Canada Finally a Just Society?

I have read with interest two articles in the public media by Den Tandt in the last few days. The first was a “celebratory back patting” for Canada’s arrival as a just society. “Across this country, from coast to coast to coast, there is now a nearly unanimous view that the old divisive, angry debates about matters of individual faith and morals are over.”

He considers that discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation are finished also. Likewise, the debate over abortion. For all these issues he quotes Geoff Norquay, a conservative strategist, “I recognize you may hold personal views at odds with the majority, but we’re not going back there.”

With regard to abortion, Tandt says that “We now have a consensus, a national one, that Canada is a socially progressive nation and will remain so.” So the slaughter of human life in the womb is progressive? The fact that this subject, like other politically unacceptable discussions, has been repressed amounts to a consensus?

This strikes me as odd when Trudeau’s Charter was specifically designed to uphold the rights of minorities, that they could not be discriminated against. In fact, the gay society has been freed from discrimination largely on the basis of the Charter. But the way in which the Charter is applied is itself discriminatory.

Den Tandt’s second article shows surprise that 19 year old William Swinimer was suspended from school for wearing his T-shirt saying “Life is wasted without Jesus.” Apparently, some students were offended by it. Fortunately, the foolish bias of the school board’s action has been reversed, William can return to school wearing his Jesus T-shirt.

Yet the discriminatory way in which Christian belief—and particularly expression of that belief—is penalised by authorities like human rights tribunals, school boards, city councils and other pseudo-government bodies, led to this debacle.

Attempts to silence opposition by some vocal groups now makes any comment that offends hate speech. The line between offence and incitement to hatred has been lost, reinforced by rulings of the notorious human rights tribunals, and has become so engrained in the collective conscience it has led to the whining versus acquiescent society Tandt grandly trumpets as just and progressive.

Truth can only be arrived at by open and free discussion, not by censorship. That’s why freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democracy. Tandt’s Canada is going in the opposite direction.