We're losing our liberties at Aylmer, ON and at the UN

By Ron Gray, National Leader
Christian Heritage Party of Canada
July 15, 2001

Parents' rights, many long-standing legal protections, the Canadian Constitution, and the Criminal Code have all come under attack in recent moves by governments in Canada. Meanwhile the federal government, silently watching it all unfold, is allowing its bureaucrats at the UN to flush our rights (and conventional standards of morality)down the drain.

Some individual cases cannot be discussed in detail, because they are before the courts; many cases are matters of provincial jurisdiction. Yet there is an urgency to comment at the federal and international level, because principles that affect all Canadians are at stake.

The most recent event was the apprehension-the virtual arrest-of seven children in Aylmer, Ontario by police acting on instructions from the Family and Children's Services agency. No news report, nor any statement from FACS, has ever indicated any evidence of abuse. The reported reason for the seizure was that the parents had refused to promise not to spank their children-a right protected under sec. 43 (3) of the Criminal Code.

Provincial politicians who have been asked to intervene have replied that they cannot act because of a 1994 provincial statute-ironically called "The Members' Integrity Act" which protects the executive branch in Ontario from "interference" by the legislature!

If elected members in any province are prohibited by a provincial statute from making enquiries when there is reason to suspect that the executive branch has exceeded its authority, the federal government has a constitutional obligation to declare that legislation ultra vires; no legislature has the power to legislate away citizens' right of appeal to their representatives for redress!

The Aylmer case, about which we cannot have all the details because of a gag order imposed by the court, is not unique: many other cases of children being taken from their parents by over-zealous Children's Services workers have occurred-notably in Ontario and BC-in recent years. Often the proximal cause has been a CS worker's personal objection to parents' use of corporal punishment, even when it was kept within the provisions of the Criminal Code.

The Criminal Code of Canada forbids child abuse, with severe penalties; but it allows spanking that is "reasonable" discipline. However, many social workers-by-passing the clear wording of the Code-consider all spanking to be "abuse", and occasionally they may put their personal opinions ahead of the legislation. If that only occurs in occasional instances, it can and should be dealt with by departmental discipline; unfortunately, in recent years departmental discipline has tended to protect, rather than correct, over-zealous social workers. Why? Probably because departmental officials, who are often graduates of the same schools of social work, have acquired the same ideas; and along with those ideas, they have been taught that their task as "change agents in society" can even supersede legislative authority. Similar revolutionary ideas are being taught at most Canadian universities in the schools of social work, education and law.

Recently, at the United Nations, Canadian representatives were among those who voted in favour of a draft proposal‹mercifully defeated by the combined opposition of the Vatican and the Muslim nations‹which would have
(a) made criticism of homosexuality a criminal offense
(b) allowed charges to be brought anonymously under that regulation, and

(c) exempted sex education materials used in schools from obscenity laws.

None of those provisions had ever been discussed in Canada's Parliament; MPs were not even given the opportunity to voice their opinions. Our dictatorial federal government either mandates such legal and moral outrages, or negligently allows federal civil servants to perpetrate them with impunity.

Several historic principles have been openly violated in these recent instances of federal and provincial malfeasance:

o The right to face one's accusers would have been obliterated by the UN proposal which the Canadian delegation supported.

o The presumption of innocence is being violated in many provincial "apprehensions": children are seized because FACS officials ( think parents might) abuse them-not under any of the provisions of existing legislation, but only in the opinion of radical activist social workers.

o Traditional morality is actually in danger of being made illegal without any oversight by democratic legislatures-while immorality is publicly endorsed, and even taught to captive audiences of children, with or without their parents' consent.

o Three provinces now allow homosexual couples to adopt children, in spite of recent peer-reviewed scientific evidence that children reared in same-sex households may suffer psychological malformation. This, coupled with activist social workers" seazure of children because of legal spanking, could soon result in children being taken from Christian homes where they are receiving godly instruction, and placed under foster care by homosexuals, to be taught that gross immorality is "normal"!

o The sovereignty of national legislatures is being over-ridden‹and Canada's diplomats and legal authorities are helping to bring about this erosion of our liberties. Canadian governmental and political leaders stand by silently, letting it happen.

o The core principles of the Preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are being unconstitutionally overridden; those principles state that "Canada was founded upon principles which recognize the supremacy of God" (capital G): the God of the Bible,"and the rule of law." Both those principles are being openly violated, and our federal and provincial governments sit passively by, derelict in their responsibility to uphold the Constitution and to protect citizens' rights!

o The major news media have utterly failed their responsibility to inform citizens of what is happening to their rights.

What can we citizens do?

It is now imperative for us-every individual citizen-to create a public clamor for the defense of our historic legal and political liberties, before they are lost forever. Such an outcry must be peaceful, but it must also be incessant: freedom-loving citizens must write, fax and phone their elected representatives-and we must refuse to take, "I'm sorry; there's nothing I can do" for an answer.

And if one call does not bring results, we must call again, and again, and again . Until the legislators at all levels fear an uprising at the ballot box, they will continue to supinely allow this erosion of our rights,or to actively work to subvert our rights, since that is the philosophical orientation of many of the people we have elected.

Canada and the Scandinavian nations are being used today as stalking-horses at the United Nations and elsewhere to advance a global agenda for overturning conventional standards of morality, decency and the integrity of the family. This social revolution could never be accomplished openly through democratically-elected governments, but it is being imposed by stealth, and by the destruction of our legal system.

Only an aroused citizenry, expressing its outrage insistently, can arrest the progress of this immoral agenda.

The Christian Heritage Party of Canada is a federal political party with

members from coast to coast, devoted to restoring respect in the public policy arena for Judeo-Christian principles.

Ron Gray has been the CHP's national leader since November, 1995. His background is in journalism, the Canadian Government¹s Trade Commissioner Service, Information Canada (a public information agency of the federal government), and as a member of the administration of two community colleges and a university. He and his wife reside in Hull, Québec.

You can contact the CHP at its website, www.chp.ca
or by telephone (in Canada) at 1-888-VOTE CHP (1-888-868-3247)
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