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01 Jun 2017 “Safe Injection Sites” – Coming to a City Near You?

Posted at 09:23h in Blog, Canadian Politics 2 Comments
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By John Sikkema “Safe” or “supervised” injection sites provide drug users with clean needles and medical supervision for injecting narcotics. So far, there are none in Canada outside of Vancouver. But that is likely to change. Parliament just made it a lot easier to establish safe injection sites with Bill C-37, which passed earlier this month. Canada’s Health Minister is currently reviewing 19 applications for such sites, and more applications are expected. Another win for “harm reduction” You may recall the 2011 Insite case (Canada v PHS Community Services Society), in which the Supreme...

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21 Apr 2017 Haunted by the “hetero-normative” family

Posted at 15:38h in Blog, Family 0 Comments
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A behind-the-scenes look at recent changes to family law in Ontario By John Sikkema Oh. I’m a zombie, raised by zombies. That’s what I learned at an Ontario Bar Association (OBA) event earlier this year called “The All Families Are Equal Act: Celebrating and Understanding the Legislative Changes.” The event was a “professional development” seminar – something lawyers must attend from time to time to keep their law license. These things usually have dull names like “Recent Changes in Corporate Tax Law” or “A Primer on Real Estate Litigation”. But this session, the...

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13 Apr 2017 Robert Frost and euthanasia: The folly of downward comparisons

Posted at 13:12h in Blog, Euthanasia 1 Comment
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             Portrait of Robert Frost by A. Allyn Bishop By André Schutten Have you ever heard a euthanasia advocate argue that to force grandma to live in pain is to treat her worse than a dog? The assumption is that if euthanasia is compassionate for the dog, it’s compassionate for the human: “I put my dog down because of horrible pain, so why can’t we put grandma down too?” The simple answer: “Because grandma is not a dog.” As Barbara Kay eloquently wrote in the National Post a few...

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11 Apr 2017 ARPA presents to Committee reviewing Bill 89

Posted at 13:09h in Blog, Family, Sexuality 0 Comments
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by John Sikkema On Thursday afternoon, April 6, I appeared before the Ontario legislature’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy on behalf of ARPA Canada to discuss Bill 89. I was given five minutes to present to the Committee, which was supposed to be followed by nine minutes of questions from Committee members. (More on that, below.) Given the short presentation time, I focused on why it is bad public policy to add a long list of personal identifying characteristics (the child’s race, family diversity, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and...

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23 Mar 2017 Genetic Discrimination in Canada is Real and it is Lethal

Posted at 18:02h in Blog, Pre-Born Human Rights 0 Comments
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By André Schutten I’m not sure if it’s hypocrisy or ignorance, but three political stories this past week exposed a massive, rotting cavity in our collective moral code. 1) The federal government’s bill to remove “zombie laws” (laws that remain on the books after being struck down by the courts) will delete an inoperative abortion law, struck down by our Supreme Court in 1988. The Toronto Star’s Chantal Hebert says the movewill “predictably” divide the Conservatives. ARPA offers a different perspective. Either way, removing the inoperative abortion provision reminds us all that...

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21 Mar 2017 Five Bills in Five Years: Gender Ideology in Ontario

Posted at 12:45h in Blog, Family, Sexuality 0 Comments
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By John Sikkema Bill 33 in 2012 (“Toby’s Act”), Bill 13 in 2012 (“Accepting Schools Act”), Bill 77 in 2015 (“Affirming Gender Identity Act”), Bill 28 in 2016 (“All Families Are Equal Act”), and now Bill 89 (“Supporting Children, Youth, and Families Act”): together these bills represent the swift advance of a left-wing social agenda in Ontario. Bill 33 added “gender identity and gender expression” to Ontario’s Human Rights Code in 2012. Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to pass such a law. Bill 13 required public and Catholic schools...

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08 Mar 2017 Why is the baby broken?

Posted at 11:39h in Blog, Pre-Born Human Rights 0 Comments
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By André Schutten My wife Karyn and I, together with two work colleagues, recently travelled to Florida for some professional development. Since it was February, this trip from Ottawa to Miami was a pleasant proposition. Our training, on the other hand, was not so pleasant: we had to face the consequences of the greatest human rights violation of the 21st century. We were trained to discuss the issue of abortion in front of massive photographs of abortion victims on college campuses packed with apathetic students and active supporters of this human rights...

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02 Mar 2017 Transgenderism, Free Expression and the Gospel

Posted at 16:54h in Blog, Sexuality 0 Comments
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Sharing the truth with compassion doesn’t guarantee you won’t be despised by Andre Schutten Transgenderism is the latest political cause du jour, dominating media headlines, saturating academic deliberation, the subject of new laws and radical educational policies across the country. People who believe they were born with the wrong body are encouraged by media, politicians and academia to embrace that notion and run with it. That might mean they start identifying as the other gender or possibly undergoing surgery to try to resemble the other gender. We must oppose this. Why? We know...

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23 Feb 2017 M-103: A threat to free speech or much ado about nothing?

Posted at 15:09h in Blog, Justice and Freedom 0 Comments
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By John Sikkema Iqra Khalid, Member of Parliament for Mississauga, tabled her Private Member’s Motion, M-103, in December, 2016. The motion calls on the House of Commons to: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or...

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24 Jan 2017 The Culture War: Exposing the Sexual Revolution’s Tragic Legacy

Posted at 14:24h in Blog, Sexuality 0 Comments
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By André Schutten Over the Christmas holidays, I read Jonathon Van Maren’s book The Culture War (LifeCycle Books, 2016). It’s more accurate to say that I devoured it. At 225 pages, and focused on heavy social issues like human trafficking, the history of the sexual revolution, and euthanasia, you’d think such a book would be a slog. Not so. I couldn’t put it down. As a friend remarked, “No one can walk away from reading this book without a profound sense of just how desperately and completely our society is in...

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