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Family

11 May 2018 How Canadian: government forces an apology but ignores the substance of the issue

Posted at 14:15h in Blog, Education, Family, Politics 0 Comments
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by André Schutten Members of Parliament voted overwhelmingly (269 to 10) in favour of a motion calling on Canada’s Roman Catholic bishops to request the pope visit Canada to apologize for the Church’s role in the residential schools. The residential school system was deeply flawed and perpetrated much evil against vulnerable children. It separated indigenous children from their parents without the families’ consent, violating the family unit with the force of law. The Roman Catholic Church and other denominations were willing cooperators with the government in running this school system. Nevertheless, this call...

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11 Apr 2018 Alberta bill blocking info on student activities from parents will be challenged in court

Posted at 13:13h in Bills and Motions, Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality, Legal Cases 1 Comment
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by Lighthouse News The Alberta government is facing a lawsuit over Bill 24. That’s the law - passed late last year - which expressly forbids school teachers, principals, or other school employees from telling parents about whether their own children join so-called "gay-straight alliance clubs". The government claimed at the time that the prohibition is about “protecting children from abusive parents”. But now, a group of 24 religious schools, eight parents and a pair of non-profit groups have launched a constitutional challenge of the law. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announced...

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07 Mar 2018 Children’s Aid Society can’t force Christian foster parents to affirm truth of the Easter bunny, judge rules

Posted at 14:54h in Family 0 Comments
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In a classic case of truth being stranger than fiction, an Ontario judge has ruled that it’s not okay for a government agency to force foster parents to lie to their foster children, especially if the lie involves a basic betrayal of religious views. The case, Derek and Frances Baars v. Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, involved a couple who had two young foster children taken away from them in April of 2017 because they refused to tell the children that the Easter Bunny was real. In a 62-page ruling handed down...

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10 Jan 2018 Child Services Loves Santa Claus: A Canadian Cultural Experience

Posted at 11:10h in Blog, Family 0 Comments
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by Colin Postma Magic was in the air last month – sleigh bells ringing, fires crackling, snow glistening and all that – if you believe the songs on mind-numbing repeat in every store. It’s the Canadian experience of Christmas: dragging yourself through shopping lists, falling asleep at the wheel while waiting for the traffic jams to clear out, and being jolted awake with the horrid realization you forgot to get anything good for Aunt Gertrude. Amidst all the wonder and merriment of this ‘essential Canadian cultural experience’, a case proceeded in a Hamilton...

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12 Dec 2017 Day care availability

Posted at 06:00h in Family 0 Comments
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Andrea Mrozek, Program Director - Cardus Family Cardus Families is out with a new report on day care vacancy rates in British Columbia. There’s a narrative in BC that says there's a “crisis in day care” because of a lack of available spaces, but Cardus Families Director Andrea Mrozek says statistics from the government don't actually bear that out. “The data shows that there are vacancies, and that those vacancy (rates) can get up to 50% depending on where you are in the province.” During the provincial election campaign in BC earlier...

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28 Nov 2017 Parental Rights affirmed at the United Nations

Posted at 06:00h in Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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A surprise vote last week at the United Nations Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural issues. There are 174 countries represented on that committee, and grouping of countries primarily from Africa blocked a resolution affirming the rights of children to self-determination when it came to sexual and reproductive health issues, and also inserted language that insisted on the primacy of parental rights when it came to issues of sex education. Several member states reaffirmed their belief that parents must play a central role in education, with Singapore’s delegate stressing that...

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22 Nov 2017 Protect them All: a Christian case for eliminating lists of special identity groups in school policies

Posted at 15:43h in Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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Schools, whether private or public, should adopt a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment. Such policies are aimed at protecting each and every student in the school. Provincial education ministries often recommend – or in some cases require – long lists of identifying characteristics to be included in these policies such as race, citizenship, disability, creed, sex, and even the modern concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity. Christian schools, however, should not include these lists in their policies. While we agree that schools need to protect all students (including those who...

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14 Nov 2017 Christians being denied for adoptions?

Posted at 10:00h in Family 0 Comments
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Lawyer John Carpay for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms Mike Schouten, Director of Advocacy The Alberta government is being taken to court over a decision by the provincial Ministry of Children's Services to deny a Christian couple's application to adopt a child. The case is being launched by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms in Calgary. The Centre's John Carpay says initially, the home study had approved the couple’s application to adopt an older child. However, he says, the government didn’t like couple’s response to the question of how they would...

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19 Sep 2017 Same-sex parents, Christian schools, and the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal

Posted at 09:44h in Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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What happened? In May of 2014, a woman in a same-sex relationship called a private Evangelical school in Ontario to inquire about enrolling her pre-school aged child. The school informed the woman that her application would be rejected because she and her partner would not be able to sign the school’s list of shared views because one of those views is that marriage is between one man and one woman. The parents filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, alleging discrimination under the Human Rights Code. However, the Tribunal...

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19 Sep 2017 A Win for Christians

Posted at 06:00h in Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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Albertos Polizogopoulos, lawyer The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has handed a major victory to a small independent Christian school in that province. The case was about whether the school was allowed to refuse admission to a child of a married same-sex couple. Lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos represented the school in the case. He says the school received an admissions request into their pre-school program, but early in the call, the applicant told the principal she was in a same-sex relationship. He says the principal informed the caller of the school’s position on...

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