News/Canada

{mosimage}TORONTO - Before stock markets around the world crashed in September 2008, $609.23 billion  in Canada was invested with an eye on protecting the environment, treating workers and communities fairly and running the company openly.

Socially responsible investing principles captured 19.9 per cent of more than $3 trillion invested in Canada, according to the second biannual Canadian Socially Responsible Investment Review. While total SRI investments climbed 21 per cent between mid-2006 and June 2008, the ethically invested market share remained steady at just under 20 per cent.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Pro-life lawyer Geoff Cauchi thinks it’s a good thing Canada has no law on abortion.

“It’s easier to get people motivated, to get them involved, when you show them, ‘Look, there’s no law; people could have an abortion right up to birth.’ They get shocked and they’re motivated,” said Cauchi, who is on the boards of Alliance for Life Ontario and Life Canada .

In Cauchi’s view the worst thing would be the sort of abortion law England and most European countries have — legal, funded abortion up to 26 weeks, with some legal restrictions on the relatively few late-term abortions.

{mosimage}At the annual March for Life in Ottawa hundreds, if not thousands, of youth from across the country gather to show their pro-life support. The May 14 march was to be no exception, with nearly 900 youth registered by the end of April for the March’s youth conference the following day.

It was unknown how many youth would join forces this year to simply be a part of the crowd making their way peacefully through downtown Ottawa. But Yoli Singson, an organizer with Campaign Life Coalition , told The Catholic Register that, increasingly, youth make up a large part of the thousands of participants.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A month before her first birthday, Katherine Mary Allen will travel to Ottawa with her parents to attend her first National March for Life.

Her mother, Tanya Granic Allen, says it’s important to bring her daughter on the five-hour trek from Toronto to the pro-life rally on Parliament Hill May 14, the 40th anniversary of an omnibus bill passed in 1969 by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government that legalized abortion in Canada.

{mosimage}TORONTO - His diocese is bigger than France and it has more moose and caribou than people. Yet Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon will drive his pickup truck thousands of kilometres to visit more than 20 parishes and mission churches that dot northern British Columbia and the Yukon with enthusiasm.

He says the faithful congregations, some as small as four people, are worth the effort, but without question need the financial help given to them every year by Catholic Missions In Canada .

{mosimage}TORONTO - The ecumenical social justice agency KAIROS is dumping five of its 27 employees and trimming its programs to focus on two areas of work.

Staff cuts were triggered by falling revenues from foundations and churches hit hard by last fall’s stock market collapse, said KAIROS executive director Mary Corkery. But even without the dip in investment income KAIROS would have had to eventually trim its expenses, she said.

“It’s a long-term problem. It’s a structural problem,” Corkery said.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has joined the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada to intervene in a Supreme Court challenge of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

The challenge was launched by the Attorney General of Quebec and is supported by the provinces of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The challenge was heard at the court April 24.

The legislation was enacted in 2004.

{mosimage}TORONTO - When St. Paul spoke in the Areopagus, he proclaimed to the Athenians that the “unknown God” they honoured with an altar was in fact the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is this biblical passage that the archbishop of Toronto will present to the public in a prayerful meditation at the heart of the city — beside the bustling Eaton Centre in Dundas Square at Yonge and Dundas Streets May 17. The event caps off the church's year-long celebration of St. Paul.

{mosimage}A Canadian ecumenical agency working with subsistence farmers who face drought and starvation in rural Tanzania is enjoying record-breaking support, despite the recession.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank raised $12.4 million in cash and crops in 2008-2009, $4 million more than its previous record.

“It was quite a remarkable year,” said Foodgrains executive director Jim Cornelius.

{mosimage}MEXICO CITY - The executive director of the Canadian Catholic bishops' aid organization has expressed confidence in the groups that receive agency funds in Mexico, even though five of those partners have been accused of promoting policies that violate church teaching.

Michael Casey, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, said he was "not dismayed" after an initial April 16 meeting in Mexico City with the five groups that allegedly have supported the liberalization of abortion laws. But Casey also stressed that the investigation by a committee of inquiry from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops was far from being completed and that committee members were taking the allegations against their partner agencies seriously.