Hindu group targets religious ads on TTC

Members of Toronto’s Hindu community are demanding to place their religious posters on TTC property now that Muslims and some Christians taken out ads promoting their respective faiths.

Ron Banerjee, of Canadian Hindu Advocacy, said his group opposes the newly-launched Islamic posters and want the TTC to remove them from the system.

“The ads say there is only one God and that is Allah,” Banerjee said. “All religions should be able to place their posters on the TTC.”

The posters, which adorn several TTC subway stations, are the first from the Walk In-Islam InfoCentre, which said: “There is no god but Allah.”

Banerjee claimed the ads are hurtful to Hindus and his group will be handing out anti-Muslim flyers outside the TTC.

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Graham James sentenced to two years in prison

Disgraced junior hockey coach Graham James has been sentenced to two years behind bars for two counts of sexual assault, including one in which the victim was former NHL star Theoren Fleury.

The sentence, handed down Tuesday in Winnipeg, was quickly dismissed as “a travesty” by another of James victims.

A thin, ashen James, 59, showed little emotion as he was led away by sheriff’s officers at the Winnipeg court.

He had pleaded guilty in December to sexually assaulting Fleury and Todd Holt, Fleury’s younger cousin, while coaching them in junior hockey during the 1980s and early ’90s. Charges against James involving a third player, Greg Gilhooly, were stayed.

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Holy debate erupts on TTC

TORONTO - A Muslim advertisement stating “There is no god but Allah” has started a vigorous debate amongst TTC riders and sparked a review from the Toronto Transit Commission Advertising Commission Group.

After five complaints were made, a working group including Councillor Karen Stintz has decided to allow the advertisement to remain in the Kennedy subway station.

“The decision to reject or accept an ad isn’t decided by whether someone takes offence to it or not,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross. “It doesn’t violate the Human Rights Code. We can’t reject an ad because it espouses one view on religion.”

According to the Islam Info Centre, the ad -- posted in January -- is aimed at raising religious awareness.

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Kelly McParland: The Amazing Daltoni reveals Ontario’s new non-Drummond plan for debt reduction

Ontarians are starting to get a picture of the Liberal government’s strategy for reducing the huge deficit it ran up in its first eight years in office.

It turns out it has little if anything to do with the 362 recommendations offered up in the year-long analysis it commissioned from economist Don Drummond. That report — much anticipated and released to great fanfare by members of the media who had been fooled into believing the government actually planned to treat it seriously — has evidently been assigned to some remote shelf deep in the dusty underground storage area used to keep MPs from being infected by good ideas. Instead, Premier Dalton McGuinty and his capable financial henchman in chief, who goes by the alias Dwight Duncan, have concocted their own game plan.

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Religious ad sparks transit fury

TORONTO - A Muslim advertisement stating "There is no god but Allah" has started a vigourous debate amongst Toronto transit riders and sparked a review from the Toronto Transit Commission Advertising Commission Group.

After five complaints were made, a working group including Coun. Karen Stintz has decided to allow the advertisement to remain in the Kennedy subway station.

"The decision to reject or accept an ad isn't decided by whether someone takes offence to it or not," said TTC spokesperson Brad Ross. "It doesn't violate the Human Rights Code. We can't reject an ad because it espouses one view on religion."

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When the state raises your kids, you don't

Strip-searching a father because his four-year-old sketched a toy gun at school paints a perfect picture of progressive public education: absurd yet sinister.

On the Keystone Kops side, if police took the girl's now-vanished doodle of her father fighting monsters and bad guys seriously, why not search his home for villains, or werewolves, before a gun? And why handcuff Jesse Sansone then strip-search him, including making him lift his personal bits? Don't cops know a gun won't fit down there? Did they also check his armpit for a tank, or his ear for a sword?

On the Big Nurse side, the police arrested Sansone for illegal possession of a firearm without any credible evidence he even had a gun, let alone illegally. They "walked through" his home without a warrant. Social services grabbed his three eldest children and interrogated his pregnant wife. And they are unrepentant.
Waterloo Regional School district superintendant Gregg Bereznick told QMI Agency's Kris Sims: "We do work hand-in-hand with these families because we co-parent, so we hope that we could move forward."

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Ontario Court of Appeal greenlights brothels, sweeps aside many of Canada’s anti-prostitution laws

TORONTO – The Court of Appeal for Ontario has swept aside some of the country’s anti-prostitution laws saying they place unconstitutional restrictions on prostitutes’ ability to protect themselves.

The landmark decision means sex workers will be able to hire drivers, bodyguards and support staff and work indoors in organized brothels or “bawdy houses,” while “exploitation” by pimps remains illegal.

However, openly soliciting customers on the street remains prohibited with the judges deeming that “a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression.”

The province’s highest court suspended the immediate implementation of striking the bawdy house law for a year to allow the government an opportunity to amend the Criminal Code.

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Wrongfully arrested father gets no apologies

KITCHENER, ONT. - The Sansone family is not getting any apologies after they were put through hell by school officials, social workers and police last week.

And, the smoking gun -- a child's drawing that triggered the whole thing -- will never be seen.

"I am really sorry that the family is as upset as they are, but we followed proper standards and procedures," said Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Child Services for the Waterloo Region.

She told QMI Agency if the same situation happened again tomorrow, her organization would do the exact same thing over again.

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Judges to release landmark prostitution ruling

TORONTO -- A landmark court ruling comes down Monday that could drastically alter prostitution laws in Ontario and potentially Canada.

A five-judge panel on the Ontario Court of Appeal will announce its decision to either uphold or reverse a September 2010 ruling by Ontario Superior Court Judge Susan Himel that struck down three prostitution laws in the Criminal Code, declaring them unconstitutional because they put the safety of sex workers at risk.

Himel struck down the laws that criminalize pimping, operating a bawdy house and communicating for the purposes of prostitution, basing her decision on a conclusion that the laws, while generally seen as there for the protection of sex workers, actually endanger them by forcing them to ply their trade in insecure locations, such as the street, and engage in cash-for-sex transactions in risky and isolated places.

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Case of counseling student forced to undergo pro-homosexual ‘sensitivity training’ goes to court

WASHINGTON, December 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After losing at a lower court, a counseling student at a public university in Georgia who was threatened with expulsion because she express discomfort with counseling homosexuals, is pleading her case before an Appeals Court this week.

A legal complaint filed on behalf of Jennifer Keeton accuses Augusta State University of placing Keeton on academic probation after she refused to comply with faculty instructions that she must, in their words, “alter her beliefs” on homosexuality and “gender identity.”

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is representing her. The ADF’s media office told LifeSiteNews.com the court had placed a gag order on the case, forbidding either side to discuss the proceedings.

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