We need to reflect on the implications of Canada’s legendary easy-access citizenship policies and the suggestion that our passport is becoming the world’s “passport of convenience”, comparable to the Liberian shipping flag-of-convenience – i.e., the flag flown by expatriate and tramp tankers and freighters with dubious credentials to exercise their operations in international waters.
Richard Belliveau
The issue of Senate reform has once again raised its hydra head. The government in the Throne Speech of October 16, 2007 said that Canada was not well served by the Senate in its present form, and that it would pursue certain aspects of reform. In the Senate itself, Senator Hugh Segal has put forward a motion calling for a referendum to abolish the Senate.
Arctic Sovereignty - Canada's Interests
The Retired Gentlemen's Reading Group
Pierre Beemans
CIDA vs. The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
The Ottawa Citizen ran an article on February 17 on the report of the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which has been looking at foreign aid and CIDA for the last year or two. The article highlighted one of the options recommended for consideration, which was that CIDA be dismantled, and touched on several others. It also chastised the Agency for being inefficient and ineffective, and criticized it for its excessively high administrative costs.
Joe Bissett
THE CURRENT STATE OF CANADIAN IMMIGRATION POLICY
We are led to believe that Canada’s immigration policy serves the national interest and is essential for economic growth, to fill our labour shortages, and to offset an aging and diminishing population. We are also told that most of our immigrants are selected because they possess the education, trades, skills and training essential to meet our labour force demands. These assertions need to be challenged because they do not bear up under examination. They have become myths, used by governments and pro – immigration advocates to justify unreasonably high immigration levels.
Axel Conradi
ROUND AND ROUND
Why do I force you to residential schools
for holding to myths not my own?
Why do I jail you in re-education camps
for calling Urumqi and Mecca home?
Why do I shackle my neighbour
never again to be loose?
Why do I choke him with my knee
as if it were a noose?
Why do I herd you onto trains
to places with Polish names?
Why do I prostitute for “comfort”
deny it and not take blame?
Why must I label you Infidel
if I answer the muezzin’s call?
Why must I seize the land of Jordan
by keening at the Western Wall?
Why do I rampage on Shiva’s behalf
if rumours have fouled my well?
Why must my Trinity be The Answer
and others be doomed to Hell?
Why do I travel down a road
of endless dead-end streets?
Why do I march round and round
when my heart knows where to meet?
By: Axel Conradi
Axel Conradi
No one’s talking, only tweeting
Traffic’s crawling, drugs are killing
But the birds still sing, my friends surround me
It will be alright, it will be alright
I don’t know why, I don’t know when
It may be in the here-and-now
It may be in the afterlife
I’ll cast my vote for the present tense
Because the future’s looking sketchy
Forests burning, ice caps melting
My head is pounding, my brain rebelling
But the birds still sing, my friends surround me
It will be alright, it will be alright
I don’t know why, I don’t know when
It may be in the here-and-now
It may be in the afterlife
I’ll cast my vote for the present tense
Because the future’s looking sketchy
Clans are stirring, the kids are marching
A virus spreading, people dying
But the birds still sing, my friends surround me
It will be alright, it will be alright
By: Axel Conradi
Max Bade
“And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven:
this travail has God given to the sons of man to be execercised therewith”.
Ecclesiastes I, 13
Essential Evolution and Nature of Science
In its simplest and etymological form, science means “knowledge”; “knowledge gained by methodical study”.
Even though mankind continuously has gathered “knowledge” over time through trial and error at first, and later through precept, “knowledge gained by study and reasoning” is of more recent origin.
Max Bade
"...without a cause, nothing can be created." Plato, Timaeus
Introduction
The present essay was drafted over a long period of time. Its form and content kept on changing since the early 70's when I had the ambition to formulate a sort of "philosophy of life" through a series of sketches on various subjects.
Brian Northgrave
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ST DAVID’S REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH, OTTAWA
This is a brief history of the church my wife Valerie and I bought in January 1972 to live in with our three children, Ben 5, Stacey 3, and Beth 1, after some renovations to make an apartment in the church hall/basement. The building had been up for sale for over a year, with a leaking roof, and some hymn books on the pews where the departing parishioners had left them.