Dec 17 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — My father’s family were Russian Jews. Most left for Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, but some remained. We kept in contact with part of the clan, and as a child I met my very Russian, very funny, very loud great-uncle. In between laughs and vodka he told us stories about his life, […]
Dec 3 2020 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — Derek Sloan, the Conservative MP for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, is quite the star among the hard line conservative right. Earlier this year he questioned the national loyalties of Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, and now he has sponsored a parliamentary e-petition that questions the safety of the much-anticipated coronavirus vaccine. The petition […]
Nov 16 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — People on the political right have lost all of their freedom of speech. We know this because they write and broadcast about it so often in major newspapers and magazines, countless talk radio stations, television networks owned by billionaires, and books published by multinational conglomerates. And in case we’d forgotten, which is somewhat unlikely, Conservative […]
Nov 2 2020 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — The old adage about never mixing religion and politics is about as inane as it is ubiquitous. In North America, it’s applied mainly to Christianity, but Christianity is political, and has to be, because it was founded by a man who roared against injustice, and spoke of a better, more equal, and more communal world. […]
Oct 28 2020 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — A picture tells a thousand words, or at least conveys the attitude of a few dozen people. And the photo of Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff crowded in a restaurant with around 40 other people, all of them standing close together and not a soul wearing a mask, rather suggests that nobody involved had very […]
Oct 27 2020 — Michael Coren — CBC — Alistair Campbell, advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, once famously said, “We don’t do God.” Canadian politicians don’t much either, but Americans of both major parties do so in abundance and it’s on full display in the run-up to the U.S. election. One of the ironies of the United States is that a […]
Oct 12 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Notre Dame University law professor Amy Coney Barrett have just begun and it’s going to be a challenging time for the woman chosen by Donald Trump to replace the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The 48-year-old mother of seven has divided American politics, media and public opinion between those who see […]
Sep 16 2020 — Michael Coren — TVO — This week, the lawyer and former federal Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis announced that she intended to run for Parliament. While not yet an official candidate, she toured the riding of Haldimand–Norfolk with MP Diane Finley, who has held the seat for 16 years but has no intention of running in the next election. The […]
Sep 4 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Charles Adler is one of the highest-profile talk radio personalities in Canada. He’s hosted prime-time shows in all of the country’s major markets as well as in the United States. He’s also known as a conservative, albeit from the libertarian wing of the movement. Adler has been changing, however. He has been moving to the […]
Aug 29 2020 — Michael Coren — The Critic — Last Sunday night’s contest to elect the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada was a bad one for the religious creationists in the party. The evening ran on for so long that several new species evolved! In truth it really was a succession of errors, with results that were supposed to be announced […]
Aug 11 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Derek Sloan won’t win this month’s Conservative Party leadership, but the MP for Hastings—Lennox and Addington will be influential in deciding who does become the new leader of the opposition. The darling of social conservatives and the Christian right, he’s positioned himself as an almost Trump-like figure and was rightly criticized when he questioned the […]
Jul 8 2020 — Michael Coren — TVO — This week, a letter signed by 150 leading writers and academics was published in Harper’s magazine. Signatories included authors J.K. Rowling and Margaret Atwood, and various other influential figures. While welcoming the current discussion about racial injustice, it condemned “restriction of debate” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism.” It was, in effect, about […]
Jun 17 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Seven years ago, while I was researching my book on equal marriage, I interviewed a number of people who had been direct victims of homophobia. Several of them had as teenagers been exposed to what is known as “conversion therapy” — a pernicious misnomer in that it’s more oppression that conversion, and more abuse than […]
Jun 11 2020 — Michael Coren — TVO — As of June 12, places of worship will be allowed to open at a much higher capacity. Not all church leaders support the move — but those who do seem to have one thing in common
Jun 2 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — If there is one thing we have discovered to our cost about Donald Trump it’s that he can always surprise us. Not with delight at his eloquence or empathy, or some desire for harmony and decorum, but in horror at some new presidential depth. And as the sun set over the capital of the United […]