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05 Feb 2021 Why is ARPA Canada Advocating for In-Person Worship Services During a Pandemic?

Posted at 15:07h in Fundamental Freedoms 0 Comments
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Those who follow ARPA Canada’s work will know that government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions have received a lot of attention from us over the last year. We expect this to continue into 2021 as we seek to intervene in a variety of court cases with a specific focus on the restrictions limiting or prohibiting in-person worship services. Almost a year has passed since the first lockdowns in March of 2020, and Christians in most of the provinces in Canada are currently forbidden by their provincial government from taking part in corporate worship. Through...

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23 Jun 2021 Unanticipated opportunities and overflowing support: reflections on a decade with ARPA Canada

Posted at 16:21h in Blog, Organizational News 0 Comments
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By André Schutten Photo: Mark Penninga, executive director of ARPA Canada, presents a plaque to André Schutten on the occasion of his 10 years with ARPA.   I started my first day with ARPA Canada as Ontario Director and Legal Counsel on June 22, 2011. My office was a single room on the upper floor of an art gallery, managed by my wife Karyn, nestled in the picturesque hills of Gatineau Park. The day before I started, I was called to the bar, officially becoming a fully licensed lawyer. One of my first...

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23 Jun 2021 Parliamentary Committee Releases Report on Pornhub

Posted at 10:24h in Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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  The House of Commons Standing Committee on Information, Privacy, and Ethics recently studied the question of ‘Protection of Privacy and Reputation on Platforms such as Pornhub.’ The Committee released its report on June 17, and it includes many noteworthy recommendations. As we discussed in previous posts (here from Dec 17th and here from Jan 27th), the December 4, 2020 New York Times exposé on the porn industry brought a welcome level of concerned attention to the website and business model of Pornhub and the Mindgeek corporation based in Montreal. Parliament needs to address...

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22 Jun 2021 Bill C-6 (Conversion Therapy) Passes through the House of Commons

Posted at 12:14h in Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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  For immediate release – Ottawa, ON June 22, 2021   Senate amendments needed to make conversion therapy law one that LBGTQ+, feminist, and religious groups can all support A majority of MPs voted in favour of Bill C-6 today, pushing the bill to criminalize “conversion therapy” into the Senate. No organization in Canada opposes the principle of banning coercive or tortuous therapies. However, Bill C-6 defines conversion therapy so broadly that some members of the LGBTQ+ community, religious groups, medical professionals, and feminists have spoken out against the bill, urging amendments. “We support a bill...

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21 Jun 2021 Book Review: Them Before Us

Posted at 10:36h in Blog, Family 0 Comments
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By Daniel Zekveld We live in a society that prioritizes choice to the extent that marriage has become whatever you want to make it. Children are subject to this redefinition of marriage and family structure and are impacted the most by the breakdown of a marriage and the biblical family. Many times, our focus is on the importance of traditional marriage for adults (and that’s a good focus). Katy Faust & Stacy Manning, in their book Them Before Us, shift focus away from adults and instead examine the impact that broken...

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18 Jun 2021 Respecting Seniors Beyond Senior’s Week

Posted at 11:25h in Blog, Elder Care 0 Comments
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By Levi Minderhoud   The first week in June every year is Senior’s Week in British Columbia. As proclaimed by the province, one of the purposes of Senior’s Week is to recognize that “seniors are a diverse population within a society that supports its members throughout the life continuum, and recognizes individual rights to dignity, respect, autonomy, and choice.” This recognition is more important now than at any time since the proclamation of this week almost two decades ago. In the past 15 months, our most vulnerable seniors living in long-term care homes...

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16 Jun 2021 New Respectfully Submitted Palliative Care Policy Report

Posted at 12:18h in Elder Care, Euthanasia 0 Comments
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ARPA Canada's newest Respectfully Submitted Palliative Care Report has just been released! You can read the text of the report below or view, download, and/or print a pdf of the policy report here.   When a medical team seems to have exhausted all treatment options and a terminal diagnosis is given, a physician will too often tell a patient, “I’m sorry, there is nothing more we can do for you.” The doctor then refers the patient to hospice or palliative care, which the patient enters with the mindset that nothing can or...

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14 Jun 2021 The Erosion of the Family that Christians Aren’t Talking About Enough

Posted at 17:18h in Blog, Family 0 Comments
7 Likes

By Levi Minderhoud   Orthodox Christians are champions of the family. And rightly so. Stretching back to the beginning of history and the creation of the world, marriage (and, by extension, the family) was the first institution that God created (Genesis 2:18, 24-25). Chronologically, the family supersedes the state, the church, and any other institution in society. For that reason, Christians often call the family the “basic unit” or “basic institution” of society. Inseparable from the concept of the family is the principle that parents have the primary responsibility to care for the...

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08 Jun 2021 ARPA Submits Brief to Senate Committee on Reducing Recidivism

Posted at 16:35h in Bills and Motions, Criminal Justice 0 Comments
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Bill C-228, An Act to Establish a Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism, has passed second reading in the Senate and is currently being discussed at the Committee on National Defence and Security. ARPA Canada recently submitted a written brief on Bill C-228 to the Committee, and we encourage you to read the submission here or at the end of this post. Bill C-228 seeks to address recidivism, or repeat offences, by people coming out of the Canadian prison system. Currently, recidivism rates are high for offenders being released from both Federal...

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02 Jun 2021 Combating Human Trafficking – Bill 251 Passes in the Ontario Legislature

Posted at 18:57h in Bills and Motions, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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In 2020, the Ontario government introduced its 5-year anti-human trafficking strategy, investing $307 million between 2020 and 2025 to combat this injustice. Bill 251 expands on previous anti-human trafficking efforts, giving greater support to victims of trafficking, educating Ontarians about the issue, and providing more tools for law enforcement to crack down on human trafficking. This week, Bill 251, the Combating Human Trafficking Act, passed 3rd reading in the Ontario Legislature and will soon receive Royal Assent. The bill was initially introduced by the Solicitor General of Ontario. A few weeks...

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27 May 2021 Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation (SISE) Act Introduced in Parliament

Posted at 14:26h in Bills and Motions, Gender and Sexuality 0 Comments
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  Today, MP Arnold Viersen introduced the Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act or the SISE Act. This private member’s bill is the next step in a long history of action on the part of MP Arnold Viersen in the face of pornography and online sexual exploitation content. He was involved in promoting and receiving unanimous consent for Motion 47 in 2016, which resulted in a committee investigation of online sexually explicit content. This piece of legislation comes amid a firestorm of activity around the organization MindGeek which profits from its online pornography...

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