{mosimage}Last week, we offered some general comments on the report of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation in Quebec. By and large, the commissioners used common sense and open-mindedness in dealing with very real tensions over religious and cultural differences between immigrants and older Quebec communities.

{mosimage}The release of the Bouchard-Taylor report May 22 on reasonable accommodation of religious and ethnic differences in Quebec offered a useful corrective to some of the alarmism creeping into public debate on this issue. As one of the first official and systematic examinations of how Canadians integrate newcomers into our midst, it holds valuable lessons for all of us.

{mosimage}No one says being an Ontario Catholic school trustee in these times is easy. The vast majority of trustees recognize, too, that theirs is a vocation with few rewards and a grinding workload. So the temptation to ease that burden in questionable ways may be understandable — even as succumbing to it is never acceptable.

{mosimage}Economists — practitioners of the “gloomy science” — are gleefully telling us the party’s over. The boom times have disappeared, pffft, into thin air, replaced by recession and unemployment. But statisticians are now saying that most Canadians were not even invited to the party to begin with.

{mosimage}A century ago, on Sept. 23, Msgr. E. Alfred Burke, a priest of the diocese of Charlottetown, started a small organization that would go on to do very big things indeed. It was the Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, now known as Catholic Missions In Canada (see article here).

{mosimage}If there is still any lingering scepticism among Canada’s opinion makers about the worrisome ambitions of the country’s human rights tribunals, it should be dispelled by the latest statement from Ontario Human Rights Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall.

{mosimage}China, the International Olympic Committee and diehard Olympic supporters continue to repeat the mantra that we should leave politics out of the Olympic Games. Since when? we might ask.

{mosimage}The dictionary defines misanthropy as “hatred or mistrust of humankind.” Over the last few months there has been an awful lot of that going around.

This attitude has displayed itself in increased chattering in the media (where else?) that responsible global citizens should refrain from reproducing in order to do their bit to save the environment. One less mouth to feed, or in contemporary terms, one less carbon footprint to mar planet Earth.

{mosimage}Canadian parents are likely breathing a sigh of relief over a recent decision by the Ontario Supreme Court. In the ruling by Madam Justice Cheryl Robertson released March 31, a father was acquitted of assault in an incident in which he used modest force to prevent his 15-year-old daughter from attending a drug party.

{mosimage}Robert Latimer’s highly publicized campaign to obtain a reversal of his second-degree murder conviction should force Canadians to think twice about our seemingly unstoppable “progress” toward legalized euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.