Quebec’s Catholic elder statesman of the common good

Proceedings from the House of Commons as reported in Hansard

Ontarians went to the polls just over three weeks ago., with the Progressive Conservatives elected with a mass majority, but this election featured record-low voter turnout, with less than half of eligible voters showing up to the polls.

It was as if the Earth stood still on its axis for a moment. That was when a family friend broke the news to me. On April 5, the Hon. David Kilgour, the distinguished Canadian politician and ambassadeur extraordinaire of global human rights, had boarded his last flight, and gone home to his father in Heaven.

Canadians have a new Parliament, but it is tough to distinguish it from the old one.

Canadians have a lot to think about before the Sept. 20 election. But for Catholics, it’s getting harder to be political and to contribute to public debate, says the author of a brand-new book about faith and politics in Canada.

A friend contacted me a few days ago incensed by Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole banishing Ontario MP Derek Sloan from the party in mid-January.

It is one disaster down and one more to go. The first disaster was, of course, the House of Commons passing Bill C-7 that will make being killed by your friendly doctor a lot easier. Thanks, Justin, for your concern for the health of your fellow Canadians. How progressive.

OTTAWA -- A “cheap shot” tweet directed at Catholics by a Liberal MP has been slammed as “anti-Catholic” by Conservative Garnett Genuis and the Catholic Civil Rights League.

Canada’s provincial and federal politicians essentially locked the country down again over Christmas because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Tightening restrictions intensified the dreariness, the darkness and coldness of a Christmas season in Canada. These limits on freedom were even instituted in communities that were faring well with flattening the pandemic’s curve.

OTTAWA -- The Catholic voice, silenced so long in Canadian public life, needs to be heard loud and clear once more, Archbishop Richard Gagnon said in his president’s report at the Canadian bishops’ annual plenary.

If John Turner hadn’t been talked out of it by his boss at the powerful Montreal law firm of Stikeman Elliott, he might have been a priest and not a politician. But he would have been one of those priests who wield power and influence under the genial guise of amusing tales, loyal friendships and long dinners within longer conversations.

If the Liberal government stands past the Sept. 23 throne speech, Martin Blanchet’s seven-year battle to get somebody with authority to look into how Canadian mining companies and others treat workers, communities and the environment in poor countries will finally get an airing in the House of Commons. 

Canada’s 43rd federal election is over — and for many Canadians it was dismal. It was a campaign of “gotcha” moments fought in the mud and a symptom of the greater rot in Canadian politics: the continued growth of so-called “affective partisanship,” or the tribal hostility felt by partisans of one party against partisans of another.

Catholics have been reminded repeatedly they must separate Church and State. In government, medicine, law, public policy or discourse, we are expected to leave Him who shapes our life and our conscience at home.