In-Sight Publishing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/08

“U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy to Canada told guests at her cosier-than-usual Fourth of July party in Ottawa on Wednesday night that the countries’ strained relationship will overcome the tough times.

Ambassador Kelly Craft delivered the message with the U.S. and Canada locked in an unprecedented trade dispute.

She made the acknowledgment to hundreds of partygoers, who listened as they sipped cocktails and ate shrimp on the sweeping front lawn of her official residence.

“Canada and the United States have an enduring partnership that I am confident will stand the test of time – and believe me, these are testing times,” Craft told the crowd, which experienced attendees of the annual gathering described as far smaller than past years.

Craft, who was hosting her first Fourth of July party as ambassador, also quoted former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson in her remarks to drive home her message.

“I have never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy as a cause for withdrawing from a friend,” she said.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-jagmeet-singh-among-those-boycotting-ottawa-fourth-of-july-party/.

“Canada’s Supreme Court recently decided to deny accreditation to a top university’s proposed law school simply because its beliefs on sexuality and marriage were too conservative for Canadian culture. Trinity Western University’s “Community Covenant” holds all students to the standard of sex within marriage, which it defines as between one man and one woman.

Canada’s decision should serve as a cautionary tale to Americans. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop reaffirmed what it had said in Obergefell v. Hodges, that belief in one-man, one-woman marriage is based upon “decent and honorable” premises, and clarified that it is a “protected view and in some instances (a) protected form of expression.”

Congress should now act to ensure that American schools will never face the kind of religious discrimination to which Canada has subjected Trinity Western.”

Source: http://www.insidesources.com/cautionary-sex-religion-decision-canada/.

“Canada’s Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 against Trinity Western University, prioritizing sexual orientation over the free exercise of religion. This ruling should serve as a warning flag to U.S. citizens.

Canada was only nine years ahead of the United States in redefining marriage. If the U.S. does not change direction, we could follow in Canada’s footsteps, sacrificing religious liberty for faux-equality and faux-diversity.

Trinity Western University, in Langley, British Columbia, is a Christian university that hoped to establish a Christian law program. The Law Society of British Columbia refused to grant Trinity Western accreditation, claiming that the university’s community covenant agreement discriminates against LGBT students.

The covenant establishes a Christian community that abstains from violence, acknowledges the inherent worth of every person, prohibits cheating, and bans alcohol. The offending clause in this case is Section 4, titled “Healthy Sexuality.”È

Source: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/07/03/canadas-supreme-court-relegates-religious-beliefs-to-second-tier-status-america-be-warned/.

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter has taken two major blows recently – one from a policy change implemented by the federal government, the second from the Supreme Court of Canada.

The first blow came when the government announced that any group wishing to apply for Canada Summer Jobs grants had to pledge to follow the Liberal Party’s official policy on a woman’s freedom of choice with respect to abortion.

The second blow came with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Trinity Western University law school case. It ruled allow provincial law societies could override religious choices made by candidates who freely chose to abide by the religious principles of certain Christian law schools, as a condition of entry.

Abortion is, and always has been, a sensitive topic for governments and courts. Most modern and democratic countries have resolved the complex topic by allowing unrestricted freedom of choice to a pregnant woman during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Thereafter, there are restrictions.”

Source: https://troymedia.com/2018/07/04/freedom-religion-disappearing-canada/.

“July 9, 2018 –  It is arguably one of the most challenging life transitions people can experience: leaving your home country for an unknown new land, working to establish yourself financially, socially and professionally, in many cases, without the support of pre-existing family networks.

A comprehensive public opinion study of new Canadian – a partnership between the Angus Reid Institute and Cardus – suggests immigrants often seek and find help, both temporal and spiritual, from Canadian religious communities. These communities are evidently integral in new Canadians’ journeys into their new lives in this country.

Half of Canadians who were born outside of Canada (49%) say they received material support from faith based communities in Canada, including help finding a job or learning a language.”

Source: http://angusreid.org/faith-canada-immigration/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

The Des Moines Register talked about a woman who was raised as a Lutheran from a first-person perspective.

The woman, Kimberly Glassman, pointed to a slippery slope argument of some of the Conservatives. She characterized the argument in the following terms, “If people can love and marry people of their same sex, then there’s nothing to stop them from demanding the right to love and marry their parakeets or their microwave ovens.”

She does not agree with this argument. Glassman argued the slipperiest slopes come with (fundamentalist) religion. The example being the Supreme Court in the United States with the interpretation of religion and the phrase “sincere and meaningful belief.”

The belief does not have to incorporate a Deity, some ultimate existent thing. Since the idea is a sincere and meaningful belief without the need for a Supreme Being, Glassman notes that this is not even needing to be in the scope of the First Amendment in terms of the gathering together of a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Then these people can get a bunch of superb tax breaks and protections against the social and cultural milieu’s criticism.

Glass queries, “Don’t want to get your children vaccinated? Declare a sincerely held belief. Don’t want to bake a wedding cake for two women? Trot out your abiding faith in a just and loving — of some people — God. Don’t want to uphold your Hippocratic oath if the patient doesn’t conform to your view of right and normal? Get Congress to pass a law protecting your appalling lack of ethics or simple humanity as a ‘religious freedom.’”

She further notes that this does not have to include the Bible or the Quran, or a Theity, but, rather, simply needs to include religion.

She relates the idea of White supremacists who remain a “clear and present danger” to American society. Glassman imagines seeing people flying a Nazi flag while walking down the flag.

“If I were to see one walking down the street flying the Nazi flag, would I be within my First Amendment rights to hit him with my car? Probably not. What if I were an EMT and my ambulance came upon him bleeding in the street? Could I refuse to administer medical assistance or carry him to the hospital?”

She asks these great questions. Glassman does this to illustrate the absurd privilege of religion above other systems and categories in the United States to exemplify the undue deference to religion.

Glassman continued, “Your sincerely held belief might be that left-handedness is the mark of Satan. After all, only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed. It is clearly not ‘normal,’” she said.

What about the banning of the scissors for the left-handed and the blacklisting of the switching sides baseball players when at the plate to bat. There could be the denial of jobs and housing to those who are left-handed and why not. I would be a faith-based initiative and religious freedom issue.

Why is religious freedom a valid excuse for bigotry and denial of the fundamental rights of others?

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

According to CNN, India has become, or maybe remains, the single most dangerous nation on the face of the Earth for women.

This is based on a survey reported on by relevant experts. The Thomson Reuters Foundation produced a survey of 550 experts on women’s issues, which found India as the most dangerous for women in a number of particular areas.

For one, the sexual violence domains, where women are the vast majority of the victims around the world. Another area is in human trafficking for sexual slavery. That is mostly women and girls too.

The other areas are for domestic work, forced labor, and then forced marriage. Each disproportionately women and girls who tend not to have any or if they do few rights in the international scene.

There were other areas in the research domains. One was the look into the dangers for women regarding the cultural traditions that impact women in a negative way and, of course, disproportionately.

There were a number of unique, almost, to women areas including acid attacks against them, female genital mutilation, infibulation, clitoridectomy, child marriage and then physical abuse.

These are the contexts for women and girls, which are, for the most part completely different than the concerns for the men and boys in the world and in particular in India, which is one of the most populous nations in the entire world.

Thus, the concern is amplified based on the number of women in the country being subjected to these brutal, harsh, and unjust conditions. It moved up from fourth to first place in terms of danger for women regarding the comparison between the survey from seven years ago.

Nine of the ten countries with the worst conditions for women were in Asia and the Middle East and Africa. Interestingly, number ten in the world was the United States of America coming in at 10th place.

It is the only country from the West where this is the case. The Thomson Reuters Foundation claimed this was the reason for being a catalyst country for the #MeToo movement.

The top ten countries are as follows:

1. India

2. Afghanistan

3. Syria

4. Somalia

5. Saudi Arabia

6. Pakistan

7. Democratic Republic of Congo

8. Yemen

9. Nigeria

10. United States

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

According to The News Minute, a case has been filed against Babu Gogineni for hurting religious sentiments.

Many rationalists and humanists have expressed solidarity with Gogineni. He is known as a human rights activist. The activists showing solidarity condemn the actions using the police by religious fundamentalists to silence critics.

The article stated, “Members of the South Asian Humanist Association, Science for Society, Jana Vignana Vedika and Indian Humanists held a joint press meet at the press club in Somajiguda, where lawyers representing Babu were present. Film critic and actor Mahesh Kathi was also present.”

Gogineni got taken by police, recently, because of accusations against him of both sedition and the hurting of religious sentiments, and some other charges.

“The petitioner, Veera Narayana Chowdary, claimed that his religious sentiments were hurt after watching Babu’s earlier speeches, which prompted him to file the case,” the article continued.

Gogineni and others believe that he has the rights of freedom of expression. The lawyers for him believe that this case will not stand in court. However, this may set a precedent or example, along with others, to silence any critics of the fundamentalist religious authorities.

One lawyer said, “The police which is investigating the case will come to a conclusion on how many charges will stand after scrutiny and how many will not, following which they will approach the court.”

This is a crucial time for Gogineni because the attack came when he could not defend himself. Some view this as an attack on Gogineni as well as a larger attack on humanism and rationalism in the early 21st century.

The president of the Lakshman Reddy, Jana Chaitanya Vedika, reported that he has known Gogineni for a long time and has worked with him around the world. The work has been focused on human rights and humanism.

They spoke together at many villages against superstitions and, indeed, their negative consequences on communities. With this form of attack by police, this becomes an attack on the larger freethinking community.

Gogineni’s allies came to the Cyderabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar and with a representation submitted to him. Sajjanar stated that he would look closely at the case.

“The lawyers present also explained that the petitioner, Veera Narayana Chowdary, had filed a private complaint in court, following which the police were ordered to look into the allegations,” the article stated, “As it was a court order, the police first registered a case and then began investigation. The police also informed that the petitioner was yet to submit his evidence to them.”

The full listing of the charges are as follows:

The case was registered under Sections 121 (waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India), 124a (sedition), 153a (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 153b (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 292 (obscenity), 293 (sale, etc, of obscene objects to young person), 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (statements conducing public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“MONTREAL — Quebec’s law banning people from covering their faces when receiving or giving a public service cannot enter into force until it goes through judicial review because of the irreparable harm it will cause Muslim women, a judge ruled Thursday.It is the second time since December a Quebec judge has suspended the controversial section of the province’s religious neutrality law, which is being challenged in court by a national Muslim group and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Khalid Elgazzar, Vice-Chair of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said the ruling by Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard was “very strongly worded.”

“It points out that (at first glance) the law violates the freedoms guaranteed by the Quebec and Canadian charters. In essence, it’s confirmation (the law) is a bad solution to a made-up problem,” Elgazzar said.

Section 10 of Quebec’s law on religious neutrality, passed in October 2017, forces everyone to show their faces when receiving or giving a public service.”

Source: http://lfpress.com/news/politics/quebec-judge-once-again-suspends-application-of-provinces-face-covering-law/wcm/0c8d61a8-e396-46d4-bccb-60b17f4f7ef3.

“I am writing in response to self-proclaimed activist Amy von Stackelberg’s recent column regarding an article I had written expressing my disappointment about the Liberal government’s decision to add a values test the Canada Summer Jobs Program.

While Ms. von Stackelberg is incorrect on multiple fronts in her response, what I take issue with is that she ignores the fact that this ultimately is about our fundamental freedoms as Canadians.

The right to freedom of belief and opinion is guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and I, along with my Conservative colleagues, strongly believe that Canadians should be very concerned that the government is basing funding decisions on whether or not you hold a certain belief.

My Conservative colleagues and I are not the only ones that have these concerns. In fact, Liberal MP Scott Simms, NDP MP David Christopherson and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May have all publicly spoken out against the attestation.”

Source: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/opinion/letters/mps-of-all-stripes-concerned-with-summer-jobs-value-test-1.23350728.

“On June 15 the Supreme Court of Canada approved the refusal by two law societies to accredit graduates of a proposed law school at Trinity Western University (TWU) in British Columbia. Students and faculty at the private evangelical Christian school are required to sign a “community covenant agreement,” pledging to “voluntarily abstain” from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.” Violations of the covenant can result in suspension or expulsion.

The law societies in Ontario and British Columbia condemned the covenant as discriminatory and denied future TWU graduates automatic access to the licensing process. The majority at the Supreme Court held that the denials limited religious freedom, but the limitation was both minimal and reasonable. (Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University2018 SCC 32; Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada 2018 SCC 33. This article only refers to the B.C. case, which sets out the various analyses in detail.)

Public discussion has framed TWU as a clash between s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, and the equality rights of LGBTQ individuals. While that is certainly part of the story, the Supreme Court rulings in this case reveal a more nuanced debate over the scope of religious freedom.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6810/trinity-western-case-a-nuanced-look-at-scope-of-religious-freedom-heather-macivor.

“This Liberal federal government is hardly liberal when it comes to reforming criminal justice.

The most significant change to our criminal justice system has not come from the Liberal government, but from the Supreme Court of Canada. The Jordan decision significantly enhanced the right of the accused to a trial within a reasonable delay and called out the culture of complacency plaguing our criminal justice system.

Many Jordan-driven initiatives, however, display a one-dimensional obsession with clearing cases.

Jordan has required a fundamental re-evaluation of criminal justice in Canada and a consideration of some basic questions:

First, what conduct merits being labelled “criminal”’ and justifies allocation of the significant public resources to prosecute and sanction such conduct?”

Source: http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-liberal-record-on-criminal-law-reform-is-deeply-disappointing.

“A judge has dismissed a family’s request to keep their daughter on life support after she was declared clinically brain dead last year, ruling that individual values cannot interfere with medical findings.

Taquisha McKitty’s parents had argued their daughter’s Christian faith defines death as the cessation of the heartbeat, and that doctors should have to take people’s beliefs into account before declaring them dead.

Doctors had ruled 27-year-old McKitty “dead by neurological criteria” on Sept. 20, 2017, one week after she was found unconscious on a Brampton, Ont. sidewalk, suffering from a drug overdose.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Lucille Shaw ruled against the family in a written decision issued Tuesday.

“The medical determination of death cannot be subject to an individual’s values and beliefs,” Shaw wrote. “Death … is a finding of fact. To import subjectivity to the definition of death would result in a lack of objectivity, certainty and clarity.””

Source: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/judge-rejects-familys-request-to-keep-daughter-on-life-support.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“OTTAWA — Any changes to Canada’s laws on pollution and toxic chemicals will likely not be made until after the next federal election. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna responded Friday to 87 recommendations made by the House of Commons environment committee a year ago on how to overhaul the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which governs the protection of human and environmental health through things such as chemical management and air pollution strategies.

In a letter to the committee, McKenna says the government agrees with the intent of most of the recommendations, but that the legislative agenda just can’t accommodate another new bill right now.

She says the government is “committed to introducing a bill to reform (the act) as soon as possible in a future Parliament” and will in the meantime consult widely on exactly how to update the legislation.

That likely means there won’t be any changes to how Canada manages toxic chemicals and air pollution until after the next election, which is scheduled for October 2019.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/feds-still-mulling-over-making-a-healthy-environment-a-right-in-canada-1.3994250.

“There are parallels between the twin crises of immigration and tariffs currently being pushed by the American president. In both cases, Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to project toughness and strength without really having thought through the potential policy implications. The impact of the child separation tactic to punish refugee claimants has seemed to backfire in the eyes of most, but there is little evidence that the president has been chastened by this experience apart from complaining about the unfairness of the media coverage.

Likewise his application of tariffs, initially on steel and aluminum but with threats of possibly more to come, is the act of someone who has given more thought to theatrical optics, than how the action might play out in practice. Despite the president’s proclamation that “trade wars are good” and “easy to win”, the vast majority of economists would suggest that everyone becomes a loser in this exercise.

Those sympathetic to the president have rationalized that the tariffs are merely a bargaining tactic to win concessions from trading partners, just like the separation of children from their refugee parents was a tactic to deter them from coming to America. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump things haven’t really worked out that way.

If those migrating from violent dysfunctional Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are sufficiently desperate and fearful for their survival, they will go to whatever ends are necessary. Likewise America’s important trading partners cannot allow themselves to be seen cowering in the face of Trump’s bullying tactics. Indeed if Justin Trudeau and other western leaders did choose to appease the American president, he might very well double down and make further demands. This has already been suggested by the additional threat of an automobile tariff.”

Source: https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8702696-to-win-in-the-long-run-canada-must-make-some-concessions-to-trump/.

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, is set to receive a significant helping hand from Canada as it undergoes major performance-boosting upgrades.

Federal science minister Kirsty Duncanannounced Monday that the Canadian government will invest $10 million towards building new particle accelerator components for the machine, with Canada’s own particle accelerator centre, TRIUMF, chipping in with a $2 million in-kind contribution.

Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as part of a massive international collaboration, the Large Hadron Collider is designed to answer fundamental questions of physics.

It does this by smashing together sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of light, enabling scientists to explore the existence of particles predicted by physics theories, discover new particles and even create micro black holes to uncover parallel universes and unexplored dimensions.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4296179/large-hadron-collider-cern-cryomodule-canada/.

“EDINBURGH, Scotland, June 28, 2018 /CNW/ – Strong scientific collaboration leads to discoveries and innovations that help solve global challenges and create well-paying jobs for the middle class. The governments of Canada and the United Kingdom have a long history of collaboration, and nowhere is this stronger or more important than in science and research.

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, is in London and Edinburgh this week to build on and strengthen Canada’s research and innovation relationship with the United Kingdom.

Minister Duncan met her U.K. counterpart Sam Gyimah, the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, to promote Canada as a top choice for international science and research collaboration opportunities.

She discussed best practices to strengthen coordination in research in her meetings with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and with Sir Paul Nurse, Director and CEO of the Francis Crick Institute, who formerly led a major review of government-funded science in his country.

She also met with Dr. Patrick Vallance, the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, to learn more about Britain’snetwork of departmental scientific advisers.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/reaching-across-borders-to-strengthen-science-in-canada-and-around-the-world-686809101.html.

“Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak might not be so fantastical after all.

A team of researchers in Montreal claims to have successfully rendered an object invisible to broadband light, using a new technique dubbed, “spectral cloaking.”

Jose Azana, who co-authored a study on the findings, says the technique could have a wide range of security applications, including masking fibre-optic transmissions and making objects invisible to the naked eye.

The experiment was conducted using fibre optic cable, laser light and a target object at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Montreal.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4302166/invisibility-cloak-technology/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“In 1982, Dominion Day officially slipped into history, when an almost empty parliament acknowledged a change that was already in common parlance: that the first of July is Canada Day.Yet Canada Day could benefit from a revival of our national holiday’s original civic purpose. Amid suggestions the national celebrations in Ottawa have come adrift—with Maclean’s own Paul Wells telling Canadians to stay home—why not reinvigorate Canada Day as a celebration of the Canadian union?

Dominion Day retains some historic resonance not just because of mere nostalgia, nor because of its alliterative quality, but because the Dominion for so long embodied the idea of Canadian union. The 1867 constitution speaks of a “Union” of the provinces—and “Dominion” was the name that embodied that union.

When the Fathers of Confederation met in London in 1866, there was literally no name or rank for the new Confederation. We might have been the Kingdom of Canada, or the United Provinces of Canada; both were given serious consideration. But in the end, the provinces formed “One Dominion under the Name of Canada.”

The suggestion of Dominion was all-Canadian, from Samuel Tilley of New Brunswick, inspired by a beautiful phrase in the Book of Psalms: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

Today, the physical achievements of Canadian unionism are our most obvious inheritance from the old Dominion—union from sea to sea to sea, from Cape Spear to Vancouver Island, to Ellesmere in the high Arctic. From the streamliner cars of transcontinental trains, to the polished steel letterboxes of the Canada Mail, to the sombre monuments of our wars, artifacts of the Dominion of Canada abound.”

Source: https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/on-canada-day-celebrate-the-spirit-of-dominion/.

“A statement from the Prime Minister Of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Canada Day:

“Happy Canada Day! No matter where we are, today, as Canadians, we celebrate Canada and the people who have built the country we love.

We’re 37 million – strong in our differences, proud of our diversity, and united by our dreams. From one generation to the next, Canadians have brought our country’s promise to life, with hard work, bold vision, and determination.

They’ve grown the strong middle class at the heart of our success – and today, Canada’s workers are the backbone of our country. “Canada’s workers build the roads and bridges that get us to work on time and back home again. They put food on the table for families from coast to coast to coast. Some are young people starting their career, or newcomers bringing fresh talent to the workforce.”

Source: https://saultonline.com/2018/07/happy-canada-day-from-the-prime-minister/.

“OTTAWA — An Ontario business says it will take the Liberal government to court over the conditions attached to the federal Canada Summer Jobs program, arguing they violate freedom of speech.

Tamara Jansen, spokeswoman for a newly formed group called Free To Do Business Canada, says a number of other companies are also expected to challenge the government’s controversial attestation requirement.

She said Sarnia Concrete Products Ltd., was the first to challenge the requirement in Federal Court as part of her initiative.

Organizations that applied for funding under the program were required to attest that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights, including reproductive rights and the values underlying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The core mandate means the primary activities undertaken by the organization.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/small-business-taking-ottawa-to-court-over-canada-summer-jobs-controversy-1.3989744.

“Two former leaders of a fundamentalist religious sect in Canada were sentenced this week to house arrest and probation following their nearly unprecedented convictions on polygamy charges, according to multiple news outlets.

Between them, the men had 29 wives and more than 160 children, France’s AFP reports.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler were each found guilty in British Columbia last July of one count of polygamy, according to the Associated Press. Blackmore has 149 kids, the Canadian Press reports.

On Tuesday Blackmore, 61, was sentenced to a six-month conditional sentence served under house arrest and then a year of probation, the Canadian Press reports. Oler, 54, was ordered to serve a three-months conditional sentence, also under house arrest, followed by a year-long probation.”

Source: https://people.com/crime/canadian-polygamist-leaders-flds-sentenced/.

“The portion of Quebec’s religious neutrality law that dictates when Quebecers must leave their faces uncovered in order to receive public services has been suspended for a second time, only days before it was slated to go into effect.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard issued the ruling Thursday, handing another victory to civil liberties groups that argue the law discriminates against Muslim women who wear niqab s or burkas.

Blanchard said Section 10, which pertains to face coverings, appears to be “a violation” of the Canadian and Quebec charters, which “provide for freedom of conscience and religion.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-bill-62-face-covering-july1-1.4724863.

“Winston Blackmore and James Oler were sentenced to six and three months of house arrest, respectively, the lawyer said. They were convicted on one count of polygamy each last July.

Both men are former bishops of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect within Bountiful, a religious community in southeastern British Columbia.

Blackmore’s defense lawyer, Blair Suffredine, said he thought the sentence was “a little higher” than he had hoped it would be but “not dramatically unreasonable.”

Suffredine said that Justice Sherry Anne Donegan “found it aggravating” that Blackmore continued practicing polygamy after 2011, when the British Columbia Supreme Court decided to uphold Canada’s laws prohibiting polygamy.

Suffredine said his client found himself in a dilemma between abandoning his large family and continuing to break the law.

Oler was not represented by a lawyer.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-court-polygamy/canada-polygamy-sect-leaders-sentenced-to-house-arrest-idUSKBN1JM2YW.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“Canada is levying sanctions against seven senior Myanmar military officials over their involvement in the violence and persecution that has forced more than 720,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee Myanmar.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the economic sanctions in a statement Monday, marking Canada’s latest response to what has been described as ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya minority group. The sanctions impose asset freezes on and prohibit Canadians from doing business with seven senior military officials involved in the violent crackdown on the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last August.

“Canada and the international community cannot be silent. This is ethnic cleansing. These are crimes against humanity,” Ms. Freeland said.

The most recent violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state began in August, 2017, after Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base. Myanmar’s military responded with a violent crackdown, triggering an exodus of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-levies-sanctions-against-seven-myanmar-military-leaders/.

“Facebook Canada has hired independent fact-checkers to vet news content and blog postings on its platform as concerns continue to grow over the dissemination of false and misleading information on social media.

Still suffering from a controversy over the misuse of its users’ data, Facebook has called upon Agence France-Presse (AFP) to pro-actively evaluate news stories in Canada for accuracy and to respond to complaints from users about fake news. To be unveiled on Wednesday, the third-party fact checking will run at least until after the next federal election in Oct., 2019, while covering news on upcoming votes in Quebec, New Brunswick and Alberta.

The announcement comes amid an ongoing debate in Canadian politics about the quality of information disseminated on social-media platforms.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-facebook-canada-contracts-independent-fact-checkers-to-combat-fake/.

“Canada needs to stand its ground in its ongoing tariff fight with the United States, witnesses from steel companies, manufacturers and the steelworkers union warned MPs Tuesday as President Donald Trump continued to hint there could be more hurt to come.

A parade of expert witnesses at a special meeting of the House of Commons committee on international trade expressed solidarity with Canada’s array of retaliatory tariffs, slated to take effect Sunday, as they urged Ottawa to take steps to protect and support affected companies and workers.

“We support the countermeasures announced by the federal government and believe that they must be comprehensive and immediate,” said Ken Neumann, the United Steelworkers union’s Canadian director.

And he waved off the notion that Canada should avoid provoking Trump.

“If you don’t poke the bear, he’s going to eat your lunch,” Neumann said.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trade-committee-tariffs-1.4721999.

“Apparently there’s no such thing as a ceasefire in a trade war, even on Canada Day.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made sure to weave in a mention of Canada’s steel and aluminum industries along with the usual Canada Day pleasantries during his annual statement to Canadians.

Beyond marking our country’s 151st birthday, Sunday is the day that Canada’s $16.6 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products came into effect.

A number of U.S. steel products now face a tariff of 25 per cent, while a vast array of aluminum products will now cost Canadian importers 10 per cent more.

Canada’s measures come a month after the Trump administration imposed its own tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, citing national security concerns.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-tariffs-canada-day-1.4730323.

“Two days before Canada’s retaliatory tariffs against U.S. steel, aluminum and some consumer goods are set to take effect, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump by phone explaining Canada had no choice but to act.

According to a readout of the call provided by the Prime Minister’s Office, Trudeau began the conversation by expressing his condolences for the victims of the mass shooting at an Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper before going on to talk about trade.

“As he has said in past conversations and in public,” the readout said. “The Prime Minister conveyed that Canada has had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the United States imposed on June 1, 2018.”

Trudeau also spoke by phone with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. Trudeau updated the president on Canada’s tariffs on U.S. imports, according to the readout, which also said the two leaders discussed “the North American Free Trade negotiations and agreed to continue working toward a mutually beneficial outcome.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tariff-list-freeland-1.4727886.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/30

Shif Gadamsetti is the Former President of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University, Support Staff for the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse, Former Chair of the Board of the Canadian Alliance of Students’ Associations and a Member of its Alumni Council. Here we look into her life, work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was family background regarding geography, culture, language, and religion?

Shif Gadamsetti: I was raised by both my parents, people I would consider traditional Christians, and quite involved with the church during my upbringing. We regularly attended Sunday service, and I was actively involved in my teen years through the youth group, outreach, teaching Sunday School and with the church’s worship team. My family immigrated to Canada from India in 2001, and settled in Calgary almost immediately. There was a certain gap in terms of finding cultural community to bridge with once we had moved. We only had one extended family in the city, and our primary social network was through the church, which did not have a significantly diverse cultural congregation at the time.

Jacobsen: How did this influence you? Did this impact the professional trajectory as a kid growing into a young woman?

Gadamsetti: I had often sought out positions of leadership throughout my youth, and I believe that I learned a lot from seeking leadership opportunities through my church. It allowed me to be socially involved with peers my own age, as my parents were quite restrictive and traditional, likely influenced by their position as immigrants. It was a safe place for them to allow me to integrate with Canadian culture while still maintaining engagement with our religious roots.

Jacobsen: As a nurse who works in the operating theatre or operating room, what tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Gadamsetti: I work with an interdisciplinary team – we always have at least one other nurse, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, and other physicians, who either assist or residents that participate in our surgical cases. My responsibilities include a pre-operative assessment, including looking for any potential risks that could compromise the surgery – these range from substance use, underlying health conditions, something as simple as the patient ingesting food or drink prior to the surgery (which could complicate their intubation and present a choking hazard if they were to vomit), etc. During these cases, I either “circulate” ( the nurse who is not sterile) and assist the surgeon and scrub nurse with opening tools, maintaining sterility, documentation, and monitoring of supplies needed during the case.  If I am scrubbing in on the case, my primary role is to assist the surgeon with their procedure, which can range from anticipating their needs, positioning, preparing tools such as sutures or drills to be used, and tracking any of the materials used to ensure that we maintain the integrity of the procedure and don’t accidentally leave something in a patient, for example.

Jacobsen: What is the motivation to work for women’s rights through the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse organization as a support staff?

Gadamsetti: I have always been interested in learning more and supporting areas of gender-based barriers, and violence. I personally am very motivated in this position because sexual violence is a nuanced issue, and there is much that goes into understanding why sexual violence is perpetuated (often long-standing histories including lack of education, ancillary mental health and relationship issues, etc), and how to best support victims of sexualized violence. There is so much that broader communities don’t understand, it is often considered a taboo topic, communities feel unequipped to have conversations that wholly support the victim, and the work is difficult – not everyone is cut out to handle such matters, which I do not fault them for. There’s a very difficult way to gauge my responsibilities – a “good” day includes having a collaborative team, a client that feels supported, autonomous, and well managed for both the social and administrative work that goes into processing a case, but its never really a good day because my clients have been victims of sexual assault. Someday, I hope to involve myself in broader-based approaches to sexual violence prevention and support, including policy development and education, but I also know that I need to understand where our clients come from and what they need. I’ve learned so much and challenged many assumptions, despite how much work I’ve put into understanding the issue, and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity.

Jacobsen: As the president at the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University (SAMRU), what are the benefits and difficulties of the work there?

Gadamsetti: I am now completed my term as President with SAMRU, but I would vouch for the endless possibilities that come with the role. It’s an incredible honor to be elected and serve students to represent their best interests, the experience with leadership, management, and so many other valuable skills is never-ending, and the connections you build with other student leaders and people across your networks are ones that last a lifetime. A lot of us would agree that we have a common vision and work so hard to achieve those results through internal and external advocacy. I learned a lot about myself and what I was capable of throughout my time there.

Jacobsen: What tend to be the issues for women on postsecondary campuses in Canada? What is being done to help solve them?

Gadamsetti: I wouldn’t want to generalize – but perhaps, the ones that most students face are common across women as well – financial precarity, employment, etc. I would, however, point out that the common issues amongst students are exacerbated by gender-based barriers – sexualized violence can sometimes be a prevalent issue amongst women on campus for a variety of reasons – lack of education around consent in an environment where young people are discovering and establishing boundaries, lack of institutional policy and supports available to help those who experience it, a lack of consent culture, perpetuation of toxic behaviours that develop into patterns that are harder to address when they become systemic or cultural. There’s also the insidious types of issues that women face – increased violence and risk to their safety, those who are marginalized amongst their different intersectional identities, be it race, sexuality, etc, are often the most unsupported. Employment trends continue to show gender-based barriers in their patterns, and addressing these issues culturally can also take a long time. Any root problem that sees women as less qualified, less equal, subservient, will perpetuate patterns of discrimination and violence, including sexualized violence.

I believe that institutions need to become bolder and take hard-line stances on the matter, while demonstrating their commitment to resolving these issues with comprehensive policies that support all students’ safety, regardless of how these opportunities might seem risky to the institution’s reputation. The largest barrier to addressing sexualized violence on campus in the past 10 years has been the inability for those in leadership to admit there’s a problem, admit they are part of the problem, and rally behind an overhauling of support systems. Culture is important – when a zero tolerance stance without allowing loopholes or technicalities to exist is implemented, those perpetuating violence might think twice, and evaluate their own behavior before choosing to victimize someone in that way. At the same time, being transparent about problems and choosing to address issues by prioritizing victims over the institution as a whole would complement the approach well. It takes a community to implement real change, and once that change occurs, institutions need to ensure that proper support systems are in place for those seeking help and are continually funded, aren’t tokenized, and can meaningfully support the community long-term. It really does require a multifaceted approach.

Jacobsen: If a senior in high school or a first-year woman student in postsecondary education wants to become involved in student politics, how can they start? Who should they contact? What should they bear in mind about the potential responsibilities that they will be taking on?

Gadamsetti: The best place to start is likely your own students’ association. It’s a great place to learn more about what your interests might be as you transition to university, meet new people, find the niche spaces you feel comfortable in, and familiarize yourself with student politics, and the “politics” of the institution as well. Student association spaces have always provided me with great insight into what students care about, need, celebrate, and champion. I started getting involved with my faculty club, and branched out to others that suited my interests. You might not be interested in running for a position as a student executive after it’s all said and done, but I guarantee you that it will enrich and support your university experience like no other.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Shif.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/28

According to Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, there is an ongoing shift in the business of Canadian oil and gas if the national industry wants to remain competitive.

A report released by PetroLMI of Energy Safety Canada described the need for new skills for the upcoming jobs in the international competition of the oil and gas industry. The future seems more inclined towards green energy and renewable ones.

Until then, “A Workforce in Transition: Oil and Gas Skills of the Future” talked about the shift in skills and occupations within the Canadian industrial work base in the energy sector.

Both federal and provincial governments have been proposing a series of changes to regulation with integration or adoption of the automation and data analytics technologies coming online.

When I worked in a Learning Analytics Research Group, the research remained based in education and the improvement in student performance. Some incorporated the new technology and software tools found in narrow artificial intelligence developed with machine learning and neural networks models.

Automation tied to these programs could improve various inefficiencies at different levels of process, of operations. Into the future, especially with the price and energy production performance of enewables outpacing standard hydrocarbon – or 20th century – energy sources, I would like to see these new technologies applied to make the full transition to renewables.

Even if nuclear, and if a breakdown, we would talk about half-lives of tens of thousands of years, which amounts to new forms of waste and pollution to people around the world only as far back as the 19th century.

There are new manufacturing technologies for oil and gas now, though. With the shifts in the extant economy here, the Vice President of Communications and PetroLMI for Energy Safety Canada, Carol Howes, stated, “This report examines where the exciting opportunities lie for new and interesting careers, and those occupations that will be on the decline, if not eliminated, because of these changes to the oil and gas business.”

I agree with Howes. However, the scope seems to narrow. The decline and potential elimination will be much of the oil and gas industry in the medium and long-term projections. People shifting into these new oil and gas jobs should predict the need to retrain and switch once more out of the oil and gas industry even if climate change is not a concern for them and only narrow economic self-interest is the concern, which is valid.

The jobs not associated with oil and gas will be more linked to the oil and gas industry in the near future.

As the reportage stated, “Occupations not traditionally considered oil and gas jobs will be more in demand – those such as data management and analytics specialists, instrumentation technologists and software engineers. Increasing numbers of natural science professionals and environmental service workers will also be required.”

There will be a dual-skillset necessary to compete in the global oil and gas industry. First, the need for mechanical skills and then also the digital skills associated with those new technologies and especially the analytics.

The article continued, “New government regulations governing major energy project approvals will require a greater need for expertise in Indigenous traditional knowledge, public health specialists, biologists and economic development specialists, says the report.”

All important and complex facets of the emergence of new transitional industries. The need for public support becomes more important as the risks become better known by a wider range of people, more citizens.

Wth the climate strategy from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, there will be work for the reduction of carbon dioxide and methane emissions. That will translate into needed jobs for the “

Meanwhile, communications and consulting abilities will be heavily relied on to earn and maintain public support for these projects “measurement, mitigation and reporting” about them.

There will be the incremnetal increase of photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, and other energy technologies as the economies of the developed world especially and the rest of the world eventually transition into renewable energy markets.

“The adoption of automation and data analytics technologies is already improving Canada’s oil and gas industry’s productivity, safety and profitability,” the article stated, “As a greater number of tasks are automated, however, more of the workforce will need to be digitally literate as well as more innovative and creative in looking for productivity improvements.”

With more analytics in the market, rhe more data scientists will be needed. In that, we should be training these individuals in increasing numbers, now, especially in oil and gas powerhouses such as the province of Alberta.

At the same time, we should start to work on the training for the upcoming and ongoing employment of alternative energy sources in the newer economies and industries of, for example, renewable resources.

Howe concluded, “With all of this change comes both challenges and exciting opportunities for Canadians working in the oil and gas industry and for those who are looking to become part of it,” said Howes, “Like other industries, the oil and gas industry is adapting and evolving and its workforce will need to do so also.”

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/27

The Toronto Star reported that the proposed sexual education changes by the Progressive Conservatives would harm kids.

Sexual education mattered to some but not all voters in Ontario. The repeal of the current sexual education curriculum was one of many foci for Doug Ford and his party. Ford won the vote in Ontario.

The reportage stated, “Doug Ford isn’t a particularly religious man of course, but he wants to display his alleged toughness and his links to ‘the people,’ and striking at a curriculum that has been lied about, and held up as a symbol of the elites at their worst, is perfect optics. Bluster and bombast in one well-rehearsed sound bite.”

Charles McVety sent a social media post – a “tweet,” so-called, on Twitter – that said, “Premier Doug Ford Majority Government. Praise God who heard our prayers and delivered victory for the sake of our children.”

Let us leave aside the efficacy of prayer or the existence of God asserted in the tweet, please. The main claim comes from the tacit assertion of the repeal of the current sexual education curriculum helping children rather than harming them. Does this work as a claim?

In short: does the repeal support the best interests of the child?

McVety stood and stands against the modern evidence-based sexual education curriculum in Ontario. He is the President of the Canada Christian College. He was the first guest on the televised leaders’ debate.

“Then there is the former Tory candidate Tanya Granic Allen. She stated last week that, ‘parents expect the repeal of the Wynne sex-ed by September.’ By ‘parents’ she means the small number of hardliners in her organization,” the article opined.

Allen was fired as a Progressive Conservative candidate based on some comments. She was present at the celebration party for Ford.

Also, the National President of Campaign Life Coalition, Jim Hughes, said, “We remain optimistic that Premier Doug Ford will uphold his campaign promises to repeal and replace Kathleen Wynne’s radical sex-ed curriculum as an ‘early priority’ in his administration.”

Others working in opposition to the sxual education curriculum are other pro-life groups including the Roman Catholic Church. Although, the laity and Catholic hierarchs differ in views on the subject of, for example, abortion.

I do not want to misrepresent. Differences exist in those groups opposed to modern evidence-based sexual education curriculum. It seems as if pro-life groups and individuals in authority formed coalitions with the movement for repeal by Ford.

“The infamous clergy sexual abuse crisis within Catholicism, which is still to be fully exposed, was dependent on children being ignorant of sex, unable to name sexual acts, and on the fog of confusion and fear around sexuality that Catholicism has long enforced in its teaching and formation,” the article stated.

The Catholic hierarchs founded, defended, and kept secret the sexual abuse in their own churches, unfortunately. It harmed and harms their image, followers, and claims to full legitimate moral authority on various issues now.

The issue with the removal of the sexual education curriculum in Ontario would not be in the best interests of the child. Why? It removes education for a child. In particular, the move would repeal the knowledge and information for children needed to make informed personal sexual choices, whether they want to or not, and in what ways they deem safe and healthy.

The article continued, “Children deserve better than to be play things in the soiled hands of single-issue fanatics and ill-informed politicians. The curriculum is balanced and appropriate, parents were consulted, groups dealing with abuse and child health contributed, and no single bureaucrat was responsible for it.” [Emphasis added.]

Is it evidence-based rather than faith-based (which, by technical definition, means without evidence)? Yes.

Is it based on consultation with the public? Yes.

Does this mean the health and wellbeing of the kids are ensured and protected? Yes, for the most part, adolescents and kids can still make mistakes, though.

Last question, does this mean the repeal would be non-evidence-based or faith-based, rejecting the implemented consultation of the Ontario public, and reduce the knowledge and capacity for kids to make informed sexual choices (against the best interests of the child)? Yes.

For the best interests of the children, their mental and physical wellbeing associated with sexual health in other words. They deserve a proper, evidence-based sexual education curriculum built in coordination and consultation with relevant parties in the province, which is the current curriculum. To remove or repeal it, it will harm kids; in turn, it will harm families, communities, and a sector of the next generation in Ontario. Those who make these choices knowingly will be the ones to live with the consequences in reality and on their consciences.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/26

The World Sikh Organization (WSO) founder spoke about human rights in The Straight.

According to the article, the WSO supports the human rights of all Canadians without regard to any status in life. Gian Singh Sandhu, the founding president, stated that the WSO has taken court cases on behalf of Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim communities.

The WSO worked as an intervenor for the Supreme Court of Canada court case with TWU. Apparently, a convicted terrorist asserted the WSO paid the legal bills for the court case of the terrorist.

The man, Jaspal Atwal, claimed the WSO paid the legal fees. He stated this came following being acquitted for the beating of lawyer Ujjal Dosanjh in 1985. Sandhu made the conter-claim the assertions of Atwal were false.

Sandhu stated, “The WSO never paid his legal fees… I was president of the organization from 1984 to 1989, so I can tell you very clearly we did not pay any of his costs… I have no idea. I have no idea.” (The final portion in response to the claim as to why Atwal would make the claim.)

Even with the allegations against the WSO, or more about the WSO, Sandhu respected the right for Atwal to “tell his side of the story.” However, Sandhu viewed this as not extending to the implication of organizations.

Sandhu has been on record condemning violence. Atwal, in the 1980s, was found guilty of attempted murder of a visiting Punjabi cabinet minister. He earned a 20-year prison sentence for the murder. His parole was 5-and-half years in prison.

Atwal was photographed with Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau in Mumbai; while also, he was on the guest list for a dinner with the Trudeau family at the Canadian High Commission in Delhi. Atwal, for a short time, became a famous Sikh in Canada.

“Trudeau’s national security adviser later told journalists that ‘rogue elements’ within the Indian government disseminated misleading information to discredit Canadian institutions.

Sandhu’s memoir,” The reportage stated, “An Uncommon Road: How Canadian Sikhs Struggled Out of the Fringes and Into the Mainstream, explained in detail how the Sikh community was frequently smeared in the media and by some Conservative politicians in the 1980s and early 1990s.”

The smearing of Sikhs by a sector of Conservative politicians for two decades. Sandhu targeted one important topic of the media. The “emerging motif,” in his words, of the independence of Khalistan and the term “extremist,” as an epithet or invective, merged together: conflated ideas.

Sandhu explained, “Many non-Sikhs seemed to regard support for an independent Sikh nation as a classic ipso facto: ‘If one is for Khalistan, then one is necessarily an extremist,’ a logical fallacy that often went unchecked and inflicted enormous damage on our community and our cause.”

The text emphasizes the tenets of the Sikh faith and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sandhu supports, in a strong fashion, both the Charter and the tenets of the Sikh faith.

Sandhu concluded, “The charter really tells me what being a Sikh is all about.”

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/25

The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur, Leilani Farha, from a housing watchdog from the UN spoke on the federal Liberals’ failures in rights to housing.

The rights to housing remain human rights. Farha sent a letter. The housing strategy did not, according to Farha, recognize the right to housing for Canadians. This comes in the analysis of the 10-year program enshrined in legislation to likely enter into the law.

The program comes to $40-billion. The Globe and Mail article stated, “A Liberal point man on the housing file told the Commons last week that the government didn’t want to declare a right that creates a belief that people can ‘prosecute their way into housing’ and that they need landlords, not lawyers.”

However, Farha viewed the government as discriminatory and patronizing. She continued to note the creation of a rights-based housing strategy without formal enshrinement of housing as a human right cannot be done.

Farha, who also leads Canada Without Poverty, opined, “At a time when human rights are so fragile around the world, with populist governments reacting against the multilateral human rights system, I would think the government of Canada — which stands apart — would do everything it could to embrace human rights… Instead of embracing the recommendation and the right to housing, the government seems to be recoiling from it.”

Jean-Yves Duclos, who is in charge of the initiative and the Social Development Minister, described the plan of the federal Liberals as on to recognize and incrementally found the rights to access to affordable housing for every Canadian citizen.

The Globe and Mail continued, “The Liberals have promised to introduce legislation to make it difficult for any successive government to back out of the plan to help provinces and territories set long-term goals, instead of wondering how much they might receive year by year.”

The purpose of the letter from Farha remains the pressure on the federal government while it works on the bill throughout the summer. This would formulate a federal watchdog as well. One watchdog to monitor the progression of the housing strategy in addition to the identification of problems with housing rights for Canadians.

The frame of housing as a right gives recourse through tribunals.

As explained in the reportage, “Characterizing housing as a human right is meant to provide recourse, usually through tribunals, to anyone wrongfully denied a home for reasons such as ethnicity, religion, or gender identity, and to allow for watchdogs to conduct reviews to remove systemic barriers to housing.”

The Duclos parliamentary secretary on housing, Adam Vaughn, stated, “It’s never been proposed as a charter amendment, or as a court to correct individual grievances… It’s about building a housing system that realizes peoples right (to) housing (through) progressive measures.”

Karen Vecchio, a critic and Conservative, stated that the efforts of the federal Liberal government will not work so well on the various barriers to affordable housing, as a supply concern. The red tape, for instance, prevents builders too much at the municipal level.

Vecchio argues for opened avenues for rental housing or home ownership rather than housing as a right. The NDP, earlier in 2018, failed to have the right to housing placed in the Canadian Bill of Rights.

One housing critic, Sheri Benson, stated, “How are we going to hold a government to account for a 10-year strategy if you don’t really have good legislation…  There’s no way the public can hold the government to account if it (the legislation) doesn’t have teeth, if it doesn’t acknowledge that people have a right to housing.”

Farha voted in the confidence of the federal Liberals’ national housing based on the reveal in November 2017. However, this was based on the recognition of the right t housing to be in the legislation as well.

Now, with the letter and the use – even abuse – of the tacit support of Farha by the government when they were questioned on the national housing strategy and the right to housing, Farha “urged the government to stop using her words as a stamp of approval.”

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“All Canadians have rights, including murderers like Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette, and they also have the capacity to be rehabilitated, the convicted killer’s lawyer argued Wednesday.

The Crown wants Bissonnette to serve a 150-year prison term, but his defence team has countered he should be eligible for parole after 25 years.

After two days of sentencing arguments, the courtroom debate shifted to whether the trial judge should be able to hand Bissonnette consecutive sentences.

Bissonnette, 28, pleaded guilty earlier this year to six charges of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder after he walked into a mosque in the provincial capital in January 2017 and opened fire.

A single first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-sentencing-quebec-mosque-city-to-150-years-in-prison-would-deprive-him/.

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedom. The Charter has taken two major blows recently — one from a recent policy change implemented earlier this year by the Trudeau government, the second from our Supreme Court.

The first blow came when the federal government announced that any group wishing to apply for summer job grants had to sign an agreement that they pledged to follow the Liberal Party’s official policy on a woman’s “freedom of choice” with respect to abortion.

The second blow came with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Trinity Law School case — namely that they would allow provincial Law Societies to override religious choices made by candidates who freely chose to abide by the religious principles of certain Christian law schools, as a condition of entry.

Abortion is, and always has been, a sensitive topic for governments and courts. Most modern and democratic countries have resolved the complex topic by allowing unrestricted freedom of choice to a pregnant woman during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Thereafter there are restrictions.

There is no such law in Canada. In fact, there is no law about abortion at all. Our politicians find the issue too difficult to deal with. In spite of the fact that there is no law, Canadian women can obtain abortions relatively easily in the first few months of the pregnancy, but if a woman was able to find a practitioner crazy enough to abort her fetus one day before she was scheduled to give birth, there are no law forbidding it.”

Source: http://winnipegsun.com/opinion/columnists/giesbrecht-freedom-of-religion-disappearing-in-canada.

“Daniel Peacock says this year is tougher for Camp Jordan.

The small Baptist summer camp in Jordan Falls, N.S., has relied on $4,000 in federal grant money to hire a student camp counsellor for the last four years — a job that is invaluable, according to Peacock, a member of the board that oversees the camp.

But this year Camp Jordan, along with at least five other faith-based camps in Nova Scotia, didn’t even bother to apply for the Canada Summer Jobs program. The decision follows the federal government’s controversial move to require all applicants to express support for “individual human rights in Canada” — including reproductive rights and equality of LGBTQ Canadians.

“The government is saying, ‘We’re right and you’re wrong and that’s it. Believe what we believe or don’t bother to apply for money,'” Peacock said. “Our Baptist foundation told us that unless we check the box off, we would be ignored.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/faith-based-camps-feel-sting-of-trudeau-government-s-summer-jobs-abortion-clause-1.4718335.

“The case against a suspected drug trafficker in Windsor has been thrown out after Judge George King ruled the man’s Charter rights were violated by police.

Today in Windsor Superior Court, King found Brandon Nunn had several of his rights, outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, violated by police — determining Nunn had been illegally searched, failed to be informed of his right to counsel and held in detention unlawfully.

Nunn walked free today after being held in custody for more than a year.

Defence lawyer Julie Santarossa says King got it right by throwing out the evidence and the case against Nunn based on the Charter rights violation.

“There are so many that were violated in such egregious ways and ultimately, that’s what the judge found,” says Santarossa.”

Source: https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/suspected-drug-trafficker-walks-after-charter-rights-violated-1.3985880.

“Editor: I would like to comment on the article from June 15 “Supreme Court of Canada rules against TWU in fight over law school.”

Section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms lists 10 specific items on which our rights and freedoms are based. They are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

If a product or service is being provided to the public, (this would include educational institutions that charge tuition to someone selling coffee and doughnuts) should the provider of that product or service be allowed to request a paying “customer” to sign a waiver that would limit their rights according to section 15(1)?

We’re familiar with the details concerning LGBTQ students who attend TWU. If this is allowed to happen with one particular item listed in section 15(1) what is stopping any of the other items on the list from being used in this manner?”

Source: https://www.langleytimes.com/opinion/letter-all-rights-and-freedoms-under-charter-must-be-protected/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“OTTAWA, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, announced the appointment of Dr. Ingrid J. Pickering as Chair of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Board of Directors, the first woman to serve in this position. She will lead the Board for a three-year term, effective immediately.

Dr. Pickering is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Environmental Science at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research uses synchrotron X-ray techniques to study metals and other elements in biological systems that are important to the environment and human health.

She has experience serving on a number of international advisory panels for synchrotron facilities, making her well suited to lead the CFI and help advance the Government’s Innovation and Skills Plan. Dr. Pickering has previously been a member of the CFI Board, providing the Foundation with advice and strategic direction that enabled it to fulfill its mandate to support world-class research infrastructure at universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research organizations across Canada.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/first-woman-appointed-chair-of-the-canada-foundation-for-innovation-board-of-directors-686037511.html.

“OTTAWA, June 19, 2018 /CNW/ – New technologies have changed the way that we access information, shop, live, socialize and work.

As a result of these changes, our economy has transformed to become increasingly data-driven and critical innovations and unparalleled economic opportunity have been unlocked. At the same time, the digital transformation has brought with it new and uncharted challenges surrounding the changing nature of work, privacy, information and consent.

Digital innovation is essential to growing our economy, attracting investment and creating middle-class jobs for Canadians, but the government recognizes that the potential of a data-driven economy must be balanced against Canadians’ right to have their data and privacy protected.

That is why the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, has launched a national consultation on digital and data transformation in order to better understand how Canada can drive innovation, prepare Canadians for the future of work, and ensure they have trust and confidence in how their data is used.’

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/government-of-canada-launches-national-consultations-on-digital-and-data-transformation-685946472.html.

“Dr. Elizabeth Borycki was interested in health informatics long before the science had a name. Now she teaches, researches, consults and publishes on the science of designing, developing and managing digitized health systems, technologies and data. Borycki, a professor with the University of Victoria’s School of Health Information Science, is recognized around the world as a leading health informatics researcher, scholar and innovator.

In 2008, Borycki co-created the first double degree graduate program in Nursing and Health Informatics in Canada. In doing so, she promoted the first nursing-informatics program in our country. Unlike other technology-focused areas of study, the majority of Health Information Science students at UVic are female. “Many of our students are interested in revolutionizing health care using health information technologies designed, developed and implemented to improve patient health,” says Borycki. The School of Health Information Science at UVic is currently educating the largest intake of undergrads in the school’s 36-year history.

Health-information technology is digitizing healthcare. Patients, health professionals and care services are moving online and becoming more accessible. Borycki develops and designs best practices and shares that knowledge with her informatics students, researchers, administrators and policy makers worldwide. That’s one reason the school attracts high interest locally and globally, graduating desirable professionals to forge new advances in settings where health-information technologies are used to improve health care.”

Source: https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2018+torch-health-technologies-borycki+news.

“TORONTO, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – We are pleased to announce the seventh cohort of Schulich Leader Scholarship recipients.

Out of a pool of 350,000 potential candidates, 1,400 students were nominated, of which 50 received this celebrated award.

Of the 50 recipients, 25 are pursuing an engineering degree and 25 are pursuing a science, technology or mathematics degree at our 20 Canadian partner universities.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/50-students-awarded-canadas-largest-undergraduate-scholarship-for-science-technology-engineering-and-math-stem-686049492.html.

“OTTAWA, June 22, 2018 /CNW/ – Canada’s greatest potential can only be realized when all people, including women, are welcomed into the lab, the classroom and the field. That is why the Government of Canada is taking action to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the research community.

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, today announced she will consult students, researchers, academics and others to discuss their views on how to adapt the Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) initiative for a “made-in-Canada” approach.

Participating in Athena SWAN is part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to promoting equity, diversity and inclusion in research. It is an internationally recognized initiative that celebrates higher education institutions that have implemented practices to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in the sciences.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-of-science-launches-consultations-for-a-made-in-canada-athena-swan-initiative-686299191.html.

“OTTAWA, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, announced that Iain Stewart has been reappointed as President of National Research Council Canada(NRC).

Mr. Stewart has been serving as President of the NRC since August 24, 2016. Prior to joining the NRC, Mr. Stewart held various leadership positions throughout the public service, notably as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board and as Assistant Secretary of the International Affairs, Security and Justice Sector at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. He also held a number of key science leadership positions at Industry Canada, including Assistant Deputy Minister of the Strategic Policy Sector, Secretary to the panel on Federal Support to Research and Development (known as the “Jenkins panel”), and Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Innovation Sector. Outside the public service, Mr. Stewart served as Assistant Vice-President, Research at Dalhousie University and was a member of the NRC Council.

This reappointment will enable Mr. Stewart to build on the results he achieved during his first term as NRC President and continue the work he launched with the NRC Dialogue:

• Achieving the promise of Budget 2018 by successfully implementing new funding for research excellence, growing firms to scale, and building collaborations with business and academic partners;
• Deepening research excellence by establishing an NRC Chief Science Advisor, developing the next generation of NRC research leaders and encouraging a more diverse NRC;
• Revitalizing NRC research facilities through shared approaches with partners; and
• Further positioning the NRC as a collaboration partner with business, academia and government.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/iain-stewart-reappointed-as-president-of-national-research-council-686032021.html.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“WASHINGTON:I recently had an interesting exchange with a Canadian reader who objected to the notion of America regulating its borders. Who took issue with the idea of American Exceptionalism. Who thought America, but not Canada, should erase their borders. That open U.S. border was the only natural outcome for America.

“America is a shithole now and Trump and his cronies & supporters are the reason,” he insisted. “You’re setting human rights back decades to a time when it was great if you were a rich, white male. Religion needs to be abolished from any influence in your government.”

These are universally held notions worth unpacking.”

Source: https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/oh-canada-open-u-s-borders-religion-diminish-american-exceptionalism-103717/.

“In 2012, Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Langley, announced its plan to open a law school. The Law Societies of B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia objected to TWU’s law school because it required its students to sign a covenant that students must restrict sexual relations to those between a man and woman within a lawful marriage.

The three law societies claimed the covenant was discriminatory against the LGBTQ community. Law societies of other provinces and territories had no objections to the covenant.

This conflict pitched the freedom of religion of a Christian university, whose right is written into S.2 of the Charter of Rights, against the rights of the LGBTQ community, whose rights were read into the Charter by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992.

The Supreme Court faced a dilemma. It had concluded in a 2001 decision in Trinity Western University v. B.C. College of Teachers that if a conflict occurs between rights, there must be a balancing of such rights so as to fully respect the importance of both sets of rights. It concluded in that previous case that TWU graduates were eligible to become teachers.”

Source: http://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/gwendolyn-landolt-twu-decision-shows-public-can-no-longer-have-confidence-in-the-impartiality-and-objectivity-of-the-supreme-court-of-canada.

“Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its decision in Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) v. Trinity Western University (TWU), a case that, in the context of a public regulatory decision, pitted religious freedom against equality rights.

A majority of the court held that the B.C. Law Society did not violate the university’s freedom of religion in refusing to approve its proposed law program, participation in which required students to sign a covenant not to engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

This covenant creates discrimination against those who practice homosexuality and, more generally, expresses TWU’s general institutional hostility towards homosexuality and homosexuals.

Graduates of Canadian law school programs qualify for admission to the process through which one can become a lawyer when a law program receives approval from the relevant provincial law society. Law societies are statutory bodies which, among other responsibilities, are mandated to give approval to law programs if satisfied that they provide appropriate professional education.”

Source: http://leaderpost.com/opinion/columnists/religion-homosexuality-and-the-charter.

“The Supreme Court’s decision affirming the right of provincial law societies to refuse to licence graduates of Trinity Western University’s law school is nominally a question of administrative law, but it touches on a more polarizing issue: the contest between traditional religious belief and the right to be free from discrimination.

Decided by a 7-2 majority, the ruling involves four separate reasons for judgment, including two concurrences and a spirited dissent.

This legal smorgasbord has inspired a wide variety of reactions that largely depend on one’s political perspective.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-canadas-top-court-strikes-a-balance-on-religious/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“Canadians with disabilities felt a surge of tempered optimism on Wednesday as they watched Canada table its first piece of federal legislation aimed at improving accessibility for people with disabilities.

Disabled residents and advocacy organizations said the introduction of the Accessible Canada Act marked a key step towards greater inclusion and contained several critical points community members had named as priorities during a lengthy cross-country consultation process that helped shape the new bill.

But they also raised concerns about provisions the draft bill appears to lack, such as measures to ensure new accessibility barriers do not work their way into future government laws.

Minister for Sport and Persons with Disabilities Kirsty Duncan, the third person to oversee the legislation in as many years, celebrated the “historic” act as a victory for disabled Canadians.

“We are here because of the disability community and their advocacy for decades,” Duncan told The Canadian Press. “This is the community’s legislation.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-government-tables-canadas-first-national-accessibility-law/.

“After the Senate voted to pass a bill legalizing recreational cannabis in Canada, the legislation sparked headlines and social media reaction around the globe.

News of the bill passing made its way onto CNN, Newsweek, and the BBC, to name a few. Most of the international stories chose to compare Canada’s new law to their own and speculate about the possibility of Canada’s rules spreading elsewhere.

While the Washington Post kept it simple with a headline reading “Canada’s Senate votes to legalize marijuana,” Esquire magazine was a tad edgier with “Canada just legalized marijuana throughout the whole damn country.” CBS News had an entire story speculating about the future of legal pot in the U.K., titled “After Canada, will U.K. be next to legalize marijuana?””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-s-cannabis-law-makes-headlines-worldwide-1.3981460.

“Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says he knew almost the moment he heard Kinder Morgan was pressing the pause button on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on April 8 that the federal government was likely going to have to buy the whole thing.

Although the final decision to purchase took more than seven weeks of secret negotiations with the company — many of which even Carr was not in on as they were handled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and a very small team of finance officials — Carr says when he got a phone call in his hotel room during a business trip to New York City he knew what the final outcome was likely to be.

“When that phone call came, I knew that there was a reasonable chance that they would pull out and at the same time there was a possibility Canada would step in,” Carr said.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carr-trans-mountain-pipeline-purchase-government-1.4720119.

“Canadian troops started to take up their positions in the world’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission on Sunday, as a dozen Forces members flew into an isolated United Nations’ base to begin work on Canada’s year-long commitment to help bring peace and stability to this strife-riven African nation.

The sun beat down on the tarmac as defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance led the small contingent out of the Hercules transport plane that had carried them into the country and were met by a German convoy covered in the red dust that seems to be everywhere.

Gen. Vance and the 12-member advance team, whose task will be to lay the groundwork for the eventual arrival of the eight helicopters and 250 military members who comprise Canada’s mission in Mali, were scheduled to arrive the day before.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-first-canadian-peacekeepers-arrive-in-mali-as-yearlong-mission-begins/.

The House of Commons erupting into chaos over a pipeline intended to connect Alberta oil to a greater market. Talk of the government subsidizing resource infrastructure. Conservatives throwing barbs over Liberal arrogance. All this should sound familiar to anyone paying even cursory attention to Canadian politics right now, but the pipeline in this scenario isn’t Kinder Morgan’s. It’s TransCanada’s. And this isn’t 2018. It’s 1956.

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion project is not the first pipeline to divide Canada’s major parties and split its electorate. From May 8 to June 7, 1956, a pipeline ripped Canadian politics apart. Debate over the construction of the TransCanada pipeline resulted in what historian William Kilbourn called “the stormiest episode in Canadian parliamentary history.” The House of Commons devolved into bitterness and viciousness, with the debate hitting such a feverish pitch that it supposedly caused the fatal heart attack of one MP. Some political careers were launched, others were destroyed.

At its heart, the 1956 pipeline debate was a microcosm of the greater economic question that had split Canada since Confederation: nationalism or continentalism? The point of division over TransCanada was not whether the pipeline should be built – the expansion of natural-resource infrastructure was considered an unambiguous good – but whether it should be owned by an American company. The U.S.-owned TransCanada Pipeline Ltd. had apprehensions about building a pipeline across the Canadian Shield, so the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent, driven largely by “Minister of Everything” C.D. Howe, offered to subsidize its construction. Mr. Howe presented a plan to the House of Commons to lend TransCanada $80-million. Describing the pipeline as a “great national project,” Mr. Howe insisted that lending money to the U.S. firm was the only way to get construction under way that year.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-politics-of-pipelines-are-the-politics-of-canadian-sovereignty/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

Carline Klijnman is the Editor-in-Chief of the upcoming Topical Magazine. Here we talk about personal and professional background and the publication. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have been involved in journalistic and writing work. What is your story regarding topics of interest and building the relevant interests and skills in journalism and writing?

Carline Klijnman: The key to building relevant interests is keeping abreast of trending topics and ensuring that relevant interpretations are afforded to them. I have always found articles more riveting when a writer is willing to think outside of the box. Indeed, I think that there are too many run-off-the-mill analyses when it comes to exploring prevailing issues in, say, politics. Conversely, and worryingly, unconventional analyses are more often than not typically exclusive to academic circles. This must be changed. I think it’s important that one of the things we do is look beyond the tralatitious circles of discourse and look to, for example, academia. I would say If there’s an article that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it yourself. As for skills in journalism, I have looked to many of my colleagues for advice while learning the necessary skills myself when possible. It’s been a lengthy learning process, and at times very piecemeal, especially when aiming to create articles that are one-of-a-kind.

Jacobsen: You are starting a new project, Topical Magazine. What inspired the name and topics to cover in the magazine?

Klijnman: The name of the magazine was floated by my colleague and founder of the magazine, Benjamin David, who rightly noted that we needed a name that is reflective of the kind of articles we publish. After all, the magazine only publishes pieces that are gripping and are, as our name suggests, topical.
Topical’s talented writers, many being academics, address contemporary themes with a philosophical perspective. Areas covered include culture, lifestyle, science and technology. We decided on this purview given their popularity in most demographics. We want to offer something for everyone. Pieces are fresh, thought-provoking and fundamental to understanding an increasingly changing world.

Jacobsen: Who is the intended audience?

Klijnman: I believe we offer something for everyone. That includes more well-read people and those who only read occasionally. Many publications are incredibly niche in terms of their readership – underpinned by a political or philosophical commitment. Topical Magazine works hard to be as inclusive as possible.

Jacobsen: What kind of articles will be featured on the site when the magazine goes live?

Klijnman: We have some very inviting articles on our site that will appeal to many people. For example, we have a piece on romance that is willing to argue that we need to do away with romantic ideals if we are to delight in the best of relationships while disposing of the oppressive and delusional. We also have exciting pieces on ways in which science can boost our creativity and how technology will transform us all by 2030.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved with the contributions side with editing or writing?

Klijnman: We are always looking to having people join our budding team, especially new writers. We are looking for people who care about science, culture, technology and lifestyle and have what it takes to offer new perspectives in accessible ways. We encourage prospective contributors and editors to contact us via our website here.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Klijnman: We know readers have become suspicious of the media, and rightly so. Too many platforms have shown themselves short-sighted, failing to deliver the stories you need in the right way.

Topical Magazine aims to give our readers balance and objectivity. We make sure what you read is well-researched, far-sighted and free of subterfuge. Ensuring we have a rigorous vetting procedure, I am convinced our writers are second to none. Moreover, In the coming year Topical will be a game changer. Seminal discussions, such as those in religion and politics, will broaden with unique analyses, and our vision and hard work guarantees our team and areas of focus continue expanding.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Carline. 

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/20

According to Richmond News, the Richmond Centre MP Alice Wong argued against the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Trinity Western University’s proposed law school.

The recent TWU decision created a landmark decision in the SCC. The decision was 7-2 against the proposed law school. In particular, the decision “upholds the right of law societies to deny accreditation to a proposed law school at the evangelical Christian Trinity Western University, which opened a new, satellite campus in Richmond in 2015.”

Wong argued the decision made Canadian society more intolerance, and less free and inclusive. Two, at least, values in Canada came to a head. One for the freedom of (and from) religion. The other for the promotion of, through a variety of mechanisms, equality.

Values in society remain valid in the individual universe of discourse. As these values come to the real world contexts or environments, the values conflict to some degree. The conflict or the rub between the values, two or more, create the decisions in the courts based on the best judgment of the SCC and other legal authorities at the time.

“TWU requires students sign a covenant allowing sexual intimacy only between a man and a woman who are married,” the article stated, “As such, the Law Society of B.C. previously voted (28-21) to deny accreditation of the proposed TWU law school because the covenant amounts to discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people.”

Wong argued from the angle of a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is, the decision to deny the Evangelical university’s law school created the basis for ‘breaking’ the Charter.

The judges on the SCC took the position of Section One of the Charter. This became the foundation for the denial of the law school. That is, the denial of the accreditation amounted to a reasonable limitation on the university’s rights.

This became the rub, the balance, between the public interest of the law societies and the rights of the university. In the individual universes of discourse, the public interest and the freedom of (and from) religion equate to valid values.

At the same time, when these conflict in highest court consideration, the comprises come to the fore. In this particular case, the SCC decided 7-2 to support the “public-interest objectives of the law societies.”

The judges stated, “It is inimical to the integrity of the legal profession to limit access on the basis of personal characteristics… This is especially so in light of the societal trust enjoyed by the legal profession.”

Of course, with the 7-2 decision, two judges supported the law school position rather than the law societies’ position.

Wong stated the decision against the law school amounted to a “profound interference with religious freedom” that will “ultimately diminish student choice and continues the trend towards a monolithic culture where one has to subscribe to specific beliefs.”

Wong argued the LGBTQ choice in the post-secondary world would not diminish, even if the decision by the SCC had gone the other way, 2-7 in other words. She stated the students are not compelled to attend a post-secondary institution.

Because TWU is a private institution, Wong considered the private funding of this particular post-secondary institution important as a factor. That is, the university is private, receives tax credits as a religious institute, and acquired public infrastructure dollars and research funding.

“In April, Wong also took aim at the Canada Summer Jobs program attestation of legally-enshrined rights for applicants, arguing it violated the rights of those who don’t agree with, for example, the right of a woman to have an abortion,” Richmond News noted.

The main concern from Wong comes from the other regulated professions being affected by the June 15 SCC decision.

The executive director of the proposed TWU law school, Earl Phillips, stated, “All Canadians should be troubled by today’s decision that sets a precedent for how the courts will interpret and apply charter rights and equality rights going forward.”

TWU made the original proposition for the law school during 2012. Approval was acquired through the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the BC Ministry of Advanced Education; nonetheless, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education withdrew the approval at a later time.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/19

According to Arab News, the United States Ambassador for the United Nations Human Rights Council, Nikki Haley, announced the withdrawal of the United States from the UN Human Rights Council.

Haley declared, “We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”

NBC News reported in more depth stating that the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council due to continued bias against Israel, from the vantage of the US Ambassador.

Haley declared the UN body hypocritical and self-serving. “For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias… Therefore, as we said we would do a year ago, if we did not see any progress, the United States is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council,” Haley said.

The top UN human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, criticized the American administration for its zero tolerance policy for immigration. The withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council came one day later.

Al Hussein explained, “The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable.”

Benjamin Netanyahu approved of Haley’s move on behalf of the Trump administration. He said, “Instead of dealing with regimes that systematically violate human rights, the UNHRC obsessively focuses on Israel, the one genuine democracy in the Middle East.”

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/18

Marie Alena Castle was the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. She was raised Roman Catholic. She became an atheist later in life.

She has since been an important figure within the atheist movement through her involvement with Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and in writing Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). 

Please read some previous publications, probably her last, between the two of us: Session 1, Session 2, and Session 3.

I have loved and love many people, in different ways and so not simply its romantic or sinewy heartthrob manifestations. Some, as you live some tad longer, become noticed as loved only through their absence, sometimes permanent departure. Marie Alena Castle was born on December 20, 1926 and died on May 25, 2018.

In the tone given in title and prior paragraph, I feel a proper loss today. I only found out about a quarter of a day ago now.

Castle knew lots. She worked from a place of authority. Her work spanned several domains of activism, where most activists focus on a particular issue including children’s rights, human rights, Indigenous rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, or women’s rights, and so on. In fact, her work spanned several of these areas, which seems impressive in contrast to the monochrome activism prominent in the modern day.

I found the work with her, in her 90s, powerful. She spoke with an authority, which I did not find feigned or ill-conceived. There was a tremendous weight of proper seriousness given from deep time experienced, assiduous work in writing, and real suffering and striving from activism where the stakes were higher than now. Our current era merely experiences the first retraction in different domains in our lifetimes in, for example, women’s rights.

We stand atop a pile of bodies, literal and metaphorical – often women, who fought for equality. In my own country, women earned the right to legal rights as persons in a democracy through the right to vote less than a century ago: staggering, true, and unsurprising. Castle knew this. I know this. To give a glimpse, please give a good ol’ gander at one question-and-answer banter regarding inculcation of protective critical thinking and education for the young here:

What can be some buffers, or defenses, against these direct attacks on the new media and communications technologies, e.g. to educate and inoculate new generations?

Marie Alena Castle:

1. No one cares about any social effects so this has to be made personally self-serving. Start with sex/contraceptive education in schools. Impress the girls that they are NOT a public utility and whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is entirely their business, not the church’s, not the state’s, not their sexual partner’s and not the Roe v. Wade regulations. Impress the boys with the fact that if they get a girl pregnant they are liable for 18 years of child support. Use social media to pass this around so it gets to the students at religious schools.
2. Try for some social effects by calling to account the “pro-life” propagandists as misogynistic, ignorant liars. (They make outrageously stupid claims about embryos and fetuses.) Put up billboards next to their 6-month-old-white-baby ads showing women (various ethnicities) asking why it is anyone’s business but hers and declaring she is not a public utility and asking what the “pro-lifers” have done for real babies lately other than only opposing welfare/child care/educational aid.
3. Run anti-terrorist ads everywhere pointing out the group that has done and is doing the most damage – the anti-abortion violence prone clinic vandals, death-threateners, bombers, murderers (give the numbers since 1973). Note the clinics’ need for excessive security, bullet proof vests, randomized doctor routes to get to clinics, etc.
4. OK to note the desperate situation women find themselves in and needing an abortion (rape, abusive relationship, health issues, fetal deformity, poverty, etc.) but don’t do much of this because the general public doesn’t care.

The clarity of thought, the moral authority, the extensive time perspective portrayed, the realism without becoming a cynic, the optimism inherent in the provision of actionable activism items, and the simple straightforward comprehension of progressive change happening from people, from human beings, behaving in coordinated ways to improve their lot over long periods of time.

It does not come from on high. It comes from down low, of those dead, forgotten, and wasted away with a hope for a better tomorrow – for peace between the “races” and “ethnicities,” between men and women, between sexual and gender minorities and majorities, and those at war in various ways over territory, ideas, faiths, politics, and resources.

I feel proper loss here.

Even though, 150,000 people or more die every day. Individual human beings become the great source of inspiration, influence, and emotionally salutary components of life. Life becomes process. People become a part of it for one another. Activism is the form in which life and people coalesce to make change together for a shared, positive future.

In personal life, most deep, close, real friends rather than by title, have been elderly women. I do not know why, nor do I figure any solution to this quandary of personal life in the near future either, for me.

In the proper loss, I feel proper love. I loved interviewing her. I loved reading the force of the thinking and the evocative power of the phrasing with the spirit or breathe of life in systematic representation. I have loved many people in a similar way, who left waves in my emotional life of solitude. It becomes both sufferings for the loss and realizations of the loss as underlying love.

I feel a proper love there.

Her obituary statement was as follows:

I have enjoyed being one of the luckiest people on Earth. Fate gave me a 91-year break from otherwise endless oblivion and a life filled with political skullduggery and social activism for the rights of workers, women, gays, and anti-war efforts. I built a dome home, raised five good kids, built atheist and political organizations, worked as a journalist, and wrote Divided We Fall: Religion, Sex and Politics, and the Political Blunder That Brought Religion into Public Life and Opened the Door to Trump. None of this uphill climbing has been especially pleasant, but it has been interesting.

Women in most societies lose prominence beyond prime reproductive age. Why? Women get seen as vessels for new life alone. As Castle noted from nearly a century of experience, women and girls get seen as public utilities. By implication, and as a testable hypothesis, their value to the public should decline proportionally over time, especially as they become older.

As women age into the darker years and leave into the yonder twilight, societies lose track of them; we stop keeping track of them: “How was your day? How are you feeling? What is new with the cat(s)? (As one stereotype might go.)”

As women enter the deep night of societal perception, I can reflect on the influence of Castle and other elderly women who made a tremendous impact on me. Their loss brings a sense of love left best to individuals influenced by them. There is a strength in the decades-long activism and persistence – a certain hopeful ebullience about life and its positive aspects apart from the negative.

Its hardships and difficulties.

And its losses,

and from there a realization of odes to love.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“Government of Canada investing close to $25M in innovative projects that will deliver new technologies to Canadians and unlock the power of AI to tackle chronic health issues

OTTAWA, June 13, 2018 /CNW/ – Artificial intelligence is changing the way Canadians live; it’s in our cars and computers, our smartphones and apps. All the more reason to unlock the power of AI to address some of the greatest health challenges Canadians face.

Today, while visiting the University of Ottawa’s Heart Institute, Parliamentary Secretary for Science, Kate Young, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General and to the Minister of Health, Bill Blair, launched the next Collaborative Health Research Project (CHRP) competition.

Previous CHRP competitions have traditionally brought together engineers, those working in the natural sciences, and health researchers, who combine their talents to bring real-world solutions to real-world problems in the health sector. Under this new competition, valued at $24.875M, social scientists and humanities researchers will, for the first time, be encouraged to join research teams applying for funding. Almost $6M of the total available funds will be targeted to projects that investigate the ethical, legal, and societal impacts associated with the development and spread of AI in the health sector.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canadas-scientists-can-pitch-projects-that-bridge-artificial-intelligence-health-research-685378241.html.

“OTTAWA — The sales practices of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies — a long-time sore spot for many consumers — will be the subject of a public inquiry ordered by the federal government on Thursday.

“Like many Canadians, we are concerned by allegations of clearly inappropriate sales practices by telecom carriers,” Navdeep Bains, the minister responsible for telecommunications, said in a statement.

Bains said he has directed the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to conduct the investigation, including a public inquiry, and report on the sales practices used in the industry by Feb. 28.”

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/06/14/telecom-sales-practices-crtc-public-inquiry_a_23459277/.

“Seaweed could become a staple in the diet of Canadian livestock after researchers discovered it’s a sustainable and viable option for healthy digestion in cows — and humans.

This research, which began in 2015, is somewhat of an extension of research from 2008 that showed Japanese people have more bacteria in their digestive tracts to digest the carbohydrates in nori seaweed. Abbott and his team wanted to see if this relationship extended to other seaweed varieties with different structures.”Wade Abbott, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and his team have been using a crystallography beam line at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to study the structure of four enzymes and how they digest agarose, a carbohydrate found in red seaweed.

Source: http://thestarphoenix.com/technology/science/seaweed-could-be-the-answer-for-cheap-sustainable-livestock-feed-researcher-says.

“For a Toronto-based innovation accelerator, the final frontier is the next frontier.

The Creative Destruction Lab, an accelerator affiliated with the University of Toronto, is now calling for applications specifically from starry-eyed entrepreneurs with space-focused startup ideas. And the new stream already has some star power behind it ― they’ve enlisted Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to serve as the founding fellow.

“Space is obviously something that most people have a lot of passion about, because it’s primarily unknown,” said CDL’s Sheret Ross, who’s leading the accelerator’s new space stream. The “unknown” is ripe territory for entrepreneurs, who he says are in constant search of problems to solve. They’re looking to recruit around 25 new ventures.

Mr. Ross believes there’s a substantial talent pool in Toronto’s aerospace realm, but no clear path to entrepreneurship. “It’s really going to be about public-private collaboration, and creating an ecosystem where ventures can go through,” he told The Globe and Mail.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-university-of-toronto-accelerator-affiliate-shoots-for-the-starry-eyed/.

“What do you do if 10 quadrillion high-energy collisions in the world’s largest particle accelerator fail to reveal any new truths about the nature of reality? The answer: Revamp your machine and go for 10 times that number.

In a nutshell, that explains the groundbreaking ceremony that took place on Friday at the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Canada is one of dozens of countries participating in the project, which will eventually see the collider’s performance increase tenfold by the middle of the next decade. Researchers hope the higher number of collisions that result will increase the likelihood that they will spot some extremely rare clues to a more fundamental theory of matter than the current standard model of particle physics.

“It’s the next step in the development of the LHC,” said Oliver Kester, an associate director at the TRIUMF accelerator in Vancouver, one of the Canadian research centres participating in the international experiment.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/science/article-canadian-scientists-among-those-intensifying-search-for-new-particles/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“MONTREAL – A Quebec mayor has found a novel way around a Supreme Court ruling forbidding prayers at municipal council meetings — reading the national anthem.

In its French version, O Canada is loaded with Christian imagery. Its first verse hails a Canada carrying the cross in its arms and invokes “valour steeped in faith.” A later, seldom-sung verse declares, “Christ is king.”

On Monday, Louiseville Mayor Yvon Deshaies opened the monthly council meeting by asking people to stand as he recited an abridged version of the anthem, which included the lines about the cross and faith as well as a French translation of “God keep our land glorious and free,” from the English O Canada.

Deshaies then hung a crucifix on the wall of the community centre where the meeting was held, drawing applause from most of the roughly 70 people in attendance

In an interview Wednesday, he said his actions were in response to news about religious minorities seeking to work as police officers in Quebec while wearing such symbols as the hijab and turban. “Where are we headed?” he asked.”

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/barred-from-reading-a-prayer-at-council-meeting-quebec-mayor-tries-o-canada-instead.

“Imagine the reaction of Vancouver residents if a U.S. airline or bank created a map showing Canada as an administrative region of the United Kingdom.

Let’s say that United Airlines or Bank of America Corp. did this to win the approval of British prime minister Theresa May, who is in a position to grant concessions to these corporations.

Canadians would be furious. They would declare that Canada ceased to be a colony in 1867 when it became independent.

No doubt, some would launch boycotts against United Airlines or the Bank of America. Canadians would also hold demonstrations outside the offending corporations’ offices”

Source: https://www.straight.com/news/1091316/taiwanese-canadians-feel-betrayed-corporate-kowtowing-chinese-strongman-xi-jinping.

“The top of the wikuom is just visible from the retirement residence of the Sisters of Charity. Its off-white canvas approximates the birch bark the Mi’kmaq people used to construct their homes when they ranged across what are now the Maritime Provinces of eastern Canada. Pine poles hold the structure up and leave an opening to release smoke from ceremonial fires. Inside the wikuom (the Mi’kmaq word for what you may have known as “wigwam”), Catherine Martin, a filmmaker and Mi’kmaw activist, leads ritual prayers, burning sage and sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco, and teaching visitors about her people’s way.

The wikuom is not a relic of the past. It is an invocation of a future in which First Nationsare respected as equals in Canada.

Last spring, when the wikuom was erected at the University of Mount St. Vincent, Ms. Martin held a visiting chair in the women’s studies department at the school, founded by the Sisters of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1873. The prayers she offered were for the victims and survivors of Canada’s centuries-long drive to eradicate its native peoples—in particular, the Mi’kmaq children forcibly taken from their families on reserves and sent to the government-sponsored boarding school the Sisters of Charity staffed for close to four decades. Former students of the Shubenacadie Residential School tell of being beaten, physically scarred for speaking their native language, forbidden from communicating with siblings, humiliated for wetting the bed and whipped with leather cat tails if they attempted to escape.”

Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/06/14/canadian-catholics-grapple-history-whitewashing-indigenous-children.

“Andre Schutten with the Association for Reforms Political Action slammed the Supreme Court decision on Trinity Western’s law school, saying it sends a bad message about religious freedoms in Canada.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/video/4276508/intervenor-says-supreme-court-decision-on-trinity-western-represents-a-danger-to-religious-freedom.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the right of provincial law societies to reject the graduates of a proposed Christian law school over its requirement that students abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

In a highly anticipated contest between religious freedom and equality, most of the court said the limit on religious freedom was a minor one – well short of “forced apostasy,” as five of the judges put it. By comparison, the effects on equality, if the school had been accredited, would have been large enough to threaten the integrity of the legal system, the judges said.

The court had been asked whether the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario were within their rights when they voted not to give licences to graduates of Trinity Western University’s proposed law school at its campus in Langley, B.C. In a pair of 7-2 rulings, the court said they were.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-supreme-court-upholds-provincial-law-societies-right-to-reject/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“OTTAWA — During a visit to Ottawa this week, Tibet’s exiled political leader was warning Canada not to fall into a trap as its trade relationship with China deepens.

Especially amid recent uncertainty with Canada’s biggest trade partner, the United States, it makes economic sense to engage with China, said Lobsang Sangay, president of the Central Tibetan Administration, a “government-in-exile” based in India that represents Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

But Canada should be careful not to self-censor or turn a blind eye to human rights abuses by the Chinese government, he said in an interview with the National Post. It’s a trend that he said he has watched in Australia, which entered into a free-trade agreement with China in 2015.

“One should enter into trade with China. You do business with China. You have to have a relationship with China. You can’t avoid it, you can’t ignore it and you should make money,” Sangay said. “But you know, what I’ve noticed is the moment there’s a trade agreement with China, all of a sudden these countries start resorting to self-censorship. First Tibet, then Tiananmen, then Taiwan and all of the environmental and labour issues and women’s rights issues in China.””

Source: http://lfpress.com/news/politics/dont-self-censor-to-please-china-in-trading-relationship-exiled-tibetan-leader-tells-canada/wcm/9aef2058-65ff-4b57-9b5b-da91fe6ee62f.

“Next January, federal politicians will gather in a new, glass-ceilinged House of Commons that takes its architectural cues from a clearing in the woods.

The temporary chamber in the West Block will replace the Centre Block, currently home to the House of Commons and Senate chambers. Centre Block will remain closed for an estimated 10 years to undergo major renovations.

This week, journalists were given an early look at the project. The new Commons was built in what was once an outdoor courtyard, and natural light pours through a sweeping glass ceiling, about the size of a football field.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/take-a-peek-at-canada-s-forest-inspired-house-of-commons-1.3976220.

“TORONTO — For the first time in decades, one of the world’s most durable and amicable alliances faces serious strain as Canadians — widely seen as some of the nicest, politest people on Earth — absorb Donald Trump’s insults against their prime minister and attacks on their country’s trade policies.

Some Canadians are urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to seek peace with the U.S. president. Many others want him to hang tough even as Trump seeks to make political hay with his anti-Canada rhetoric.

But there’s broad agreement with this assessment by The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper: “Relations between two of the world’s closest allies are now at a perilous low.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-u-s-relations-at-a-low-after-trudeau-trump-trade-tiff-1.3973145.

“Politics sometimes makes for strange bedfellows — but what we’re seeing in Canada this week is a veritable orgy.

Everybody is jumping in bed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: New Democrats, Greens, even Conservatives.

Heck, especially Conservatives.

Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, Andrew Scheer, Stephen Harper.

Name any prominent Canadian conservative, particularly those who despise Trudeau, and odds are you’ll find them snuggled under the sheets, politically speaking, with the prime minister.

It’s not that they’re particularly keen to spoon with Trudeau, but they want to be seen defending Canada against the bullying tactics of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Not only has Trump imposed punishing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exported to the U.S., but, in a move typical of a president whose political behaviour has yet to hit bottom, he began tweeting personal attacks against Trudeau as “very dishonest and weak.””

Source: http://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/graham-thomson-canadas-politicians-pile-into-bed-with-prime-minister.

“Canada’s system of supply management has been the target of heated political debate for the better part of half a century — but very few Canadians outside of the affected farm sectors actually understand how it works, or who foots the bill for stabilizing farmers’ incomes.

Supply management is a system that allows specific commodity sectors — dairy, poultry and eggs — to limit the supply of their products to what Canadians are expected to consume in order to ensure predictable, stable prices.

While the federal government has played a role in supporting agricultural pricing policies for more than a century, the current system of supply management traces its origins to the 1960s — a period of overproduction due to technological advances that resulted in low prices for farmers.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-supply-management-explainer-1.4708341.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“Last week, in response to my request from over six weeks earlier, the Liberal Government finally released details outlining the impact on Manitoba from their “Liberal values test” within the Canada Summer Jobs program.

The numbers revealed that 101 community and faith-based organizations in Manitoba were unable to participate in the Canada Summer Jobs program because of the Liberal government’s new discriminatory attestation requirement. This figure makes up part of the 1,559 applications that were denied over the attestation nationwide.

The government’s response reads: “In Manitoba, 101 applications were deemed ineligible on the basis of submitting an incomplete application in relation to the attestation. The category the Department uses to track ineligibility in relation to the attestation does not solely track failure to sign the attestation, but also includes modified and removed attestations.”

What we see from these numbers is that, at a minimum, 101 summer jobs that may have been created for students in our communities across Manitoba will not exist this summer. And since each individual applicant can request funding for several positions, the number of lost opportunities for Manitoba’s youth is likely much more significant.’

Source: https://www.mysteinbach.ca/blogs/8961/manitoba-hit-hard-in-canada-summer-jobs-fiasco/.

“The Supreme Court of Canada says the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal was correct in deciding it does not have the jurisdiction to consider whether Canadian laws are discriminatory, a decision that comes as the government launches consultations to remove sexism from the Indian Act.

The top court on Thursday dismissed a challenge of tribunal decisions brought by the Canadian Human Rights Commission on behalf of two families who could not pass their Indian status on to their descendants because of discriminatory policies in the Act.

The Tribunal said in rulings in those cases that it could decide whether government services had been distributed unfairly but does not have the power to consider direct challenges to legislation because legislation is not a service. The decision was later upheld by the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal.

In a decision written by Justice Clément Gascon, the Supreme Court found that the tribunal and the courts were right to dismiss the challenges.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-human-rights-tribunal-cannot-challenge-discrimination-in/.

“Everybody gains an education, but not in the way they may have wanted to, given the recent decision in the most important legal case determining religious freedom in Canada of the past decade.

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada announced a pair of 7-2 rulings that dealt a blow to Trinity Western University’s hopes of running a nationally accredited law school. It’s a result that has been disquieting to both sides represented in court as it pitted two important societal values against each other: the freedom of religion and the promotion of equality. This is the messy, imperfect work of living with personal beliefs and convictions that must fit the Charter Rights and Freedoms that shapes Canada.

A portion of Christian freedom of expression loses big time in this ruling, which implies that in Canada, sexual identity trumps religious identity. Christian belief understands that sexuality is informed by the God of the Bible. So when TWU, a Christian university in Langley, B.C., wanted the ability to train accredited lawyers, it meant those students would have to sign the school’s community covenant to enroll. The covenant prohibits having sex in any way except the context of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Law Societies in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and B.C. argued that such a voluntary surrender of sexual rights discriminated against Charter freedoms.

Our Supreme Court justices decided the TWU community covenant disqualifies graduates from mandatory law society accreditation. TWU’s community covenant has a host of other lifestyle conditions, such as prohibition of harassment, verbal intimidation, gossip, obscene language, lying, and drunkenness.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trinity-western-decision-is-a-big-loss-for-christian-freedom/.

“Ewert appealed from a judgment of the Federal Court of Appeal setting aside a decision finding Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) had breached its obligation under s. 24(1) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) and had infringed Ewert’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter. Ewert, who is a Métis inmate, challenged the CSC’s reliance on certain psychological and actuarial risk assessment tools. He claimed the validity of the tools, when applied to Indigenous offenders, had not been established through empirical research. The reliance on those tools, he further argued, infringed his rights under ss. 7 and 15 of the Charter and the CSC did not take all reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of information about offenders as required by s. 24(1) of the CCRA. The trial judge concluded that the CSC had infringed Ewert’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter and did not meet the requirements of s. 24(1) of the CCRA. He ordered an interim injunction that prohibited the CSC from using results generated by the impugned tools with respect to Ewert. The Federal Court of Appeal allowed the Crown’s appeal and found that Ewert did not establish on a balance of probabilities that the impugned tools produced inaccurate results when applied to Indigenous inmates. The issues raised by the appeal were whether the reliance on the tools resulted in a breach of s. 24(1) of the CCRA and the infringement of ss.7 and 15 of the Charter.

HELD: Appeal allowed in part. The statutory purpose of the correctional system supported an interpretation according to which the CSC’s obligation under s. 24(1) extended to the accuracy of psychological or actuarial test results that it used. Ewert did not have to prove that the impugned tools produced inaccurate results. The question to be addressed was whether the CSC’s actions were sufficient to fulfill the legislated standard of all reasonable steps to ensure accuracy, currency and completeness. Section 4(g) of the CCRA represented an acknowledgement of the systemic discrimination faced by Indigenous persons in the Canadian correctional system. The clear direction expressed in s. 4(g) and the underlying rationale for that direction strongly supported the conclusion that CSC’s inaction with respect to the concerns raised about the risk assessment instruments fell short of what s. 24(1) of the CCRA required it to do. The finding that there was uncertainty about the extent to which the tests were accurate when applied to Indigenous offenders was not sufficient to establish that there was no rational connection between reliance on the tests and the relevant government objective. Thus, Ewert did not establish that the CSC’s reliance on the tools violated the principle of fundamental justice under s. 7 of the Charter.  Furthermore, Ewert failed to establish infringement of his rights under s. 15 Charter on the basis that the evidentiary record was not sufficiently developed. The Court appropriately exercised its discretion and issued a declaration. Exceptional circumstances included the fact that Ewert had already used the statutory grievance mechanism under the CCRA.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6731/constitutional-issues-canadian-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms-aboriginal-rights-remedies-for-denial-of-rights.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/14

Usama al-Binni is an Administrator of the Arab Atheist Network, the Editor of the Arab Atheists Magazine. Here we explore his story and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You grew up in Jordan to a moderately religious family. What did your parents do? How did this influence your faith? How did your faith develop over time?

Usama al-Binni: Both parents were school teachers, my father was a religious education teacher and a graduate of al-Azhar University. He taught at the same high-school where I went and was supposedly the epitome of piety for being his son. I wasn’t that pious though. I tried to hold on to my faith during my late teen years, but to no avail. I was interested in philosophy and science and was fortunate enough to have a couple of friends willing to debate. I ended up going into physics and in part because of that struggle as I saw in physics there place where many age-old philosophical questions being answered. Back when I started questioning my faith in the late 1990s I had access only to scant blasphemous content, and I left Islam gradually and not without pain.

Jacobsen: How did this atheism develop over time?

al-Binni:  By early 2000s I felt Islam was finally behind me, that criticizing Islam was a transitional phase and immersed myself in other concerns living as an agnostic who became an anti-theist during infrequent debates. I did have a brief stint frequenting debate forums on the internet, but was doing so under a pseudonym as I was still living in Jordan. Discovering online Arab ex-Muslim communities on Facebook around 2014 changed things completely for me, as I felt that unlike the solitary struggle I had to go through, there is a widespread movement online of people coming together, and while many stayed anonymous, they were all very vocal and explicit about criticizing religion and they were a community. I felt I belonged. I felt a responsibility to join the movement. It started with a local group in East Tennessee of American atheists, which I discovered through a MeetUp group, and then moved on to a Facebook group called Arab Atheists Forum and Network, where I became very active, and soon enough I was approached by the admins to join them, and I did. I have had the privilege to know many wonderful and intelligent people who share a lot with me.

Jacobsen: Now, how did this lead to the work with the Arab Atheists Magazine?

al-Binni: One project of that group which attracted me especially was the Arab Atheists Magazine, the continuity of the project over years and its diversity drew me in and with my academic background I felt I could contribute to that effort, both in terms of content and organization, and that’s one of my main concentrations now, although there are other ongoing projects as well. I believe that being openly atheist and an academic gives me some advantage over those who cannot use their real name and face, and living in the US gives me great latitude to do many things people back in the Middle East can’t do.

Jacobsen: What are some of the important provisions for others with an online space as opposed to an offline space to express their atheism?

al-Binni: It’s a world of difference. I lived for about 10 years as a closeted ex-Muslims back in Jordan and was very careful about who I divulge the secret to. Most people over there would be deeply intolerant of anyone who criticized religion in any way, especially if the criticism is overtly one directed from someone who says they’ve left the faith. I once mistakenly talked about my thoughts to someone I had thought was a friend, but he ended up (maybe half-jokingly) threading me inflict the punishment of apostasy upon me. I became after that extra careful about what I say and to whom I say it. And while Jordan is considered by many to be a bastion of religious moderation, one needs to remember that abu-Musab az-Zarqawi, the famed al-Qaida terrorist, came from Jordan. In late 2015 a Jordanian writer who shared a cartoon on his Facebook page, and ended up being shot by a Muslim extremist on the steps of the court house right after a hearing where he was being tried for blasphemy for sharing the cartoon! And there are numerous examples from many Arab countries where being openly critical of religion can bring countless troubles. Being online, and especially in communities like our Facebook group, Arab Atheists Network and Forum, it is possible to be with like-minded people, use pseudonyms and at the same time debate Muslims without fear of physical harm if one carefully guards their real identity. This is a world of difference from the openness I have experienced in the US. Here, I have met people face to face, seen how they exercise their civil rights to counter religious rhetoric but also to participate in a life far closer to normal than an ex-Muslim would dream of in a majority-Muslim country. I don’t say the US is a perfect haven for atheists, but it is a world of difference from what I’ve known back in Jordan and what I see online from fellow ex-Muslims in the Muslim world. It is perhaps this dual life I live as an openly atheist ex-Muslim in the US compared to what I see online that gives me hope and a desire to work with the people back there to improve their living situation.

Jacobsen: What tend to be the foci of the Arab Atheist Magazine?

al-Binni: The Magazine emerged in late 2012 as a means of distilling the thought of Arab atheists at this important juncture in their history, where, for the first time since the dawn of Islam, there is an actual community of ex-Muslims coming together and forming a community. This has never happened before. The Magazine, and other forms of discourse we have, are meant to capture that, as a mirror for our identity and a record for whoever comes after us. We cover everything that has to do with Arab atheism, although atheism here is a rather broad category encompassing a wide range of religious dissent and persuasions. We publish both original and translated works that focus on religious criticism, but also includes attempts to go beyond that limited bubble into a vision of an alternatives to religion. We published original novels, poetry, studies conducted by researchers who collaborated with us, cartoons (the one that resulted in the murder of the Jordanian writer was drawn by an artist who regularly publishes with us), we have our in-house painter who creates paintings especially for the Magazine. The Magazine is closely linked to the Network Forum on Facebook and there is a continuity between the two entities, both in the people who run the two and in the content.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved in and support the Arab atheist diaspora?

al-Binni: The situation for Arab atheists living outside the Muslim world is complicated. Many tend to leave the faith early in life, maybe as teenagers. Extricating one’s life from religion is a redefinition of identity, and as teenagers still dependent on their families and living usually within an Islamic community means one is risking being banished from one’s home while vulnerable and without means of support. Ex-Muslims of North America and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (and many other such organizations) are doing wonderful work helping ex-Muslims, young and old, find a community of people who understand them and can provide support. These organizations deserve all the support they can get, it is often the case that they have to assist ex-Muslims facing persecution in a Muslim country an need to get out, they help ex-Muslims fleeing potential violence from their communities in the US and Europe. But perhaps, getting the word out, letting people know what ex-Muslims and atheists are facing and start viewing them as a legitimate minority with a voice that needs to be heard, a faceless minority that is being oppressed and not even recognized.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Usama.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

I wanted to explore some of the world of different Christian leaders, small and big. However, I wanted to report less on those and more in their own words. These will be published, slowly, over time. This, I trust, may open dialogue and understanding between various communities. Of course, an interview does not amount to an endorsement, but to the creation of conversation, comprehension, and compassion.  Rev. Tim Bowman is the Minister of Gladwin Heights Church. Here we talk about the Gladwin Heights Church, community, church services, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, especially regarding religion and irreligion in peers and family? As you were born in Guelph, Ontario in 1977 and raised in Calgary, Alberta. You earned degrees in English and Psychology with a Master of Divinity degree from the Vancouver School of Theology. This seems to indicate an early life influence as well – potentially not, but probably so. 

Rev. Tim Bowman: My father grew up in the steel town of Hamilton, Ontario; my mother was a farm girl from southern Ontario. She had a large extended family; I saw a lot of my aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins at every holiday. My fondest memories are of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas at my grandfather’s farm and later at an aunt and uncle’s, large meals with dozens of people, board games and snowmobiling and sleeping on floors and couches. Pretty much everyone attended church.

My father studied engineering and got into oil and gas work, and so we moved quite a lot when I was a child, including to Saudi Arabia and Italy. Finally we settled down in Calgary when I was in Grade Three. My father taught Sunday School at our local church for a few years, and my mother was the assistant office administrator for a long time.

Given our frequent moves, family and belonging were important to me, and I felt like I belonged at our church. I noticed how my mother went above and beyond her job description to set up and clean up after every event. I began to volunteer with the Sunday School and to attend the youth group. So many people clearly found joy, purpose and belonging there – how could I not want to be a part of it?

As I made friends in Junior High and then High School, I noticed that few of them talked about their faith, but at the same time I was never made to feel out of place because of it.

Jacobsen: When did you first become Christian or a follower of Christ in an explicit way? Often, in conversation with Christians, the conversions come from upbringing or adolescence/later life experience of God – using their terminology.

Bowman: My friend in Guelph invited me to a fairly evangelical children’s / youth group (similar to Scouts). I continued to attend that group’s meetings and go to its summer camps for a few years after moving to Calgary. The emphasis tended to be on believing the right things and avoiding sin so I could get into heaven. As I got older, I began to drift away from church somewhat – partly as the search for individuality that all adolescents experience, and partly because that message began to lose its appeal.

Of course, if I’d listened closer to what was said at my family church on Sundays, I might have heard a different message.

University was when things really changed for me. I tried out one or two of the Christian groups on campus, but they always seemed to be lacking something. A shared faith was a reason for gathering, maybe reading the bible and then having pizza and watching a movie, but that felt a little hollow. I sought out the United Church campus chaplain, and he suggested the Student Christian Movement.

The first SCM meeting I attended was a planning session to host the national gathering of the SCM, so it was more jumping in the deep end rather than dipping my toe in the water, but the more I saw of these folks, the more I liked. Here was a faith that really made a difference in how they lived. They advocated for gay rights, they attended environmental rallies…this was a faith with purpose and meaning and relevance. It was also small and tight-knit enough that it felt like a home among the large and impersonal campus crowds.

When I graduated with Arts degrees in English and Psychology, and decided that overseas English teaching wasn’t for me, I asked, “What’s next?”. I decided to actually start listening to the voices in the back of my head (as well as the voices of my parents, chaplain, and minister). I asked my congregation to help me consider whether I was called to ministry, and attended the open house at the Vancouver School of Theology. I began to pay attention to my spiritual life, and to follow my father’s example in experiencing the divine in nature.

At around the time I encountered the SCM, I was also given a book by Marcus Borg. Borg’s demonstration that Christianity is at least as much about meaningful and ethical life in this world, as about life in the next world, also struck a chord with me.

Jacobsen: Gladwin Heights United Church is the place where you preach, teach, and build Christian community. Who was the founder? Why the title Gladwin Heights United Church as the name of the church? What are the positives and negatives of working in and building a church community in Canada?

Bowman: In 1979, the Fraser Presbytery of the United Church noted new housing developments in Abbotsford-Matsqui. A new church would be needed to serve all of these new residents. Trinity Memorial United Church provided much of the funding and human resources to establish the new congregation, which was named Gladwin Heights after the neighbourhood it was situated in.

It turned that many of the new residents were immigrants from Christian-minority countries, so the church has not been quite as full as was expected. This diversity is both a challenge and blessing of ministry in the Canadian context: whereas previously many people attended church simply because it was the thing to do, cultural and demographic shifts mean that people no longer attend simply as a cultural norm, which translates into smaller congregations. At the same time however, it means that people are here because they really want to be.

Canada has a complicated history with First Nations people, and the Church is part of that history. As First Nations are becoming increasingly visible and assertive, we have engaged more deeply and intentionally. Trying to heal old wounds, deeply embedded in Canadian society, is not easy, but it is also faithful and life-giving.

Jacobsen: What is the particular denomination of the church? How does this differ from other churches? Also, why focus on ecotheology and process theology within this work or calling for you?

Bowman: The United Church of Canada was born from the union of the Methodists, Congregationalists, and most of the Presbyterian churches in Canada in 1925. These denominations saw the need to coordinate their efforts to serve northern and Prairie areas where the need for clergy to serve the growing population often outstripped the supply. Throughout the years other denominations and local churches, for example the Evangelical United Brethren, have joined as well. At one point we envisioned becoming the national church of Canada. As the religious landscape changes, we are again looking more and more to collaboration with other denominations to serve God’s people.

Each of the founding denominations have contributed to the personality, or perhaps DNA, of the United Church. From the Methodists we inherit a concern for justice, from the Presbyterians a concern for ordered worship, and from the Congregationalists a tendency to allow individual congregations as much local decision-making power as possible while still remaining a united church across the nation.

The vast size and diversity of Canada, including the desire for local autonomy, means that each region and indeed congregation can be different, but one can make a few general statements. We tend to have a strong streak of social justice and activism, as well as a liberal, non-literal approach to theology. For example, while some denominations are currently debating whether to ordain openly LGBTQ people as ministers, we decided in the affirmative back in 1988. My favourite nickname for the United Church is “the NDP at prayer.” But then, I mostly vote NDP, so I consider this a compliment! Again however, the United Church can be very diverse; not all of us vote NDP.

Perhaps this is why ecotheology and process theology interest me. Whereas some ancient theologies stressed the power and glory of God, meaning that God existed in splendid isolation from the world and remained unaffected by it, I am more attracted to theologies that understand God in relationship to the world and everything within it. This implies that God is affected by, involved with, grows along with, and interpenetrates the world, because if you are not affected by anything someone says or does, how can you claim to be in relationship with them? Process theology envisions a God that operates by persuasion and invitation rather than by compulsion. The stories in Scripture that I find most fascinating are those that seem to show God and/or Jesus learning or changing their minds in response to encounters with human beings. This is a God that truly loves the world.

Jacobsen: What does an average Sunday service look like at the church? How do you, as a pastor, prepare the sermon? What tends to be the topics taught or spoken about at the church? Final question, what seems like the bigger problems and trends for the Christian church in Canada into the coming decade, i.e., the 2020s?

Bowman:  I think of a worship service as having three movements, if I as a musical amateur may use that term. First, we gather with God and each other (to be with each other is to be with God). We invite each other, we pray that we may be aware of God’s presence, and confess the truth about ourselves and our world – unburdening ourselves of that which separates us from God. Then we read the scriptures and reflect in a sermon on how the living Word of God is speaking to us today. Lastly, we respond to the Word in action: through prayer, through offerings for the work of the church in the world, and by going out into God’s world as God’s people.

My music director and I choose scriptures and hymns two weeks in advance, so I get an advance look at the scriptures for a given Sunday. At that time I choose one text which might reward further study, and do enough reading and thinking to get an idea of what I might want to say about it.

Then it mostly sits in the back of my head until the following week. At the beginning of the week I pull it out again and begin to study it in depth. Eventually I have enough understanding of the text, enough ideas and information circling around in my head, that one or more will collide with a situation in the life of congregation members, the church as a whole, or in the world.

When that ‘aha!’ moment occurs, I get a sense of what the Word might be for us in the intersection of that passage and our lives. To get my thoughts in order, I then try to map out my ideas in the following outline: 1) What is the need or problem in the Bible’s original context that the text describes or is responding to? 2) What is the analogous need or problem in our world today? 3) What is the good news of God’s activity in response to that original problem? 4) What is the analogous good news of God’s activity for today’s problems?

Ideally, then, the topic of a sermon emerges from themes found in one of the prescribed scripture texts for a given Sunday, in conversation with needs or events in our world today. At the risk of fulfilling the stereotype that Christians are obsessed with talking about sex, I recently preached on two Bible passages which are often used to condemn homosexuality; I argued that this not the only way to read such texts. Previously I preached on the Biblical idea that the love of God can “overcome the world,” and pointed to the example of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings on nonviolence.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rev. Bowman. 

My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to communicate with people who see things differently than I do. Our world needs more of that.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

Christianity Today reported on the recent Pew Research report. The report from the Pew Research Center indicated a “gap” in the age between the believers and the non-believers.

That is to say, on one binary face value metric – old and young, the old seem more religious than the young. They identify as more religious and take part in more of the standard suggested practices of religion.

The secularization of the world seems like a concern for the religions of the world, especially the largest ones’ leadership. It would seem to mean wanes in power and influence and potential new followers. In the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America, the young adults appear far less religious than the older generations.

The Pew Research Center looked into 106 countries in the new report with about 58 nations having “little or no age gap in religious commitment.” Of the remainder, 46 of them at least, the adults under the age of 40 showed a significantly lower level of religious commitment or considering religion important than their older or over 40 counterparts.

Christianity Today explained, “Particularly religious countries with higher population growth tend to maintain religious belief and commitment between young and old generations. Pew found that over the past decade these highly religious countries outpaced their less religious counterparts due to high fertility rates and disproportionately young populations, factors often tied to their level of development.”

In the international analysis, the economic and social environment in a country affected the level of religiosity, in both the developing countries and the advanced industrial economies. With North America and Western Europe, the most secularization appears to have taken place.

Those parts of the world show a “pretty stark” difference in the formal religious affiliation of the young and the old. It becomes “two to five times wider than the global age gap. Canada has the biggest generational religious divide in the world. The difference between Canadian young adults and their elders who affiliate with a particular religion is 28 percentage points.”

That makes Canada an outlier in the religious affiliation gap between the young and the old. Other countries were included in the analysis and worth mention in the Christianity Today article.

“Other top countries for gaps in religious affiliation include Denmark (26 percentage points), South Korea (24 percentage points), Australia (23 percentage points), and Norway and Sweden (both 20 percentage points),” the reportage stated.

The US young adult population identify the role of religion in their lives as twice as important as the Canadian young adult population. I do not know how this maps onto the forms of the informal non-religious seen in Canada with the – what the literature calls – SBNRs or the “spiritual but not religious” people.

SBNRs seem to, at times, engage in informal activities outside of a formal religious context with religious overtones, or simply sub-texts, to them. In contrast to the Americas and Europe in general, Africa and the Middle East show different contrasts in religious affiliation by age.

The Middle East and Africa do not show much difference in religious affiliation between generations. Religious commitment remains strongest there.

“Two majority Christian countries represent the biggest exceptions to the religious age gap seen around the globe,” Christianity Today explained, “In Ghana, a relatively stable country in West Africa, and Georgia, a former Soviet republic, today’s young people are more likely than older generations to say religion is ‘very important’ in their lives, the report stated.”

If you compare the under 40 Ghanaians and the over 40 Ghanaians, the numbers emerge as 91% to 85%, respectively. In Chad, Liberia, and Rwanda, the young “claim their religious affiliation, attend services, and commit to daily prayer at higher rates than their parents and grandparents.”

A common theme in these countries comes from the threat of violent conflict. If a violent conflict is present, people seem more religious. The “existential insecurity” seems to correlate, positively, with more religiosity. If more risk to life and limb, then more religion.

“In predominantly Christian countries, it’s whether they consider religion a priority; the greatest generational discrepancies emerge over the question of religion’s importance in their lives,” Christianity Today explained, “In predominantly Muslim countries, it’s a question of mosque attendance. Even in countries where religiosity remains steady across age groups, young people still tend to be less likely to pray daily.”

The countries with the majority of citizens adhering to or identifying as Christian show the highest levels of decrease in religiosity. It shows in the other main Abrahamic faith, Islam, but not as severe in terms of the decrease.

The reportage said, “As noted, the countries with the greatest percentage of people who say religion is “very important” in their lives—mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central America—are also among the fastest-growing countries in the world.”

It continued to note. The Pew Research Center Report explained a negative correlation between the level of commitment to religion and the markers for the economic and social development of a country. That is, education levels, GDP, and income equality negatively associated with or negatively correlate with religious commitment. If poorer, less educated, with higher income inequality, then the countries’ citizens will adhere more to a faith.

The one outlier in this is the United States of America. Unique in its high level of development and high religiosity.

As noted in the article, out of the 102 nations analyzed by the Pew Research Center, only the United States showed higher levels of daily prayer. In fact, it had above-average levels of prayer. In conclusion, it was higher in other measures of its citizens’ level of religious commitment too.

External to the United States as an outlier example, religion correlates with poverty, lack of education, and greater divides between the poor and the rich.

Moral of the story, and to policymakers: if someone wants to increase religiosity or religious commitment, they would construct policy to increase income inequality, decrease educational access and success, and increase the quantity of the poor; if someone wants to decrease religious commitment, and so increase secularization, they would become policy architects oriented to increase educational achievement, attainment, and completion, and decrease income inequality and the quantity of the citizenry below or in the poverty lines.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

According to CBC News, there has been an infant custody court case. One involving a stuffed lion, purportedly Jesus Christ as lawyer, glossolalia or speaking in tongues, and asserted religious zealots in British Columbia.

One couple considered religious zealots rejected legal assistance in a court case. They informed the witnesses to the case: Jesus Christ is their lawyer. Where Christ asked questions via the voice of one of the parents, so in context, Christ – via the parent, purportedly – fought for the custody of the parent.

The mother wanted to rename the child “Jesus JoyoftheLord.” The couple lost the court battle. Social workers balance child safety and parental beliefs, often. This case highlighted it. The couple spoke to the court room through a stuffed lion, who they purported was the lawyer, Christ (their alleged Lord and Saviour).

The Justice Diane MacDonald said, “This is a difficult case… The parents obviously love their child and wish to raise her in a home with their Christian values.”

AJ and DK, or the couple’s initialisms within the court case, had a trouble history. They moved from community to community. They alienated people. They did this through “efforts to purge churches of ‘evil influences.’”

“The stakes are high because a continuing custody order paves the way to adoption. The case is not the first time religion has reared its head in a child custody dispute,” CBC News reported, “In 2015, a pair of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses were ordered not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.”

In addition in 2009, the “top court” in Canada considered and then dismissed the case of a Jehovah’s Witnesses Manitoba girl. She claimed rights were violated because of a forced blood transfusion as a minor.

“The Ministry of Children and Family Development got involved with AJ and DK in 2016 after AJ told a facilitator at a lunch program that DK had choked her and “believes sexual relations between children should be encouraged,’” CBC News explained.

The mother later denied the disclosure. AJ was pregnant at the time. Their baby was born on November 1 of 2016, where a paramedic helped them. AJ refused any medical procedures, even vaccinations.

There were also issues “expressed about AJ’s mental health and DK’s potential for violence. A specialist was assigned to work with the family, and the baby was placed in voluntary care with foster parents.”

The child began to lose weight between 1 and 2 months old, so the child was taken from the home. AJ did not feed the child breast milk and the child was losing weight. One pastor sought a restraining order against them.

In West Kelowna, the couple were charged with criminal disturbance of another church.

The court case decision (the one they lost) described, “DK co-operated with the arrest but AJ ‘rolled around on the ground’ and did not co-operate… The parents allegedly wanted to cleanse the Church of evil influences.”

This did not mean something with the parents’ freedom of religion at all, according to the CBC News reportage. The director of the child, family and community services originally argued the parents were unfit for parenting or caretaking of the child.

The parents put forth the argument that they were being persecuted for their “deeply held Christian beliefs.” The justice’s review of the case “was limited to errors of law.”

MacDonald (the justice) noted, “…he, himself, was a Christian and did not have any issue with their Christian family values… I restate that this hearing is not about the parent’s freedom of religion.”

She, the justice, continued to talk about Christianity not being on trial; and the parents’ belief in some purported revelation in God or the use of speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, are not on trial. Same with the home birthing or the denial of use of vaccinations. Those were not on trial.

What was on trial according to MacDonald? Nothing, the issue was the best interests of the child. The justice, in the case of a potential adoption, had the hope that the ministry may consider in searching for an extended member of their family for the child.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“VANCOUVER, June 8, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Haida Nation, Oceana Canada and Ocean Networks Canada announced a new partnership to share resources, knowledge and expertise to better understand and protect seamounts (underwater mountains) near the islands of Haida Gwaii.

Protecting seamounts is internationally recognized as important for healthy oceans. Seamounts are offshore biodiversity hotspots. These highly-structured environments are ideal for coral and sponge growth, in turn providing nursery and foraging habitat important for fish populations and other marine life.

This summer, the group will spend 16 days aboard the Ocean Exploration Trust’s state-of-the-art vessel, E/V Nautilus, studying three seamounts: SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie, Dellwood and Explorer.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/celebrating-world-oceans-day-by-partnering-to-explore-and-protect-mysterious-underwater-mountains-in-canada-684989491.html.

“Professor Vivek Goel is vice-president, research and innovation at the University of Toronto.

When was the last time you travelled outside Canada? Can you remember the last time you had a conversation with someone born elsewhere or felt a personal link to international events?

Canadians pride themselves on our global connections, diversity and openness. We are a small but significant player on the world stage and our ability to work across borders is a key part of our influence. As we all benefit from such global connections, so does research. If you want to be at the leading edge globally, you have to build global partnerships. Prosperity-generating breakthroughs in Canada depend on knowledge that is produced here, as well as in many other research centres around the world.

Unfortunately, there are some people who raise concerns about working with foreign partners. Something has to be done, the argument goes, to stop academics from handing over our national know-how to foreign players with little in return.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-building-walls-around-our-research-wont-lead-to-made-in-canada/.

“When Kirsty Duncan, Canada’s federal science minister, wants to illustrate the importance of fundamental science – research driven by human curiosity, not potential outcomes – she often reaches for the example of deep learning.

The branch of artificial intelligence, which attempts to mimic the way the human brain learns, was pioneered by University of Toronto researcher Geoffrey Hinton and others and is now widely viewed as a potentially revolutionary technology that could transform Toronto – and Canada – into a global innovation hub.

But if it weren’t for public funding of University Professor Hinton’s research decades ago, when he toiled in obscurity on a field of inquiry many considered crazy, the breakthrough may well have happened somewhere else – or perhaps not all.

“There’s a lesson here: it’s investments in discovery research over decades,” Duncan said in an interview during a visit to U of T’s campus this week, noting the federal government last year invested $125 million in a Canada-wide artificial intelligence strategy to capitalize on its early lead.”

Source: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/it-all-starts-discovery-research-federal-science-minister-says-canada-s-innovation-pipeline.

“Federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan has made it clear that gender equity in science is a big priority for her. And now she’s looking beyond universities to scientists employed by the federal government.

Duncan said in an interview in Toronto this week that she has asked science-based departments in the federal government to collect demographic data about their staff following a union survey that found:

• 42 per cent of female federal scientists, engineers and researchers who responded thought gender bias was a career barrier.
• 27 per cent believe men are favoured in opportunities for leadership roles.

But Duncan isn’t relying on the union’s own study.

“I think we have to know what the data is,” she said.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/gender-bias-duncan-1.4696030.

“Expectations include delivering on mandate priorities, engaging in consultations and continuing ongoing collaboration

OTTAWA, June 8, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, met the Canada Research Coordinating Committee (CRCC) to outline her expectations for transformative change in the research community. The Minister launched the CRCC in October 2017 with the mission of delivering on priorities that include:

• Bringing greater harmony and coordination to research-related programs and policies in Canada and addressing common concerns across the three federal granting councils and the Canada Foundation for Innovation;
• Improving equity, diversity and inclusion across the research spectrum; and
• Developing, in partnership with Indigenous communities, an interdisciplinary Indigenous research and training model that contributes to reconciliation with First Nations, Métis and Inuit.

During today’s meeting in Ottawa, the Minister outlined her expectations that the committee engage in ongoing consultations with the members and organizations that are part of Canada’s research community.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-of-science-met-with-the-canada-research-coordinating-committee-to-outline-expectations-684981421.html.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“WEATHER-RELATED disasters can make people more religious but it depends on the toll they inflict, suggests new UBC research. If a disaster injures a significant number of people, it can strengthen religiosity among those who are already religious. But if a disaster inflicts mostly economic damage, the opposite effect applies.

“It’s generally assumed that disasters can intensify religious preferences or practices,” said study author Oscar Zapata, a postdoctoral researcher in UBC’s school of community and regional planning. “My analysis suggests that it depends on the frequency of disasters in that region and the specific impact of the disaster.”

Eighty-two per cent of survey respondents said they believe in God, with the majority reporting that they are either Roman Catholic, Protestant or Christian Orthodox. Using statistical analysis, Zapata found that among the believers of God, religiosity increased following disasters that injured a significant number of people; for every one per cent increase in the number of injured due to a climate disaster, attendance at religious services increased by close to four per cent.”

Source: https://www.voiceonline.com/injuries-and-loss-of-life-boost-religious-faith-after-disasters-in-canada-ubc-study/.

“The couple spoke in tongues in court to a stuffed lion who they claimed was giving them direct counsel from God.

They rejected legal aid, preferring to advise witnesses “it was their lawyer Jesus Christ asking the questions through the voice of the parent.”

The battle was for custody of their baby — who the mother wants to rename Jesus JoyoftheLord.

They lost.

Now, in a decision highlighting the tightrope social workers walk in balancing parental beliefs with child safety, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed the Kelowna couple’s claim of religious persecution.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christianity-custody-child-religious-debate-1.4693154.

“An Osborne Village-area church is using the separation of religion and state as an argument against a city plan to confer heritage status on the building.

On Friday, city council’s property and development committee voted to place Trinity Baptist Church on Gertrude Avenue on the City of Winnipeg’s list of historical resources.

The 80-member congregation opposed the heritage designation for its 108-year-old building on the basis it could hamper the church’s religious freedom, in the event it wished to make changes to its interior. “

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/trinity-baptist-church-heritage-1.4698065.

“Canada’s Supreme Court strongly supported religious freedom when it ruled that faith-based congregations have the right to establish their own rules of membership and procedures for determining when someone can be expelled.

The May 31  decision was met with relief by Christian groups that backed the case of a Jehovah’s Witness community in the western province of Alberta, which had been sued by a former member it had excommunicated.

The nation’s highest court ruled unanimously that the state had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of any religious organization as long as it didn’t affect civil rights or laws.”

Source: https://international.la-croix.com/news/canada-s-top-court-gives-a-boost-to-religious-freedom/7738#.

“MONTREAL – Beginning next month, at least one employee in every Quebec government body, municipality, transit agency, school board, university, daycare and hospital will need a new skill: judging the sincerity of religious beliefs.

Across the province, hundreds of “accommodation officers” are getting crash courses on whether to accept or reject requests for accommodations made on religious grounds, such as meals respecting dietary restrictions or time off for religious holidays.

In recently published guidelines, the provincial government says the officers will apply a number of criteria established over time thorough jurisprudence, including whether the request for a religious accommodation stems from a “sincerely held belief.””

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-begins-training-accommodation-officers-to-assess-religious-sincerity.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“The Canadian government announced at the G7 summit in Quebec that it has raised more than $3.8 billion in an effort with other countries to send the world’s poorest girls to school.

That includes a $400-million investment from Canada as part of the overall three-year commitment, and also includes contributions from G7 partners and the World Bank.

Canada, along with the European Union, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the World Bank, will partner on the funds, which will go towards supporting women acquiring job skills, improving teacher training to improve curriculum for girls, expanding the quality of data available on female education and promoting more coordination between humanitarian partners.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-education-girls-g7-1.4699620.

“Ontario turned Tory Blue in this week’s election, not because newly-crowned Premier Doug Ford is an extremist, but because he isn’t.

The contest became a weird three-way race: Between a moderate and fiscally conservative businessman and two tax-and-spenders out of the public sector, one more extreme than the other.

It was not a right, center and left contest. It was Doug Ford in the center versus a left and an extreme left leader.

He promised to cut spending, taxes, hydro rates, and scandals. His goal was to trim spending overall by a relatively modest four per cent and to fire Hydro One’s overpaid $6-million-a-year chief executive officer.

By contrast, the Liberal and NDP leaders outdid one another with promises to spend more, never less. They offered the status quo on steroids despite widespread public dissatisfaction about taxes, energy costs, and scandals.

The first indication Ford would win handily was when sitting Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne conceded that she couldn’t win. Her announcement was an admission that her policies had alienated voters. It was unusual, classy, but risky, and ended up handing the NDP’s Andrea Horwath the highest popular vote of any NDPer. Wynne’s concession convinced many Liberal voters to move into the extreme left lane to stop Ford.

Meanwhile, Ford never veered, adhering to his pledge to restore fiscal integrity and cut taxes.””

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/diane-francis/doug-fords-win-sends-a-message-to-the-rest-of-canadas-politicians-including-the-prime-minister.

“OTTAWA – U.S. President Donald Trump has backed up threats of tariffs in the past with real trade action, and that’s why his latest comments about the Canadian dairy and auto sectors are worrying, and need to be taken seriously, say trade insiders.

On CTV’s Question Period Sunday morning, Former premier of Quebec and deputy prime minister Jean Charest said Canada has to prepare for Trump to act, because as seen with the levelling of steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, “he tends to follow through on the threats he makes.”

“We have to prepare and we’re very worried, and should be very worried on this side,” said Charest. “On a day-to-day basis the Trump administration is confusion and chaos, but on the key issues he ran on… he has remained constant.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-s-parting-g7-threats-to-canadian-dairy-autos-a-real-cause-for-concern-trade-insiders-1.3967340.

“QUEBEC — When Donald Trump boarded Air Force One in Quebec and whisked his way to Singapore on Saturday, he left behind a stormy wake of mixed signals that bordered on rage. Hours after indicating he would sign on to a carefully drafted G7 communique, he rescinded his support, accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being meek and dishonest, and threatened Canada with more trade action.

Here are five questions about what’s at stake:

The future of the G7: The leaders huddled late into the night on Friday and again on Saturday morning to find compromises palatable to all, especially on maintaining free trade and carefully managing trade disputes. With Trump rejecting those compromises and turning his back on an agreement, can the G7 remain intact? They also affirmed the importance of the “international rules-based order” and that the G7 is based on a set of “shared values.” What is lost if the G7 becomes the G6, or simply falls apart?

Canada-U.S. trade: The United States is, by far, Canada’s biggest customer. Much of Canada’s export sector is tightly linked to having an open border with the United States. That makes the renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement that Trump has instigated crucial to the future of Canadian investment and prosperity. The U.S. has recently thrown up or reinforced several barriers to that open border — in aerospace, lumber, and most recently steel and aluminum. With Trump and Trudeau exchanging increasingly personal and public insults, what happens to those NAFTA negotiations? Are Canada’s supply chains at risk? Are there enough reasonable conversations taking place with thoughtful American powerbrokers behind the scenes to help Canada escape a full-blown trade war that would devastate a wide range of sectors?””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-s-aggression-against-g7-and-canada-five-questions-about-what-s-at-stake-1.3967281.

“You would have been called a cynic if you had predicted that, on the launch of a Canada-U.S. trade war initiated without valid cause by the larger country, Canada’s free-market Conservative Party would use the occasion to undermine its own government by supporting tariff-protected dairy farmers.

But then, politics has a way of breeding cynicism.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer did his part on Tuesday when he released a statement criticizing not U.S. President Donald Trump, who capriciously imposed levies on Canadian steel and aluminum last week, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the crime of announcing “flexibility” in his position on access to the Canadian dairy market.

Mr. Scheer called any weakening of the tariffs that shield Canadian milk, eggs and poultry from foreign competition “totally unacceptable” and accused the PM of being duplicitous for saying otherwise to an American audience.

The most galling thing about this attack on the PM was not that the Conservative stance on supply management is dead wrong. All three major parties have, in the past, steadfastly supported the antiquated and expensive fixed prices, production quotas and trade barriers that protect dairy and poultry farming in Canada, so Mr. Scheer is not alone in this.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-andrew-scheers-cheesy-trade-war-politics/.

“The federal Department of Justice has quietly agreed to amend the regulations on internet child pornography after Parliament Hill’s legal fact checkers spotted problems with the law.

The back and forth between department officials and lawyers with the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations — detailed in internal letters — shines a light on the imperfect science of drafting government regulations.

The regulations brought in by the Harper government in 2011 to accompany a new child pornography law require that Canadian internet service providers (ISPs) report child pornography to the police.

The regulations include a unique provision that asks a designated organization — the Canadian Centre for Child Protection — to review any online files flagged by ISPs or members of the public to determine if they constitute child pornography. The Manitoba-based charity is seen as the leading voice on the issue in Canada.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scutiniy-committee-internet-porn-1.4695165.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) has announced it will not appeal a recent court decision striking down a controversial section of its membership law that barred residents who married non-Indigenous partners from living with them in the community on Montreal’s South Shore.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Thomas Davis ruled the law, dubbed “marry out, get out” by many Kahnawake Mohawks, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“It is clearly in our interest to move forward as a community and to put this unpleasant episode behind us as a community,” said Grand Chief Joe Norton in a statement released Wednesday.

“It was unanimously agreed [by the Kahnawake Mohawk Council] that going to another court would not serve our purpose,” Norton said.

Council also agreed to pay $35,000 to seven of the 16 plaintiffs, as Davis ordered.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/kahnawake-mohawk-council-will-not-appeal-superior-court-decision-overturning-marry-out-get-out-policy-1.4694696.

“Bedell, 18, is a former member of the Mayor’s Youth Council and has been active in student politics since he was in middle school.

He said he was interested in participating in the project because issues that young people face need to be addressed.

“Though we do have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, oftentimes in our political discourse, we tend to only focus on issues that adults face,” said Bedell. “We brush under the rug how those issues affect children.”

Developing the children’s charter began in 2017 when Children First Canada, a national non-profit organization, hosted online forums and focus groups to see what issues concerned Canada’s youth.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2018/06/06/teens-across-the-country-gather-in-ottawa-to-finalize-new-childrens-charter.html.

“The Supreme Court of Canada didn’t find this to be a laughing matter, and has reinforced on several occasions, the fact all provincial legislation must conform to the Constitution, which has provisions for regional and voter thresholds in deciding electoral reform.

There was a foundational case heard before the B.C. Court of Appeal back in 1989 (Dixon v. Attorney General of B.C.) that has been referenced numerous times since by the Supreme Court of Canada, that determined “the right to a high degree of equality of voting power is one of great importance; it is one of the most fundamental freedoms granted by the Charter.” This resulted in B.C. introducing the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act that included the following principles as instructed by the Court: “that the principle of representation by population be achieved, recognizing the imperatives imposed by geographical and demographic realities, the legacy of our history and the need to balance the community interests of the people of British Columbia.”

The legislation also followed the direction of the court in allowing a population deviation of plus or minus 25 per cent. When electoral boundary commissions are struck, they go to great lengths to comply with the Constitution to ensure equality of voting power is maintained.”

Source: http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/opinion/letters/a-proportional-representation-response-1.23330716.

“Gerald Comeau, a volunteer with the Bangor Sawmill Museum in Meteghan River, N.S., said the museum does not have a mandate to take an ideological position on abortion, and should not be compelled to do so in order to be eligible for funding.

“We’re a museum. We’re not involved in the business of ideological questions of abortion and so on,” said Comeau in a phone interview Thursday. “So we came to the decision that we could not support that clause.”

Comeau, a former longtime Tory politician and senator, said he wrote a letter to accompany the application that affirmed the organization’s respect for human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the application was nevertheless denied.

He said without government funding, the museum — home to one of Canada’s last water-powered mills — does not have enough money to hire a student museum guide, and so will not open this summer as scheduled. The funding required to hire the student amounts to about $3,000.”

Source: http://www.squamishchief.com/n-s-sawmill-museum-blames-closure-on-canada-summer-jobs-abortion-controversy-1.23328266.

“A landmark Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruling, which recently determined that cutting or reducing benefits for workers over the age of 65 amounts to discrimination, is expected to have significant implications for older workers from coast to coast.

After more than a year and a half of deliberation, the tribunal decided in favour of Brantford teacher Steve Talos, who was taken off the Grand Erie District School Board’s benefits plan upon reaching the age of 65. On May 18 the tribunal determined that doing so violates Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees Canadians protection from discrimination on the basis of age.

“The tribunal found, five years ago, that the legislation allows the Grand Erie District School Board to do what it did, and the only way this could possibly move forward and be successful was if we challenged the legislation itself,” said Jamie Melnick, who represented Mr. Talos in the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal case. “This decision I believe is the first decision in Canadian history that has found in favour of the applicant on the basis of age discrimination under the Constitution.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/management/article-cutting-benefits-for-workers-65-and-over-ruled-unconstitutional-by/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09

A science prodigy in Grade 11 from Waterloo, Ontario, named Sajeev Kohli received the top honours in the Global Healthcare Challenge.

Kohli attends the Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School in Waterloo. He is the 2018 Sanofi Biogenius Canada national champion. Recently, he was the national champion and won the grand prize for the Global Healthcare Challenge.

He won the award at the “prestigious International BioGENEius Challenge in Boston.” It is considered among the preeminent student biotechnology competitions all over the world.

The competition focuses on healthcare and medical biotechnology. With an emphasis on the production of discovery inventions, Kohli was one among 14 finalists from Canada, Germany, and the United States.

The grand prize came with a cash award of $7,500. Kohli earned recognition for excellence with the research initiative entitled “Recruiting Endogenous Proteins for Site Specific Transport: A Novel Workflow for Gene Carrier Design.”

He had important mentorship, which is crucial for the young gifted and talented – unnurtured gifts are small tragedies. The mentor was, and all should be mentioned for their important often volunteer work throughout the country, Dr. Pu Chen.

Chen is a Canada Research Chair in Biomanufacturing at the University of Waterloo. Chen wanted to develop a cost-effective medication in order to reduce the side effects of cancer treatment.

One that could “selectively target malignant cells. His project could potentially impact the hundreds of thousands of Canadian patients with cancer, the leading cause of death in Canada,” the reportage explained.

Below is a quote about Kohli:

Sajeev has truly distinguished himself, both as the winner of the 2018 Sanofi Biogenius Canada competition, and now with this well-deserved international recognition. His research and drive to innovate is a true symbol of the depth and calibre of scientific talent in Canada,” said Niven Al-Khoury, President of Sanofi Canada. “Sanofi strongly believes in empowering our country’s next generation of innovators. For almost 25 years, we have been proud to support a program that pairs promising young researchers with mentors who will help them realize their greatest potential and showcase their work on the national and international stage. Congratulations, Sajeev, on this wonderful accomplishment.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/06

Professor Anthony Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities at Rice University.  He earned his B.A. from Columbia University, and M.Div. and Ph.D. in the study of religion from Harvard University. He is an author, humanist, and public speaker. Also, and this is in no way a complete listing of titles or accomplishments, Pinn is the Founding Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g. geography, culture, language, and religion/irreligion?

Professor Anthony B. Pinn: I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and in a fairly religious family (particularly my mother’s side of the family).  Church was a major cultural and social force in my early years – so much so that I moved into ministry at a relative young age.  We’d moved from a Baptist church to an independent church that eventually affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination, and it was within that denomination I received ordination and worked as a youth pastor through much of my years in school – high school, college, and some of graduate school.

Jacobsen: When did the humanist ethic and aesthetic first come to you? What was the first explicit mention of yourself as a humanist?

Pinn:I grew into humanism as my theology and religious sensibilities did not line up with my experience and the conditions of life in a more general sense.  This process started while I was a college student at Columbia University, and it was completed during my early years in the PhD program at Harvard University.  My theology didn’t address the circumstances of collective life — e.g., racism, class discrimination and so on.  Rather, my theology and religious setting required surrender of these existential questions and a somewhat blind adherence to doctrine.  With time, that approach created a dissonance that I couldn’t maintain.  I had to either comfort myself as a safeguard of the “Tradition”, or I would have to leave theism (because the problem was larger than my church and denomination).  I decided to leave theism.

I can’t recall the first time I was called a humanism, or labelled myself a humanist.

Jacobsen: How did these inform your research work and educational pursuits and attainments over time? Some from the most prestigious and authoritative post-secondary institutions in the world. 

Pinn:My interests in religion as both academic subject and personal concern motivated my early study of religion.  However, I came to realize only my academic study of religion – as a cultural force in the world – could be justified.  Much of my work now involves an effort to better understand the nature and meaning of humanism.

Jacobsen: What is the importance of having the moral authority and community solidarity in times of strife, tribulation, trial, moral ambiguity, political instability, economic uncertainty, and fundamentalist (religion, Islamism and Christian Dominionism, and non-religion, e.g., ethnic nationalism and supremacism)?

Pinn:I’m not certain I understand the question. Moral authority is subjective and community solidarity is conditional.  I would say, however, that community remains important across various challenges.  There is a need for connection, for the presence of the likeminded, who confirm one’s life choices and understand one’s life challenges.  Religion serves to accomplish this for some, but humanism also serves this function as well.

Jacobsen: What seems like the next steps for the non-religious movements in North America over the 2018/2019 period?

Pinn:There is no one answer to that question in that there is no consensus related to concerns or context for non-religious “movements” in North America.  The next steps?  That depends on what these various organizations and the “movements” they constitute under and as their goals and objectives.  I’m not certain there is consistent related to goals and objectives.  I, however, would argue that non-religious movements will only be relevant moving forward IF they concern themselves with various dimensions of social justice work.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Pinn:Nothing comes to mind.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Pinn.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/05

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. Here we continue the discussion on the creation of a community for the non-religious.

Jacobsen: I want to focus less on pointing the finger in this 4^th session. I look to the production of the community rather than the direction of flaws in other communities.

The non-religious communities, in so far as I can tell, have flaws as with any other community. How do you plan to build the non-religious community alongside, and even with, the religious community in Tanzania?         

Nsajigwa: Could you recall the “Brook farm” experiment of the Transcendentalists, as well as the “Walden pond” experience of Thoreau in 1840s to 1850s USA? Both were inspired by the teachings of Transcendentalists – Ralph Waldo Emerson and others. They had Thoreau retreat back to nature to practiced right there, self-reliance.

Well, we had our own Tanzanian similar-like experience here, inspired by the teachings of Ushirika – Communitarianism back then. Thus I initiated a “back to the land” move for the unemployed youth in urban centers to go farming, including myself. That was in the mid-1990s.

We went back to the farm in Mbozi very near to the Kimwondo – a meteorite stone, and stayed there 1995 to 1998. Due to heavy “El Nino” rain and a complete lack of any support from the Government (despite their promises for same) we had to abandon the project but out of it came cultural tourism that became lifetime career for some freethinkers.

If we had support by then who knows? Maybe, you could have today a well-established freethinker institution and community in Africa, emerging right from the grassroots…! anyway even the Brook farm and the Walden pond experiments both had to be dissolved but their ideas and ideals linger still.

One of our member of that Youth-hood move is a “Thoreau Anarchist” … still living by farming nearby there, still don’t own a cellphone thus living without one, refusing to visit urban centers only when necessary, doing (building) everything by himself…!

And yes the non-religious are fallible too, I know from experience of building same in Africa, East African part. As of the moment, I am surprised by arguments just on definitions of who & what is a Humanist here. The latter-day generation of nonbeliever potential activists seems stuck just on that…So you hear…I am this not that…Agnostic not Atheist, Apatheist not Atheist, Atheist not Humanist, Pantheist not Atheist, Freethinker not Atheist etc.

As a long time veteran Pioneer freethinker activist, I find this mind-boggling. Does it matter…? as long as you are an independent-minded, skeptic and can question even your own religion that is, you are a brainchild of enlightenment. Those other labels are but personal temperaments. And one can be multiple of those anyway, depending on the circumstances.

Thus in Africa, it’s important to build by teaching (as I have always done) correctly this philosophy & worldview & life stance. We don’t need yet more tribalism, this time of nonbelievers each thinking his label is what this philosophy is.

Likewise building by doing & living by examples of one’s own positive life as a mirror of the Happy Humanist who is Ethical, Humanistic, Rationalist, Responsible, tolerant…tolerant to others viewpoints, only to counter when such becomes inhuman, dangerous…give respect for all…eclecticism…just insist on rationalism, and scepticism to claims, outside likewise inside religion. Of interfaith…Africa had been observed by great thinker late Ali A Mazrui as “Triple heritage melting pot” …Jichojipya deals with that reality on the ground.

Jichojipya is more of “Pro” rather than “against” movement…Pro IHEU AD 2002 Declaration (of which I translated into Swahili being the first time its available in an African language – and one with large speakers and readers), Pro-African Freedom charter before and an African human rights charter now, Pro George Ayittey’s Indigenist renaissance Cheetah teachings, Pro Paul Kurtz Eupraxsophy teachings for building communities and institutions for people living without religion, Pro UN 1948 Human rights charter all in agreement by people in and outside religions like me…Pro secularism…keep religion out of state & governance, our country being secular thanks to our founder who happened to be a good student of John Stuart Mills on subject “liberty”.

I am for individuality (liberty) within cooperatism, each one help one, Ushirika – “SisikwaSisi”, work together for the common good, let 100 flowers blossom to make a beautiful garden, Humanism should rule, whether religious (John Dewey to Julian Huxley), ethical (Felix Adler) or secular (Paul Kurtz)…in all cases man is the centre..! on How (plan) to build…its a nascent movement so building here is from the scratch, grassroots has I have always done throughout my experience above – Mbozi Sisikwasisi project and now for Jichojipya Think Anew.

Jacobsen: Have there been interbelief panels with religions and the non-religious community?

Nsajigwa: Non-religious as a movement is nascent here, except before it was the “back to the land” SisikwaSisi youth movement that became like the Brook Farm and Walden pond transcendentalist adventure. Now, it’s Jichojipya-Think Anew.

There have been conferences of interfaith but the voices of nonbelievers are just not there, they are not even thought to exist, except with (aside from) the elder Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru as an individual exception. He was assumed a “Marxist”, or “communist” by the way, no one ever knew him to be a freethinker until that Jichojipya interview with him.

However, we live with others most of whom are religious, some very religious. It’s our African “triple heritage” package, again as one African great thinker Ali A Mazrui had postulated.

Jacobsen: Have you worked on the creation of schools and clubs and associations outside of Jichojipya to build the non-religious community?

Nsajigwa: No but one thing needs to be highlighted here. Our curriculum syllabus in Tanzania is secular to the point of teaching and even broadcasting “Zamadamu”- theory of evolution already…!

So to be fair the secular education already provided by the state is a good beginning here, but there is that socialization, indoctrination, religion-based from childhood I explained elsewhere about, that one is taken to be primary to the secular education one would get at school. As for ourselves we freethinkers few here in our particular case, despite having such plans before and even now, it is an expensive venture, money capital is needed for that.

As for the clubs yes, circles of book reading philosophy in general, freethinking humanism in particular, doing this since the 1990s when back then a Secondary school teacher, to being a youth activist for social change, to become a pioneer of humanist life stance here from 2002 on. I am an autodidact and have influenced many youths basing on that, as I explained before, a library is my sanctuary.

More so I helped the emergence of a non-religious community in Uganda, was right there from the very beginning of planting seeds done by the IHEU President elder Levi Fragel. Me helping out being his guide as he traveled in places to explain what IHEU and Humanism are about, helping behind the scene too. And for the cause of freethinking humanism elsewhere in Africa, have traveled also to Malawi, Kenya and recently Nigeria.

Jacobsen: What may be some next steps in the development of said communities?

Nsajigwa: For Tanzania and much of Africa its to “unearth” the in the closet Freethinkers nonbelievers and connect them into a circle, body, and institution to work for actualizing Humanist life stance idealism – free world that is secular, tolerant, rational, commensurate with the 21^st century human ethical sympathy and empathy, liberty to all, muted irrationality, superstitions and fundamentalism beliefs – whether theological or ideological…

In practice, resources and funds for building what great thinker Paul Kurtz termed as Eupraxsophy institutions, centers, what we tried to build during the phase of our Youth-hood SisikwaSisi “Brook farm” to “Walden pond” back to the land adventurism…!

Jacobsen: We can fix more within the community rather than work to point to flaws in other communities. What do the non-religious communities do wrong? Why are these problems? How can these be solved or ameliorated as problems? I mean in the global non-religious community and the local Tanzanian community.

Nsajigwa: Yes, we can fix by showing the alternative…we are part of the solution, globally and locally…in our African case two cases here one, the non-religious needs to get organized, not each living on his own, and in the closet. Here is the imperative need for a good & exemplary Leadership from the Pioneers.

Thus it’s important, as Roslyn Mould of Ghana had rightly pointed out elsewhere, to get the right people leading…and help them on the work to build a movement and a community. In Europe well there is already high level of Liberty & bills of right & rule of law…but here in Africa we live in illiberal societies, with triple tyranny of culture, religion and politics all demanding conformity making it just too hard to be an independent thinker let alone (dangerous being a) freethinker nonbeliever.

Nevertheless, time has come now to “unearth” and organize these extraordinary individuals – what W E B Du Bois termed as the “talented 10th” of every age in every society since the time of Socrates, before and after, into a global community that lives to keep that elenchus habit, that had produced modernity itself as we know it today.

Let us organize ourselves into Eupraxsophy as a community beyond lonesome stoic endurance. For Tanzania front, the emerging of Jichojipya is exactly to facilitate that. We wish to make figure Socrates and subject philosophy qua philosophy get known to the populace. We were able to unearth the late elder Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru as an independent thinker and as a freethinker.

We shall keep doing that, including keep inspiring (we don’t convert though, live and let live..!) others who are independent thinkers and freethinkers on the closet, to realize they are not alone, that there are others like them and that man is a social animal, they need to come together to meet the like-minded, see how they can help one another, each other in this drama of circle of nonbeing to life being and back to nonbeing, while living in between as realists, without religion, or if in it, then be sceptic doubting one, Thomases within it, rationalists as Mutazilites in Islam or Obierikas of African tradition. Religions being but cultural phenomena, thus man-made.

That a possibility to live a Happy and ethical life of usawa, ubinadamu na Utu wema – Swahili for Humanism, without a religion or any supernatural beliefs. Man is the center, from philosopher Protagoras of ancient past to Tanzanian founder father of the Nation (and its secularism principles) late J K Nyerere.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, and the opportunity, again. 

Nsajigwa: Thanks back to you too, one more time.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/04

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Here we talk about the research that helps the low income and the critical thinking stance to take on pseudo-medicines or medicine purporting to help but does not in the end.

In 2017, I had the chance to talk with a leading medical research, distinguished professor Gordon Guyatt. He specializes in evidence-based medicine. I wanted to talk about some important research and some practical tips for the public.

Tips for the public to avoid snake oil and bogus remedies. We started on the research and then moved onto the practical tips. When I asked about the research, I focused on the research with the most potential to improve health outcomes for the low income.

On low-income Canadians, Guyatt stated, “The best way to improve the health of low-income folks is to decrease income gradients and that would have far more impact than any particular health interventions.”

That is, if society could stop or reduce smoking, then this would improve the health outcomes of the entire population. Lifetime smokers have seven few years of life than non-smokers. That is significant. Who would not pay for another 2,000-3,000 days of life, especially near the end of life?

It is a “far bigger gradient that can come from any particular health interventions. So if we can persuade everyone to stop smoking, that would have an enormous impact on health. While medical innovations have made a big impact on both quality and quantity, there are other things like income gradients, like health habits – in particular, smoking – that have a bigger impact,” Guyatt explained.

As a provincial, national, and, indeed, international expert in evidence-based medicine, this became an important point to convey to me. In particular, the clarity comes from the expertise, knowledge, years in the field, and reading the research.

“Medical treatment has made a big impact on various areas, including cardiovascular disease and treatments and cancer. Those were made because those were the biggest sources of morbidity and mortality in society. That is where I see the biggest continuing potential: certainly, within the area of cancer, our understanding biology has advanced enormously,” Guyatt said.

He states that there will be a steady intake of new preventions and therapies. Many fatal cancers will be chronic diseases in the future. This has been happening. He predicts this will continue into the future. When I shifted the conversation to the critical thinking part. I wanted some simple tips.

Guyatt stated, “What they can do is learn the basic principles of deciding what evidence is trustworthy and what is not.  That should be possible. A colleague of mine by the name of Andy Oxlan has completed a large randomized trial in Africa of teaching school-age kids about recognizing, as you put it, snake oil from legitimate health claims.

Oxlan’s randomized trial showed that kids improved substantially in their ability to make the distinctions. At the same time, the parents’ ability to make these decisions improved too. Now, these are highly poor or poverty-stricken areas of the world in parts of the African continent.

We live in a rich country with more resources including information. That would make our job easier in terms of taking a proactive approach to personal health claims.

“Should people decide to educate themselves, they all would be in a position to make judgments themselves. They should certainly be in the position, even with quite limited knowledge,” Guyatt explained, “of asking their clinicians to justify what evidence there is to base what is being suggested and to challenge the physician or the clinician in explaining – to be made knowledgeable of the evidence that supports what they’re doing.”

—

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed like a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 222 and has a total citation count of more than 200,000. That is, he has the highest H-Index, likely, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g. geography, culture, language, religion, and so on?

Ismail Mohamed: I was born in 1983 and travelled with my family to Jordan at the age of five. Luckily, my father was not a religious man; that is, he did not practice religious rituals. This bothered me because all my friends had their parents’ religions and practised the rituals of Islam permanently.

He does not. I was born in Alexandria, Egypt. I lived in Jordan for a long time and returned with my family to Egypt after 9/11. I remember in these days in Jordan how many talked about bin Laden as a Muslim hero.

My uncle helped to raise me. He was devout. He took me with him to the mosque constantly and made me memorize the Koran. I was not able to read and memorize the Koran. This was causing me some frustration among classmates because everyone was good at reading the Koran well and memorizing it.

In my adolescence, I was living a conflict between religious commitment, and my love for music and listening to music and songs. I remember in this period. I was very attracted to the melodies and songs of Michael Jackson, but his reputation was bad among people in my community.

People accuse him of likening women (this is a charge and a stigma in our societies). It was not easy to express my admiration for all the people. I was walking in the Jordanian capital looking for any picture of Michael Jackson just to watch from afar.

The best thing that happened to me in this period was to encourage my parents to read books, encyclopedias, reading about electricity, physics, and chemistry. I loved going to the library and reading about how electricity works and reading about how sexual organs work. I could get information from books. It is great and helped me a lot in understanding life better.

Unfortunately, I only learned the Arabic language at this time in my life. My father was not a person with a university education. He knew that science was wonderful. He encouraged me to read continuously and with the advent of the Internet. He encouraged me to go online and remember that I went.

Jacobsen: You are Egyptian. What is the climate for atheists and religious people there? Is it more favourable for the atheists or for the religious? 

Mohamed: I am an Egyptian living in Egypt since the events of 9/11. Being a Muslim and a straight man means that you live in the perfect place for you. Egypt, like any Muslim country, is good for conservative Muslims and heterosexuals.

It is not a good place for atheists. I am not gay, but I have gay friends who live in very difficult circumstances. Almost all of them live a double life. The community may be married to another sex or show that they love the opposite sex, but in fact, they are gay or lesbian.

Jacobsen: How does Egypt tend to treat atheists in social and professional life?

Mohamed: No one can declare his atheism and remain in the same social and professional life. This is almost impossible. This can be announced to some people close to him and will remain secret to everyone.

But if his declaration is strong, the society will not have mercy on him, whether he is a university professor or whatever. Therefore, the majority of those who declared atheism are now social outcasts.

Some of them resort to changing their homes or jobs or hiding, or working through the Internet as I did after my declaration of atheism in one of the satellite channels. I then had to leave my city and go to live in the city for fear on my life and the life of my family, religious persecution and fear of persecution is very difficult and turns life into a great hell.

Jacobsen: What are the laws regarding atheists in Egypt? Does this violate human rights of non-believers?

Mohamed: There are no laws that criminalize atheism in Egypt. If you are an atheist, you do not violate the law. But if you talk about the reasons for atheism or explain religion as you understood it and make you an atheist, you may be imprisoned for contempt of religions. This violates the human rights of freedom of belief and expression.

Jacobsen: What was the show The Black aDucks?

Mohamed: It is a media platform where non-believers were given the opportunity to talk about their experience with religion; an information platform that also propagates the principles of secularism and acceptance of the other.

The program’s guests were not only non-believers, but also minority believers such as Christians, Baha’is, and Shi’a Muslims from Sunni Muslim communities and Sunni Muslims. Shiite communities, and a group of thinkers and writers from different countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

I have recorded more than 300 episodes so far. The program has also been the first to give the opportunity to many homosexuals who are forgotten. They can talk about their experience. Their suffering in the Middle East, also the program aims to encourage non-believers and oppressed life and deliver a message to them is that they are not alone, but we are with them.

Jacobsen: What is going on with the show now? What happens on the show in its more prominent moments? 

Mohamed: I was forced to leave the city and go to another city with a very small population. I was able to continue broadcasting from there. However, I was apprehended by security and stopped for a while and returned to my city.

Now, I broadcast my programs with sound instead of audio and video to avoid any trouble that may occur. I was invited to participate in a conference on secularism in London last year. I got a visa to travel, but the security authorities prevented me from travelling for unknown reasons. I received a prize from the conference with Richard Dawkins and others.

Jacobsen: Of course, people have the right to believe or follow a religion as they wish, according to the UN Charter, which narrows the problem to rights violations against atheists with death penalties or against the ordinary religion with the fundamentalists enforcing their views on both of non-religious and the ordinary religious, How can both groups work to combat the encroachment of the fundamentalist religious to protect human rights and acquire justice in the many cases of rights violations?

Mohamed: This is a wonderful question. Unfortunately, to this day, there is an overlap (almost all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa) between what is religious and what is related to life, people, and society. There are many laws based on religion such as personal status laws in Egypt for example (such as marriage and inheritance), and some other laws.

A large proportion of ordinary Muslims do not care about this and do not feel threatened by this overlap between religion and politics or between religion and state and the system of life, while the unbelievers are difficult to hear because most are oppressed and afraid to speak freely because of the laws of contempt of religions that can imprison them at any time. It happened with many thinkers and writers, and some may be killed.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Mohamed: We are one world and one planet. Western societies are created, produced, and manufactured by the creativity of their children who enjoy freedom after separating what is religious from what is related to life.

I believe that individuals and institutions from all Western countries should support our transformation of secularism and separation of religion and law. We need your support. Islam is a very old religion.

I think it needs to evolve and change many of its interpretations. Western societies and governments can put pressure on Islamic religious institutions to change their concepts.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ismail.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Regarding geography, culture, and language, where does family background reside?

Nacer Amari: Although, the Tunisian southern region is where most citizens adhere to the religion. Its customs, traditions, and social norms. I grew up in a Berber family with Arab culture where parents are illiterate and not religious.

Jacobsen: How did this influence personal development?

Amari: Usually, it has a negative impact on the child’s personality, but I consider myself to be lucky compared to the children where I grew up, even though my parents were illiterate and managed to raise me without being affected by religion.

Jacobsen: When did you first identify as an atheist?

Amari: I started to have doubts about religion during the high school. I noticed that my colleagues in the high school were praying, but my family’s members were not. This is when I started thinking about the purpose of prayers and religion and the existence of God in general. Then I completely lost my faith in God during the 10th class identifying myself as an atheist.

Jacobsen: You co-founded united atheists of Europe. Why found it? How big is it? What are your aims and concrete goals for the upcoming years?

Amari: Karrar Al Asfoor and I founded this social fraternity when we noticed that there is a need to unify the efforts of atheists across Europe. It is to bring the European atheists to work together with the ex-Muslim community for a secular world.

In the meantime, it is considered a small-sized social fraternity, but it’s open for every atheist who is interested to join. Our future goals are to have the effective means to challenge religions and protecting secularism in Europe and to empower atheists in the Islamic world pushing it into secularism there.

Jacobsen: In Tunisia, you are banned from eating during Ramadan. Why? How are people quietly and openly protesting it?

Amari: The old Tunisian constitution did not prohibit eating during Ramadan, but there was a ban from the Ministry of Interior requiring restaurants and cafes to obtain touristic permits to be able to serve food and drinks during Ramadan with the windows covered.

The constitution has been updated after the revolution with a new chapter, which is called “the good ethics chapter” giving the ban legal status.

Jacobsen: What is the purported purpose and reasoning behind Ramadan?

Amari: The practice of fasting performed by Muslims every year for 14 centuries is a phenomenon of ancient religious rites that has preserved its existence to this day and is not commensurate with any logical scientific explanation.

This is a holy month par excellence for Muslims. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, as they believe that the revelation of the Qur’an was a “night of fate” this month, also the only month of which the name appears in the Koran.

They considered it the “month of charity” because, when it ends, the faithful must pay alms.

Jacobsen: What is the religious climate in Tunisia? How is freedom to criticize religion there?

Amari: The talk about religious aspect in Tunisia is the talk of a conflict that has existed between religious and political since independence, on the face of social-political, but in its depth is political-religious.

After the revolution the Islamists seized the power, the religious climate became very scary, where have been many assassinations, terror attacks, the rise of terrorism, and atonement to date.

The freedom to criticize religion in Tunisia is complicated, because in the new constitution, there is a contradiction in the laws, where we find in the first chapter mentioned that “Islam is the religion of the state.”

However, in chapter six, ” The State protects the religion (Islam), guarantees the freedom of belief, conscience and the exercise of the cults.”

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Nacer.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the courts have no jurisdiction to address the procedural fairness of religious groups or other volunteer organizations.

Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v. Wall involved a man who was expelled from his religious community and raised the question of whether the decisions by private, volunteer organizations should be subject to judicial review. Canada’s highest court found that judicial review is limited to public decision-makers and there is no right to procedural fairness absent an underlying legal right, according to the decision, which overturned rulings from the Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal of Alberta.

“Issues of theology are not justiciable,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Rowe, who delivered the judgment.”

Source: http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/legalfeeds/author/aidan-macnab/scc-says-courts-cant-decide-procedural-fairness-of-religious-organizations-15792/.

“A new Supreme Court ruling that Jehovah’s Witnesses are free to banish and shun any member they wish, regardless of how they decide to do it, offers a powerful precedent for religious independence in Canada.

It follows years of uncertainty of just how deeply into the waters of faith and doctrine Canada’s judges are willing or able to wade.

Now the limits are clear, thanks to the case of Randy Wall, a Calgary real estate agent and longtime Jehovah’s Witness whose “disfellowship” destroyed his client base and led him to seek redress in the courts. He did not dispute the right of the Highwood Congregation to banish him, but claimed they did so unfairly, without telling him detailed allegations, or whether he could have counsel or a record of proceedings.”

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/religion/jehovahs-witnesses-can-shun-members-as-they-see-fit-just-like-any-old-bridge-club-supreme-court.

“WASHINGTON, D.C., May 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a report on international religious freedom on Tuesday that includes Canada’s battles over freedom of conscience and parental rights as concerning international incidents.

The report documents Ontario’s Christian doctors’ fight for conscience rights and the government’s inclusion of gender expression and identity in child welfare law. Pro-life and pro-family advocates have warned that the latter gives the state license to remove children from homes if their parents are not accepting enough of the LGBT cause.

Pompeo also announced his department will host a conference on international religious liberty, “Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom,” in Washington. “

Source: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/u.s.-state-dept-canadian-laws-are-threatening-religious-freedom.

“When Farida Pedhiwala couldn’t articulate the importance of giving charity and sharing wealth to the less fortunate with her three-year-old son, Adam, she decided she was going to show him instead.

Inspired by her son, Pedhiwala began a program — in partnership with ICNA Relief Canada in Mississauga — and will be collecting toy donations until July 4 that will be distributed to families through the food bank to children celebrating Eid al-Fitr.

Eid al-Fitr, a celebration marking the end of Ramadan, is a day where families come together, eat, and give presents to children.

Pedhiwala says like her family donates and volunteers with different charities during December for Christmas, she wanted to do it for Eid as well, and hopes to see the program become an annual event. “

Source: https://www.mississauga.com/community-story/8645170-mississauga-woman-starts-eid-toy-drive/.

“Canada “does not censor” what it posts to Chinese social media, a Foreign Affairs official said, after a report raised questions about how countries communicate on the tightly controlled Chinese internet.

Authorities in China routinely delete and otherwise restrict communications made by foreign embassies on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, whose reach to large numbers of Chinese people has made it a desired location for “weiplomacy.”

But a report this week that documented the censorship taking place also pointed out countries whose Weibo posts are not being aggressively censored, including Canada, calling into question whether they are redacting themselves.

In at least two instances in the past month, messages posted to Weibo by the Canadian embassy in Beijing differ substantially from those posted to Twitter.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canada-does-not-censor-social-media-posts-in-china-foreign-affairs/.

“WireService.ca Media Release (06/01/2018) Ottawa, ON – The facts of Wall case revolve around Mr. Wall who was “dis-fellowed” (expelled) from his Jehovah’s Witness congregation due to allegations of drunkenness and misbehavior with his family. Mr. Wall brought an application for Judicial Review of the Congregation’s decision alleging that the expulsion affected his livelihood as a realtor since many of his clients were Jehovah’s Witnesses who no longer gave him business. The Court of Queen’s Bench concluded that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the Judicial Review application based on Wall’s economic interest on whether he was afforded due process before this disfellowship.

The Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the lower court decision. The Congregation then appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The WSO was granted intervener status in the case by the Supreme Court of Canada on August 24, 2017 and the appeal was heard by the Court on November 2, 2017. The WSO has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada five times as an intervener- four of those cases, such as this one, involved non-Sikh appellants.”

Source: https://www.wireservice.ca/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=23432.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“A lack of funding has forced the Canadian Space Agency to abandon plans to participate in a NASA-led space telescope project that Canadian astronomers say is a top priority for the coming decade.

The decision delivers a galaxy-sized blow to a sector already reeling from a federal budget that was notably silent on space. Scientists and industry partners are now left wondering what has happened to a long-awaited strategy from the Trudeau government for pursuing Canada’s research-and-development goals in orbit.

“It’s a gutting feeling,” said Michael Hudson, a professor of astronomy at the University of Waterloo and Canada’s representative on the keystone mission, known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST. Dr. Hudson, who has been working on the project since 2013, learned of the cancellation earlier this month during a 4 a.m. phone call in Sydney, where he is on sabbatical.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-lack-of-funding-forces-canada-to-abort-mission-on-nasa-telescope/.

“The Government of Canada announces the appointment of Christina Tessier as Director of the National Museum of Science and Technology

GATINEAU, QC, May 29, 2018 /CNW/ – The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today announced the appointment of Christina Tessier to the position of Director of the National Museum of Science and Technology for a term of five years, effective June 11, 2018. The appointment is the result of the Government of Canada’s open, transparent and merit-based selection process.

Ms. Tessier has been serving as Director General of the National Museum of Science and Technology since 2014, delivering a fast-tracked rebuild of the Museum on time and on budget. She joined the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation in 2013 as Director of Operations of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Ms. Tessier has also held numerous senior leadership positions, notably at Parks Canada. She possesses multi-faceted professional experience acquired in an array of different fields, including culture, high technology and public governance. She is a highly-respected senior executive working with a unique perspective and skill set, together with a corporate focus and a results-driven attitude.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-joly-announces-an-appointment-to-the-national-museum-of-science-and-technology-683955821.html.

“GATINEAU, QC, May 31, 2018 /CNW/ – Every day, scientists and technologists are hard at work at Environment and Climate Change Canada labs across the country, to ensure Canadians enjoy a safe, clean, and sustainable environment.

On June 13 and 14, 2018—during National Public Service Week—we are opening select research facilities across the country to offer Canadians a first-hand look at our work and an opportunity to meet our outstanding scientists and experts.

Visitors will have the chance to tour facilities housing some of the world’s leading research laboratories where our scientists are monitoring air and water quality, studying ecosystem health and the impacts of climate change, and improving our ability to predict extreme weather events.

Participating Environment and Climate Change Canada laboratories are located in Montréal, Burlington, Ottawa, Toronto, and North Vancouver. For more information on these open house events, please visit our website.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/open-house-meet-environment-and-climate-change-canadas-scientists-and-get-a-unique-behind-the-scenes-glimpse-into-our-science-labs-684175811.html.

“Imagine: A Canadian athlete trains and works for 15 years, preparing to make history — then just before he goes for his second gold medal at his second Olympics, the government cuts all Olympic funding for his sport.

That’s what funding is like for some of our scientists, who face the nearly impossible task of making life-saving discoveries or scientific history without good financial support.

Research Manitoba recently released its new funding guidelines. Money goes, in very small grant amounts, to new investigators in a much wider area of fields than previously (not just health sciences but natural sciences and humanities, too). At the same time, it cut its program for health research mid-career investigator operating grants.

On the federal level, the government puts a lot of money into new five year term Canada Research chairs. This pays for new positions, equipment and lab startup funds, but provides little for ongoing lab support, research technicians or grad student research and education.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/opinion-joanne-seiff-research-funding-canada-1.4687400.

“OTTAWA, May 31, 2018 /CNW/ – The federal government is using its purchasing power to ensure Canada’s men and women in uniform have the equipment and services they need, while promoting diversity and gender balance and creating skills training opportunities for all Canadians.

The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, today released the new Value Proposition Guide, which updates the government’s approach to assessing economic benefits to Canada under the Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) Policy.

Under the new guide, the Government of Canada will leverage its contracts in the defence sector to promote skills development and diversity.

The ITB Policy requires that for every dollar the government spends on equipment for our Armed Forces and Coast Guard, the supplying company reinvests a dollar back into the Canadian economy. That translates into a robust research and development environment and hundreds of well-paying middle-class jobs for Canadians.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/federal-government-supporting-diversity-and-skills-development-through-defence-spending-684173591.html.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the U.S. administration’s decision to place tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel citing national security issues is an insult.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Trudeau admitted he’s struggling to come to terms with President Donald Trump’s use of Section 232 to slap 25 per cent duties on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.

“The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable.”

Trudeau said he has no idea what Trump wants from Canada, and that a year ago the president told him it would be a poor decision to include Canada in any action under Section 232’s national security rationale.

Tariffs will hurt jobs and prosperity on both sides of the border, he added — and he wants Americans to understand that.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-tariffs-canada-insulting-trudeau-1.4689819.

“There are nine new political parties registered in Ontario and at least one pundit says the number is a sure sign of an “anti-incumbent” election.

All of the new parties are small. Some are focused on one issue. Others take positions on a broad range of issues. Still others want a different approach to governing.

The nine entrants bring the total number of parties in the election to 28.

Many leaders of the new parties told CBC Toronto they have launched the parties because they believe voters are not being heard.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fringe-parties-ontario-election-increase-1.4683906.

“Trade actions like the ones taken by the Trump administration this week are intended to inflict pain, and the steel and aluminum tariffs levied by the Trump administration are unwelcome developments for both industries in Canada.

But the harm will fall disproportionately on producers of steel, rather than aluminum — and not only because the tariff on steel (25 per cent) is higher than the one on aluminum (10 per cent).

The United States is in a much weaker position to hurt Canadian aluminum producers than it is to punish Canadian steelmakers. Indeed, the likely reason for the lower tariff on aluminum is that the Trump administration realizes it’s American consumers, not Canadian producers, who will end up paying for it.

In fact, the top U.S. aluminum industry consultant says the tariff has, so far, actually enriched Canadian aluminum producers.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-aluminum-shows-its-mettle-in-face-of-trump-s-tariff-1.4686655.

“A Gatineau, Que. doctor says Venezuelans caught in a deepening political and economic crisis at home are being unfairly being denied travel visas to Canada.

Gabriela Prada said she hoped her sister and mother could visit to attend her daughter’s graduation, but their visa applications were turned down. A letter explaining the rationale for her sister’s refusal cited family ties to Canada and turmoil in her home country.

“Given the deteriorating social, economic and political situations in Venezuela, I am not satisfied that you are a bona fide visitor who will depart Canada by the end of any authorized stay,” the letter reads.

Prada said that decision is inappropriate and runs counter to Canada’s foreign policy position that joins other countries in condemning the escalating humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

“It is good for Canada to endorse other countries, but at the same time, it discriminates (against) Venezuelans’ applications to come to Canada. The policies do not seem in line to me,” she said.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/venezuela-visa-canada-hussen-1.4685689.

“Canada is countering the United States’ move to slap punishing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports by imposing dollar-for-dollar tariffs of its own on everything from steel products to maple syrup.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada is hitting back with duties of up to $16.6 billion on some steel and aluminum products and other goods from the U.S. — including beer kegs, whisky, toilet paper and “hair lacquers.”

She and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement at a press conference hours after U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross confirmed the United States is following through on its threat to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on imported aluminum, citing national security interests.

“This is the strongest trade action Canada has taken in the post-war era. This is a very strong response, it is a proportionate response, it is perfectly reciprocal,” Freeland told reporters.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-steel-deadline-1.4685242.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“Appeal by the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform of a decision dismissing its application for judicial review of the respondent’s decision refusing to permit the appellant to place certain anti-abortion advertising on the respondent’s transit buses. The appellant was a public interest group that focused its efforts on the issue of abortion. The proposed advertising consisted of full colour depictions of fetuses with the graphics “abortion kills children” and “ENDTHEKILLING”. The respondent refused to permit the proposed advertising because it would be disturbing to people within the community. The appellant argued its right to freedom of expression was violated. The reviewing judge found that the advertisement, when considered in the context of the content of the appellant’s website, consisted of strong statements that vilified women who had chosen to have an abortion. The judge found that the rejection of the appellant’s advertisement in furtherance of the respondent’s statutory objectives had infringed the appellant’s freedom of expression but that infringement was not absolute, because the respondent had not refused to post any advertisements, just the particular one originally submitted. She concluded that the advertisement was likely to cause psychological harm to some women and to cause fear and confusion among children. The judge found the respondent had acted proportionately and reasonably in refusing this particular advertisement.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6635/canadian-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms-freedoms-of-thought-belief-opinion-and-expression.

“Try to imagine what it must have been like growing up as the son of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

You probably would have heard more than a million times how great your dad was.

You likely would have encountered scores of people telling you how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed their lives.

You would have met Ismaili Muslims, Chilean Canadians, and people of many other cultural and religious backgrounds telling you how grateful they were that your father enabled them to come to Canada to build a new life.

Scholars would have told you that your dad was brilliant. Some might have even remarked that your father had attended Harvard, the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne, which is the academic equivalent of scoring a hat trick.

Gays and lesbians would have said they’re eternally grateful to your father for declaring that the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Source: https://www.straight.com/news/1084386/did-justin-trudeau-just-deal-his-father-issues-purchasing-pipeline.

“As with thousands of other Canadians, Robert Wayne Nelson had the chance to die on his own terms.

Nelson’s earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease was enough to handle in the years leading up to his spring 2016 diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy — a disease his daughter, Jen Wiles, described as Parkinson’s “evil big brother.”

Doctors didn’t know what to do. The severe brain disorder holds no effective treatments.

However, as a biologist throughout his life, the then-71-year-old had always followed legislation surrounding medical assistance in dying.

“My dad was the first medically assisted death in our community,” said Nelson’s only daughter, Wiles, of her father who died on Feb. 15, 2017, in Camrose.”

Source: http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/my-dad-gave-us-a-gift-daughter-opens-up-on-fathers-medically-assisted-death.

“When Ontario abolished mandatory retirement in 2006, employers could still terminate benefits for workers who turned 65. But in May, the province’s Human Rights Tribunal determined the provision in the Human Rights Codethat allowed employers to do so was unconstitutional.

Previously, employers often offered benefits to older workers to encourage them to stay and cut benefits at 65 if they wanted to encourage retirement, says Tiina Liivet, vice-president of benefits and health at Accompass Inc. in Toronto.

But she isn’t at all surprised by the tribunal’s decision, noting the provision was at odds with the ban on mandatory retirement. “I think it’s taken a while [for someone to] feel strongly enough about it to take it to the Human Rights Tribunal,” she says.”

Source: https://www.benefitscanada.com/news/age-discrimination-in-benefits-plans-unconstitutional-finds-human-rights-tribunal-115168.

“The P.E.I. government says any restrictions on freedom of expression in its new referendum legislation are “reasonably necessary” to ensure a level playing field for both sides in the upcoming debate — and vote — on proportional representation.

Bill 38, the Electoral System Referendum Act, would limit groups and individuals to spending no more than $500 on referendum advertising unless they register with government, in which case they would be permitted to spend a share of $75,000 in taxpayer funding for each side in the debate.

Exceeding spending limits would lead to fines of $10,000 or more.

Both the Green Party and the P.E.I. Coalition for Proportional Representation have raised concerns, suggesting the legislation would not withstand a legal challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-referendum-charter-free-speech-1.4683914.

“WATERLOO — Senators at Wilfrid Laurier University approved a freedom-of-expression statement Tuesday that details the school’s commitment to not censoring difficult or controversial ideas.

The final statement, developed by the Task Force on Freedom of Expression, says Laurier “unequivocally embraces the principles of free expression required in an academic environment.” That includes a range of perspectives and ideas, “including those that may be deemed difficult, controversial, extreme, or even wrong-headed.”

In a presentation to senators Tuesday afternoon, Robert Gordon, chair of the task force, said “the principles are grounded by a commitment to academic freedom, freedom of speech … and the relevant legislation around free speech.” That includes the Criminal Code of Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

Source: https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8638724-laurier-senate-approves-freedom-of-expression-statement/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.This Week in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-06-03

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Sunday Express reported on the possibility for research in standard Big Bang cosmology into areas before not empirically researched. That point being before the singularity at the moment of creation or the Big Bang as it is sometimes called.

It has been notoriously thought as something outside of the realm of empirical physics and only left to theoretical physicists to speculate and compare with moments of the universe after T=0, when time began — literally came into existence.

One international team of researchers is proposing a different picture of a before of creation, of a time before the Big Bang. Apparently, the singularity of black holes is akin to the Big Bang because the laws of physics appear to break down.

With some complex math and quantum strangeness, the international team of researchers claim the origins of the universe and the center of a black hole can be explained, comprehended, and not seen as a sort of known unknown.

Professor Mir Faizal at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada and the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada explained, “It is known that general relativity predicts that the universe started with a big bang singularity and the laws are physics cannot be meaningfully applied to a singularity.”

Faizal co-authored the paper with Salwa Alsaleh, Lina Alasfar, and Ahmed Farag Ali. Faizal said that the current theories show the singularities, in black holes and at the Big Bang, are built into the interpretations of the math to make the theories. They follow from the math.

However, if they include quantum effects to remove the singularities, then the standard theories based on work by Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and Stephen Hawking, Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, can be modified.

Those changes to remove the singularities imply new models. Those old models without the quantum effects to the remove the singularities relied on specific models with problems. One model includes string theory, which, as noted, has its own problems.

Only “very general considerations” rather than a specific model is needed to ‘prove’ the proposal in the paper by Faizal and others. The paper concludes that the centres of black holes do not amount to singularities, but, rather, to empirically testable areas of future research.

“The absence of singularity means the absence of inconsistency in the laws of nature describing our universe, that shows a particular importance in studying black holes and cosmology,” the paper said.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says, “97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities” (NASA, 2016b).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report says, “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015).

The British Royal Society says, “Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities from an understanding of basic physics, comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting the detailed patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural influences.” (The Royal Society, 2016b).

And the Government of Canada says, “The science behind man-made climate change is unequivocal. Climate change is a global challenge whose impacts will be felt by all countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable. Indeed, impacts are already occurring across the globe. Strong action is required now and Canada intends to be a climate leader.” (The Government of Canada, 2015b). What do these mean, plainly?

In short, the vast majority of those that spend expertise, money, and time to research the climate affirm that global warming is a reality, and a looming threat to the biosphere (Upton, 2015; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015). So that means, in general, if you know what you’re talking about regarding the climate, you understand it’s changing. You know it’s warming globally — not necessarily locally, wherever any particular local is, which would be weather. What does this imply?

Well if it is inevitable and ongoing, then its solution or set of solutions is a necessity, which should be the center of the discussion. Not if, but when, and therefore, how do we work together to prevent and lessen its impacts? There can be legitimate disagreement about the timeline and the severity within a margin of error based on data sets, or meta-analyses, but legitimate conversation starts with an affirmative. So why is it significant?

Because most of the biosphere exists in that “extremely thin sheet of air” (Hall, 2015) with a thickness of only “60 miles” or ~96.56 kilometers called the atmosphere. It is happening to the minute sheet of the Earth, and in turn affects the biosphere. So small, globally speaking, contributions to the atmosphere can have large impacts throughout the biosphere and climate, as is extrapolated from current and historical data. What is the timeline, and why the urgency?

Because, in general, it will cause numerous changes in decades, not centuries (Gillis, 2016). That translates into our parents, our own, our (if any) children, and our (if any) current or future grandchildren. In other words, all of us, present and future. What kind of things would, or should, we expect — or even are witnessing?

For starters, we’ll experience average increases in global temperatures, impacts to ecosystems and economies, flooding and drought, and affected water sources and forests such as Canada’s (David Suzuki Foundation, 2014b; David Suzuki Foundation, 2014d; David Suzuki Foundation, 2014e).

It affects the health of children and grandchildren, and grandparents, through heat-related deaths, tropical disease increases, and heat-aggravated health problems (David Suzuki Foundation, 2014c). It is adversely affecting biodiversity (Harvard University School of Public Health, 2016) and threatening human survival (Jordan-Stanford, 2015).

Recently it was reported that the Arctic winter sea ice is at a record low (Weber, 2016). There’ll be sea-level rise and superstorms (Urry, 2016). And it affects all, not just our own, primate species, according to primatologists (Platt, 2016). So even our closest evolutionary cousins, via proximate ancestry, will be affected too. This is a global crisis. What are major factors?

Population and industrial activity are the big ones. Too many people doing lots of highly pollution-producing stuff. It’s greatly connected to the last three centuries’ human population explosion and industrialization, which was an increase from about 1 billion to over 7 billion people (Brooke, 2012). So life on Earth is changing, in part, because of human industrial activity with increasing severity as there are more, and more, human beings on the planet (Scientific American, 2009). What’s being done to prepare for it?

Nations throughout the world are preparing for the relatively predictable general, and severe, impacts of it (Union of Concern Scientists, n.d.). The international community is aware, and that explains the Paris climate conference (COP21) during late 2015 (European Commission, 2016), which Prime Minister Trudeau attended for our national representation at this important global meeting (Fitz-Morris, 2015).

Alberta is making its own preparation too (Leach, 2015). And, apparently, small municipalities in Canada are not prepared for its impacts (The Canadian Press, 2015; The University of British Columbia, 2014). But there are those in Alberta such as Power Shift Alberta, hoping to derive solutions to climate change from our youth (Bourgeois, 2016).

So there’s thoughtful consideration, and work, from the international and national to the provincial and territorial, and even municipal levels, for the incoming changing crisis. Whether something can be done about it at one magnitude or another, it is being talked about more with concomitant changes to policy and actions following from them.

All of this preparation, or at least consciousness-raising, is relevant and needing further integration. Climate change will only get more severe unless we do something about it. So, again, that means it’s all a question of when, not ‘if’.

If we want a long-term, robust solution to assist in the reduction of CO2 emissions, a carbon tax fits the bill for a start. Then there’s future energy resources including Hydro, bioenergy, wind, solar, geothermal, and ocean (Natural Resources Canada, 2016). And the flip side of the coin for an energy source is a place to put that energy via future storage technologies also (Dodge, 2015).

But there’s something needed prior to and alongside all of that, which leads back into the original point. Talk about it. Discussion and conversation is the glue that will bind all of these together. The energy sources and storage-devices of the future, the preparation for the effects of climate change that is happening and will continue to happen, and so on, need chit-chat throughout democratic societies for even more awareness of it.

So let’s do something about it, by talking about it more through a national discourse.

Here and now.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the status of religion in Iraq?

Karrar Al Asfoor: Religion controls every aspect of life in Iraq, from the simple cashier in a small shop to the largest governmental organization to my house, to the children playing in the streets, to the cafe talks, whatever you do there you will be in touch with religion.

Iraq is considered one of the most important Shia majority countries with Najaf and Karbala cities that are considered to be the holiest Shia cities. The whole calendar is filled with religious festivals that take place in every part of the country.

Jacobsen: How much political and legal power does religion enforce in Iraq?

Asfoor: Taking into consideration that the government is run by religious organizations and Islamic parties with religious militias who have much more power than the security forces, and people needing a fatwa from the grand mufti for everything; I would say that religion is the dominant political power in the country.

Jacobsen: You co-founded an organization with Nacer Ameri. What is the organization? Why co-found it? What is its title, mission, and purpose?

Asfoor: First, let me clarify that it is not yet an officially registered organization, it is an Idea in its early phases. It is much like a social fraternity with goals to bring the European atheist community to work together with the ex-Muslim community for a secular world. Its name is United Atheists of Europe.

It is clear that we rely on unifying the efforts of atheists across the European continent but are not limited to this, because the world has become a small village and whatever happens in one part of the world would affect other parts.

We will use the space of possible freedom here and have that to make an impact in the Islamic world. In terms of “missions,” we have two generally. The first one is to protect secularism in Europe, which faces the risk of Islamism. The second is to have the effective means to empower atheists in the Islamic world pushing things into secularism there.

And as mentioned earlier, our purpose is a secular world, but that is not achievable at the moment because there are political agendas controlling our world. They have the resources and the larger media outlets.

We only have our brains so we need to face them smartly with an innovative workaround, inspired by the Illuminati, which existed during the enlightenment era. Nacer and I started this social fraternity.

Jacobsen: How does religion in Europe represent a better version with more moderation, tolerance, diversity, and real secularism?

Asfoor: During my stay in Europe until now, religion has never intervened with my freedom or personal choices. For example, I could be arrested if drink alcohol in some cities in Iraq compared to over the counter alcohol bottles here in Europe.

That’s a huge difference, and here I feel more comfortable with the idea that my head will still be connected to my body if I criticize religion.

Jacobsen: Does Islam permit secularism in a fundamentalist reading or interpretation of the scripture?

Asfoor: There is no secularism in Islam or other religions. Religions are based on the divine command theory of ethics while secularism is based on the rational ethical theories (like Utilitarianism). They are totally different axiological worldviews, despite the fact some interpretations permit secularism and some reformers actually advocate for it ignoring the huge contradictions between the original scripture and the new interpretation.

But taking in consideration that people vary in their thinking, psychological elements, and social field factors, I think interpretations and reformers hold a key role in the social transformation and our existence (we ex-Muslim atheists) is so much important to them while the opposite is true.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Karrar.

Asfoor: I am honored to participate in this interview with you, thanks a lot Scott.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/30

Ian Bushfield, M.Sc., is the Executive Director of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA). The BCHA has been working to have humanist marriages on the same plane as other marriages in the province. Here we talk about recent updates from the view of the BCHA.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It has been several months since the last conversation. Let us jump into it. What have been the general trends in British Columbia for the humanist population?

Ian Bushfield: I can only speak broadly, as we don’t get a lot of regular data on the religious and nonreligious make-up of British Columbia. What we do know is that over the past few decades, BC has become increasingly secular where most metrics show a majority of people in the province identify as having no religion and as few as one-in-ten regularly attend religious services.

Within the BC Humanist Association, we’ve continued to see growth throughout 2017 and 2018. Some of our biggest growths in membership and support have come in the past year and we’re really excited to continue that trend through 2018.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the developments in 2018, so far, for the British Columbia Humanist Association?

Bushfield: It’s been interesting for us to watch and start to interact with the new BC Government over the past few months.

Some of it has been promising, like their commitment and consultation around rebuilding the province’s Human Rights Commission, while other issues have been a bit more disappointing, like the continued funding of religious independent schools, possible expansion of faith-based care facilities in Comox and lack of movement on permitting Humanist marriages.

Overall, I think we’re still optimistic that having accomplished much of its election platform in its first year that we’ll be able to start to work with the Government on these and other issues that many Humanists are passionate about.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the more prominent campaigns ongoing into 2018?

Bushfield: What we’re really looking forward to hearing, and this could be any day now, is the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Trinity Western University law school case. We intervened at the Court to argue that organizations shouldn’t be able to claim religious exemptions under Canadian law. If the Court adopts our arguments that will be a big defence in Canadian law against the excesses we’re seeing in the USA following Hobby Lobby.

We are also continuing to follow a number of issues such as access to reproductive healthcare and medical assistance in dying and the pushback by religious fundamentalists to improved sexual and gender education in BC schools.

Jacobsen: What are the expectations for projects and developments for the BCHA within the province for the rest of 2018 and into 2019?

Bushfield: We’re looking at three big campaigns this year.

First, we want to dive headfirst into challenging the nearly half-a-billion dollar giveaway BC provides to private schools. The overwhelming majority of these schools are faith-based and many proudly mix creation in their science classrooms. Overall, these schools segregate students by class and religion, which is antithetical to Humanist values.

Second, we’re starting to do some work on looking at how BC municipalities treat religious property tax exemptions. They have some latitude in how they treat these exemptions and we know that not all towns simply give a blanket exemption to all churches. We’re curious as to what different approaches are out there and have already seen some who provide no exemptions to churches!

Finally, BC is in the midst of an overdose crisis and our governments are starting to take some needed action on this file. We want to make sure the approach we’re taking is based on the best available evidence and respects people’s (non-)religious freedoms.

Jacobsen: What are some concerns in the coming months of 2018 for the non-religious in the province?

Bushfield: In addition to what I’ve already spoken about, we’re watching a couple things.

First, the Government is taking some desperately needed steps to tackle the province’s housing crisis. Toward this end, they’ve committed to working with non-profits, including faith groups, to develop new affordable housing units. We’ve heard in the past that these developments have put vulnerable people at risk of religious coercion.

While we understand the urgency of getting units built, this shouldn’t come at the cost of violating the human rights of the nonreligious, religious minorities or the LGBTQ+ community.

Second, the government will be tabling a bill to create a new Human Rights Commission in the fall. This can be an important institution that acts to proactively protect human rights in the province, including secularism. The devil is going to be in the details so we’ll have to keep our eye on what comes forward.

Jacobsen: What are some concerns in the coming months of 2018 for the non-religious in the nation?

Bushfield: Last year, l we saw the federal government table legislation to finally repeal Canada’s blasphemy law. Unfortunately, that bill has been stalled in the Senate for months now.

We need to continue pressing the government and Senators to move the bill forward and ensure its passage this fall. There’s always a small chance that the government will opt to prorogue Parliament over the summer and that could mean we have to start from square one again.

While we’re on the Senate, the chamber has also created a committee to study Canadian charity law. The BCHA is working with the Canadian Secular Alliance to speak against the current privileged position that religious groups receive under Canadian law.

Between this and the government’s expected response to an expert report on loosening the rules around charities’ political activities, we have a rare opportunity to remake Canada’s charity laws.

Jacobsen: You had a debate, recently. How did you get involved in it? What was the background and topic of the discussion/debate?How do you think it turned out in the end?

Bushfield: This was a really great opportunity that was extended to me by people with Apologetics Canada. Rather than a debate, what myself and Dr. Andy Bannister had was a cordial dialogue on whether Humanism or Christianity provided a better foundation for human rights.

While Dr. Bannister has far more academic training than me in philosophy and apologetics, I tried to present a layman case for the understanding that morality and therefore our contemporary human rights are the result of a cultural evolutionary process and something we can continually build upon.

Dr. Bannister argued that there needs to be some fundamental basis for moral transactions but I couched it in the simple and largely universal approach of the Golden Rule.

In the end, I had a lot more fun than I expected and I encourage people to check out the dialogue on our YouTube channel if they’re curious.

Link to debate here:

Q&A here:

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Bushfield: More than anything else, I really want to spend more time talking about the fundamentals of Humanism this year. These campaigns are all obviously important as they aim to make a real difference in the lives of people in BC and across Canada but it’s important to understand why we’re taking these positions. Humanism is pro-human but it isn’t anti-religious. We need to talk more about the things we stand for – human rights, democracy, peace – and not just the things we’re opposed to.

I’m increasingly worried that as a movement we’ve possibly spent too much time on the latter and that’s made some of our spaces less welcoming than we’d want. I think there’s an appetite for the secular, inclusive and progressive message that Humanism can offer and I’m eager to talk more about that.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ian.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is among the most prominent African non-religious people from the African continent. When he speaks, many people listen in a serious way. He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Here we talk about Nigerian and African humanism, the responsibilities of recognition, aims for the humanist movement, and a recent TED talk.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are one of the most active Nigerian, and African for that matter, activists known to me. For many others, you have left a positive impression and impact, and show no signs of slowing down. What does this widespread recognition as an important voice mean to you?

Dr. Leo Igwe: The widespread recognition means more responsibility and more work. It obligates me to exert more efforts and sustain the momentum to further humanist ideals and values. It entails devising new and more potent strategies to make humanism flourish, and mainstream the rights and interests of nonreligious persons. The positive impression is a sign of a growing understanding or better, an enhanced realization of the importance of humanism; an indication that a long forgotten, long overlooked need for a positive non-religious outlook is now being fulfilled. In a country such as Nigeria, religion has an overwhelming influence. So it can be very difficult for humanist activists to make any significant impact because such an impression chips away on the rock of overbearing religions. Thus the recognition is a welcome development, a sign of hope that should propel me and other activists out there to do more and consolidate on the gains, the hard-won progress that the humanist movement has so far recorded.

Jacobsen: What does this also mean in terms of additional responsibilities from the recognition by peers and youth?

Igwe: It means striving to ensure that humanism takes its rightful place on the table of religions, philosophies or life stances, and that humanists and other non-religious people can live their lives and go about their everyday business with less and less fear. It means working to end persecution and discrimination against non-religious persons in the region. It motivates me to work for a secular Nigeria.

In Nigeria, those who identify as having no religion are in the minority; they are not reckoned with. Non-religious persons suffer systemic marginalization. For too long, persons without religion have been identified as a silent and sometimes, a non-existing minority. The maltreatment is unacceptable and I want to ensure that this situation changes and that the voice of humanism is heard when issues that affect the public are discussed.

In the coming years, I want to work to ensure that Nigerians grow up understanding that religion is an option, and knowing that they can leave religion; that they can criticize religion. I want to make sure that people in Nigeria are aware that humanism and atheism as options that they can explore and embrace.

Jacobsen: What are your current aims for the humanist movement of Nigeria, which you founded?

Igwe: I have two main objectives for the humanist movement. First is to strengthen the capacity of the movement to fulfill its role of providing a sense of community to non-religious persons. Active humanists are still few and far apart, but the challenge of organizing humanism, of growing and managing the humanist community is huge. The humanist movement needs to be positioned to meet these challenges. It needs mechanisms to robustly address the needs and interests of humanists. So I plan to identify such structures, locally and internationally, wherever they exist and put them at the disposal of the movement.

Second, I want to position the movement to meet the needs of the society. Some mistakenly think that humanism is exclusively for humanists. This is not the case. The humanist/freethought movement does not exist only for humanists but for the society as a whole. Religion and superstition negatively affect the religious and the superstitious. So the humanist movement should be enabled to support victims of religious extremism and irrational beliefs whether they are believers or nonbelievers. My goal is to capacitate the movement so that it can fulfill its obligation to humanists including defending the rights to freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and working to end harmful religious and superstitious practices.

Jacobsen: In a recent, and popular TED talk, you posited a positive life stance with humanism. One that even in spite of the difficulties in the past into the present for many Africans poses a positive future. How did you get the opportunity to present at TED?

Igwe: TED officials contacted me. They asked me to draft a talk on humanism and I did. The talk went through several revisions and very rigorous editing processes and rehearsals before it was finally accepted.

Jacobsen: How does humanism present a better future compared to other philosophies?

Igwe: Humanism presents a better future because it has humanity as its main reference. Humanism emphasizes human abilities and potentialities; that humans can overcome its problems and difficulties in this world. Unlike philosophies, especially those with supernatural resonation, humanism’s future is not an otherworldly infrastructure. It is this-world bound. Humanism stresses a future that is attainable and realizable in time and space. The future that it presents may be ideal but not completely a form of fantasy that only the disincarnated savour. It is not a strictly imagined idea that transcends reality, bereft of any trappings of the worldly. The future is not a post-mortem heritage that people can only enjoy and behold after they are dead. It is a future that is achievable in this life, in the here and now.

Jacobsen: In terms of the outcomes and responses to the TED talk, what has been the feedback?

Igwe: The responses have been encouraging. The talk has been viewed over seven hundred thousand times. I have received a couple of messages from those who listened and were inspired by the talk. I guess that the positive feedbacks, which the talk has so far elicited was mainly because such a perspective is a rarity in African discourses. I hope this is going to change and that there will be more TED and non-TED talks that make a strong case for humanism and freethought in Africa.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Igwe.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

“Ponoka Christian School (PCS) is among a group of several Alberta schools and families taking on the province’s Bill 24: An Act to Support Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA).

The hearing for this large group of schools, which includes the Lacombe and Rimbey Christian Schools, is coming up on June 8 in Medicine Hat.

The grounds of the application state that there is an absence of parental knowledge with Bill 24, which creates an opportunity for predation.

“Children are often exploited, both sexually and emotionally, by adults or by their own peers, often with tragic, lifelong and irreparable consequences,” states the application, which can be found at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms website.

“The abuse and exploitation of children occurs most often in places, and during times, when parents are absent and unaware,” it adds.

For parents within the application, it adds there is a worry of an air of secrecy. “The parents are alarmed and frightened at the climate of secrecy that the School Act has created around ideological sexual clubs and related activities.””

Source: https://www.ponokanews.com/news/ponoka-christian-school-among-group-suing-province/.

“This time around, the massive legal bill was not claimed by controversial St. Catharines regional Coun. Andy Petrowski.

Recently released 2017 regional councillor expense data shows that Petrowski — who claimed, and was paid for, $44, 570 in legal bills in April 2017 — claimed an additional $14,318 in “external legal expenses.”

However, Petrowski denied he filed that expense and acting regional clerk Anne-Marie Norio confirmed Thursday it was an error.

However, she would not explain how the mistake was made, only saying in an email it “was an incorrect allocation due to an administrative error.”

“We have no further comment,” Norio wrote in an email when asked for details.

The expense report says Petrowski billed the Region for $14,318 for legal services from the Toronto legal firm of Boghosian & Allen in July 2017. The report does not specify why the firm was hired.

In an email to The Standard, Petrowski — who is currently on paid leave from regional council for undisclosed reasons — said he did not file the expense. Norio later confirmed the error.

Petrowski has filed for large external legal bills in the past, however.”

Source: https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news-story/8631840-region-won-t-explain-14-000-expense-error/.

“The only thing wrong with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commencement speech to the graduates of New York University recently is that his walk doesn’t match his talk.

In other words, his 22-minute address on May 16 is filled with glaring hypocrisy.

“Humanity has to fight our tribal mindset,” he told the thousands who gathered in the rain at Yankee Stadium.

“So here is my request: As you go forward from this place, I would like you to make a point of reaching out to people whose beliefs and values differ from your own. I would like you to listen to them, truly listen, and try to understand them, and find that common ground,” he continued.

Trudeau should tell that to the thousands of charities and faith groups denied Canada Summer Jobs funding, not to mention pro-life MPs in his own caucus because they refused to sign something they don’t agree with, particularly unrestricted abortion.

He should tell that to the poor and the homeless who will suffer as a result and the students who will be denied meaningful employment working with the needy or children.

“But the leadership we need most today and in the years to come is leadership that brings people together. . . . This is the antithesis of the polarization, the aggressive nationalism, the identity politics that have grown so common of late. It’s harder, of course. It’s always been easier to divide than unite. But mostly, it requires true courage.””

Source: http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-trudeau-is-the-master-of-identity-politics-and-aggressive-nationalism.

“Diane Ikonen writes that it’s unfair that potential employers cannot access the Canada Summer Jobs program because “their beliefs about when life begins differ from the Liberals.”

That is completely untrue — the attestation in question is clearly based on protecting Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These are not Liberal values or even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s values. A woman’s right to choose and LGBTQ2 rights are very hard-earned Canadian values, protected by our constitution.

Your writer is also wrong in claiming that pro-life candidates are not permitted to run as a candidate for MP in the Liberal Party. There are famously several pro-life Liberal MPs, and as long as they respect Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there is no issue. That is the exact same bargain Stephen Harper struck with his pro-life Conservative MPs.

As I understand it, in the past the Conservatives funded groups putting kids to work distributing graphic flyers and poster of aborted fetuses. I’m proud this government has taken the principled stand that we will not fund groups that actively work to undermine the rights of women and the LGBTQ2 communities.”

Source: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2018/05/26/sudbury-letter-pm-standing-up-for-rights.

“Long wait times are the vulnerable soft underbelly of the Canadian health system.

Canadians treasure our single-payer, publicly-funded program of physician and hospital care, virtually as a defining part of our national identity. And yet, increasing legal and political pressure over quick access to elective surgeries – cataract extraction and joint replacement, for example – threaten to undermine that support.

The Commonwealth Fund 2017 report ranked Canada last among 11 countries in timeliness of care.

And a case before the British Columbia Supreme Court aims to topple provincial regulations that limit private payment for medically necessary services, claiming that surgical wait times for elective procedures such as arthroscopic knee surgery violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The truth is that few people anywhere in the world are in love with their health-care system. Canada is no exception. Why?

Modern health care is expensive – so expensive, at C$5,900 per person per year in Canada, US$9,900 in the U.S. and £2,900 in the U.K., that it costs more than many people are happy to pay, whether through taxation, insurance premiums or out-of-pocket.”

Source: https://troymedia.com/2018/05/27/shorten-hospital-wait-times-canada/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.