Category: Perspectives

This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on December 30, 2024. At the end of one year and the beginning of another it is customary to look back at what happened and speculate on what is to come. With that in mind, here is an overview of national security as we enter 2025, […]

This piece appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on December 21, 2024. When you think of a local police station—not the headquarters building but a smaller neighbourhood branch—what comes to mind? Likely a few things: a sense of security that the police are nearby if trouble brews, a place to touch base with law enforcement […]

There are times when you work in the (counter) terrorism space that you come across a story and say: WTF? This is one of those times. In early January, a Sri Lankan court sentenced a hardline Buddhist monk named Galagodaatte Gnanasara to nine months in prison for insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred. The remarks […]

This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on December 9, 2024. Assad is gone from Syria. Hip hip hooray. Actually, let’s wait a minute before celebrating. Any time a dictator who has abused his nation’s citizens—jailing them, torturing them, and even using chemical weapons against them—is forced to flee has to be a […]

You do not have to go that far back in human history to have seen people burned at the stake, hung, drawn and quartered and otherwise treated very badly for having ‘blasphemed’ (although my favourite blasphemy scene is still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where John Cleese plays a rabbi calling for the death […]

This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on December 3, 2024 In the post 9/11 period, a new tool was made available for the Canadian government in the ill-named “war on terrorism.” It is not as if we had not experienced terrorism before that fateful day (the FLQ crisis in 1970 and the […]

One of the things you notice about kids, especially younger ones, is their proclivity to ask ‘why’. At times, this habit can get a little annoying as the little tots seem to question the reason behind just about everything. As a grandfather of a 3-yr old boy, I can attest to how many ‘whys’ come […]

This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on November 5, 2024. As many have noted, we live in a world of instant information. Thanks to the internet and social media, we can learn about what is happening in real time. Images are shared as events are unfolding, and anyone with a cellphone can […]

This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on October 6, 2024. Imagine the following scenario. A group of people who are angry at U.S. foreign policy and the government’s continued meddling in the Middle East decide to host a series of mass demonstrations across the United States, and even around the world, to […]

Many years ago, I was in a relationship with a woman whose parents had emigrated to Canada from Europe shortly after WWII.  The reasons for their move had to do with conflict in their homeland and the search for a better life abroad.  Canada offered them that better life. Nevertheless, the woman’s mother hated everything […]