Tag Archives: Canada

Commentary

How secularism and socialism killed marriage and family in Canada

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Marriage and family
Marriage and family

This is actually a news article from National Post, the more prestigious and less progressive of Canada’s two national newspapers.

Excerpt:

Couples without kids are outpacing their procreating counterparts, same-sex relationships are blossoming, multiple generations are living under the same roof and more people than ever are living alone, Statistics Canada revealed Wednesday as the 2016 census showcased more seismic changes in the way Canadians are living their lives.

[…]Canada is skewing older, with fewer children and less affinity for marriage — forcing legislators to adjust and adapt their policies and programs to fit a rapidly evolving reality.

[…]Higher rates of separation and divorce also mean more people living alone or as lone parents, as does an increasing number of women in the workforce, which fosters a greater sense of economic independence.

Childless couples grew in number at a faster rate over the last five years than couples with at least one child, leaving the latter group at 51.1 per cent of the population, the lowest level ever recorded.

The baby boomers who fuelled such population growth in the 20th century are empty nesters in the 21st. The census found younger Canadians who do have kids are living in places like Alberta, long a magnet for job-seeking families, or Nunavut, where fertility rates are high.

They also important large numbers of unskilled immigrants who paid less in taxes than they used in social programs:

Canada’s 35.15 million people are getting older; there are now more seniors than children under the age of 14. Immigration contributed two-thirds of the country’s population growth between 2011 and 2016, and that diversity has also added complexity to the Canadian family portrait.

At the time, the Liberal Party thought that importing a lot of non-Christians who would vote for bigger government dependency was a good idea. And it was a good idea to keep them getting elected, but now they are facing the long-term consequences of importing a lot of unskilled have-not socialists.

Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and same-sex marriages don’t produce children naturally:

And a decade after census-takers first collected numbers on same-sex marriage, such couples now make up one per cent of all households, with their overall numbers having increased by 60.7 per cent since 2006. Opposite-sex couples grew by just 9.6 per cent during the same period.

Today, about 12 per cent of all same-sex couples are living with children, be they biological offspring, adopted or members of a stepfamily. In raw numbers, there were 10,020 children aged 14 and under living with 8,770 same-sex couple parents on census day last year.

Canada legalized same-sex “marriage” a decade before America did.

Basically, the problem here is that men don’t get married in a big government socialist country, because they are taxed to pay for the big government, but they aren’t allowed to lead the family. The money men earn that would be used to make decisions about their households is eaten up by secular socialist government programs. Instead of gun ownership, Canada has a politically correct and ineffective police force. Instead of home-schooling or a network or private schools, there are failing public schools that indoctrinate rather than educate. Instead of a choice of medical providers, there is a single-payer system that makes you take a number and wait your turn. Instead of stay at home mothers, they have expensive, ineffective government-run daycare. Instead of deciding what kind of car to drive, car money is confiscated for public transportation. Canada has some of the worst anti-male divorce and custody laws. And so on and so on. Big government makes men opt out of marriage. The whole society is set up to undermine the male aspiration to be the provider, and to let government make all the important decisions.

In Canada, it’s now a criminal offense to disagree with transgenderism, and in the province of Ontario, if parents disagree with transgenderism, the government will seize your children. Speaking as a Christian man with a high income, and a high net worth, I find it unappealing to think that I would be paying the salaries of secular socialists so that they could then interfere in my life and rule over me. I would be forced to give social engineers my money, and they would be continuously overruling my leadership in the home.

Canada, as a nation, decided a while back to embrace non-judgmentalism and redistribution of wealth to make sinful lifestyles produce the same outcomes as traditional lifestyles. Everybody gets free health care. What this means is that only working people pay for health care, but only the immoral people used it. They thought that this was “compassion”, but it just meant that fewer people would work, and more people who go off down immoral rabbit trails in their personal lives. They have free abortions and free drug injection clinics and free sex change surgery. But they don’t have free homeschooling, free stay at home moms, or tax breaks for chastity and sobriety. Everything wrong was subsidized, and everything right was taxed. The state became an unofficial arbiter of disputes between husbands and wives, always siding with the unhappy, emotional wife against the husbands who attempted to lead their families to be moral and spiritual.

What we are seeing now is similar to what has been observed in European countries for decades. An aging population that is depending on government to provide health care and pensions for them in their old age. When government grows large, human beings become more and more irresponsible. The population of Canada has been trained to think that their future needs are government’s problem. They don’t have to marry and make children to care for them in their old age – that’s government’s problem. They don’t have to save their own money for old age – that’s  government’s problem. When the government taxes all your money and takes over everything in the private sector, including the traditional roles of churches and charities, people become passive and irresponsible. Canada proudly embraced abortion and the redefinition of marriage, and now they don’t have a new generation of taxpayers to pay for their bloated government.

Next stop, Greece. Well done, Canada. If you want to have secularism, socialism and feminism, then you can’t have liberty, marriage and family. They made their choice, and we ought to be learning from their mistakes.

News

Canada’s prime minister explains why pro-life groups are not eligible for job grants

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Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau
Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau

First, the news story, and after we’ll see the prime minister explain his reasons for this policy in his own words. As you are reading, keep in mind that the federal government sells no products or services of value in a free market. They earn no money. All the money they have was confiscated from people working in the free (private sector) market.

The Calgary Herald reports: (H/T McKenzie)

In the name of “inclusion” and “tolerance,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government are excluding and being intolerant to faith-based social agencies and churches from even applying for the Canada Summer Jobs program that provides subsidies to hire summer students.

In so doing, Trudeau will hypocritically be harming the very people he claims to care for the most — youth seeking work experience and the poorest of the poor in Canada.

The new application for the Canada Jobs Grant requires that the organization’s core mandate respects “reproductive rights” along with other human rights, and unless that “attestation” is checked, the online application cannot be submitted. That means fewer students will be hired to help the most vulnerable in society.

Now why do you think that Trudeau, a secular left fascist, would do this? Could it be that he wants people to see the secular state as the sole provider of assistance to people in need, by attacking private Christian charities?

In the name of tolerance, the Trudeau government is being intolerant to a huge swath of society that does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to caring for the poor and vulnerable in Canada.

According to the report Religion, Participation, and Charitable Giving — written at the behest of Canadian Heritage, Statistics Canada, Health Canada and other organizations — author Kurt Bowen found that actively religious people are far more likely to give of their time and money to charitable causes — including secular charitable causes.

According to the 1999 report, “the religiously active are 32 per cent of all Canadians, but they are responsible for 65 per cent of all direct, charitable donations. Conversely, the 42 per cent of Canadians who are religiously inactive generate only 20 per cent of all charitable givings.”

Famous economist Thomas Sowell discussed a study by Arthur Brooks on who gives to charity in National Review. The study found that religious people give far more of their time and money to helping others than secular people. So, by attacking the part of the population that actually cares about morality, Trudeau is basically trying to cut off the poor from private-sector charity, so that they have nowhere else to turn for help except the secular government.

Now let’s hear Trudeau – a former substitute drama teacher, who was elected because of his looks and famous name – explain why taxing pro-lifers and then discriminating against them is a good idea.

Townhall reports: (H/T Sean McDowell)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke Wednesday about a new requirement in the Canadian summer jobs grant application that groups must indicate support for “the right to access safe and legal abortions” to be included in the program. Trudeau defended the requirement and called groups opposed to abortion “not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society.”

“If you’re pro-life then you are ridiculed and insulted, but if you’re pro-choice then you are praised,” a student told Trudeau at a town hall at McMaster University and was greeted with applause.

Trudeau replied that defending rights and freedoms “is at the core of who I am and, quite frankly, is at the core of who Canada is. … At the same time, we need to know that there is a difference between freedom of expression and acting on those expressions and beliefs.”

He went on to explain his issue with pro-life groups receiving the grant.

“An organization that has the explicit purpose of restricting women’s rights by removing rights to abortion and the right for women to control their own bodies is not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society,” he said.

He also clarified that while people can believe what they want, acting on those beliefs was problematic, in his view.

“Of course, you’re more than allowed to have whatever beliefs you like,” he continued. “But when those beliefs lead to actions determined to restrict a woman’s right to control her own body, that’s where I, and I think we, draw the line as a country. And that’s where we stand on that.”

You can have whatever beliefs you like, as you’re working hard to earn the money that will be spent by your secular leftist fascist overlords. You’re certainly good enough to work for money, you’re just not good enough to get anything from the government for it.

And this is why we need pro-lifers to realize that the government is not their friend when it comes to spending money. We should not be giving them any more money than they need to do their  Constitutionally-determined responsibilities. When you grow the government to meet every need, e.g. – health care, then you find out that their idea of health care isn’t what you expected. In Canada, abortion is health care. Pro-lifers pay taxes to the government, and the government takes those taxes and performs abortions with them. If you don’t like it, then don’t vote for the government to take over health care. We need people who are moral to understand what it means to trust a secular government to do the things that should be done by individuals, families, churches, and community organizations. And when those entities keep their own money, they can do more than the government can anyway.

News

Is Bernie Sanders correct to say that Canada has better, lower-cost health care?

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Wall Street Journal calculates cost of Sanders spending plan
Wall Street Journal calculates cost of Sanders spending plan

He seems to be really passionate about raising taxes on working families, and then giving them “free” health care in return. Let’s see how that’s working out in Canada, where they do have a single-payer health care system.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Waiting times for medically necessary health care services under Canada’s single-payer system have hit a record high, according to a report from the Fraser Institute.

[…]The Fraser Institute found that patients under Canada’s single-payer system this year waited an average of 10.9 weeks—roughly two-and-a-half months—from the time they had a consultation with a specialist to the time at which they received treatment. Physicians consider 7.2 weeks to be a clinically reasonable wait time.

The report also found that patients’ wait for treatment after referral to a specialist by their general practitioner was 21.2 weeks, or longer than four months.

“This year’s wait time—the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history—is 128 percent longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks,” the report states.

The report, which looks at 10 provinces in Canada, found that there are 1,040,791 patients waiting for procedures. There are also high wait times to receive scans and ultrasounds. Patients waited an average of 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.

“Research has repeatedly indicated that wait times for medically necessary treatment are not benign inconveniences,” the report states. “Wait times can, and do, have serious consequences such as increased pain, suffering, and mental anguish.”

According to the report, patients experience long wait times for surgeries, waiting as long as 41.7 weeks for orthopedic surgery, 32.9 weeks for neurosurgery, and 31.4 weeks for ophthalmology.

“In certain instances, [wait times] can also result in poorer medical outcomes—transforming potentially reversible illnesses or injuries into chronic, irreversible conditions, or even permanent disabilities,” the report states. “In many instances, patients may also have to forgo their wages while they wait for treatment, resulting in an economic cost to the individuals themselves and the economy in general.”

Fraser points out that previous studies have found the lost economic output in waiting for joint replacement surgery, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, MRI scans, and cataract surgery totaled $14.8 billion in 2007.

The report also notes that 46.3 percent of patients would prefer to have their procedure performed within a week if they had the opportunity to do so.

The article also quotes Sally C. Pipes, a Canadian health care expert who knows how much Canadian taxpayers pay for “free” health care.

Pipes also refutes Sanders’s claim that Canada’s system offers relatively the same quality of care at a cheaper cost.

“It isn’t cheaper because Canadians pay for health care through their taxes,” Pipes explains. “The average Canadian family pays anywhere between $4,000 and $12,000 a year in taxes for a system where they have to wait over five months from seeing a primary care doctor to getting treatment by a specialist.”

“There’s fewer doctors relative to the population than in all but four other industrialized countries,” she said. “It’s last in terms of acute care hospital beds and there’s doctor shortages, residency spots are down, and waiting times—this is what happens when government controls the health care system, and this is what Bernie Sanders wants for the United States.”

Canadians are also paid less than Americans. Why? Because Canadian employers have to pay a percentage of their employee’s salary to the government for health care. Obviously, the employers are going to take that out of their employee’s salary without telling them.

Finally, it should be obvious that progressive Canadian politicians go South when they’re sick for healthcare. They know that when health care is free, you get the quality you’re paying for.

One thing you need to understand is that if you put health care in the hands of politicians, they they will use it for vote-buying, like they do with any government-run social program. So, if you are young and want an abortion or a sex change, you’re in luck. Because you have a lot of voting ahead of you, and they want to keep you happy with big government. But, if you’re old, and don’t have so much voting left to do, you’re expendable. That’s why countries with big government health care, like the Netherlands and Canada and the UK are always tinkering with euthanasia for the elderly.