Canada Grants Right to Active Euthanasia

Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-14, the euthanasia and assisted suicide bill.

The Senate first passed Bill C-14 a few days ago with seven amendments from the original bill that was passed in the House of Commons on May 31.
Yesterday, the House of Commons removed a controversial amendment and a protective amendment in the Senate version of the bill and then sent it back to the Senate for approval.

This morning the Senate considered an amendment that would have referred the terminal illness provision in the bill (natural death is reasonably foreseeable) to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that amendment was defeated.

The controversial issue was the requirement that a medical or nurse practitioner could approve a lethal injection if the person’s “natural death is reasonably foreseeable.” Parliament insisted that this requirement remain in the bill while the Senate argued that the Supreme Court did not state that a person must be “terminally ill.”

The final bill maintains that “natural death must be reasonably foreseeable.”

I was disappointed that House of Commons withdrew the amendment that prohibited a beneficiary from participating in a persons assisted death or signing the person’s request for assisted death. This was an amendment that protected people from a greedy beneficiary or an unscrupulous family member.

The final bill allows a beneficiary to participate in the act, even to lethally inject.
The Senate then passed Bill C-14 by a vote of 44 to 28. The response from parliament was to declare a summer recess.

The bill that determines how Canadians will kill Canadians was passed on the last day of the parliamentary schedule in time for the summer recess.

Bill C-14 now goes to the Governor General to be signed.

No attempts were made to amend the most grievous parts of Bill C-14.

1. Bill C-14 provides medical practitioners or nurse practitioners legal immunity for decisions or acts that contravene the law.

•Section 241.3 states: Before a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner provides a person with medical assistance in dying, the medical or nurse practitioner must: (a) be of the opinion that the person meets all of the criteria set out in subsection (1);

• Section 227(3) states: For greater certainty, the exemption set out in subsection (1) or (2) applies even if the person invoking it has a reasonable but mistaken belief about any fact that is an element of the exemption.

These sections of the law ensure that a medical or nurse practitioner will never be prosecuted for decisions or acts that contravene Bill C-14.

2. Bill C-14 allows anyone to cause death by euthanasia or assisted suicide.


• Bill C-14 – Section 227(2) states: No person is a party to culpable homicide if they do anything for the purpose of aiding a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner to provide a person with medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241.‍2.


• Bill C-14 – Section 241(3) states: No person is a party to an offence under paragraph (1)(b) if they do anything for the purpose of aiding a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner to provide a person with medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241.‍2.


• Bill C-14 – Section 241(5) states: No person commits an offence under paragraph (1)‍(b) if they do anything, at another person’s explicit request, for the purpose of aiding that other person to self-administer a substance that has been prescribed for that other person as part of the provision of medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241.‍2.

No jurisdiction in the world offers legal immunity to anyone who does anything for the purposes of assisting death. Bill C-14 is the most wide-open bill in the world. It is even worse than the Belgian law. Recent studies from Belgium indicate that more than 1000 assisted deaths occur without request each year.

Alex Schadenberg, the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, writes, "I cannot understand why people remain so blind about the implications of the language of Bill C-14. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will resist the cultural acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide." You can read his blog here.

Canada Waffles on International Funding for Abortions

Some Canadian grant money funds International Planned Parenthood Federation which is the world's largest provider of abortions. 

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

NEW YORK, June 6 (C-FAM) The defining feature of Canada’s ambitious multi-billion-dollar international plan to help mothers and newborns is not what it provides, but what it leaves out, namely, abortion.

As Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised a further $3.5 billion dollars to his signature foreign policy health initiative at a Toronto summit last week, abortion advocates renewed their call for him to not “separate abortion from maternal health.”

Harper told the Globe and Mail, “What we have been trying to do since 2010 is build broad public and international consensus for saving the lives of mothers and babies,” he said. “You cannot do that if you introduce that other issue.”

Harper’s reluctance to refer to “that other issue” by name reflects the stigma around abortion worldwide, including in Canada, which has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world. It is because of this stigma that abortion advocacy groups have made great efforts to fit themselves into the broad maternal health umbrella – and why they protest so strongly at being evicted from beneath it.

Canada is not alone among major donors in blocking aid funding for foreign abortions – the U.S. has done so since shortly after abortion was legalized at the national level by the Supreme Court decisionRoe v. Wade.

When philanthropist Melinda Gates announced her goal to make family planning her signature issue, she explicitly stated that she would not fund abortions. While she has drawn criticism for partnering with organizations that advocate for and provide abortions, Gates has not changed her public stance.

In the same Globe and Mail interview, Gates spoke favorably about Harper’s initiative focusing on pregnancy and childbirth. “Maternal and child health is on the global health agenda, in part, really, thanks to what Canada did.”

She later reflected, “every journalist also focused on Canada’s policy on abortion.” She argued that conflating abortion with other issues stalls progress and undermines cooperation. “I’ve decided not to engage on it publicly—and the Gates Foundation has decided not to fund abortion.”

Many of the editorials urging Canada to fund overseas abortions as a component of maternal health cited the same statistic: that abortions cause approximately 13% of maternal deaths worldwide. The WHO has recently released an estimate saying the actual number may be closer to 8%.

Like the Gates Foundation, Canada’s maternal health initiative prohibits directly funding abortion, but the situation on the ground in recipient countries can depend on the agencies the donor chooses as partners. LifeSiteNews reports that Canadian grant money will go to International Planned Parenthood Federation, the world’s largest abortion provider, but only in countries where abortion is illegal or heavily restricted. Among these countries is Bangladesh, which permits abortion under the name “menstrual regulation” during the first trimester. It is unclear that the funding would be segregated to prevent its use to fund this procedure.

Nevertheless, Canada is not only establishing itself as a global leader on maternal and child health but demonstrating that this work does not require funding for abortion, and inheriting the moral and political controversy that goes with it.

“The fact of the matter is it’s not only divisive in our country and in other donor countries, it’s extremely divisive in recipient countries where it’s often illegal,” said Harper. “There are obviously some organizations that advance that issue but the government of Canada does not advance that issue.”

From here.

Secular Quebec is Poised to Euthanize

QUEBEC CITY — Quebec is North America’s most European jurisdiction, but this doesn’t appear to be an asset in terms of valuing human life, economic health or the preservation of its Catholic heritage.

The predominantly French-speaking Canadian province has this continent’s lowest birth rate, at 1.5 children per woman, the highest debt-to-GDP ratio at 94%, the lowest weekly church attendance at 6% of residents — and soon, if its separatist Parti Quebecois government has its way, it will add euthanasia to the list of dubious similarities.

However, the term “euthanasia” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Quebec government’s Bill 52, “An Act Respecting End-of-Life Care.” While it offers doctor-applied fatal injections to those wishing to escape painful, terminal illnesses, it calls this “palliative care … including terminal palliative sedation and medical aid in dying.”

Read it all here.

Canada: Unethical Nutritional "Research" on Indian Children

A controversial report in the journal Social History - recounting details of grossly unethical 'nutritional research' carried out by the Canadian government on native Indian children in the 1940s and 50s - has sparked outrage among Canada's aboriginal community.

The article, 'Admistering Colonial Science', describes a range of trials run by three key Canadian scientists to discover the effects of different nutritional interventions on malnourished children. Thousands of Indians from reserves and church schools took part in the trials. Many of them were, for scientific purposes, denied basic dietary requirements and health care, putting their short and long-term health in jeopardy.

In one trial, after the discovery of widespread malnourishment in Northern Manitoba, the government deliberately withheld vitamin supplements from 175 children so as to create a 'control group' for impending research. In another trial, 1000 children from state-funded boarding schools were given less than half the necessary daily intake of milk, thus creating a 'baseline' against which to test vitamin C supplements. Later, children from six schools were denied dental care.

As Nature reported, the Assembly of First Nations has demanded the release of all information relating to the studies. The Aboriginal affairs department labeled the experiments "abhorrent", and said they had given 900 documents to a commission investigating abuses in residential schools.

Canada and Same Sex Partnerships

Would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages be much of a game-changer? What impact, if any, would it have on the public conception of marriage or the state of a nation’s marriage culture?

There has been no shortage of speculation on these questions. But the limited American experience with same-sex marriage to date gives us few concrete answers. So it makes sense to consider the Canadian experience since the first Canadian court established same-sex marriage a decade ago. There are, of course, important cultural and institutional differences between the US and Canada and, as is the case in any polity, much depends upon the actions of local political and cultural actors. That is to say, it is not necessarily safe to assume that Canadian experiences will be replicated here. But they should be considered; the Canadian experience is the best available evidence of the short-term impact of same-sex marriage in a democratic society very much like America.

Anyone interested in assessing the impact of same-sex marriage on public life should investigate the outcomes in three spheres: first, human rights (including impacts on freedom of speech, parental rights in public education, and the autonomy of religious institutions); second, further developments in what sorts of relationships political society will be willing to recognize as a marriage (e.g., polygamy); and third, the social practice of marriage.

The Impact on Human Rights

The formal effect of the judicial decisions (and subsequent legislation) establishing same-sex civil marriage in Canada was simply that persons of the same-sex could now have the government recognize their relationships as marriages. But the legal and cultural effect was much broader. What transpired was the adoption of a new orthodoxy: that same-sex relationships are, in every way, the equivalent of traditional marriage, and that same-sex marriage must therefore be treated identically to traditional marriage in law and public life.

A corollary is that anyone who rejects the new orthodoxy must be acting on the basis of bigotry and animus toward gays and lesbians. Any statement of disagreement with same-sex civil marriage is thus considered a straightforward manifestation of hatred toward a minority sexual group. Any reasoned explanation (for example, those that were offered in legal arguments that same-sex marriage is incompatible with a conception of marriage that responds to the needs of the children of the marriage for stability, fidelity, and permanence—what is sometimes called the conjugal conception of marriage), is dismissed right away as mere pretext.

When one understands opposition to same-sex marriage as a manifestation of sheer bigotry and hatred, it becomes very hard to tolerate continued dissent. Thus it was in Canada that the terms of participation in public life changed very quickly. Civil marriage commissioners were the first to feel the hard edge of the new orthodoxy; several provinces refused to allow commissioners a right of conscience to refuse to preside over same-sex weddings, and demanded their resignations. At the same time, religious organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, were fined for refusing to rent their facilities for post-wedding celebrations.

The Right to Freedom of Expression

The new orthodoxy’s impact has not been limited to the relatively small number of persons at risk of being coerced into supporting or celebrating a same-sex marriage. The change has widely affected persons—including clergy—who wish to make public arguments about human sexuality.

Much speech that was permitted before same-sex marriage now carries risks. Many of those who have persisted in voicing their dissent have been subjected to investigations by human rights commissions and (in some cases) proceedings before human rights tribunals. Those who are poor, poorly educated, and without institutional affiliation have been particularly easy targets—anti-discrimination laws are not always applied evenly. Some have been ordered to pay fines, make apologies, and undertake never to speak publicly on such matters again. Targets have included individuals writing letters to the editors of local newspapers, and ministers of small congregations of Christians. A Catholic bishop faced two complaints—both eventually withdrawn—prompted by comments he made in a pastoral letter about marriage.

Reviewing courts have begun to rein in the commissions and tribunals (particularly since some ill-advised proceedings against Mark Steyn andMaclean’s magazine in 2009), and restore a more capacious view of freedom of speech. And in response to the public outcry following the Steyn/Maclean’saffair, the Parliament of Canada recently revoked the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s statutory jurisdiction to pursue “hate speech.”

But the financial cost of fighting the human rights machine remains enormous—Maclean’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, none of which is recoverable from the commissions, tribunals, or complainants. And these cases can take up to a decade to resolve. An ordinary person with few resources who has drawn the attention of a human rights commission has no hope of appealing to the courts for relief; such a person can only accept the admonition of the commission, pay a (comparatively) small fine, and then observe the directive to remain forever silent. As long as these tools remain at the disposal of the commissions—for whom the new orthodoxy gives no theoretical basis to tolerate dissent—to engage in public discussion about same-sex marriage is to court ruin.

Similar pressure can be—and is—brought to bear on dissenters by professional governing bodies (such as bar associations, teachers’ colleges, and the like) that have statutory power to discipline members for conduct unbecoming of the profession. Expressions of disagreement with the reasonableness of institutionalizing same-sex marriage are understood by these bodies to be acts of illegal discrimination, which are matters for professional censure.

Teachers are particularly at risk for disciplinary action, for even if they only make public statements criticizing same-sex marriage outside the classroom, they are still deemed to create a hostile environment for gay and lesbian students. Other workplaces and voluntary associations have adopted similar policies as a result of their having internalized this new orthodoxy that disagreement with same-sex marriage is illegal discrimination that must not be tolerated.

Parental Rights in Public Education

Institutionalizing same-sex marriage has subtly but pervasively changed parental rights in public education. The debate over how to cast same-sex marriage in the classroom is much like the debate over the place of sex education in schools, and of governmental pretensions to exercise primary authority over children. But sex education has always been a discrete matter, in the sense that by its nature it cannot permeate the entirety of the curriculum. Same-sex marriage is on a different footing.

Since one of the tenets of the new orthodoxy is that same-sex relationships deserve the same respect that we give marriage, its proponents have been remarkably successful in demanding that same-sex marriage be depicted positively in the classroom. Curriculum reforms in jurisdictions such as British Columbia now prevent parents from exercising their long-held veto power over contentious educational practices.

The new curricula are permeated by positive references to same-sex marriage, not just in one discipline but in all. Faced with this strategy of diffusion, the only parental defense is to remove one’s children from the public school system entirely. Courts have been unsympathetic to parental objections: if parents are clinging to outdated bigotries, then children must bear the burden of “cognitive dissonance”—they must absorb conflicting things from home and school while school tries to win out.

The reforms, of course, were not sold to the public as a matter of enforcing the new orthodoxy. Instead, the stated rationale was to prevent bullying; that is, to promote the acceptance of gay and lesbian youth and the children of same-sex households.

It is a laudable goal to encourage acceptance of persons. But whatever can be said for the objective, the means chosen to achieve it is a gross violation of the family. It is nothing less than the deliberate indoctrination of children (over the objections of their parents) into a conception of marriage that is fundamentally hostile to what the parents understand to be in their children’s best interests. It frustrates the ability of parents to lead their children to an understanding of marriage that will be conducive to their flourishing as adults. At a very early age, it teaches children that the underlying rationale of marriage is nothing other than the satisfaction of changeable adult desires for companionship.

Religious Institutions’ Right to Autonomy

At first glance, clergy and houses of worship appeared largely immune from coercion to condone or perform same-sex marriages. Indeed, this was the grand bargain of the same-sex marriage legislation—clergy would retain the right not to perform marriages that would violate their religious beliefs. Houses of worship could not be conscripted against the wishes of religious bodies.

It should have been clear from the outset just how narrow this protection is. It only prevents clergy from being coerced into performing marriage ceremonies. It does not, as we have seen, shield sermons or pastoral letters from the scrutiny of human rights commissions. It leaves congregations vulnerable to legal challenges if they refuse to rent their auxiliary facilities to same-sex couples for their ceremony receptions, or to any other organization that will use the facility to promote a view of sexuality wholly at odds with their own.

Neither does it prevent provincial and municipal governments from withholding benefits to religious congregations because of their marriage doctrine. For example, Bill 13, the same Ontario statute that compels Catholic schools to host “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs (and to use that particular name), also prohibits public schools from renting their facilities to organizations that will not agree to a code of conduct premised on the new orthodoxy. Given that many small Christian congregations rent school auditoriums to conduct their worship services, it is easy to appreciate their vulnerability.

Changes to the Public Conception of Marriage

It has been argued that if same-sex marriage is institutionalized, new marital categories may be accepted, like polygamy. Once one abandons a conjugal conception of marriage, and replaces it with a conception of marriage that has adult companionship as its focus, there is no principled basis for resisting the extension of marriage licenses to polygamist and polyamorist unions.

In other words, if marriage is about satisfying adult desires for companionship, and if the desires of some adults extend to more novel arrangements, how can we deny them? I will not here evaluate this claim, but simply report how this scenario has played out in Canada.

One prominent polygamist community in British Columbia was greatly emboldened by the creation of same-sex marriage, and publicly proclaimed that there was now no principled basis for the state’s continued criminalization of polygamy. Of all the Canadian courts, only a trial court in British Columbia has addressed whether prohibiting polygamy is constitutional, and provided an advisory opinion to the province’s government. The criminal prohibition of polygamy was upheld, but on a narrow basis that defined polygamy as multiple, concurrent civil marriages. The court did not address the phenomenon of multiple common-law marriages. So, thus far, the dominant forms of polygamy and polyamory practiced in Canada have not gained legal status, but neither have they faced practical impediments.

The lesson is this: a society that institutionalizes same-sex marriage needn’t necessarily institutionalize polygamy. But the example from British Columbia suggests that the only way to do so is to ignore principle. The polygamy case’s reasoning gave no convincing explanation why it would be discriminatory not to extend the marriage franchise to gays and lesbians, but not discriminatory to draw the line at polygamists and polyamorists. In fact, the judgment looks like it rests on animus toward polygamists and polyamorists, which is not a stable juridical foundation.




The Impact on the Practice of Marriage

As for the practice of marriage, it is too soon to say much. The 2011 census data establish that, first, marriage is in decline in Canada, as it is in much of the West; second, same-sex marriage is a statistically minor phenomenon; and third, there are very few same-sex couples (married or not) with children in the home.

There are approximately 21,000 married same-sex couples in Canada, out of 6.29 million married couples. Same-sex couples (married and unmarried) constitute 0.8% of all couples in Canada; 9.4% of the 64,575 same-sex couples (including common-law and married) have children in the home, and 80% of these are lesbian couples. By contrast, 47.2% of heterosexual couples have children in the home. Canada stopped tracking divorce after 2008, and has never provided data on same-sex divorce.

What we can gather from these data is that same-sex marriage has not, contrary to arguments that it would, powered a resurgent marriage culture in Canada. Nor are there any census data (one way or the other) for empirical arguments tying the institutionalization of same-sex marriage to marriage stability.

Without empirical data on divorce rates (which are not forthcoming in Canada), we are left with conceptual arguments that must be evaluated on their merits. Here, the Canadian experience cannot provide much information. We are left with the question, does the institutionalization of same-sex marriage rest on a conception of marriage that places a premium on stability, as does the conjugal conception? If it does not, then we can reasonably believe same-sex marriage will speed up cultural acceptance of a conception of marriage—the adult companionate model—that has done much social damage over the past fifty years.

Bradley W. Miller is an associate professor of law at the University of Western Ontario and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. This article has been reproduced with permission from Public Discourse. 

MercatorNet Interviews Michael Coren

Canadian columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren has just published another controversial book about Christianity in the public square. “Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity” is on best-seller lists in Canada. MercatorNet interviewed him here about his thought-provoking arguments.

MercatorNet: Tell us a bit about your own background. You’re a convert at a time when most Catholics seem to be dropping away.

Michael Coren: My father was Jewish, but very secular. So it was a mixed family, but one with an implicit respect for God and religion. I remember studying for my history O-Levels when I was a teenager and learning about the Reformation. The assumed line was that the Catholics were the bad guys, but to me the opposite seemed the case. A love for the Church began, but it took until 1985 for the marriage to take place. Yes, people are falling away, but those who stay are stronger and better than ever and the converts coming into the Church are of the highest quality.

MercatorNet: I know that comedian Bill Maher and Comedy Central portray Christians as fanatical fruitcakes. But shouldn’t Christians just have a thicker skin? Aren’t they just crying the victim?

We do have thick skins but truth and balance are important. I think we should laugh at ourselves more, not less. But today there are ever more groups that are off limits for humour, and certainly abuse; simultaneously Christians are abused so often, and to such an extent, that it’s cruel rather than funny.

It’s one thing for an adult, but ask Christian students what university is like, or a child at school who refuses to go along with the prevailing morality because of their Christian faith.

MercatorNet: As the author of books with titles like “Why Catholics are Right” and “Heresy: the Ten Lies they Tell about Christianity”, you obviously like a good fight. What about turning the other cheek?

I so do, every day! You should see my emails and tweets. I’m known as a defender of Christianity in Canada, and the death threats, insults, and venom are as endless. But an individual Christian’s forgiving an attack and turning the other cheek is different from defending the weak and standing up for the truth of Christ and the integrity of the faith.

MercatorNet: Hostility to Christianity has a long history among intellectuals, from at least the time of Voltaire. Even well-known figures like Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Stephen Hawking, or Jimmy Wales have been agnostics or atheists. Aren’t you pushing it uphill to persuade smart, well-educated people to be Christians?

Not at all. I wrote a biography of Wells a few years ago actually – rather a controversial one. There are clever atheists and clever Christians, and stupid atheists and stupid Christians. It’s not really an issue of intellect, although I’ve yet to hear a truly compelling case for genuine atheism. I rather thought myself into faith, and it was cerebral for me in a way, as is it for many.

That, of course, is only one of the roads to Christianity. The point, though, is that if we accept the modern idea that the clever people are the doubters, we make it very difficult for thinking people to even consider Christianity. It’s why there is an entire chapter in Heresy about this.

MercatorNet: With modern communications technology like Facebook and Twitter, people today seem to have the attention span of a particularly thoughtful rabbit. How can Christianity compete?

Yes, well said. C.S. Lewis pointed this sort of thing out in The Screwtape Letters. In his version, the devil has made intellectual argument irrelevant, so that even if Christians make a pristine argument for belief, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s yet another example of Lewis’s brilliance that he saw this long before Facebook and the like.

Yes, it is difficult, but then so is being a Christian. We can use new technology, but we also have to be careful of it. The irony that helps us here is that the easier, more accessible, and even more facile things become, the more people want the permanent things, and the most permanent is God.

MercatorNet: In an era when tolerance seems to be the premier virtue, serious Christians seem rabidly intolerant, especially on hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Your comment?

The imploding notion of tolerance: tolerate everyone apart from those who do not accept tolerance. Actually it’s a misnomer. They don’t mean tolerance, they mean acceptance, even affirmation.

In Canada, for example, since gay marriage was introduced we’ve had around 300 prosecutions and firings of people who are not hateful of gays, but believe marriage is the union of man and woman. Who then is the intolerant party here? Abortion is the taking if innocent life, and we should be proud of refusing to tolerate it.

But, as you say, the rallying cry of the new generation is “I tolerate therefore I am.” It’s meaningless, and these people tend to be grotesquely intolerant of dissent, and especially Christian dissent.

MercatorNet: Is there a common thread? What is the biggest obstacle that Christianity faces in the 21st century in the West?

Difficult, because there are so many. Perhaps the death of the intellect. People are controlled by feelings, and have allowed emotion to dominate their values – witness Oprah, the death of Princess Diana, the morbid mock tears we see so regularly. Added to this is the war on self-restraint, whereas Christianity believes in order out of chaos, and the importance of dignity and self-control.

MercatorNet: Will this year’s election in the United States have an impact upon the future of Christianity?

Very much so. Obama is the first President who does not sincerely believe in the separation of church and state, which is, of course, a means to protect Christians from an established Church, not a way to save the state from Christianity. Even Clinton believed in this, and certainly the other Presidents. If Obama does win, he and some of the people around him will take serious Christianity into a newKulturkampf. I really believe this.

Michael Coren is a broadcaster and writer living in Toronto, Canada. His latest book is Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity, available at Amazon.com. His website is michaelcoren.com

Related reading:  Review of Corn's book Why Catholics Are Right

Canada Scores an F for Free Expression

Source:  Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

(CJFE/IFEX) - May 2, 2012, Toronto, ON - For the third straight year, the federal government received failing grades from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression in a report card on freedom of expression in Canada.

The report card, included in the annual Review of Free Expression in Canada, highlights how access to information at the federal level is marred by secrecy and delays  -  the federal government continues its stonewalling tactics to deter journalists, muzzles scientists from speaking to media about their research, and is failing to do its part to protect our digital rights.

Released to coincide with World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2012, the Review also examines such issues as our relationship with the Internet, media ownership and wiretapping.

"A year into the Harper majority we have yet to see changes to federal government behaviour regarding transparency and reform to access to information," said Arnold Amber, CJFE President. "Freedom of expression is continually stifled by restrictions. Our internet freedom in particularly is in jeopardy, as proposed legislation intrudes on our privacy and threatens the free flow of information."

Report card grades include:

Access to information and the federal government: F

• Bumped up from an F- last year due to a very slight increase in completed federal ATI requests and a slight decrease in the number of requests denied for security reasons, the government's performance is still unacceptable. Canada was ranked 40th out of 89 countries in last year's Global Right to Information Rating, the ATI process is still marred by delays, denials, fees and redactions, and the number of ATI requests denied on security grounds has tripled since 2002 - 2003.

Federal scientists' freedom of expression: F

• Canada's control over the communications of federally funded scientists is alarming. Climate change science coverage in the media has plummeted by 80 per cent since 2007, drastically reducing information available to Canadians. Some scientists have been denied permission to talk to the media about their research even after it was published in peer-reviewed journals.

The Supreme Court: B+
• The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that emergency wiretapping by police without a warrant is unconstitutional and upheld a lower court's ruling that hyperlinking is not the same as publication in alleged cases of libel. Although both decisions were welcomed by free expression advocates, the Supreme Court's decision barring access to records held in cabinet ministers' offices brought down its overall grade.

Grades were also assigned to Media Ownership, Federal Protection of Digital Rights and Internet Access, and the Canadian Public.

Other topics covered in this year's Review include:

• an overview of the global cyber threat landscape
• the debate over Internet anonymity
• media ownership in Canada
• obstacles faced by Canadian whistleblowers
• online collaborative journalism
• cross-Canada free expression reports
• notable free-expression-related court decisions from the past year


For more information:
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
PO Box 407
555 Richmond St. W., Suite 1101
Toronto, ON M5V 3B1
Canada
cjfe @ cjfe.org
Phone: +1 416 515 9622
Fax: +1 416 515 7879
http://www.cjfe.org
@canadacjfe

Euthanasia Coming to Quebec?

A report from a legislative committee in Quebec reads like a pro-euthanasia manifesto, not an unbiased study. That's the opinion of  Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.  Here is what she has to say:

Will Quebec Legalize Euthanasia?

By Margaret Somerville

Before society responds affirmatively to the call for legalized euthanasia, we will need to provide the public with a more full and open explanation of the case against it. The recent Quebec National Assembly committee report Dying with Dignity fails to do that.

Like the previous report of the expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada on this same subject, the Quebec report is not balanced and reads rather like a pro-euthanasia manifesto. The fact that it strongly recommends palliative care does not negate that characterization. The Quebec report takes a purely utilitarian approach to the euthanasia question. In the committee’s estimation, legalizing euthanasia will do more good than harm -- and that justifies allowing it.

It upholds respect for individuals’ rights to autonomy and self-determination as the overriding value, citing, among other examples, the current approach to abortion as showing this value predominates in contemporary Quebec society.

The committee concludes that legalizing euthanasia will not harm the value of respect for life, because euthanasia will only be used in exceptional circumstances and there will be very few cases. And in any case, “La valeur du caractère sacré de la vie a subi une transformation notable” ("The value of the sanctity of life has undergone a significant transformation") relative to other values, which means that now respect for life itself doesn’t necessarily take priority.

The committee argues that allowing euthanasia is merely an incremental change --- we all agree with palliative care and, it says, “aide medicale a mourir” (euthanasia) needs to be seen as just another “palliative-care option.”

How should we respond to these arguments?

First, many people who oppose legalizing euthanasia do so because they believe it’s inherently wrong to kill another person, except when that is the only way in which to protect innocent human life. Euthanasia does not fall within this exception and, therefore, for them, can never be ethically justified.

The clash of values involved in the euthanasia debate is between, on the one hand, respect for life, both individual human life and human life in general; and, on the other hand, individuals’ rights to autonomy and self-determination. People who reject euthanasia give priority to respect for life; people who support euthanasia give priority to autonomy and self-determination.

“Respect for life” must be upheld at two levels: respect for each individual human life and respect for human life, in general. The latter requirement is the reason that the consent of an individual to being euthanized is not sufficient to avoid damaging the value of respect for life. Authorizing doctors to kill their patients necessarily contravenes respect for human life, in general.

And, even if the committee’s  reassurance that cases of euthanasia will be exceptional and, therefore, not damage the value of respect for life, indeed, even if there were only one case, legalizing euthanasia still involves crossing the line established by the fundamental rule that we must not intentionally kill each other.
In short, it would unavoidably harm the value of respect for life, which means that legalizing euthanasia involves a radical change in our society’s values.

Pro-euthanasia advocates often argue that seeing life as “sacred” is a religious value and, because of that, should not be taken into account in the public square. Whatever one’s views are in that regard, respect for life is not just a religious value; it’s a foundational value of all societies in which reasonable people would want to live.

Concern about the consequences of legalizing euthanasia raises the question of whether a utilitarian case against euthanasia can be made. Exploring that question shows that the utilitarian case for euthanasia is not nearly as strong as the committee argues it is. Many seriously harmful consequences from legalizing euthanasia could far outweigh any benefits it might have.

Apart from its harmful impact on the societal value of respect for life, it would harm the institutions of law and medicine, and the healthcare professions. Can we even imagine teaching medical students how to kill their patients?

The committee recognizes the serious danger of the abuse of euthanasia must be taken into account and proposes safeguards. However, contrary to what the committee states, experience with euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium is not strongly reassuring that such safeguards are effective.

The committee adopts the strategy used by advocates of legalizing euthanasia of confusing it with interventions that are not euthanasia and are ethically and legally acceptable. For instance, it tells us that in accepting, as we do in some cases, the withdrawal of life-support treatment to allow a person to die, we are already practicing euthanasia; therefore, legalizing euthanasia is just a small step forward. These are false and misleading analogies and a false and misleading line of argument. There is a radical difference between killing a person and allowing them to die of natural causes.

In proposing to replace the word euthanasia with the term “aide médicale à mourir,” the committee introduces a euphemism that both trivializes and is likely to conceal the moral and ethical issues. Terminology matters because our emotional responses and moral intuitions play an important role in helping us to decide what is ethical and what is not and the language we use affects these responses: compare “physician assisted death” with “doctors killing their patients”.

If we are to have a discussion about euthanasia, it must be an unbiased one. It’s hard for me to conclude from its report that the National Assembly committee undertook such an unbiased reflection, especially in view of the fact that two-thirds of the submissions it received argued against legalizing euthanasia.



Related reading:  More Euthanasia, Assisted-Suicide Propaganda; Utilitarian Euthanasia and the Question of Dignity

Seceding from the Public Schools

Rebekah Hebbert

Canada's Supreme Court has spurned Quebec parents who sought the right to keep their children out of an ethics and religious culture program taught in the province's schools. The program, which was introduced in 2008, replaced religion classes with a curriculum covering all major faiths found in Quebec culture, including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and aboriginal beliefs.

"Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion," said the Court. Furthermore,

"the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society. The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes their religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education."

The question of religious accommodation in general is one that is making bigger and bigger headlines across the globe as schools adapt to a population that is much less homogenous than in earlier years.

May Sikh children carry kirpans (daggers that have religious meanings for Sikhs) in school despite the fact that having knives at school is severely punished? May religious parents take their children out of sex-ed or gay rights classes? May girls wear burkas? May atheists not be exposed to any official mention of God? May Christian children have the right to study the Bible during recess? May Muslim children be excused from music and physical education classes or be given special accommodations for Friday prayers?

In conflict can be notions of parental rights, individual rights, religious rights, cultural identity, safety, Canadian values, government law, separation of church/mosque/synagogue/temple and state, and plain old-fashioned pragmatism. Is it reasonable to gender-segregate 300 six-year-olds playing dodge ball or duck-duck-goose because one child’s parents think it inappropriate for their first-grade son to play with girls? Is it reasonable to expect teachers or schools to navigate through the complications of 1,200 children, if half of them have different exemption requests covering everything from diet to clothing, exercise, curriculum, or exercise?

Yet parents have an extremely good point. Why do state officials have the right to insist that children are taught a single state-approved perspective on so many either explicitly or tangentially religious issues? Schools insist on teaching a view of sexual morality and homosexual relationships that is at odds with the traditional values of almost every, if not every, religion in the world. Is it not reasonable for parents to object?

Yet others would disagree, and maintain that not only accepting, but celebrating, things such as homosexual and other alternative lifestyles is a non-negotiable part of what it means to be a Canadian. The Toronto District School Board maintains that

“While the Board works to create a school system free from religious discrimination, this freedom is not absolute... If a parent/guardian/ caregiver asks for his or her child to be exempt from any discussion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or same-sex-family issue, the request cannot be granted because it violates the TDSB Human Rights Policy.”

Other contentious issues can centre around ideas of gender equality, tolerance, sexual safety, or in cases like evolution basic education.

While it is easy to argue both sides of this question, ultimately we need to remember that these are typically not mere matters of personal preference, but often strike at the heart of personal and family identity. Children are vulnerable, and children growing up in strongly religious or immigrant households are probably if anything more vulnerable than normal as they sense the dissonance (regardless of accommodation) between their home and school life. The last thing they assuredly need is for these two worlds to move from dissonance to outright hostility, or full-scale war.

Will banning burkas or headscarves in school advance gender equality? Not likely. The more likely option is that fundamentalist parents will simply keep their daughters under permanent house arrest, unable to ever set foot outside the house. Education may or may not, under these circumstances, be much of a priority. Particularly if the parents are illiterate in the majority language of the country. Even otherwise moderate families may feel under threat, and may become more radical than they otherwise would, making very sure that their children are in no danger whatsoever of being seduced by the secularism of the school.

Whether you think that an increased devotion to religion as a result of feeling under attack is a good thing or a bad thing will probably depend on your attitude towards religion in general and certain religions in particular. Your opinion about religious families withdrawing their children in favour of private schools or homeschooling will depend on your opinion of the benefits of homogenous public education.

As a homeschool graduate, I think that homeschooling, for example, is a perfectly legitimate choice for parents who wish to instill a particular religious perspective. But I know others will disagree, not least those who are most anxious to limit religious accommodation in school.

Refusing to accept and respect religious difference and the role of parents in deciding the education and upbringing of their children is likely to increase the conflict and dissonance in the life of the child who is caught in the middle. It may even backfire and encourage the very opinions it seeks to discourage.

That doesn’t mean that parents should get carte blanche to dictate to schools or demand a custom rewrite of the curriculum. But schools should be willing to do what they can to accommodate religious students, while religious parents should realize that after a certain point they should probably consider homeschooling or private schooling.

If nothing else, secularists should realize that by not compromising on these religious issues they risk losing the children altogether.

And yes, I realize that I just wrote an apologetic for religious parents to leave the public schools, no matter how friendly their system is. So be it.

Rebekah Hebbert is the Managing Editor of The Prince Arthur Herald, a centre-right student newspaper that circulates throughout Canada. A student of economics, she lives in Eastern Canada.

Canada: Priests, Porn and Child Abuse

The arrest on Dec 8 of the Rev Robin Barrett, rector of St John’s Anglican Church in Goulds, Newfoundland, is the second recent high-profile arrest of a clergyman in Canada for possession of child pornography.

On Sept 25 Ottawa police charged Roman Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey with possessing and importing child pornography. Bishop Lahey, who resigned as Bishop of Antigonish in Nova Scotia shortly before his arrest, allegedly brought a laptop home to Canada that contained images the Canadian Border Services found of “concern” during a customs inspection.

The laptop was confiscated and after a forensic analysis the Catholic bishop was charged with possession of child pornography.

Fr Barrett was arrested after detectives in Toronto, posing as paedophiles on an internet chat room, struck up an on-line relationship with the priest, and allegedly received pornographic images from him. “I can tell you that they are images that involve, basically, sexual activity, and it involves infants and babies. This person had what I would consider a fairly large collection, however the age of the [people in the] collection really concerns us,” Detective Paul Krawczyk told the Toronto Globe & Mail.

 
Read it all here.

Canadian Resurgence of Interest in Euthanasia

Euthanasia is back on the agenda in Canada. The first hour of debate on a “euthanasia bill”, Bill C-384, has already taken place in Parliament and a second hour is scheduled for November 16.

As a “private member’s bill”, it is limited to two hours of debate and is expected to go to a second reading vote on November 18. If passed, it would be referred to committee for detailed discussion. There has been an increasing mobilization of opposition to this bill which, if enacted, would allow euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. This opposition ranges from the Canadian Medical Association distributing a letter opposing the bill to members of Parliament, to Steve Passmore, a person with a disability, protesting it on Parliament Hill during the debate. His message is that Bill C-384 threatens his life and the life of people with disabilities.

So, why now are we considering legalizing euthanasia (a term I use here to include assisted suicide) when we have prohibited it for millennia? Not one of the bottom-line conditions usually linked with calls for legalizing euthanasia – that a person is terminally ill, wants to die and we can kill them – is new. These factors have been part of the human condition for as long as humans have existed. And our capacity to relieve pain and suffering has improved remarkably. So, is some other cause the main one? I suggest it’s profound changes in our post-modern, secular, Western, democratic societies, and their interactive and cumulative effects. To make wise decisions about whether or not to legalize euthanasia, we need to identify and understand these changes in relation to euthanasia.

Read the full article here. Definitely worth reading! Margaret Somerville lists and elaborates these changes:

Intense individualism
Mass media
Denial and control of death, and “death talk"
Fear
Legalism
Materialism and consumerism
What it means to be human
Impact of Scientific advances
Competing world views

Canadian Anglicans Join ACNA

St. John’s Anglican Church in Vancouver will join a new group of conservative parishes, the latest move in an ideological battle over same-sex marriage with the local Anglican authority.

St. John’s Rev. Canon David Short will be in Texas this week for meetings to create the Anglican Church of North America. It will include roughly 700 parishes, which are united in their belief in orthodox principles. All 30 parishes that make up the conservative Anglican Network in Canada will join.

The new group will be a permanent home for St. John’s, the largest Canadian Anglican parish, with four services and roughly 1,000 worshippers most Sundays.

After leaving the Diocese of New Westminster, which authorized same-sex blessings in 2002, St. John’s joined the Diocese of the Southern Cone in South America in February 2008. The new Anglican Church of North America will unite it with conservative Anglican churches closer to home.

"The new (group) is the response of many orthodox groupings in Canada and the United States to the innovation of Canadian and American churches," said Short. "We believe that you cannot innovate. It’s the same Jesus yesterday, today and forever."

Read it all here.

Canada Court to Consider Daniel Leblanc Case

SOURCE: Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), Toronto

(CJFE/IFEX) - Toronto, May 21, 2009 - Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) welcomes the Supreme Court decision today to consider whether Globe and Mail reporter Daniel Leblanc must reveal the confidential source that led him to the sponsorship scandal.

Leblanc's work on the CAD$100-million federal sponsorship scandal was a pivotal piece of journalism that changed the course of Canadian history.

The series was based on information provided by a source Leblanc has only referred to by the code name Ma Chouette.

One of the companies that allegedly overbilled the government is seeking Ma Chouette's identity as part of its defense in a multi-million dollar lawsuit. The Globe and Mail argues that forcing Leblanc to reveal this source would violate freedom of expression guarantees in the Charter of Rights.

The Leblanc case goes to the heart of journalism's role in a democracy.

"This is a perfect example of why journalists must sometimes rely on anonymous sources to further the wellbeing of society," said CJFE Boardmember and journalist Kelly Toughill. "We are very pleased that the Supreme Court will consider Leblanc's appeal."

The Leblanc case is set to be heard on October 21, 2009. In advance, CJFE hopes that its intervention as part of a media coalition in tomorrow's hearing on a similar case - The National Post, Matthew Fraser & Andrew McIntosh v. The Queen - will provide a successful precedent.

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) is an association of more than 300 journalists, editors, publishers, producers, students and others who work to promote and defend free expression and press freedom in Canada and abroad.

http://www.ifex.org/canada/2009/05/26/leblanc_appeal/

For further information, contact the CJFE Manager, Julie Payne, 555Richmond Street West, Suite 1101, P.O.B. 407, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3B1Canada, tel: +1 416 515 9622 x.226, fax: +1 416 515 7879, e-mail:cjfe@cjfe.org, Internet: http://www.cjfe.org/

More Canadian Micro Management of Citizens

By recently-passed law, Canadians can be arrested for smoking in their cars if a child is a passenger, and now this:

OTTAWA - Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said that the passage of her anti-spanking bill through the Senate will "send a signal so that people who use violence in a repeated way will no longer feel protected." She added: "It is not to arrest everyone who gives their child a tap on the arm."

Bill S-209, which will see parents charged with assault for spanking their children, has passed its first hurdle and now moves on to the House of Commons. It has been working its way through committees for four years and proposes to remove Section 43 of the Criminal Code that says, "Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances."

The bill proposes to prohibit a parent using force to discipline children except in very limited circumstances. It allows parents, teachers or other guardians to use "reasonable force other than corporal punishment, but only in three specific circumstances: preventing or minimizing harm to the child or another person; preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that is of a criminal nature; preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in excessively offensive or disruptive behaviour." It rules out the use of any force such as spanking as a routine disciplinary measure.

"No corporal punishment would be allowed, either by an educator, the mother, the father or someone acting for them," Hervieux-Payette said.

Criminal defence lawyers and the Canadian Bar Association appearing before the Senate argued against the criminalizing impact the bill will have on parents, teachers and caregivers. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected arguments that spanking and striking children was "cruel and unusual punishment" and cited safeguards in other Criminal Code sections against abusive or harmful conduct against children.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has indicated that Conservative MPs will probably be given a free vote on the bill when it comes into the lower House. "We look forward to the debate that will take place when the House of Commons will consider this bill, as amended by the Senate, in the fall," a spokesman for Nicholson wrote in an email to the Montreal Gazette. But Hervieux-Payette said that if the Commons rejects the bill, she will continue to reintroduce it until it becomes law.

MPs on both sides of the House are divided. CTV News quotes Conservative MP Daryl Kramp, once an Ontario Provincial Police officer, saying, "I'm a traditionalist. I believe that parents should be able to make the decision best for their own family." Calgary Conservative MP Art Hanger, another former police officer, agreed, and told CTV, "I believe the status quo is very acceptable."

Liberal whip Karen Redman said she understood the need to protect children from physical abuse, but also said that she believes physical force is sometimes necessary. "When I think back, when my children were little, there were times when you smacked them on the bum, but it was a diapered bum and it was as much to get their attention," she said.

During the Senate debates on the Bill, Senator Anne Cools said the bill is just another Liberal attempt to micromanage private life. "What concerns me is that ordinary parents who may slap a child as a manner of correction, and not even in excessive rage, will suddenly find themselves subject to the risk of prosecution," she said. "It is an act of arrogance on our part to believe we can place laws and then say to people, 'Follow them, because we are so enlightened that we will teach you how to be good, kind and gentle people.'"

Source: OneNewsNow

Canadian Pastor Fined and Gagged

Boissoin was first hauled before the Human Rights Commission to answer to a complaint filed by Lund, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Lund made his complaint after Boissoin published a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate, in which he denounced homosexuality as immoral and dangerous, and called into question new gay-rights curricula permeating the province's educational system.

"Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights," wrote Boissoin in the letter.

In an interview, Boissoin told LifeSiteNews.com that he's under attack not only for his letter, but more significantly for his beliefs.

"The point I am trying to make here is what's being attacked at the core is what I believe, according to my personal beliefs and my religious beliefs."

Most disturbingly, says Boissoin, is that the ruling calls for him to "cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals." Boissoin wondered to what extent the right to freedom of expression in Canada will be deteriorated, stating, "I am not allowed to hold on to my views."

The pastor also maintained that his beliefs are founded not on hate or malice, but derive from a personal concern for the family and society rooted not only in faith, but also in science.

"I am not allowed to hold my views, but the Lunds of the world are allowed to bring gay ministers into schools, they are allowed to present scientifically baseless teachings to kids that people are born gay."

"I am all for tolerance, I don't want to see anyone who calls themselves homosexual be discriminated against," added Boissoin. "At the same time I believe it is a behaviour, there is no scientific proof that anyone is born gay, but these teens are taught in our school systems that that is the way it is, that people are born homosexual."

Boissoin then addressed the potential implications of what he called a scientifically baseless pro-homosexual curriculum being taught in schools. "When you deem something acceptable, you increase the likelihood that they will participate in that, and that's a great concern to me," he said.

Boissoin also accused Lund of considently defaming him in another local newspaper, which either refused to publish Boissoin's rebuts or edited them severely.

He concluded by commenting on the Remedy order and the entire ordeal, which over the last six years has consumed tremendous time, energy and money - both from the pockets of taxpayers and Boissoin.

"Absurd - beyond absurd. I will never make a public apology; I stand by what I said. My context has never been taken into consideration. Lund's context has always been taken into consideration."

Read it all here.