Laïcity in the State, a delicate balance

Benoît Pelletier. The author is a lawyer emeritus, has a doctorate in law and is a distinguished professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa. March 5, 2024, published in Le Devoir The recent ruling by the Quebec Court of Appeal marked an important victory for the Quebec government in its defence […]

Reflections on the death of Richard Bilkszto

I think there is much humanists can learn from the death of Richard Bilkszto. My tribute to him was published in this month’s issue of Humanistically Speaking, a humanist magazine published in the United Kingdom that was doing a special issue on the phenomenon of Wokism. The article can be found here:  How Woke puritanism […]

Interviewed: Carey Linde, lawyer and activist.

Carey Linde, former 60s radical, was the first lawyer in Canada to live and practice on reserve, the first to introduce the concept of shared parenting between divorced parents in family law, and the first to defend a parent in a transgender case. He has been in trouble with the authorities more than once. For […]

Security and dignity, new pretexts for censorship

Patrick Moreau is a professor of literature in Montreal, editor-in-chief of the journal Argument and essayist. His publications include “Ces mots qui pensent à notre place” (These words that think for us – Liber, 2017) and “La prose d’Alain Grandbois, ou lire et relire Les voyages de Marco Polo” (Nota bene, 2019). Le Devoir, January […]

Unrest at the university

By Normand Baillargeon * Le Devoir, Montréal, January 15th, 2023 I am currently editing lectures given by my dear Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1950. In them he addresses the question of the philosophical and political conception of the individual. He inspires me to reflect on what I consider to be some troubling aspects of current […]

A plea for respectful robustness

By Jean-François Lisée Le Devoir, January 4th, 2023 I have read many political programmes in my life and helped to write some of them. However, I had never come across a sentence like this: “We agree to disagree: our opponents are not our enemies.“ Nor had I come across any variation of the following statement: […]

CBC’s farewell to objectivity

Jean-François Lisée, Le Devoir October 12, 2022 You are an employee, executive, of a large company. You are professional, respect the laws and codes of ethics. If you cherish opinions that do not conform to the prevailing winds, you keep them to yourself. But now you are faced with a difficult decision. Your boss has […]

Woke Puritanism at the CRTC

Full speed backward: Woke Puritanism has now penetrated even the CRTC to the point the CRTC thinks it can tell Radio-Canada (and CBC) what to say and what not to say down to a single word. This is a CRTC attitude that the law ruled out thirty years ago. Pierre Trudel, Le Devoir July 5th, […]