Without exemptions to protect women in prison, gender identity laws are unconstitutionalMonday April 12th, 2021
Canada’s federal prisons for women were once like men’s: cells, high security, guards with guns. But following the suicides of seven female inmates between 1989 and 1991 (all but one Indigenous), inquiries led to the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, culminating in a report, Creating Choices. As a result, six regional women’s prisons were created whose infrastructure and policies reflec...
In Service of Progressive Values, US Military Has Become Detached From RealityMonday April 5th, 2021
Commentary
To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, U.S. President Biden honoured women in the U.S. military. “We’re making good progress designing body armour that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating—updating requirements for their hairstyles,” he boasted.
Maternity flight suits? The idea provoked Fox News host Tucker...
In the progressive era, even literary critics aren’t safeMonday March 29th, 2021
In 1981, Toni Morrison wrote, “If there were better criticism, there would be better books.” Better can mean negative — sometimes even harsh — criticism. There was a time when that was received wisdom. No longer.
John Metcalf, a transplant to Montreal from England, has for 55 years toiled in Canada’s various literary vineyards: teaching, editing (300-plus books), publishing (Porcupine Press ...
Government-sponsored erasure of women's rights advances with the word 'female' being banned on International Women's DaySunday March 21st, 2021
According to research on the "cancellation" of conservative thinkers in academia, gender-critical academics are the most beleaguered of all. In his recent Quillette article, "The Threat to Academic Freedom: From Anecdotes to Data," University of London professor Eric Kaufmann writes, "just 28 percent of American and Canadian academics, and barely a third of British academics, would ha...
Birth of a new resistance: Parents mobilize to tackle woke ideologyFriday March 12th, 2021
Riverdale Country School is one of New York City’s — and therefore America’s — most elite private schools. Last June the school administration sent a memo to parents alerting them to curriculum changes that would reflect “the responsibility to use our privilege to fight for change.”
At the first assembly in September, instead of the school’s traditiona...
Switzerland votes to ban the niqab in publicTuesday March 9th, 2021
Switzerland takes direct democracy very seriously, often putting questions of public policy to the public in the form of a national or regional referendum requiring a 50 percent threshold for passage.
Sometimes the results accord with the government's preferred policy, sometimes not. In 2009, Swiss citizens resisted government advice and voted to ban the building of minarets, agreeing wi...
Quebec, France Resistant to Encroaching ‘Woke’ IdeologyMonday March 8th, 2021
Commentary
Last month, Quebec Premier François Legault took to Facebook to criticize “radical activists” who he said are taking political correctness to extremes. He was in part reacting to the suspension last September of a francophone University of Ottawa professor for using the N-word in class.
“If we don’t defend someone who is a victim of this, we’re playing the game of the radical...
Mask mandates for children have no basis in scienceFriday March 5th, 2021
At about this time last year, I was fretting to a friend about the paucity of medical masks available, and the difficulty of getting hold of cloth ones. My friend thought I was over-reacting. The government isn't telling us to wear masks, she said. They're even saying masks are ineffective and counter-productive. I remember my exact words to her: "Government policy accords with the scarcity of ...
One-size-fits-all solutions won’t work for childcare, especially after the pandemicFriday March 5th, 2021
COVID-19 has changed the habits of those in the work force, but parents of very young children have been especially hard hit. Prior to the pandemic, many parents were using childcare services for reasons of work and study. But a national survey of childcare facilities in April-May 2020 found that 70 per cent of centres reported they had laid off some or all of their staff. In Ontario and Quebec...
Finding hope in the unlikeliest waysFriday February 26th, 2021
In January 2014, Harold Heft, a successful writer, educator and communications executive, learned he had inoperable brain cancer of the kind that killed the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie. He had less than two years to live. In that precious time, working with his beloved wife Suzanne Heft, a social activist and fundraiser, and his close friend Peter O’Brien, journalist, author, entre...
Academics and theorists reframe opposition to dangerous pit bulls in racist termsMonday February 22nd, 2021
I am a seasoned polemicist in the pit bull wars (I'm not a fan of pit bull type dogs, to put it kindly, as you can see in this 2017 piece published in The Walrus online). It's been quite a while since I've engaged on that front, though. So a recent book review published in Aero magazine acted upon me as a bugle to an old cavalry horse.
Titled "critical race theory is Coming for the Dogs," I ha...
Jessica Mulroney was exonerated —so why isn't anyone apologizing for her cancellation?Sunday February 14th, 2021
It's not often an opinion columnist has the opportunity for a "scoop"—that is, the opportunity to break a story to the public that has not been covered by other media outlets. It's a gratifying experience when it happens—and also, to judge by the feedback—an instructive one.
In December, my editor at the National Post invited me to write a feature article based on material th...
Wider access to assisted dying in Canada will be catastrophic for the disabledSaturday February 13th, 2021
A bill to expand access to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) comes to a Senate vote no later than Feb 17. That leaves a bare working week for the House to consider what may be a number of Senate-approved amendments before a court-imposed deadline for final passage on Feb 26.
Bill C-7 is the Trudeau government’s response to the 2019 Quebec Superior Court Truchon ruling — named for ...
Instead of Expanding MAiD, Expand Palliative CareMonday February 8th, 2021
Commentary
A good friend of ours died last year of a slow-growing but inexorable form of lung cancer. In his final months, he received expert outpatient care from a team of palliative-care specialists. When the end was imminent and breathing became difficult, he was asked if he preferred lucidity with suffering, or comfort. “Comfort,” he whispered. His medication was adjusted, and he re...
U of T student faces petition to revoke academic award because he is conservativeThursday February 4th, 2021
Academia is so dominated by progressive dogmas that most students and professors who hold conservative views keep them on the “down low” to avoid being censured by the thought police. But a diminishing few still boldly thrust their heads above the parapet.
We find an example of this endangered species in Arjun Singh, a University of Toronto political science student whose extracurr...
Following the science in the controversy over when you became youFriday January 29th, 2021
One of the great pleasures of a second pregnancy is telling your first child that he or she is to have a sibling. Anticipated questions bubble up. How did the baby get in there? Can (s)he see me? The child may start talking to the baby by name (real or invented).
If the child is old enough to understand — say six or seven — the gift of an illustrated children’s book explainin...
Text messages exonerate Jessica Mulroney after she was cancelled last summerThursday January 21st, 2021
“Cancel culture” is pandemic today, but the virus was already in patchy play 30 years ago.
In 1991, Toronto journalist and social activist June Callwood was charged with racist behaviour by a Black staff member of Nellie’s women’s shelter, one of 50 social organizations Callwood helped establish in her lifetime. The staffer accused Callwood of being “a woman of pr...
Ryerson journalism student should not be barred from school newspaper for his religious viewsSunday January 17th, 2021
There are two student newspapers at Ryerson University: The Ryersonian—funded by the university—and the Eyeopener, which is independent, but receives $6 per student, a contribution students may not opt out of.
Jonathan Bradley, who is a contributor to The Post Millennial, is a fourth-year journalism student at Ryerson who by last spring had achieved the status of contributing write...
Faith and family are at the core of Netflix's 'Greenleaf'Sunday January 17th, 2021
I am a sucker for soap operas, and always was.
One of my favourites was the CBS series, Dallas, which ran from 1978 to 1991. Its plotline had family patriarch Jock Ewing, founder of Ewing oil, presiding over all the ways in which such an apparent blessing can go wrong through no fault of his own, but plenty of fault shared out amongst his offspring, especially the Machiavellian older of his tw...
Without exemptions to protect women in prison, gender identity laws are unconstitutional
Monday April 12th, 2021
In Service of Progressive Values, US Military Has Become Detached From Reality
Monday April 5th, 2021
Government-sponsored erasure of women's rights advances with the word 'female' being banned on International Women's Day
Sunday March 21st, 2021
