadian women whose waiting doesn’t matter. And then there are Canadian women whose waiting is especially terrible and reported on regularly. The Canadian Press reported on Aug. 15 that a 29-year-old whose birth control failed got the abortion she wanted. Except it wasn’t quite fast enough. She waited two months for her abortion…
Independent schools achieve a better balance of good academic, civic, religious and spiritual outcomes
Parents, what are the top three things to pack in your kid’s school bag? These days, back-to-school supplies like coloured pencils and geometry sets run a poor second place to YouTube. At the end of the summer vacation, when I checked out videos about the best hairstyles, the best first-day-back outfits and hacks for making…
A healthy marriage contributes to family stability so there’s a need for recovery of the institution. But how?
By Andrea Mrozek and Peter Jon Mitchell Cardus You could sugar-coat the newly-released 2016 Census data on families, households and marital status by applauding the rise of family diversity in Canada. Yet family diversity is so often a euphemism for family breakdown, which is something that’s generally painful. A more honest take on the Statistics…
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibit mythologizes the 1960s by ignoring the dark ugliness masked by all those drug-addled smiles
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a major institution in Canada’s only real city, which is why its summer Revolution exhibit is such a serious letdown. Devotees of the museum expect far better than Revolution’s intellectually lazy merchandising of 1960s mythology. Based around the eponymous Beatles song, Revolution purports to be a fresh exploration…
It feels like good fortune to watch this full circle moment when the son must grapple with what the father wrought. Mere weeks ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke emphatically about his insistence on proper conduct between the sexes on Parliament Hill and, by extension, among Canadians generally. While North America grapples with the newest…
