Post 171--Use of Bible Censored in Alberta Christian School!

Throughout this blog, I have talked about the creeping restrictions on expressions of the Christian faith in Canada. While freedom of WORSHIP has not been curtailed, though that cannot be far behind, freedom of RELIGION is another matter.  Freedom of worship, if very narrowly defined, takes place in Church, but freedom of religion takes place throughout our culture, in both private and public places--in the market place as it has come to be called. It is this religion thing that is under fire.  

It mostly happens under the radar, for the mainline media do not concern themselves with it. So it happens with very few people noticing. As a result when someone does notice and makes it public, she will be sidelined as a "r

adical" who does not deserve our attention and is berated even by such respected journalists as Andrew Coyne, whom, I hasten to say, I enjoy reading--without always agreeing.

It is not always brave individuals like Ezra Levant who monitor such situations; some church organizations do as well, among them the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) and non-church Christian organizations like the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA). You've met both of these organizations in this blog and no doubt will again.  

Today's report comes from Levant. It's heading reads:

"A school board in Alberta has LITERALLY BANNED PASSAGES FROM THE BIBLE."

The Cornerstone Christian Academy in Alberta is exactly what it says it is — a Christian school. Just like Alberta has Jewish schools and Muslim schools too. But the head of the government school board that oversees Cornerstone, a woman named Lauri Skori, has literally ordered the school to stop teaching passages in the Bible that she personally disagrees with. I know this sounds crazy. But it’s true. For example, Skori has ordered the school to stop teaching a line from 1 Corinthians, because she finds it “offensive": It’s shocking, but it’s not surprising. Christianity has been driven out of the public square everywhere in Canada. But surely this is a new low — Christianity is actually being banned in a Christian school. Government bureaucrats would never dream of telling Muslim schools they couldn’t teach passages from the Koran — even ones that call for the murder of infidels and apostates. But banning the Bible is now official school board policy. And, not surprisingly, the media and the political class are silent. Even supposedly Christian or conservative politicians are keeping their heads down — they don’t want to be attacked by the leftist mob at the CBC. Well, we’ve found one honest man — John Carpay, from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. He’s agreed to take the case of Cornerstone Christian Academy. He’s written a scorching 8-page legal letter to the school board pointing out how what they’re doing is illegal — it’s unconstitutional. You can read that letter here. But they seem to be digging in their heels. And why not? No-one is coming to the aid of the school. Well, that’s where you and I come in. As you can see in my interview with John (at the end of the video here), I’ve promised to help him raise up to $5,000 to help pay for his team of three lawyers to fight for the school’s freedom of religion, against government censors. I’ve agreed to chip in the first $50 myself. If you agree that this case is outrageous, please join with me in helping to chip in to John’s legal defence fund, by clicking here.

Post 111—Liberal FG and Transparency

Canada underwent an election in the 2015 fall. That first sentence contains a pun, something I, along with newspaper editors, always enjoy. It was fall, that is, autumn time, but it was also the fall of the Harper Conservative government, a double fall situation. The victorious Liberals promised this was going to be a change from dark opaque government to transparency and disclosure.

The Harper Record

First of all, was the Harper government all that disastrous?  Den Tandt, whose writings I increasingly appreciate along with those of Andrew Coyne as I proceed with this blog, acknowledges that it is fashionable “to belittle and insult the outgoing PM. What good he did is forgotten amid the rush to assign blame for the loss.”  At the same time, he strongly argues that Harper’s was a government marked by “responsible fiscal management” that handed over balanced books and a growing economy.  Harper may have had his nasty dictatorial and centralizing side—and I fully agree with that—but Den Tandt’s list of five positive points for the defeated Conservative government was not balanced by a charge of lack of fiscal transparency, something he would surely have included in his article of November 2, 2015. Nasty personality? Yes, that was Harper’s downfall. But fiscal opaqueness? Lack of fiscal transparency? None of that surfaced—except of course from the victorious Liberal side. But that’s to be expected in the Canadian political culture of nastiness, blackball and blame; it has nothing to do with truth or fact.

The Transparency Tumble

      Den Tandt

Half a year after the above Den Tandt article, he wrote a column with the title “Liberals hiding budget plans.” Now that does not sound like transparency to me. So, let’s see how he unpacks this charge. There is this institution called Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that apparently keeps an eye on the Federal budget. According to Den Tandt, this office had been given data by the Finance Department “that would have allowed for a five-year breakdown of the government’s taxing and spending plans.” However, Finance prevented PBO from releasing this data because it allegedly is “confidential.”  The problem here is that it was not deemed confidential under the Harper or even the Liberal Paul Martin regime. Den Tandt lashes out:

The fair questions, then, which only a cretin (Boer: from a Webster-- stupid, vulgar, mentally retarded) would not think to ask: Why is this information confidential now, when it was not before?  And how can this Liberal party, whose leader lashed himself to the mast of transparency long before he became PM, justify a move that appears to limit the PBO’s power to publicly dissect government projections, and thus, this independent office of parliament’s freedom of action?

The article contains more of the same. There is the talk of openness, but not the walk. There is the claim of transparency, but it is not an honest claim. Den Tandt did not expect a reasonable answer from the PM himself, for, he charges, “The PM himself responds to fair questions with the most outrageous nonsense” (VS, April 8, 2016).

      Coyne

Coyne chimed in on a similar strong, not so pleasant, note.  “The face on TV may bespeak a commitment to idealism and honesty, transparency and fairness, but the government behind it has already amassed a record od cynicism, deception, secrecy and cronyism that for most governments would take years.”  He hands us a long list of things promised on which they have reneged. I won’t go into the gory details, but, as I noted above, nothing pretty about it. Words and phrases used in his article include “political chicanery,” “carelessness,” “recklessness.” “the scent of money and expediency” that surround this government. He concludes his piece with this statement, “The Liberals are building up a deficit of trust and ethics to match the fiscal deficit. It has been just six months since they were elected” (VS, April 21, 2016).

Den Tandt and Coyne are two writers for whom I have the highest regard. They don’t play politics; they are straight shooters, the kind I go for.  All I can say is,  “Phew! Wow! Was there something substantial after all about the Conservative election claim that Trudeau was “not ready” for the PM office?” 

Aboriginal Transparency  

But to take it one step further, there’s the case with Canada’s Aboriginals. Everything one reads about them leaves the impression they wallow in poverty. That is a terrible shame, especially since the Feds pump so much money into them year after year without any apparent success in raising them up out of the poverty level. I have written earlier posts to which I refer you in which I discuss how the Harper government began insisting on disclosure on the part of the chiefs who were/are the beneficiaries of that government largess.  The reports I have read indicate that this was a good move supported by most Aboriginals, especially the commoners among them. During an RV trip to Canada’s far north some years ago, we stopped in various Aboriginal communities and spoke with some of their inhabitants. We were surprised how open they were with respect to the corruption, especially amongst their own chiefs. I could not believe how they freely volunteered such info to an unknown white couple. Things were obviously bad.

But now comes the clincher: The Trudeau government is intending to unwind that disclosure standard! Now that leaves me totally floored. Disclosure is part of the gold standard of modern progressive nations. Joe Oliver, the former Conservative Minister of Finance, writes, "The Transparency Act was designed to protect Aboriginal people" (VS, May 3, 2016). On what basis would one lower a demand for disclosure when, as has been revealed abundantly, that many Aboriginal chiefs receive millions while their people live in absolute misery. The documentation is there all over the place for people to see.

I am simply dumbfounded! 

I need to change to another subject, for I don’t want to be seen as a negative politician who loves to berate the current government.  I surely don’t. I am basically a positive citizen who appreciates good government, but what we’re facing now seems to be something else!

Post 95--Trudeau: Due Diligence? (2)

  

More “Spontaneity” and Populism?

The same issue arose in my mind with respect to the PM’s announcement that his government was going to accept all the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee—and, if my memory serves me right—they are up into the 90’s!  Again, that mix of spontaneity and populism.  Again, what seems like a serious lack of due diligence. All 90+ without careful analysis, even before he was enthroned?  I loved and still love the composition of his Cabinet, assuming that the Ministers are all fully qualified, but even that I am beginning to wonder in view of this pattern of spontaneity and populism without due diligence. Did he and his advisers possibly practice ethnic and tribal politics by glad handing Canada’s various races and religions, including recent immigrant arrivals as well as more settled non-Caucasians?  In view of already mentioned instances of seeming spontaneity and populism, the question of due diligence refuses to go away, even though I have no doubt that there are people worthy of cabinet appointments among all of us.  Once you have the suspicion of lack of due diligence, rightly or wrongly, you begin to look for it everywhere. 

Andrew Coyne’s Take

I have great respect for Andrew Coyne, one of Canada’s most prominent and, perhaps, most popular political commentators in both Canadian press and TV.  He recently published an opinion column under the title “Maximum political mileage with minimum thought.” The subtitle was “Promises: After three months in office, Trudeau big on smiles and symbolism but short on substance” (Vancouver Sun, Feb. 6, 2016).  Wow! Coming from Coyne, this is like a bomb shell. Under a picture of a smiling, waving Trudeau, the editor comments “A tendency ‘to announce policy first, then figure out the consequences later’ is the modus operandi of PM Justin Trudeau’s government….” 

In case you haven’t caught on yet, I want it understood that the suspicions I am airing are pre-Coyne. That is to say, they were raised in my mind before I read any commentator on the subject. They popped up immediately I first read about the 25,000. But Coyne strongly confirmed these suspicions and he buttresses them with more facts at his fingertips than I can muster.  So, with your permission, here’s a little more of Andrew’s take. I promise that tomorrow I will move on to another subject.

Apart from their tragic content, namely a seemingly light-hearted playing with the destiny of 34 million plus people, Coyne’s article contains so many pithy and humorous quotables, that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Here are some samples about Trudeau’s government:

It is one part not being Stephen Harper, one part symbolic gesture, one part wriggling out of campaign promises, and one part saying yes to everybody. … Get used to it.

For a government that makes much of its…forward-looking credentials, the Trudeau crew are unusually obsessed with digging up the recent past. The platform itself was filled with promises (my colleague, Bill Watson, puts the number at 50) to reverse this or that Conservative initiative.  … What was common to all was their relentless symbolic focus, achieving maximum political mileage for least expense.   

Is it to be supposed that the “evidence-based” party had any research to support its claim to be able to safely admit 25,000… refugees… by December?

Referring to the announcement of a tax increase for high incomers that would precisely offset a tax decrease for the “middle tax bracket,” Coyne asks, “Was there any basis for the party’s claim?” The original $3 billion income from the increase was subsequently whittled down to $1 billion.  Any basis?

Of course not: they gave…about the same amount of thought as Trudeau did in announcing…that he would implement all 94 of (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s) recommendation. Which is about twice as much thought as he and his advisers gave to the implications of abolishing party caucuses in the Senate. Or, for that matter, than they gave to their pipeline policy.

You have no idea how hard it is for me to refrain from just reproducing Coyne’s entire article, but I have to watch copyright restrictions and may already have transgressed them.  I plead for mercy from the Vancouver Sun on the grounds that I am such a strong advertiser for them apart from being part of that rare breed of remaining loyal paper subscribers.

Coyne does not relent. Two weeks later, he published another article entitled “Liberals fooled by their own image” with the subtitle “Broken promises: This Trudeau government says one thing and does the other at the same time”  (Feb. 20, p. B2), also loaded with gems:  “It is one thing to say one thing and do another in sequence. But to do both at the same time is deeply worrying.”  But be comforted; things are not as bad as they could be. Andrew writes that he would not go as far as therapist Evan Solomon, who describes Trudeau “as a kind of psychopath, alternatively charming (‘the romantic’) and homicide (‘the killer’). I think…he poses no danger to anyone but the economy. Still a number of recent incidents give one pause.” And then comes another litany of examples.

If Andrew does not relent, I will, right here, before the temptation overpowers me. I am no politician, but I do recognize political irresponsibility when I see it, at least this brazen variety of it. And this is not a political column, but I have stated somewhere in the past that social responsibility is one of my trademarks that comes straight out of my Christian convictions. When I see that, whether political or not, I get my dander up high and mighty. I need time to cool off. See you next time.

P.S.--It’s February 28, 2016. Today the announcement was made that Canada received the quota of 25,000 refugees.