The story went that the student wore the same shirt several days in a row (let’s assume he washed it or had multiple ones and wasn’t suspended for stinking up the place) and was suspended when he refused to obey a demand by the school’s principal that he no longer wear the shirt.

Quick to stand up for free speech and religious freedom, Centre for Inquiry Canada released a press release condemning the school.

"While CFI sponsored the Atheist Bus Campaign, we are a strong champion of freedom of speech and freedom of religion," said National Communications Director Justin Trottier. "This shirt causes no harm and is a perfectly acceptable contribution to the marketplace of ideas."

I could point out again how CFI did not sponsor the Atheist Bus Campaign (except in Kelowna) – the Freethought Association of Canada did – but that’s not my point here.

With any sensational news story, I think we all ought to put our skeptic hats and try to figure out what is really going on before we rush to comment. And in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit more there.

Students said William Swinimer has been preaching and making them feel uncomfortable, and the shirt was the last straw so they complained.

"He's told kids they'll burn in hell if they don't confess themselves to Jesus," student Riley Gibb-Smith said.

Katelyn Hiltz, student council vice-president, agreed the controversy didn't begin with the T-shirt.

"It started with him preaching his religion to kids and then telling them to go to hell. A lot of kids don't want to deal with this anymore," she said.

Furthermore, the students father has begun pulling William from any class beyond the basics.

"He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old-fashioned academics," he said, waving a New Testament bible. "When they're having forums, when they're having other extra-curricular activity, he will not attend that school."

I guess that means no evolution, sex-ed, or critical thinking for poor William.

This background doesn’t change the fact that suspended a student for wearing a t-shirt is wrong, but it does give the context of why such a seemingly disproportionate measure was taken. The school was fed up with an obnoxious Jesus freak shoving his religion down everyone’s throats. The school administrators have a duty to ensure that all students feel welcome and safe at the school and are able to learn, if one student is compromising that security, then they’re bound to find a way to deal with it.

If anyone else had worn that t-shirt, they would have been fine, but couple it to a continued campaign of disruptions, and I can understand and potentially support the school’s actions.

Of course, we likely still don’t have a complete story. We don’t know the extent that William pushed his religion on others and we don’t know how many people complained about it. We likely never will.

But this is precisely why organizations that want to maintain some semblance of credibility on these issues ought to hesitate before crying wolf. It’s nice to be the first to comment, but without the full context, one can come off as ignorant and closed-minded.

Friendly Atheist and high school math teach Hemant Mehta was also generally supportive of the suspension.

This past week has seen blow up and scandal plague Alberta politics, as the boobs come off the Wildrose bus. First, we have a compilation of quotes by Danielle Smith shaping her as a Christian Libertarian, then we have her denouncing established climate science, plus she has refused to chasten her candidates for slandering the Edmonton Public School Board and damning homosexuals to burn in “the lake of fire” or for saying that being white is an advantage.

It’s well established that Conservative Party of Canada insiders, like former strategist Tom Flanagan and past Edmonton-Strathcona candidate Ryan Hastman, are working closely with the Wildrose Party. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see the social conservative forces, fresh off their recent Ottawa takeover, are feeling threatened by a new Albertan premier who started to put a bit too much emphasis on the progressive in Progressive Conservative.

Meanwhile, in Ottawa, backbencher Stephen Woodworth will get to argue for rolling back the start of life (and thereby rolling back women’s rights) sometime soon.

It’s therefore encouraging to see Molly Grave’s new YouTube series “Prime Minister Stephen Harper & Canada’s Religious Right”, which has two episodes posted so far:

With luck (and the polls may be starting to turn around), these recent controversies will pull the Wildrose back from majority territory and into a minority situation. It is likely that we will then see (in a cruel irony to their federal brethren) a Wildrose coalition government, supported by either the NDP, Liberals, or both.

Now, like the last UK election where the natural alliance would seem to be between Labour and the Liberal-Democrats, it is very likely that given the balance of power, both the NDP and Liberals would rather see a change in guard then continue to prop up the Tory dynasty. For at very least, it would be easier to fight an election against a relatively new government, then one with such a long history. However, progressive Albertans should heed England’s lessons as such a coalition could still mean harsh, unnecessary austerity and regressive policies, all at the cost of a few minor concessions (like electoral reform).

So I’m a little less pessimistic about Alberta’s future than a week ago, if only because a few Liberal or NDP cabinet ministers could be enough to stave off the harsher portions of the Wildrose social policy. Nevertheless, I’m not envious of my friends and family in Alberta who are faced with these options.

But I’ve never seen anything where an MP from across the country takes the time to read my concerns in their entirety and responds in kind to each point.

Last week, I mentioned that the NDP are still chasing down leads on the Office of Religious Freedom and after writing the post, I sent an email to Hélène Laverdière, NDP MP for Laurier – Ste-Marie, and Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs. My email and her eloquent and detailed response are below the fold.

Dear Hélène Laverdière,

I was glad to read that you have continued to make inquiries into the Harper Conservative's Office of Religious Freedoms. It concerns me that the government continues to stonewall any attempts to be held accountable and I want to strongly encourage you to continue your investigations.

While I, the NDP, and most Canadians, are strongly committed to human rights, including religious freedoms, this office has raised much scepticism over its secrecy. Many like myself are also worried that this office will be used to push a narrow religious ideology into Canada's foreign policy and will threaten our implicit separation of church and state. We also see this office as more likely to promote freedom of religion while ignoring the equally important concept of freedom from religion. This concern is highlighted by the fact that no secular voices seem to have been included in the discussions around this office.

So again, I urge you to continue your investigation, and also question whether non-religious, secular humanist, and other secular viewpoints have been or will be included in discussions around this office.

Sincerely,

Ian Bushfield

Her response:

Dear Ian Bushfield,

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the establishment of an Office of Religious Freedom by the Harper Conservatives. As you noted in your email, the response I received recently from the government to my question on the Order Paper regarding the Office of Religious Freedom was wholly unsatisfactory.

Like you, I have concerns about the mandate, structure, and purpose of this office. New Democrats believe that Canada does and must continue to play an important role internationally in promoting the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. At the same time, we believe the question of religious freedom has to be understood within the broader context of freedoms and fundamental rights.

Aside from its narrow focus, concerns have surfaced around the consultation process during the development of this Office. We understand from media reports that faith leaders consulted on this initiative were invited primarily from Western religions, with the near-exclusion of representatives from Eastern religions. There are also practical concerns that the mandate of the Office is ill-defined, which may lead to difficulties in implementing this initiative within a broader departmental framework.

New Democrats would rather see the Canadian government focus on the important areas of institution-building, democracy promotion, and human rights. In the 2008 Speech from the Throne, the Harper government pledged to create “a new, non-partisan democracy promotion agency … to support the peaceful transition to democracy in repressive countries and help emerging democracies build strong institutions.” This initiative could have been an important way to share Canadian expertise on human rights, transparency and the rule of law with emerging democracies – and, in turn, ensure religious freedoms. It might have been used as a key part of Canada’s reaction to the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, the Conservatives broke their promise to establish this agency, and Canada lost an opportunity to provide international leadership in helping these emerging democracies.

The NDP’s position is reflected in comments made by Jinny Sims, our Deputy Foreign Affairs Critic and Critic for International Cooperation, during a debate in the House of Commons in October 2011. As Ms. Sims said on October 27^th in the House, “I am not sure spending $5 million on another office would actually get us where we need to go. I would like to see those resources put toward a non-partisan agency that would promote democracy. The NDP and I are very committed to religious freedom. There is no magic agency that is going to fix this.” (Ms. Sims’ comments can be found here)

Mr. Bushfield, thank you also for raising an important point about the inclusion of secular voices. We will be sure to consider this as we continue to monitor this issue over the coming months. I want to assure you that we will continue to encourage the Canadian government to focus on the more important international issues, rather than those that are politically expedient for the Conservative Party.

Sincerely,

Hélène Laverdière
MP, Laurier – Ste-Marie
Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs

I emphasized the bit that made me happiest in there. Feel free to add your voice in support of uncovering the motivations behind this Office by emailing Helene.Laverdiere.A2@parl.gc.ca

The NDP leadership convention kicks off tomorrow (early in the morning out here on the left West coast), so I’ll either be blogging or Tweeting the action as it happens. Then on Saturday, I’ll be joining Vancouver Point-Grey New Democrats at the Sunshine Grill in Kitsilano for brunch and to vote and watch the results live. Of course because the first round will be announced at 7 AM, we will be voting for the first 2 rounds before meeting there at 10 AM.

Alberta’s education laws haven’t been updated in decades and given last year’s slow resolution of bring secular schooling to Morinville, it’s long overdue. Yet the proposed act is drawing criticism on all sides.

The Catholic School Trustees Association fears that this is the first step to destroying their century-long privilege. Specifically, the act will allow the government to force secular and Catholic schools to share space when necessary and to amalgamate school boards.

Meanwhile, homeschoolers rallied 1500 people for a protest because they don’t want to have to teach they’re children to obey the Alberta Human Rights Act (seriously).  To placate these religious homeschooling extremists, the education minister caved and “offered an amendment on Monday to the preamble of the bill, recognizing parents’ right to raise their children within their ethical and religious traditions.” This was not enough to satisfy those who believe we can simply put two words like parents and rights together and suddenly have a codified law.

Nevertheless, the Alberta Liberal Party (who are the fourth party in terms of the number of candidates nominated) is skeptical of the government and fears it will further surrender to the Religious Right.

Kent Hehr, MLA for Calgary Buffalo, asked the education minister , Tom Lukaszuk, whether the province would soon provide “public funding of a school of Scientology or Druids or a school for witches and Wiccans?” Lukaszuk parroted the standard lines of “choice in education” in response.

Hehr pressed further asking if Lukaszuk was “comfortable with parents teaching that homosexuality is a sin or that evolution is not real?” Sadly, the education minister either dodged the question at best or admitted that parents have a right to poison the minds of their children.

Please, listen to the answer. I am comfortable with the fact that parents have the right of teaching their children and passing on their family values, their religious beliefs, and their morality. This is what we do as parents. Whether my daughter comes from a public school or whether she stays at home all day long, I still take responsibility for teaching her what is right and what is wrong, so that aspect has nothing to do with homeschooling. That is what we all as parents have the primary right to do, and we continue doing that.

Choice in education is a smokescreen for wasting money on inefficient two-tiered school systems. Alberta (and BC) currently grant ridiculous amounts of money to private schools, which can discriminate in enrolment and hiring under this absurd system. Furthermore, the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned the separate school system in Alberta, Saksatchewan, and Ontario as discriminatory and called for the ending of separated school funding.

It will be interesting to see if the majority of Albertans (represented by neither the Homeschoolers or Catholic schools Associations) will stand up for secular, adequately funded education. Hell, it will be interesting alone to see if any party is that brave – the Alberta Party already missed that boat with their platform [pdf].

Luckily, we have representatives like NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière, who continue to work to uncover answers. Specifically, she submitted an Order Paper question on the Office of Religious Freedoms that has been mired in mystery since Harper’s election promise and subsequent founding.

According to CBC correspondent Kady O’Malley (who you must follow on Twitter), these are designed to ask “all manner of questions on the administration of government – specifically, questions that, by their very nature, were simply too technical or otherwise unwieldy to be answered during [question period].” Basically, boring stuff that still merits some investigation. It’s less theatrical than question period but often equally important.

So here’s what Laverdière asked:

With regard to the Office of Religious Freedom:
(a) when did the government decide to establish an Office of Religious Freedom and at whose request;
(b) what is the mandate and the objectives of this office;
(c) what is the budget breakdown of the office for

(i) staff,
(ii) programs,
(iii) operations;

(d) what is the reporting structure of the office;
(e) what will the office produce;
(f) how many people will be employed in this office and what will be their level;
(g) what are the hiring criteria and salary levels for each person employed in this office;
(h) how will this office work differently from other sections of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) already working on human rights issues;
(i) who was consulted regarding the creation of the office,

(i) when did the consultations take place,
(ii) what are the names and affiliations of those who were consulted;

(j) what are the names, positions, and religious affiliations of the guests who attended consultations on a new Office of Religious Freedom in October 2011,

(i) how many people from religions including, but not limited to, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Buddhism were invited to the meeting,
(ii) how were the panellists and participants chosen for the meeting with Minister Baird,
(iii) who made the final decisions on panellists and participants chosen for the meeting,
(iv) what discussions were held at DFAIT about inviting Amnesty International and why was this organization not invited;

(k) who are the employees responsible for the development of the Office of Religious Freedom within

(i) the Prime Minister's Office,
(ii) the Minister of Foreign Affairs' Office,
(iii) other Ministers' offices,
(iv) DFAIT,
(v) other government departments?

Pretty thorough, no? My only complaint would be to add under (j-i) something to the effect of “how many non-religious or secularists were invited to the meeting,” although I already likely know the answer.

Unfortunately, the Harper Government^TM responded with little more than the standard promotional speech about the Office, answering none of the specific questions asked. This follows the saying “they call it Question Period, not answer period.”*

So on the one hand, it’s good to see the NDP continue to pushback against the subversive religious agenda of the Harper Cons. However, it also exposes another way they seem to be able to skirt accountability and democracy. Hopefully the NDP will continue to pursue this cause in the House. Consider sending Laverdière an email of support at helene.laverdiere@parl.gc.ca

*I’ve heard this attributed to Jean Chretien, but can’t find the source. The best I found is this article quoting Stockwell Day as saying it to mock the Prime Minister.

First, the Vancouver Sun mistakenly takes the view that science and Christian lobby groups deserve equal weight when presenting research. Their article titled “Research mixed on whether parents should be banned from spanking” does a solid job of presenting the scientific evidence of the harms of corporal punishment of children, but then goes and quotes the homophobic Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (at least it identifies it as a Christian right group spun off of Focus on the Family) who want the right to beat their kids. It’s telling that the following day this article was republished on the Ottawa Citizen under the more accurate title, “Time for parents to disarm.”

Next, we have a good news-bad news story, also from the Vancouver Sun. The good news is that the Delta school board has kicked religious proselytizers out of its classrooms, while the bad news is that many volunteer evangelicals remain in schools across the province – including in Kitsilano Secondary School (near my home). The BC school act makes it explicitly clear that our schools are to be secular, so any move from volunteering to preaching will hopefully be rooted by our teachers and school administrators.

Finally, the British Humanist Association has highlighted some research undertaken by the Guardian which showed that publicly funded faith schools are discriminating against poor students.  This research is quite relevant in Canada where several provinces provide funding to private schools (BC and Alberta) and others provide full funding to separate Catholic school boards (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario). It would be interesting to do a similar study here to try to prove if such systemic discrimination exists here as well.

The suggestion is that visual cues of churches or religious buildings lead people to vote more conservatively, “and the effect seems to hold, whether you’re Christian, Muslim or agnostic, progressive, independent or conservative.”

This is an intriguing suggestion because if you’re anything like me, you always resent when they hold a poll or public forum in a church.

This is also a very testable hypothesis, outside of psychology. Elections Canada publishes poll-by-poll results, so one merely has to cross reference which polls were held in churches with those that weren’t. There’s 308 separate electoral districts to run the analysis for, and in each district there should be a decent number of religious and secular polls to contrast. With this much data, it should be possible to see if church voters are more likely to vote Conservative than NDP, Liberal, or Green.

Perhaps if I get really bored while job hunting, I may try to do the numbers for my own riding.

Speaking at a Muslim Canadian Congress event honouring his “courageous decision,” Mr. Kenney said polling shows that eight out of 10 Canadians agreed with the decision while only 14% were opposed.

Sadly, neither Kenney nor the National Post provided any evidence for this statistic, so we can’t actually verify it ourselves.

Regardless, I’m still mixed on my own feelings about these decisions. Obviously forcing women to conceal their skin is an affront to feminism and equality but forcing them to undress can be equally offensive to one’s freedoms. I’m not really comfortable with a government that tells its citizens what they can and cannot wear.

Arguments aside, this opposition always seems to come down as a political distraction. It always seems to be presented as a solution that’s looking for a problem.

How many Muslim women were taking the oath while wearing a veil?

One per year? Two?

Without numbers and evidence – which we know that this government despises – all I can chalk these announcements up to is blatant fear-mongering and Islamophobia. Recall that Harper thinks Islamicism is the major threat to Canadian security.

Basically, NPA trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo have been caught red-handed in videos lying to the Christian Social Concern Fellowship that Vancouver has no anti-homophobia policy, when in fact one was passed in 2004. They’ve also been trotting out the “parent’s rights” arguments, long used by the Christian Right who want the right to continue to keep their children as ignorant and biggoted as themselves.

Vancouver’s LGBTQ community isn’t taking this one lying down.

On Monday evening, the first Vancouver School Board meeting was held and a resolution was put forward calling on the VSB to reaffirm its support for the policy and to censure trutees Denike and Woo. The resolution passed with the strong Vision-COPE majority but the crowd was split between pro- and anti-gay protesters.

There is now a Facebook call for people to send letters to Denike, Woo, and VSB chair Patti Bacchus, calling for the NPA trustees to resign. Please consider sending this message (or a modified version) to the emails listed below.

Dear Trustees Woo and Denike,

You have failed in your position within the Vancouver School Board. You have infracted and abused your powers and position, and have tried to spread hate within our society.

-You have made many students feel unsafe and uncomfortable within their schools.
-Publicly disagreed with the 'Anti Homophobia Policies' that were put in place by VSB (2004)
-Accused the 'Out in Schools' program for showing pornographic images.
-Are closely related and in support with the Parents Voice Committee, Who are known for their Anti-Homosexual campaigns.

I do not support your actions and views on this issue. The messages you and your groups are spreading are inhumane and dishonest. I do not want people in my city to feel unsafe or unwanted, Vancouver is meant to be a city that accepts differences and respects culture and diversity.

Because of these actions you have taken, I am asking you to resign from your position as Trustee as you have failed to protect all the students within the school board.

ken.denike@vsb.bc.ca
sophia.woo@vsb.bc.ca
patti.bacchus@vsb.bc.ca

His first idea to hold joint nomination meetings quickly moved him to the bottom of a number of peoples ballots, but I’m reconsidering him given his latest statement

Hold a plebiscite on the future of the monarchy in conjunction with a referendum on voting reform. This would be the first time citizens have been asked about whether the monarchy plays a valuable role in 21st Century Canada.  It’s hoped the results would guide Parliament and legislatures on Constitutional changes, should Canadians indicate a desire for change.

Wow, I didn’t know Cullen was a republican, although he ironically referred to himself as a democrat in an interview with The Tyee. Anyone who says the monarchy “irks” them is good in my books.

He does note that the monarchy issue is a “distracting” debate and that there are more pressing issues that he’d deal with.

See also: The Globe and Mail.