Friday, September 30, 2016

Cassie and Molly's Law - write to your MP

Please write a letter to your MP about Cassie and Molly's law. weneedaLAW has some great sample letters to help you write your letter. Or after you look at weneedaLAW's sample letters, you can simply write your own letter, in your own words, as I did below. Hand written is best if you can.

I received a letter yesterday from the Clerk of the House of Commons informing me that MP Andrew Leslie will take over Mauril Belanger's riding until a by-election can be held in Ottawa Vanier. So that is who my letter is addressed to.

Letters can be sent postage free to:

House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, ON
Canada
K1A 0A6

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Kathleen Wynne still pretending "open government"



Choice Joyce only supports abortion choice

Opponents of Bill C-225 are endangering women and choice
For Immediate Release

Ottawa, September 28, 2016 – A private member’s bill put forward by Cathay Wagantall is receiving pushback from unlikely sources. Joyce Arthur, executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, has initiated a petition calling upon the House of Commons to oppose Bill C-225. The petition is sponsored by Sheila Malcolmson, MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

Bill C-225 ( Protection of Pregnant Women and Their Preborn Children Act or “Cassie and Molly’s Law") addresses gender-based violence – specifically protecting pregnant women who have chosen to carry their child to term.

“It is shocking that Ms. Arthur is opposed to a bill that is designed to protect choice,” said Mike Schouten of WeNeedaLAW.ca. “Cassie, who the bill is named for, chose life for her daughter Molly, but Cassie was murdered before her baby could be born. Under our laws their killer will not be brought to justice for taking the life of her daughter without her consent.”

Schouten challenged Ms. Arthur and other pro-choice activists by saying, “If they truly believed that a woman’s choice is paramount, then they would have no problem justifying a woman’s choice to have a legal abortion while also supporting a law against the violent crime of killing a fetus when the pregnant woman has not  chosen abortion. If they cannot do this, the only option they support is abortion, which is really no longer a choice at all.

“If choice is removed from the equation, there is nothing left to distinguish a legal abortion from a violent attack on a pregnant woman that results in the death of her wanted child. In failing to consider what distinguishes the two scenarios, these supposedly strong defenders of “choice” instead draw attention to how the two scenarios are alike: the death of a preborn child occurs, the very thing they don’t want people to think about.

“In opposing C-225 out of fear that it will endanger abortion, these “pro-choice” activists end up exposing their own inability to defend abortion using a choice-based narrative. Their lack of consistency as to what “choice” really means for a woman becomes clear and thus, paradoxically, compromises choice,” concluded Schouten.

-30-​

For further comment or interview requests please contact 
Cassy Knegt at 905-347-1393 or cassy@weneedalaw.ca

Friday, September 23, 2016

Patrick Brown and his under the bus philosophy

“Frankly, I’m very comfortable with the fact there’s been a falling out. I don’t lose any sleep over the fact that  and Campaign Life are upset,” the PC leader said, adding he now regrets voting against same-sex marriage and abortion when he was a Conservative MP. 
“If Charles McVety wants his ten bucks back for membership, he can have it. If he wants to vote for someone else, he can vote for someone else, so be it,” he said. 
“Frankly, I think they take more credit for any part of my leadership campaign than is merited. I went out and signed up 45,000 members.”
Back in December 2014, I sent an email to a couple of politicians expressing my concern over the Liberals sex-ed curriculum. Almost immediately after I sent the email, Patrick Brown emailed me back from his personal email address (like he did to CLC) asking me for my phone number. I gave it to him and he called me back. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was against the sex-ed curriculum. I asked him at the time if he was also concerned about the Liberals decision to hide abortion information. He told me he was for open access to information, although any further emails I sent him on this subject, remained unanswered (that should have been my first clue to PB's philosophy).

I subsequently bought a membership for myself and my husband and we voted for him for the leadership, which he won. I know many many others who did the same.

It's pretty easy to tell people what they want to hear if you if you don't need to worry about keeping your promises. Because once you've won, well there isn't much they can do about it is there?

Did Patrick Brown sign up 45,000 members? Or did we do it for him?

And Patrick? Johnathon Van Maren has some good advice for you:
"Social conservatives, as I’ve written before, are not numerous enough to single-handedly put someone in office. However, we are numerous enough to ruin the career of someone like Patrick Brown, who has managed to lie to us, betray us, call us intolerant bigots, and then shruggingly suggest we vote for someone else in the confidence that we won’t. If we keep letting politicians like Patrick Brown treat us like that, we are simply ensuring that no politician will ever take us seriously, because they can have their cake and eat it too—they can get so-con votes while telling the Toronto downtown elites that they think we’re kind of repulsive. I think it’s time for social conservatives to show that we care more about putting someone Conservative in power. We have real concerns that need to be addressed, and if Patrick Brown is an impediment to that, then we should treat him as such."
Good luck Patrick in trying to get anyone to believe you ever again. I think you're going to need it.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Let's rip up the Canadian Charter while we're at it

This is perverted:
"Authorities should bar doctors from refusing services like abortion and assisted death on moral grounds, and screen out potential medical students who might impose their values on patients, leading Canadian and British bioethicists argue in a provocative new commentary. 
The paper by professors at Queen’s and Oxford universities, who are also editors of two major bioethics journals, throws rocket fuel onto a debate already inflamed by the new law allowing assisted death. 
They argue that physicians have no right to opt out of lawful medical services — from abortion to prescribing contraceptives — that are requested by a patient and in the person’s interest. 
Those who let conscientious objection affect patient care are clearly unprofessional, say Udo Schuklenk and Julian Savulescu. 
“Doctors must put patients’ interests ahead of their own integrity,” they write in the journal Bioethics. 
“If this leads to feelings of guilty remorse or them dropping out of the profession, so be it,” says the bluntly worded piece. 
“There is an oversupply of people wishing to be doctors. The place to debate issues of contraception, abortion and euthanasia is at the societal level, not the bedside... 
...Schuklenk said it is debatable whether currently practising doctors should be barred from practising because they morally object to facilitating certain legal services. 
But it would be reasonable to screen applicants to medical school and eliminate those unable to put aside their moral values, he said, comparing the idea to a medical faculty in South Africa rejecting racist students. 
Such screening might exclude people of certain religious beliefs from becoming doctors, but there is little evidence that would be detrimental to patients, the commentary says."
Is this what we call progress? Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral. This sounds like what Hitler demanded of his doctors in Nazi Germany. It may have been legal then to perform horrid medical experiments, etc. on people, but it certainly wasn't moral.

In fact even now we wonder why presumably decent men and women performed those experiments and didn't refuse based on their (presumablely) moral objections. And now we want doctors to behave like they did in Nazi Germany.

And notice that last sentence. With Schuklenk and Savulescu, it's apparently also okay to exclude people because of their religious beliefs.

Forget morality. Forget freedom of conscience. Forget freedom of religion. Done with that. That's so old school.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 10

"In my view, to deny access to generalized, non-identifying statistics regarding an important public policy issue such as the provision of abortion services would have the effect of hindering citizens’ ability to participate meaningfully in the democratic process and undermine the government’s accountability to the public." Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, 2000

Monday, September 12, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 9

“Information sharing should not be impeded because of excessive classification rules …. we must work to extinguish the belief that those who collect information own it.” -- William P. Crowell, Markle Task Force on National Security in The Information Age, testifying before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, 8 Nov. 2005

Friday, September 9, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 8

"After I had been confirmed as federal Information Commissioner, I met with the former Commissioner, John Grace, to get his advice.  One thing he said struck me in particular; he said that in his seven years as Privacy Commissioner and eight years as Information Commissioner (a total of 15 years spent reviewing the records which government wanted to withhold from Canadians) he hadn't seen a really good secret.  My experience is much the same over the first year of my term.  For the most part, officials love secrecy because it is a tool of power and control, not because the information they hold is particularly sensitive by nature." 
John Reid, 1999

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 7

"Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety." Woodrow Wilson"

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 6

"The overarching purpose of access to information legislation … is to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to ensure first, that citizens have the information required to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and secondly, that politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry." - Gerard LaForest, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice, in Dagg vs. Canada (1997)

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 5

"Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety." Woodrow Wilson

Monday, September 5, 2016

Why we use graphic abortion pictures

Sephanie Gray discussing graphic abortion pictures and children


Dear Kathleen Wynne - Freedom of Information Quote 4

"I believe that a guarantee of public access to government  information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless." - Sissela Bok, Swedish philosopher, 1982

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Friday, September 2, 2016