Uncategorized
Ending the silence on sex abuse: Vatican holds summit

VATICAN CITY — If Pope Francis needed a concrete example to justify summoning church leaders from around the globe to Rome for a tutorial on clergy sex abuse, Sister Bernardine Pemii has it.
The nun, who recently completed a course on child protection policies at Rome’s Jesuit university, has been advising her bishop in Ghana on an abuse case, instructing him to invite the victim to his office to hear her story before opening an investigation. If Pemii hadn’t stepped in?
“It would have been covered. There would have been complete silence,” Pemii told The Associated Press recently. “And nothing would have happened. Nobody would have listened to the victim.”
Francis is convening this week’s summit at the Vatican to prevent
History’s first Latin American pope has made many of the same mistakes. As archbishop in Buenos Aires, he went out of his way to defend a famous street priest who was later convicted of abuse. He took a handful of measures early on in his papacy that undermined progress the Vatican had made in taking a hard line against rapists.
These include the pontiff seriously and publicly botching a well-known case of
The pope has now done an about-face and is bringing the rest of the church leadership along with him at the extraordinary summit that starts Thursday. The meeting will bring together some 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences, religious orders and Vatican offices for four days of lectures and workshops on preventing sex abuse in their churches, tending to victims, and investigating abuse when it does occur.
The Vatican isn’t expecting any miracles, and the pope himself has called for expectations to be “deflated.” But organizers say the meeting nevertheless marks a turning point in the way the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem, with Francis’ own conversion last year a key point of departure.
“I have been impressed by the humility of the Holy Father,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican sex crimes investigator who helped set Francis straight on Chile. “He’s ready to say ‘I got that wrong. We’re not going to do it again. We’re going to do it right.'”
“I think that gives us great hope,” Scicluna said.
But the challenges are daunting as the message trickles down slowly.
Just this week, the online research group BishopAccountability released statistics from eight of the largest Catholic countries in the world, with the bishops from only one country — the U.S. — committing to a policy to permanently remove any priest who has sexually abused a child.
Bishops in some countries, including Brazil, don’t even have a published policy to speak of. In Italy, the president of the bishops’ conference met with victims for the first time last week — after summit organizers demanded it.
“I want to say that something important is going to come out of the week, but based on research we’ve done, I believe this church is nowhere close to enacting the reforms it must make to stop this epidemic,” said BishopAccountability’s Anne Barret Doyle.
Survivor Phil Saviano, who was crucial to the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose that first revealed the extent of the abuse and
“I really didn’t expect to hear them complimenting the news media and thanking you for helping them to come to better understanding of the nature of this problem that is so deeply entrenched within the Catholic Church,” Saviano told reporters.
Saviano is joining about a dozen abuse survivors, many of them activists, who are meeting with summit organizers Wednesday. A different group of survivors will join the bishops themselves, offering testimonies during daily prayers.
The message, said Chilean survivor Cruz, who organized the meeting with the committee members, is that bishops must listen to survivors and apply true zero tolerance at home.
“Those who have covered up, there is the door,” Cruz told AP.
While survivors are being well represented at the summit, women as a whole are not.
Of the 190 participants, 10 are religious sisters representing orders in the summit, and three women will address the meeting. Other than that, the meeting is by men and for men — the hierarchy of the church.
On the sidelines of the summit, women’s groups are demanding a greater voice and speaking out about the sexual abuse of adult women and religious sisters in the church — a scandal that has recently come to light after Francis acknowledged it was a problem.
“I do not have much hope for this meeting and we were already warned by Pope Francis not to have hope,” said Virginia Saldanha, secretary of the Indian Women Theologians Forum. “I see that it is the people … that have to raise voices, voices that can bring about change.”
___
AP producer Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Uncategorized
Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

From Conservative Party Communications
“Yes. He must be disqualified. I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty, a foreign government that would almost certainly execute that Canadian citizen.
“Think about that for a second. We have a Liberal MP saying that a Canadian citizen should be handed over to a foreign dictatorship to get a bounty so that that citizen could be murdered. And Mark Carney says he should stay on as a candidate. What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?
“Mark Carney is deeply conflicted. Just in November, he went to Beijing and secured a quarter-billion-dollar loan for his company from a state-owned Chinese bank. He’s deeply compromised, and he will never stand up for Canada against any foreign regime. It is another reason why Mr. Carney must show us all his assets, all the money he owes, all the money that his companies owe to foreign hostile regimes. And this story might not be entirely the story of the bounty, and a Liberal MP calling for a Canadian to be handed over for execution to a foreign government might not be something that the everyday Canadian can relate to because it’s so outrageous. But I ask you this, if Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?
“He has never put Canada first, and that’s why we cannot have a fourth Liberal term. After the Lost Liberal Decade, our country is a playground for foreign interference. Our economy is weaker than ever before. Our people more divided. We need a change to put Canada first with a new government that will stand up for the security and economy of our citizens and take back control of our destiny. Let’s bring it home.”
Uncategorized
Canada Needs A Real Plan To Compete Globally

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Ottawa’s ideological policies have left Canada vulnerable. Strategic action is needed now
As Canada navigates an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, the next federal government must move beyond reflexive anti—Americanism regardless of its political leanings. Instead, Canada should prioritize national interests while avoiding unnecessary conflict and subservience.
The notion that Canada can stand alone is as misguided as the idea that it is only an economic appendage of the United States. Both perspectives have influenced policy in Ottawa at different times, leading to mistakes.
Rather than engaging in futile name-calling or trade disputes, Canada must take strategic steps to reinforce its autonomy. This approach requires a pragmatic view rooted in Realpolitik—recognizing global realities, mitigating risks, governing for the whole country, and seizing opportunities while abandoning failed ideologies.
However, if Washington continues to pursue protectionist measures, Canada must find effective ways to counteract the weakened position Ottawa has placed the country in over the past decade.
One key strategy is diversifying trade relationships, notably by expanding economic ties with emerging markets such as India and Southeast Asia. This will require repairing Canada’s strained relationship with India and regaining political respect in China.
Unlike past Liberal trade missions, which often prioritized ideological talking points over substance, Canada must negotiate deals that protect domestic industries rather than turning summits into platforms for moral posturing.
A more effective approach would be strengthening partnerships with countries that value Canadian resources instead of vilifying them under misguided environmental policies. Expand LNG exports to Europe and Asia and leverage Canada’s critical minerals sector to establish reciprocal supply chains with non-Western economies, reducing economic reliance on the U.S.
Decades of complacency have left Canada vulnerable to American influence over its resource sector. Foreign-funded environmental groups have weakened domestic energy production, handing U.S. industries a strategic advantage. Ottawa must counter this by ensuring Canadian energy is developed at home rather than allowing suppressed domestic production to benefit foreign competitors.
Likewise, a robust industrial policy—prioritizing mining, manufacturing, and agricultural resilience—could reduce dependence on U.S. and Chinese imports. This does not mean adopting European-style subsidies but rather eliminating excessive regulations that make Canadian businesses uncompetitive, including costly domestic carbon tariffs.
Another key vulnerability is Canada’s growing military dependence on the U.S. through NORAD and NATO. While alliances are essential, decades of underfunding and neglect have turned the Canadian Armed Forces into little more than a symbolic force. Canada must learn self-reliance and commit to serious investment in defence.
Increasing defence spending—not to meet NATO targets but to build deterrence—is essential. Ottawa must reform its outdated procurement processes and develop a domestic defence manufacturing base, reducing reliance on foreign arms deals.
Canada’s vast Arctic is also at risk. Without continued investment in northern sovereignty, Ottawa may find itself locked out of its own backyard by more assertive global powers.
For too long, Canada has relied on an economic model that prioritizes federal redistribution over wealth creation and productivity. A competitive tax regime—one that attracts investment instead of punishing success—is essential.
A capital gains tax hike might satisfy activists in Toronto, but it does little to attract investments and encourage economic growth. Likewise, Ottawa must abandon ideological green policies that threaten agri-food production, whether by overregulating farmers or ranchers. At the same time, it must address inefficiencies in supply management once and for all. Canada must be able to feed a growing world without unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles.
Ottawa must also create an environment where businesses can innovate and grow without excessive regulatory burdens. This includes eliminating interprovincial trade barriers that stifle commerce.
Similarly, Canada’s tech sector, long hindered by predatory regulations, should be freed from excessive government interference. Instead of suffocating innovation with compliance mandates, Ottawa should focus on deregulation while implementing stronger security measures for foreign tech firms operating in Canada.
Perhaps Ottawa’s greatest mistake is its knee-jerk reactions to American policies, made without a coherent long-term strategy. Performative trade disputes with Washington and symbolic grandstanding in multilateral organizations do little to advance Canada’s interests.
Instead of reacting emotionally, Canada must take proactive steps to secure its economic, resource, and defence future. That is the role of a responsible government.
History’s best strategists understood that one should never fight an opponent’s war but instead dictate the terms of engagement. Canada’s future does not depend on reacting to Washington’s policies—these are calculated strategies, not whims. Instead, Canada’s success will be determined by its ability to act in the interests of citizens in all regions of the country, and seeing the world as it is rather than how ideological narratives wish it to be.
Marco Navarro-Génie is the vice president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. With Barry Cooper, he is co-author of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
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Uncategorized
Ending the silence on sex abuse: Vatican holds summit

VATICAN CITY — If Pope Francis needed a concrete example to justify summoning church leaders from around the globe to Rome for a tutorial on clergy sex abuse, Sister Bernardine Pemii has it.
The nun, who recently completed a course on child protection policies at Rome’s Jesuit university, has been advising her bishop in Ghana on an abuse case, instructing him to invite the victim to his office to hear her story before opening an investigation. If Pemii hadn’t stepped in?
“It would have been covered. There would have been complete silence,” Pemii told The Associated Press recently. “And nothing would have happened. Nobody would have listened to the victim.”
Francis is convening this week’s summit at the Vatican to prevent
History’s first Latin American pope has made many of the same mistakes. As archbishop in Buenos Aires, he went out of his way to defend a famous street priest who was later convicted of abuse. He took a handful of measures early on in his papacy that undermined progress the Vatican had made in taking a hard line against rapists.
These include the pontiff seriously and publicly botching a well-known case of
The pope has now done an about-face and is bringing the rest of the church leadership along with him at the extraordinary summit that starts Thursday. The meeting will bring together some 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences, religious orders and Vatican offices for four days of lectures and workshops on preventing sex abuse in their churches, tending to victims, and investigating abuse when it does occur.
The Vatican isn’t expecting any miracles, and the pope himself has called for expectations to be “deflated.” But organizers say the meeting nevertheless marks a turning point in the way the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem, with Francis’ own conversion last year a key point of departure.
“I have been impressed by the humility of the Holy Father,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican sex crimes investigator who helped set Francis straight on Chile. “He’s ready to say ‘I got that wrong. We’re not going to do it again. We’re going to do it right.'”
“I think that gives us great hope,” Scicluna said.
But the challenges are daunting as the message trickles down slowly.
Just this week, the online research group BishopAccountability released statistics from eight of the largest Catholic countries in the world, with the bishops from only one country — the U.S. — committing to a policy to permanently remove any priest who has sexually abused a child.
Bishops in some countries, including Brazil, don’t even have a published policy to speak of. In Italy, the president of the bishops’ conference met with victims for the first time last week — after summit organizers demanded it.
“I want to say that something important is going to come out of the week, but based on research we’ve done, I believe this church is nowhere close to enacting the reforms it must make to stop this epidemic,” said BishopAccountability’s Anne Barret Doyle.
Survivor Phil Saviano, who was crucial to the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose that first revealed the extent of the abuse and
“I really didn’t expect to hear them complimenting the news media and thanking you for helping them to come to better understanding of the nature of this problem that is so deeply entrenched within the Catholic Church,” Saviano told reporters.
Saviano is joining about a dozen abuse survivors, many of them activists, who are meeting with summit organizers Wednesday. A different group of survivors will join the bishops themselves, offering testimonies during daily prayers.
The message, said Chilean survivor Cruz, who organized the meeting with the committee members, is that bishops must listen to survivors and apply true zero tolerance at home.
“Those who have covered up, there is the door,” Cruz told AP.
While survivors are being well represented at the summit, women as a whole are not.
Of the 190 participants, 10 are religious sisters representing orders in the summit, and three women will address the meeting. Other than that, the meeting is by men and for men — the hierarchy of the church.
On the sidelines of the summit, women’s groups are demanding a greater voice and speaking out about the sexual abuse of adult women and religious sisters in the church — a scandal that has recently come to light after Francis acknowledged it was a problem.
“I do not have much hope for this meeting and we were already warned by Pope Francis not to have hope,” said Virginia Saldanha, secretary of the Indian Women Theologians Forum. “I see that it is the people … that have to raise voices, voices that can bring about change.”
___
AP producer Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Uncategorized
Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

From Conservative Party Communications
“Yes. He must be disqualified. I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty, a foreign government that would almost certainly execute that Canadian citizen.
“Think about that for a second. We have a Liberal MP saying that a Canadian citizen should be handed over to a foreign dictatorship to get a bounty so that that citizen could be murdered. And Mark Carney says he should stay on as a candidate. What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?
“Mark Carney is deeply conflicted. Just in November, he went to Beijing and secured a quarter-billion-dollar loan for his company from a state-owned Chinese bank. He’s deeply compromised, and he will never stand up for Canada against any foreign regime. It is another reason why Mr. Carney must show us all his assets, all the money he owes, all the money that his companies owe to foreign hostile regimes. And this story might not be entirely the story of the bounty, and a Liberal MP calling for a Canadian to be handed over for execution to a foreign government might not be something that the everyday Canadian can relate to because it’s so outrageous. But I ask you this, if Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?
“He has never put Canada first, and that’s why we cannot have a fourth Liberal term. After the Lost Liberal Decade, our country is a playground for foreign interference. Our economy is weaker than ever before. Our people more divided. We need a change to put Canada first with a new government that will stand up for the security and economy of our citizens and take back control of our destiny. Let’s bring it home.”
Uncategorized
Canada Needs A Real Plan To Compete Globally

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Ottawa’s ideological policies have left Canada vulnerable. Strategic action is needed now
As Canada navigates an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, the next federal government must move beyond reflexive anti—Americanism regardless of its political leanings. Instead, Canada should prioritize national interests while avoiding unnecessary conflict and subservience.
The notion that Canada can stand alone is as misguided as the idea that it is only an economic appendage of the United States. Both perspectives have influenced policy in Ottawa at different times, leading to mistakes.
Rather than engaging in futile name-calling or trade disputes, Canada must take strategic steps to reinforce its autonomy. This approach requires a pragmatic view rooted in Realpolitik—recognizing global realities, mitigating risks, governing for the whole country, and seizing opportunities while abandoning failed ideologies.
However, if Washington continues to pursue protectionist measures, Canada must find effective ways to counteract the weakened position Ottawa has placed the country in over the past decade.
One key strategy is diversifying trade relationships, notably by expanding economic ties with emerging markets such as India and Southeast Asia. This will require repairing Canada’s strained relationship with India and regaining political respect in China.
Unlike past Liberal trade missions, which often prioritized ideological talking points over substance, Canada must negotiate deals that protect domestic industries rather than turning summits into platforms for moral posturing.
A more effective approach would be strengthening partnerships with countries that value Canadian resources instead of vilifying them under misguided environmental policies. Expand LNG exports to Europe and Asia and leverage Canada’s critical minerals sector to establish reciprocal supply chains with non-Western economies, reducing economic reliance on the U.S.
Decades of complacency have left Canada vulnerable to American influence over its resource sector. Foreign-funded environmental groups have weakened domestic energy production, handing U.S. industries a strategic advantage. Ottawa must counter this by ensuring Canadian energy is developed at home rather than allowing suppressed domestic production to benefit foreign competitors.
Likewise, a robust industrial policy—prioritizing mining, manufacturing, and agricultural resilience—could reduce dependence on U.S. and Chinese imports. This does not mean adopting European-style subsidies but rather eliminating excessive regulations that make Canadian businesses uncompetitive, including costly domestic carbon tariffs.
Another key vulnerability is Canada’s growing military dependence on the U.S. through NORAD and NATO. While alliances are essential, decades of underfunding and neglect have turned the Canadian Armed Forces into little more than a symbolic force. Canada must learn self-reliance and commit to serious investment in defence.
Increasing defence spending—not to meet NATO targets but to build deterrence—is essential. Ottawa must reform its outdated procurement processes and develop a domestic defence manufacturing base, reducing reliance on foreign arms deals.
Canada’s vast Arctic is also at risk. Without continued investment in northern sovereignty, Ottawa may find itself locked out of its own backyard by more assertive global powers.
For too long, Canada has relied on an economic model that prioritizes federal redistribution over wealth creation and productivity. A competitive tax regime—one that attracts investment instead of punishing success—is essential.
A capital gains tax hike might satisfy activists in Toronto, but it does little to attract investments and encourage economic growth. Likewise, Ottawa must abandon ideological green policies that threaten agri-food production, whether by overregulating farmers or ranchers. At the same time, it must address inefficiencies in supply management once and for all. Canada must be able to feed a growing world without unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles.
Ottawa must also create an environment where businesses can innovate and grow without excessive regulatory burdens. This includes eliminating interprovincial trade barriers that stifle commerce.
Similarly, Canada’s tech sector, long hindered by predatory regulations, should be freed from excessive government interference. Instead of suffocating innovation with compliance mandates, Ottawa should focus on deregulation while implementing stronger security measures for foreign tech firms operating in Canada.
Perhaps Ottawa’s greatest mistake is its knee-jerk reactions to American policies, made without a coherent long-term strategy. Performative trade disputes with Washington and symbolic grandstanding in multilateral organizations do little to advance Canada’s interests.
Instead of reacting emotionally, Canada must take proactive steps to secure its economic, resource, and defence future. That is the role of a responsible government.
History’s best strategists understood that one should never fight an opponent’s war but instead dictate the terms of engagement. Canada’s future does not depend on reacting to Washington’s policies—these are calculated strategies, not whims. Instead, Canada’s success will be determined by its ability to act in the interests of citizens in all regions of the country, and seeing the world as it is rather than how ideological narratives wish it to be.
Marco Navarro-Génie is the vice president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. With Barry Cooper, he is co-author of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
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