Evangelical Pushing Bill To Deny Tax Credits To Films Deemed Offensive By The Gov’t

Canada Family Action Coalition president Charles McVety has no regrets about engaging in politics on behalf of evangelicals: ‘I don’t think it’s helpful to democracy to discourage people from getting involved.’

It’s difficult to pinpoint which version of Charles McVety is most accurate. A powerful religious lobbyist who has the ear of the Harper government, or a mere spokesman for a segment of Canada’s evangelical community concerned with promoting family values? Manipulator or messenger?

Lately, the image of Mr. McVety as a Parliament Hill string-puller prevails as he pushes for Bill C-10, an amendment to the federal tax-credit system that critics say is an affront to freedom of speech and a mortal threat to the Canadian film industry. (MODERATOR’s NOTE: See explanatory link via CBC News website here).

The controversial section of the bill, which would deny tax credits to films deemed offensive by government, has sparked a battle between Canada’s entertainment industry and the 40,000-member Canada Family Action Coalition, of which Mr. McVety is president.

On Thursday, the reigning queen of Canadian independent film and recent Oscar nominee Sarah Polley testified before the Senate banking committee, which is receiving a level of attention almost always reserved for non-tax-related issues.

Ms. Polley told the committee that public money is key to the production of daring, inspirational film and television. Bill C-10 smacks of government censorship, she says.

Next week, Mr. McVety will get his turn with the committee. And he has no doubt the panel of mostly Liberal-appointed senators will see the light.

“This change has to happen. As sure as I sit here, it’s going to happen,” he says.

Under the current regulations, he says it is conceivable that a film could violate the Criminal Code of Canada and still qualify for government funding through tax credits. Bill C-10 is simply good public policy, he says.

Mr. McVety bristles against reports that he boasted of having an instrumental role in getting key changes into the tax bill.

But he says he raised the issue of denying tax credits to offensive films with his old ally Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety. And his executive director at the coalition, Brian Rushfeldt, talked with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson about Bill C-10, he says.

Questions about the extent of Mr. McVety’s clout with the Harper Conservatives are not new. According to former Conservative MP and avid McVety critic Garth Turner, in 2006 during a commercial break on The Michael Coren Show, Mr. McVety claimed: “I can pick up the phone and call Harper and I can get him in two minutes.”

Words he never uttered, Mr. McVety insists, which Mr. Coren backed up. But Mr. McVety says he does have many friends in the current government and is unapologetic about getting involved in politics.

“The expectation that religious people should not have a voice in democracy is undemocratic in its very nature,” he says.

Mr. McVety, 48, was born in Winnipeg where his father, Elmer McVety, a “Billy Graham evangelist,” founded a Bible school called Richmond College, the predecessor to Canada Christian College.

In 1967, the family and the school relocated to Toronto. Mr. McVety took over as college president after his father’s death in 1993 in the midst of a battle with the provincial government over the school’s authority to grant degrees.

The college survived a bid by the education ministry to shut it down and now offers undergraduate, masters and doctoral programs mainly focusing on theology and divinity.

In his political youth, Mr. McVety became involved in the riding nomination of Ken Robinson, a Liberal MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and then-chairman of the board of the college.

In the runup to the 1984 federal election, Mr. Robinson was bumped from his own riding when several hundred supporters of a rookie candidate unexpectedly ousted the incumbent.

For Mr. McVety, it was a realization that a small number of people can make a big difference in the grassroots of Canadian politics.

“We realized not enough people get involved. Canadians are complacent, laid-back people,” he says.

In the 2006 federal election, Mr. McVety and his supporters sought to sway a few dozen ridings across the country in favour of Conservative candidates.

He was not very successful.

In his own riding of Ajax-Pickering, Mr. McVety helped nominate Conservative candidate Rondo Thomas, also an administrator at the college, to challenge Liberal MP Mark Holland, a proponent of same-sex marriage. Mr. Holland sailed to victory in the general election with almost half the total riding vote. Mr. Thomas placed a distant second.

Before the election, Mr. McVety also registered dozens of unclaimed Internet domains bearing the names of several Liberal candidates, like www.josephvolpe.com and www.donboudria.ca, to inform constituents of those MPs’ views on same-sex marriage.

Although the practice was widely criticized and branded a form of cybersquatting, Mr. McVety still stands by the approach.

“A lot of members of Parliament, they like to appease special interests and do things that are against the population, but they don’t like people knowing about it,” he says. “Why not educate people on what their representative is doing? Why should all the education be left to the CBC?”

Come next election, Mr. McVety plans to wage more nomination battles, particularly against Conservative candidates who support same-sex marriage.

Mr. McVety says his allegiance does not lie exclusively with the Conservative Party of Canada. The Liberals, in fact, supported many “pro-family positions” throughout the 1990s, Mr. McVety says. He aims to hold representatives of all parties to account.

Individual ridings are fertile ground to effect change on behalf of his evangelical supporters, he says. And since such a small fraction of Canadian voters get involved in nomination contests, he believes his participation should be welcome.

“In the general population, you make a choice between the two options the one per cent gives you. I don’t think it’s helpful to democracy to discourage any group of people from getting involved.”

It would be a mistake, however, to assume Mr. McVety represents the collective views of Canada’s evangelical community, says Don Hutchinson, a director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

The EFC represents more than three million Canadians, 40 denominations and more than 1,000 congregations. That does not include Mr. McVety, his denomination, or his church, Mr. Hutchinson says.

The EFC is also affiliated with 35 Christian colleges and 89 organizations, but not The Canada Christian College or The Canada Family Action Coalition.

“There’s a broad spectrum on the evangelical meter. Charles may be representative of one end, probably one extreme end, of that spectrum,” Mr. Hutchinson says.

Mr. McVety belongs to a brand of Pentecostalism that sees modern-day prophecies and speaking in tongues as gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Support of Zionism is also key to Mr. McVety’s belief, as a strong Israel is considered by some evangelicals to be the definitive sign of the return of the Messiah. Hence, he firmly rejects a two-state agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

This branch of evangelical Christianity, which Ottawa-based Lloyd Mackey, a veteran journalist for several Christian publications, calls “pretty close to fundamentalist,” is much more common in the United States, with adherents such as the firebrand San Antonio televangelist John Hagee and the late Jerry Fallwell.

In Canada, however, those beliefs simply fall well outside mainstream evangelism, Mr. Hutchinson says. “Public-policy development is not based on whether or not there’s a strong Biblical argument for it; it’s based on whether there’s a sound public-policy reason for the initiative.”

Still, Mr. McVety manages to project a public profile disproportionate to the segment of Christianity he champions, Mr. Mackey says.

“It’s easy to get a colourful quote from Charles. Some of the other major spokespersons for evangelical Christianity aren’t nearly as colourful.”

But it wasn’t always this easy for Mr. McVety and his ilk to get a hearing in Ottawa.

The enormous political influence wielded by American evangelicals, combined with what is considered in Canada to be a disastrous Bush administration, soured Canadians to political involvement of the religious right, Mr. McVety says.

“There was a great deal of hostility that developed, especially under Paul Martin’s government, toward family values,” he says.

So when Mr. Harper took the reins of power in February 2006, there was a giddy optimism that social conservatism would no longer be taboo in Canadian politics.

But the relationship between the Harper government and Ottawa’s burgeoning network of evangelical organizations, galvanized by the same-sex marriage debate, soon hit the rocks.

“That honeymoon ended quite quickly,” Mr. McVety says. After Mr. Harper lost a free vote in the House to restore the traditional definition of marriage, he declared the issue closed, much to the dismay of Mr. McVety and The Canada Family Action Coalition.

And not even a Conservative majority government will bring back the spark between Mr. Harper and Mr. McVety’s cast of social conservatives, Mr. Mackey says. “In effect, (Mr Harper is) functioning as if it’s a majority anyway.”

The government won some praise from Mr. McVety last year when it raised the age of sexual consent. And he says Bill C-10 closes a long-standing policy gap that funnels taxpayer money into obscene movies like Young People Fucking, last year’s Toronto International Film Festival hit that Mr. McVety equates to state-sponsored pornography.

“When it comes to the government allocating hard-earned taxpayer dollars, I believe there’s a national consensus on this issue that it should not go to dirty movies.”
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…this post forwarded by Windsor Humanist, J.Pkr, after an April 12, 2008 article by Tim Shufelt in The Ottawa Citizen

The Leamington Arts Centre Gets a Quarter-Million

The Leamington Arts Centre received $218,000 from the province Friday to revamp the gallery and revitalize the uptown core, which may increase tourism and create new jobs.

“The improvement is well overdue,” said Mayor John Adams. The carpeting is more than 30 years old, the walls need painting and better accessibility is needed, he said.

The money will be used primarily to create better accessibility in the building by installing an elevator and constructing a barrier-free washroom, said Michelle Le Chien, director of the arts centre.

The Leamington Arts Centre teamed up with the municipality and jointly put in an application to the provincial Rural Economic Development Program.

“The goal is that the renovations will allow the arts centre to bring in expanded shows and bring tourism into the community,” said Paul Anthony, the town’s manager of culture and recreation.

Local artist Katherine Burton said revamped classrooms will increase the variety of art programs, such as writing programs, children’s programs, possibly even a dance or yoga class, she said.
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…this post forwarded by Windsor Humanist, Alexander Neil, after an April 26, 2008 article in The Windsor Star

 

WSO Receives More Kudos – 2008 Juno Nomination

Windsor Symphony Orchestra has been nominated for a 2008 Juno Award for its recording of Peter and the Wolf.

The nomination is for best children’s album of the year. The Juno awards will be announced on national TV on April 6.

“This is a spiritual shot in the arm for everyone involved,” said WSO conductor John Morris Russell.

The recording features narration of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf by actor Colm Feore, who grew up in Windsor, and a new work, Last Minute Lulu, by University of Windsor composer Brent Lee, narrated by the author, Windsor-based Christopher Paul Curtis.

“This is the heart and soul of what music can mean to a community,” Mr. Russell said. The Prokofiev work was recently added to the program for WSO’s school concerts, starting April 8.

“That means 5,000 kids will hear their own Juno-nominated orchestra playing Peter and the Wolf,” Mr. Russell said. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.”

WSO board president Vicky Kyriaco-Wilson said: “This validates our top-notch educational program. Windsor should be proud to have this orchestra and someone of John Morris Russell’s calibre in their midst.”

This is the orchestra’s first Juno nomination. It was nominated for a Gemini Award in 2004 for its performance on a CBC-TV Christmas special.

In 2007, WSO was named orchestra winner of a major award from The Vida Peene Fund for Artistic Excellence. The orchestra is also a two-time recipient of the Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts.

Rob Gold, WSO marketing director, said the recording has Windsor written all over it, from the fact it was recorded at the Capitol Theatre, to the involvement of Messieurs Lee, Curtis and Feore, whose mother Sally Feore, works in WSO’s administrative offices.
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…this post forwarded by Windsor Humanist, Alexander Neil, after a February 6, 2008 article by Ted Shaw in The Windsor Star

Darwin’s Era, Modern Themes: Science, Faith & Publication

Given the furour he feared it would unleash, it is not surprising that Charles Darwin sat on his “great idea,” refusing to publish “The Origin of Species” until 1859, more than 20 years after he first devised the theory of evolution.“If I finish the book, I’m a killer,” he said. “I murder God.”At least that’s what Peter Parnell has Charles Darwin say in his new play, “Trumpery,” which opened this month at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.

In the play, as in real life, Charles Darwin is moved to publish by Alfred Russel Wallace, a young man whom Peter Parnell’s Charles Darwin dismisses as “a nobody, a collector, a poor specimen hunter,” but who has independently come up with a theory just like the one Charles Darwin has been chewing on for decades.

So in part the play hangs on scientific “priority:” who will publish first? As the action begins, Alfred Russel Wallace, as in real life, has sent Charles Darwin a paper describing his ideas, in hopes that Charles Darwin will help make them known. (If, like many people, you know who Charles Darwin is but not Alfred Russel Wallace, you probably think you know how that comes out. Think again.)

But a larger question, Mr. Parnell said in an interview, is “what it means to be a scientist” when confronting issues of faith. It is an idea as controversial today as it was then.

Charles Darwin’s Britain teemed with religiosity as diverse as evangelical Christian fervour and spiritualism, an idea whose adherents included Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood. Charles Darwin knew he would be called heretical for challenging the Biblical idea of God as a one-time-only creator of an immutable natural order.

At first, he finds the idea literally sickening. But, as Mr. Parnell put it, Charles Darwin is “both great enough and grandiose enough” to eventually conclude not just that he could do it, but that he ought to. And we all know how that came out.

But today as then, there are creationists who assert that people must choose between belief in Charles Darwin’s theory and belief in God. Yet Charles Darwin did not kill God. His theory, unchallenged in science, is the foundation on which the edifice of modern biology is built. And it has plenty of adherents among religious believers.

“Trumpery” is not the first foray into science for Mr. Parnell, a screenwriter and dramatist who has worked on television shows like “The West Wing” and who teaches television writing at the Yale School of Drama. That would be “QED,” a play about Richard Feynman, the physicist and theorist of quantum electrodynamics, the modern theory of electromagnetism.

It was while working on that play that Mr. Parnell stumbled on a book, “The Song of the Dodo” by David Quammen, which describes Alfred Russel Wallace’s work. The book led Mr. Parnell to more study of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and their times. Pretty soon, he had a three-act play with, he realized, a cast of way too many characters dealing with way too many subjects — not just evolution, but topics like Colonialism and a Tierra del Fuegan accused of murder.

“I didn’t know for a long time what the play was about,” he said.

But just as “QED” focused sharply on Richard Feynman, Mr. Parnell found this play by focusing on Charles Darwin and telescoping some of the events in his life to bring his quandaries into sharp relief.

For example, much of the play is an argument involving Charles Darwin, his biological allies Joseph Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley, and their foe, Richard Owen. In fact, their debates took place in letters. But confrontation is useful for a dramatist dealing with science.

“The ideas have to be accurate, they have to be intelligible,” Mr. Parnell said. “But you have to find a dramatic way to tell it — a reason it can be a play, to exist on stage.”

He added, “It has to be grounded in conflict.”

“Trumpery” is not Mr. Parnell’s first exploration of a frightening idea either. That was “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book he wrote with his partner, Justin Richardson. The book tells the true story of Silo and Roy, two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who courted each other and formed a relationship. When a keeper saw them trying to incubate a rock, he gave them an orphaned egg, which they cared for until it hatched as the chick Tango.

While the book received many favourable reviews, some parents and religious groups objected to it as suggesting that a family could be something other than Mom, Dad and kids.

“That idea is considered dangerous,” Mr. Parnell said.

Today, although Charles Darwin’s idea is not so frightening to many, the conflict over evolution still plays on, on stage and in school boards and courtrooms around the country. Perhaps conflict is inevitable when people confront new and frightening ideas. But, as Charles Darwin tells his dying daughter Annie Darwin, at the end of the play, it is good to challenge conventional wisdom. He adds, though, “if you question everything, you have to expect to be scared.”
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…this post forwarded by Windsor Humanist, Joe Pkr, after a December 18, 2007 essay by Cornelia Dean in The New York Times