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Inside the Christian Right's Ottawa Finishing School

How the Laurentian Leadership Centre prepares the Joshua generation to take the reins of government.

By Marci McDonald, 23 Jul 2010, TheTyee.ca

Laurentian Centre

Centre of influence: Laurentian Leadership Centre in Ottawa.

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Also in this series:
Raising the Joshua Generation

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[Editor's note: This is the last of five excerpts from The Armageddon Factor, Marci McDonald's chronicle of the rise of Canada's Christian right. Yesterday's installment related how Trinity Western University in B.C. emulated Patrick Henry College in the U.S. by creating a new finishing school for Christian conservative university students seeking roles in government. It's called The Laurentian Leadership Centre in Ottawa, and this series ends with a look at its ties to Prime Minister Harper, and a glimpse of what goes on inside its walls.]

At 8:20 on a Wednesday morning in October 2007, students litter the magnificent, main-floor salons of the Laurentian Leadership Centre, some sprawled on damask sofas under priceless antique tapestries, others straggling out of the eat-in kitchen, a dazzling mix of marble and stainless steel that could pass for an upscale Italian café. But as the clock strikes the half hour, they scramble up the panelled staircase to an ornate conference room for that day's class on politics and government.

Janet Epp Buckingham, who has replaced Paul Wilson as the centre's executive director, opens with a reading from the book of Joshua, whose hero led the Israelites across the Jordan River to conquer Jericho. "We have an example of some pretty serious leadership here," Buckingham observes. "Joshua is the guy who gets things done. He got a very clear message from God and the Bible says people followed Joshua without hesitation."

As she points out, the same could not be said about the two prime ministers whom her students are profiling that day. Matt Pasiuk, a business major from Abbotsford who has spent his entire academic life in Christian schools, is upbeat about his subject, Brian Mulroney, praising him for the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. while slamming his imposition of the "horrendous" Goods and Services Tax. But Pasiuk seems hazy on the failed Meech Lake Accord -- "It's a bit over my head," he says -- and he makes no mention of the corruption charges then hanging over Mulroney, a lapse that Buckingham chooses to leave unexplored.

Reporting on Kim Campbell's ill-fated four months in power, Irene Cadrin, a political-science student from northern Alberta, appears to view the country's only female prime minister with undisguised scorn.

"She's very popular among the feminist movement in Canada," Cadrin says in a tone that makes clear this is not a desirable distinction. "She's their poster girl." Cadrin barely mentions Campbell's tenure as justice minister, but notes that when she was in the B.C. legislature, she fought restrictions on abortion and has the most "complicated" marital situation of any prime minister. "She was married once, she was married twice, then she didn't bother to get married again," Cadrin says, making no attempt to mask her disapproval.

Only weeks earlier, the National Post had run a flattering, full-page profile of the Laurentian Leadership Centre, celebrating it as a new haven for the "sharpest edge of intellectual evangelical Christianity," but on the day I visit there is little evidence of that acuity. If this is history filtered through a biblical worldview, it is a version that seems hopelessly skewed by conservative bias and a marked disregard for the facts. When students refer to the Toronto Star as "the Red Star" and deride Canada as a "welfare state," I feel as if I've stumbled into the ornate clubhouse of some fresh-faced relics from the Reagan era.

Photos with the PM

That impression only deepens after a mid-morning break when Buckingham steers the discussion to the Charter of Rights, her own legal specialty. As the former chief counsel of the Evangelical Fellowship, she had been one of the leading advocates for the Christian right and, during the incendiary same-sex marriage debate, she won a reputation as a reasonable and nuanced voice. Today, however, Buckingham makes little attempt to temper the arguments of her students who, almost without exception, slam the Charter as "bad" or "frightening" and a threat to evangelical Christians. Decrying the fact that the courts "have gone too far on social issues," she notes that religion in Canada has been "privatized," as she puts it, which turns out to mean that it has been banished from the public sphere.

Sitting in on the discussion, it seems no wonder that critics see the centre as an elite finishing school for Harper's Conservatives. Every class has been invited to a photo session with the prime minister, and his office has hosted at least one intern each semester. Despite the centre's repeated insistence that it is non-partisan, a seven-year review of its internships shows that, of the fifty-one MPs who employed students, 42 were Conservatives -- most of them evangelicals. It's a critique for which the students themselves are well prepared.

"Sometimes I can see people trying to paint us as a Conservative breeding ground," Matt Pasiuk volunteers, unasked, after class. "But there's a lot of different views here. In the halls or at dinner time, there are some pretty interesting arguments about things like abortion and same-sex marriage."

Pasiuk's internship with his Conservative MP, Ed Fast, whose daughter was a friend back in Abbotsford, convinced him he would never want a career in politics, but for others, the experience has opened coveted doors. Matthew Laine had never set foot in Ottawa before he arrived at the centre, but, interning with the Green Party, he discovered an organization in chaos where he could carve out his own niche. After two weeks helping out in a cliff-hanger of a provincial campaign, he felt "totally empowered. I was calling these bureaucrats all over Ontario on behalf of candidates to get them registered," he says. "It was pretty cool."

Laine snagged a seat on the party's youth council, and months after graduating from Trininty Western, he landed the Greens' nomination in the B.C. riding of Delta-Richmond East, where he racked up 8 per cent of the 2008 vote. A year later, he ran in the provincial election, and he argues that a Green Party candidacy is consistent with his faith. "If you want to be a Christian, you need to be a good steward of the planet," he says.

Still he admits his wariness of hyper-righteous rhetoric. "I say, prove to me you're a Christian," Laine says. "It can't be just a now-and-then thing. That's why the pro-life movement bugs me. It's okay to be pro-life, but I say, 'Be pro all life -- be pro the homeless guy, not just pro-fetus.'"

With those views, Laine admits he was the ideological odd man out at the centre -- "pretty much the token liberal," he says.

Succeeding at their missions

Many Laurentian Leadership Centre alumni have gone on to work for Conservative MPs or cabinet members, and Jared Kuehl, a graduate of the Laurentian Leadership Centre's first class, went straight from university to a job in the issues management branch of Harper's office.

Another graduate, Mark Penninga, has taken another sort of political path. After an internship with Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, Penninga landed a job as a spokesman for Focus on the Family Canada before founding his own Christian nationalist lobby, the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA), backed by the country's Reformed churches. Announcing its arrival on the political scene, he threw a Parliament Hill seminar for MPs co-hosted by Vellacott and the Liberals' leading evangelical, John McKay, which featured a lecture from a respected Christian Reformed theologian entitled "God and Government: A Biblical Perspective on the Role of the State."

While the seminar was an exercise in gentility, ARPA's website is less so. "Canada is perishing -- both physically and spiritually -- because we have turned our back on God," it declares. One of the main objects of its wrath is the Corren agreement, which Penninga paints as a threat to religious freedom. "In the name of tolerance," he argues, "tolerance is being thrown out the window."

Was this then what Don Page envisaged for the country's Joshua generation? Page answers by recounting a moment when, watching the proceedings of a parliamentary committee on television, he noticed three familiar figures in the front row. All were Laurentian Leadership Centre graduates, researching departmental policy papers or speeches for MPs. "Where else do we see another university having such a positive influence?" he beams. "I'm hearing that our students are the people MPs want to hire in their offices."

At least 30 of the centre's young Christian soldiers have won jobs in Ottawa's permanent policy-making apparatus and every semester produces new recruits. That is no mean accomplishment at a time when the federal civil service is facing an imminent labour crisis, aging faster than the general population, with one-third of its members due for retirement within the next decade.

Nor is it a development that Stephen Harper would frown upon. Before he was prime minister, Harper railed against the liberalism of the civil service, and Trinity Western is not alone in attempting to help him reverse that tilt. More than a dozen well-regarded Christian colleges and universities now exist in this country, and the Conservatives are quietly fostering their growth. When economic stimulus funds were being doled out, Harper funneled more than $26 million their way, including $2.6 million to Trinity Western -- a windfall that was announced by Conservative MP Mark Warawa, a TWU alumnus himself.

What effect those graduates will have on Canadian politics remains to be seen, but as Page recalled from his experience with the Public Service Christian Fellowship, it doesn't take huge numbers to get things done on Parliament Hill. He once managed to solve an overseas crisis with phone calls to senior bureaucrats he knew from departmental prayer cells, and he credits the backstage intercessions of a handful of evangelical mandarins with convincing cabinet ministers to take a stand on tobacco advertising.

"In today's society, there are important issues and Christians have a role to play," he says. "I think our students are already influencing the thinking of government." [Tyee]

Excerpted from The Armageddon Factor. Copyright 2010 Marci McDonald. Published by Random House Canada, which is a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

33 Comments:

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  • movietone

    1 year ago

    Misguided.

    Time and time again, these bible thumping conservatives fail to grasp one very basic premise: tolerating homosexuals has nothing to do with stripping Christians of their religious freedom.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    By the way, what happened to

    By the way, what happened to Moral Re-Armament ? And many others of the same ilk, too numerous to mention?

    The world is in big trouble, thanks to idiotic theories of the Priesthood of the Money God, otherwise known as "economists" and in all such times, people flock to religions.

    During WW2, on the nazi side, religion was a big item, the churches were full, and there were all kinds of predictions by alleged clergy and nuns that the "Leader with the cross on his chest" will win and bring Christianity to the world."

    Ed Deak.

  • Van Isle

    1 year ago

    Thank god that I'm an

    Thank god that I'm an atheist.

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    One point.

    Christ never mentions anything about sexual orientation, anywhere, nor did he mention abortions. Most of what the fundamentalists believe is an interpretation which is politically self-serving. Not really "Christian" at all. I have always wondered why fundamentalist "Christians" do not refuse to participate in the political process much as the Jehovah Witnesses do. I mean if they were really fundamentalists.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    European history, and even

    European history, and even art glorifying war, is full of the stories of clergymen who grabbed the flag when the flagbearer fell and with the flag in one hand, and the cross raised high in the other, led their side to victory.

    I was always wondering, what happened when clergy of opposing sides met on the battlefield? Have they been bashing each others heads with their flags and crosses?

    History never talks about such occasions.

    Ed Deak.

  • White Bird

    1 year ago

    I've never understood why it

    I've never understood why it must only be ancient narratives from a single book, (translated and edited) rather than the entire wealth of literature that can instruct on points of leadership, morality, etc.

    Now that's narrow.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    Hard Reading

    As this series continues I am finding it harder and harder to keep reading it. Not because I think it's bad, because I don't. I think it's very good, and of extreme importance. But the endless litany of just how bigoted, uninformed, myopic, hateful, and just plain downright stupid so many potentially powerful Canadians are is deeply, deeply disturbing. And it sure does not bode well for the future.

    The sheer madness, the lunacy, and the vigourous hatred these folks carry inside is simply terrifying.

    And too, it's scary news to me how twisted some centres of education are. I mean, I knew they tended to overlook certain realities, but holy moly! I had no idea how misinformed, how overflowing with mendacity and plain disinformation some education centres are.

  • Jeffrey J.

    1 year ago

    Kudos to Ms. McDonald

    Ms. McDonald has achieved for this topic what Donald Gutstein did in exposing the Fraser Institute (Not a Conspiracy Theory). As Andrew Nikiforuk exposed about the Alberta tar sands (Tar Sands). And UBC Prof. Chris Shaw did for the Vancouver Olympics (Five Ring Circus). As Marc Edge did in explaining the history of CanWestGlobal (Asper Nation). And as hopefully Bill Tielemen will do in his upcoming book about the Gordon Campbell Basi/ Virk corruption Trial of the Century.

    Each one of these courageous authors has blown the lid off a simmering, creepy weird system bubbling away in secrecy. Nothing like the light of day (and public understanding) to bring a dose of reality to these enterprises.

    Great coverage by BC's best news organization! We are very, very fortunate to still have a beacon of democracy. Long may this continue.

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    Organize

    As someone with fundies in the family this stuff doesn't surprise me too much. To me, it points to the importance of the skeptical movement and the vocal atheists. These religious activists need to know that they have a significant opposition to their program, and the politicians and the media need to know that too. Don't be silent.

  • Jerry Munro

    1 year ago

    God, Caesar and Humanity...

    Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's, and unto God, the which is God's.

    It is this ideological tenet that is the fundamental problem that has always existed with Christianity especially. Though all the major religions, at least those known to me, have been at one time or another, one incarnation or another, the servants of the ruling class and the state, teaching humility, the value of suffering and acceptance of one place in life, and obedience to the authority of Rome.

    It hasn't stopped all "the faithful" from the path of questioning and rebellion of course. But by and large, again with notable exceptions that prove the rule, religion really has quite consciously been the opiate of the masses.

    Too bad.

    That said, "progressive" and especially "revolutionary" agnostics and atheists ned to be careful to not "needlessly" make believing or not believing the major issue in intra-human and intra-class relations, I think. Time and human progress, and education, will sort this issue out for at least the intelligent of both camps. It is our attitude to the major issues of the day, and the issues of class and power that we have to seek workable compromises and alliances around... setting aside for the moment what neither side is right now prepared to be convinced of or concede.

    On the other hand, these nutters above are the enemy, or at least, the servants of our main enemy. In either case, one and the same really.Right from out of the rubber room of capitalism, there folks get special treatment from "the system", as if they were entirely rational human beings.

  • Frank

    1 year ago

    Interesting

    That a bunch of people seem to have no trouble jumping the queue and getting very hard to get jobs. And its more interesting that they just happen to be right-wingers of the extremist variety.

    One might get the impression that Canada is being remade in Stephen's image right in front of our eyes.

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    Coyoteman

    I agree. Someone once explained it to me this way. The Bible says something about the "righteous will prosper" or at least that was God's promise to Abraham. The problem is that the Christian Right believes the corollory, that is that if I am prosperous, (or one of the elite) I must be righteous. The danger is that once you reach that conclusion you need never question how you practice your faith.

  • Jerry Munro

    1 year ago

    Christian Soldiers of the Corporate State

    "One might get the impression that Canada is being remade in Stephen's image right in front of our eyes." Frank.

    Interesting to be sure, but as an extremely dangerous development tendency here in current neoconservative-capitalism. These are the fascistic Christian Soldiers in training of the rising Corporate State. I don't think there is any question.

    But what I find really quite worrisome is, that the only potential force that would have the understanding and chutzpah to expose and stand up against this Christian fascist tendency as it evolves here, "the serious left" is still in such a weakened, fragmented and largely ineffective state.There's going to have to be some fairly dramatic developments occur here, pretty damn soon. (And these guys are way better funded and assisted along the entire social, business and state front than this much needed "left" is likely to ever be, this side of capitalism.

    My view.

  • alive

    1 year ago

    best comment

    Thank god that I'm an atheist.

  • happy

    1 year ago

    Skywalker

    You said
    "I have always wondered why fundamentalist "Christians" do not refuse to participate in the political process much as the Jehovah Witnesses do."

    Good observation. The JW's probably don't feel the need to participate in society in general b/c they are always predicting the imminent "end of the world"
    Next time for sure.... We really mean it this time.....join us now, there's hardly any time left.....

    And Van Isle and alive, I really must toot my own horn by pointing out that I was the one who first made the god/atheist comment some time ago.

    Cheers

    "I thank god every day
    That my parents raised me an athiest..."

    http://thetyee.ca/Life/2009/10/07/PreacherPhelps/

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    happy.

    I think you may have it wrong about the JW's. They don't believe in politics or earthly kingdoms/governments because they abide by the teaching, "My kingdom is not of this world." Their predictions about the end of the world are another matter.

  • Frank

    1 year ago

    happy old man

    I think I see why you're happy :)

  • Van Isle

    1 year ago

    Happy, for your info my

    Happy, for your info my brother and I had our basic elementary education in a religious school back in the 50's, In the 60's, when we started to think for ourselves, we use to joke about "Thank God that I'm an atheist". Who coined that phrase I don't have a clue, but I like it and use it when it fits the topic.

  • happy

    1 year ago

    VI

    Just having a little fun...I didn't claim to patent the phrase. I like it too.
    This discussion got me thinking to back when I first started grade one and the first thing I had to learn was to stand up at our desks every morning and recite the lords prayer.
    I just used to mumble it while staring at the picture of Her Royal Highness that hung in every classroom....

    Thanks Frank. Thats one reason.... :)

  • Tahsis Tattler

    1 year ago

    political religion

    You don't have to look far to see what hapens when religion and politics meet, Iran stands out like a sore thumb. The current Prime Minister of Canada is already showing what a religiously intolerant government would act like by selctivly applying government services and largess today in spite of the fact they are a minority government.

  • Noggy

    1 year ago

    Crutches

    If we could only stand on our own two feet, it would amount to limitless possibilities for a world deprived of possibilities.

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    Ed

    Quote:
    I was always wondering, what happened when clergy of opposing sides met on the battlefield? Have they been bashing each others heads with their flags and crosses?

    Everyone "knows" the "other side" doesn't have clergy, because their gods are false.........

  • Chicken Little

    1 year ago

    The Second Coming

    "...The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity."

    Just when you think all that has been submerged forever, it surfaces again like a mafia hit that has lost its cement overshoes.

  • Bob Watts

    1 year ago

    More crap from my mind.

    The Talaban and Ring Wing Christians are the same.
    Both want every person to follow them.
    Both believe being a martyr is a one way ticket to heaven/virgins.
    Both hate sex, but both love young boys, and sheep.
    Both don’t like my liberal thinking.
    Both hate Homo’s but any male under 10 tastes like chicken.
    The list is endless but…both groups are very willing to kill us all to prove they are right and just.

  • DerrickA

    1 year ago

    Critical Thinking.

    Sorry Sunday school kids, I'll be voting for leaders who display critical thinking skills, and base their decisions on science, facts, and reason. Our modern world is now clearly based on science, not religious superstition or fear. Our future leaders should be too. Let the voice of reason shine.

  • dorothy

    1 year ago

    It's not that

    "both groups are very willing to kill us all to prove they are right and just."

    They KNOW they're not right and just. They also know that we know it. They'll kill us because we stand in the way of their unlimited 'power and prosperity. If we're gone, they have the field. The Roman Church has defended itself ruthlessly against critics almost from the word go. The fate of Hypatia in Alexandria. The persecution or Arrian Christians. The butchering of Saxons at Verden and other places. The Albigensian crusade. The fate of the Knights Templar. Every time eliminating qualified criticism. We should not think they would do less today. Please do not make that mistake.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    dorothy said:

    Quote:
    They KNOW they're not right and just.

    I'm not sure about that. What I mean is, nobody thinks themselves evil; no one can really tolerate believing they are doing wrong, whether it's something as extreme as Jeffrey Dahmer, or as mundane as the neighbourhod Catholic priest. It's too uncomfortable a form of cognitive dissonance, and so we rationalize it into being right, and just, and so forth. Don't forget the powerful ability of the mind to justify anything we do as being for the greater good one way or another. It is, in part, how we so successfully deal with almost anything that causes cognitive dissonance.

    There was a great piece of research I read many years ago that showed quite effectively what happens when people are forced by circumstances into a job or a job-related task that goes against their ethical beliefs and their sense of morality. When the option to quit was not available, the majority of participants were able to quite successfully change their ethical beliefs and sense of moarilty without a lingering sense of conflict or contradiction so as to continue with the necessary employment.

    Sadly, almost none of us are as committed to our ethical beliefs or sense of morals as we like to believe for the simple reason that cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to live with. And so, if one cannot change the circumstance causing the cognitive dissonance, one changes one's ideals.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    Ooops

    sense of moarilty = sense of morality

    My bad.

  • Jeannie

    1 year ago

    Be afraid..

    This is one of the scariest series that I have read. Nightmare material for sure.

    Silly me, I had no idea that Kim Campbell was a poster child for us feminist leaning folks!

  • kootenay

    1 year ago

    What are we Waiting for?

    Like I said in a post last week, What are we waiting for?

    The right has been developing their resources/strength for decades while the rest of us have been either reeling from the affects of their policies or quietly ignoring the ever increasing signs that the end of Canada as we have come to love her, is near.

    People just can't let go of the image of what Canada used to be; as a result it prevents us from fighting against own governments and fighting for our human rights, something we never imagined we would ever have to do, in our own country.

  • sidehiller

    1 year ago

    Scary Stuff

    I also just read American Facists by Chris Hedges.
    He warns that we tolerate the intolerant at our own peril.
    Harper is subtly taking us down the road to the religious state, where the only "democracy" will be for the true belivers.
    Time to wake up & get vocal, those who want to maintain the seraration of religion & state.

  • zalm

    1 year ago

    The age of reason or the reason of age?

    "Only weeks earlier, the National Post had run a flattering, full-page profile of the Laurentian Leadership Centre, celebrating it as a new haven for the "sharpest edge of intellectual evangelical Christianity," but on the day I visit there is little evidence of that acuity. If this is history filtered through a biblical worldview, it is a version that seems hopelessly skewed by conservative bias and a marked disregard for the facts."

    Seems more like a place that still has lead water pipes, and a lot of thirsty drinkers....

    I kind of wish we'd heard more about the gang closest to Harper, who feeds him his distorted world-view - Darrel Reid, Guy Giorno and Mark Cameron. I'm sure Marci must have written about them - that would be too big an oversight to be comprehended.

    I guess I'll have to line up for the book....

  • stevebailey

    1 year ago

    Galloping Ignorance

    Take about an animated exchange of ignorance. Most of the posts on this story completely miss Marci McDonald's focus of analysis in her excellent book. I've read the entire book from which this excerpt is taken; I doubt many posting here have read it carefully, if at all. The silly intolerant insults hurled about here, the ignorance of the Laurentian Institute and just plain stupidity along with the usual all too common uninformed atheist arrogance combine to make a pathetic, if not laughable, commentary.

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