Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
After Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie was attacked during a writing conference in western New York on Friday, current and former Canadian politicians are weighing in on what such attacks mean for freedom of expression and thought.
Former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff, who is a friend of Rushdie and has known him since 1984, told CTV News Channel he felt a personal reaction of “sorrow, dismay, and anger” after learning of the incident.
He considers such an attack a threat to freedom of thought.
“I just think fanaticism is a danger to free expression everywhere,” he said. “It’s a danger to every writer and every free thinker. We have to stand against it everywhere it raises its head.”
Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” published in 1988, drew death threats from Iran’s leaders, who viewed the book as blasphemy towards Islamic faith and offered a reward for the death of its author. Rushdie was stabbed numerous times in the neck and abdomen on Friday and was rushed to the hospital.
“I just think this is an example of the ways in which a young person, adrift possibly in American society, thought his life had purpose if he executed a religious warrant for an execution,” Ignatieff said.
“That’s what’s dangerous going forward — that there will be other people who will think their lives will suddenly have meaning if they can execute the same warrant laid down 30 or more years ago.”
Ignatieff believes the attack is a painful reminder of what’s at stake, and what, he said, must be protected.
“What we have to defend here is the right of an artist of the word to use words to raise any subject,” he said.
“Every single belief, every single doctrine, including my own, should be subject to criticism, comedy, good jokes, bad jokes. That’s how freedom thrives.”
Ignatieff said blasphemy, as a concept, “should not exist.”
“I respect people who live their faiths,” he said. “I respect them as individuals. But I’m not under their obligation to respect their faith whether they’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or, you know, Liberal seculars. I’m not required to respect a faith. I’m required to respect persons. And I do. Whatever their faith. And I think that’s the distinction we need to hold.”
The former Liberal Party leader added that “every belief needs to be questioned. And that’s what he’s fought and that’s what he’s stood for. And that’s why [Rushdie] has paid the price he’s paid.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also weighed in on the attack.
“The cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie is a strike on the freedom of expression that our world relies on,” he tweeted on Saturday.
“No one should be threatened or harmed on the basis of what they have written. I’m wishing him a speedy recovery.”
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, a key terminal for the entry of humanitarian aid that was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.