News/Canada

OTTAWA - The House of Commons voted 153-136 June 6 to repeal  Section 13, the controversial hate-crimes provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act June 6, drawing praise from the Catholic Civil Rights League.

MP Brian Storseth’s private member’s Bill C-304 now moves to the Senate where it will be shepherded through by Conservative Senator Doug Finley.

QUEBEC CITY - While university students, anti-capitalists and environmentalists have routinely mustered tens of thousands into the streets of Montreal and Quebec City over the last two months, a small coalition of conservative Christians managed 650 for the second annual Christian March from the Plains of Abraham to Quebec’s National Assembly.

The number of marchers for the June 2 event was down from about 1,000 the year before.

OTTAWA - The federal government’s National Action Plan (NAP) to Combat Human Trafficking announced June 6 will be a “huge help” in battling modern-day slavery, said Conservative MP Joy Smith.

“I’m absolutely delighted,” said Smith, who participated in the NAP’s roll-out in one of several news conferences across the country. “This adds a new step toward combatting human trafficking in Canada.

OTTAWA - Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth's private member's Motion-312 has been postponed until the fall session because the MP's mother has been gravely ill.

"I know for the last month or so I have not been as effective as I should be on anything because my mother has been in such difficult straits and it's been weighing me down," said Woodworth.

Motion-312, which calls for the creation of a Parliamentary committee to examine the Criminal Code's definition of a human being in light of the latest science and medical evidence, was supposed to come to a vote on June 6.

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has overwhelming dismissed an appeal by pro-life crusader Linda Gibbons.

In an 8-1 vote, Canada's highest court upheld lower court rulings that permitted Gibbons to be charged criminally for disobeying temporary injunctions that were imposed in civil courts several years ago.

The fairness of criminally prosecuting anti-abortion protester Linda Gibbons for breaching a 17-year-old temporary order will be ruled on by the Supreme Court of Canada today.

"The case is basically about whether they can charge Linda criminally under the Criminal Code for breaking an injunction that was issued by a civil court," Daniel Santoro, Gibbons' lawyer, told The Catholic Register. "If I win, they won't be able to do that. They'll have to start a contempt proceeding and bring it before the court that made the order."

Kayla Baker, 14, has her green and pink dress all ready for her Grade 8 graduation. When she grows up, she wants to be a nurse or a physiotherapist. But first she needs a double lung transplant.

Baker was diagnosed with fibrosis, a chronic disease that causes swelling and scarring of the lung tissue, and has been on the transplant list for over a year. On May 31, she helped organize an organ transplant awareness day at her school, St. Michael Catholic School in Cambridge, Ont.

TORONTO - Opponents of Bill-13 lost the debate over gay-straight alliances because they seemed either fearful or contemptuous of the word gay in presentations at committee, said NDP and Liberal legislators during debate at final reading of the Accepting Schools Act.

“We know that homophobia is real. The committee hearings proved it is real,” said NDP MP Cheri DiNovo.

VICTORIA, B.C. - A team of Western pro-lifers has begun a month-long trek to Ottawa in what the group is calling the New Abortion Caravan.

“Our journey will begin with how the opposition began (in 1970) — with a caravan,” said Stephanie Gray, the executive director of Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR). “They did graphic, bloody dramatizations of illegal abortions. We will demonstrate with graphic, bloody images showing the reality of all abortions.”

Gray understands that CCBR’s tactics may cause controversy, but notes the graphic images are necessary to focus discussion on what actually happens in an abortion.

“The pictures of abortion are shocking because abortion is shocking,” she said.

“The images are disturbing because killing a child is a disturbing thing.”

The caravan launched on May 29 from the Vancouver Art Gallery amid shouts of protest from pro-abortionists. It is a project of the Calgary-based CCBR. 

In 1970, a group of woman gathered outside the Vancouver Art Gallery to begin its Abortion Caravan — a touring protest demanding unrestricted access to free abortions on demand in Canada.

The group made its way from Vancouver to Ottawa, where it burned then prime minister Pierre Trudeau in effigy and dumped a coffin full of coat-hangers at his Sussex Drive residence. 

Eighteen years later, the Supreme Court repealed all restrictions on abortion.

The CCBR has turned the tables and will retrace the 1970 caravan by travelling through British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario before reaching Ottawa on Canada Day weekend.

The tour kicked off with a rendition of O Canada by Vancouver Canucks’ anthem singer Mark Donnelly. He said the event was for all Canadians and hoped it would spark a national debate on abortion. As he sang, protesters chanted: “This isn’t a Canadian issue.”

“We have taken the sacred cow of Canada’s abortion rights movement and are using it to advance the cause for pre-born children,” said Gray.

“Last year, we announced our new EndtheKilling plan to eradicate abortion from our country in our lifetime. We have given ourselves an 18-year deadline to achieve justice for the pre-born.”

Many of CCBR’s staff were born after Canada’s abortion laws were struck down and see themselves as a part of a survivor generation.

“Too many of our peers have died and now the young people of Canada are standing up to lead the New Abortion Caravan,” said Lauren Kyfiuk, a CCBR summer intern.

“It’s our responsibility as survivors to speak out for those who have been killed and to be a voice for the voiceless.”

The group will engage the cities they tour using a variety of mediums. Young pro-lifers will drive trucks with large posters of aborted children on the outside, while other staff will demonstrate on street corners holding large signs with similar images. CCBR will circulate graphic postcards at peoples’ homes and will engage the public through debates and presentations.

“We must bring that which is done in darkness into the light and confront the culture with the graphic reality of abortion,” said Kyfiuk. “We must have the courage to tell the truth in love if we aim to EndtheKilling in our lifetime.”

After several stops in British Columbia, the tour was to visit Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina from June 6-9, and then stop in Brandon, Man. June 12 and Winnipeg June 13, before making these Ontario stops: Thunder Bay June 16, Sudbury June 20, Brampton June 21, London June 25, Toronto June 28 and Ottawa July 2. For more information visit: www.unmaskingchoice.ca.

(With files from the B.C. Catholic)

OTTAWA - A call by an influential Saudi sheikh to destroy all churches on the Arabian Peninsula has led the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Human Rights Committee to voice its concern to the government of Saudi Arabia.

In a May 30 letter to Saudi Ambassador Osamah Al Sanosi Ahmad, Bishop François Lapierre, chairman of the CCCB’s Human Rights Committee, referred to a March 12 statement by Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who said: “only one religion,” Islam, “should exist in the Arabian Peninsula” and thus “it is necessary to destroy all churches in the region.”