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Live Event in Vancouver

September 18, 2025

6:00 – 10:00 pm PT

A joint CFIC Vancouver SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

A fun, adults-only event at Science World

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit Science World’s After Dark: Actually it is Rocket Science – Space Edition.

Why you should attend and why you should care

Leslie Rosenblood

On September 9 at 3:30 PM ET, Cardus will present a webinar: “Can Christians participate fully in 21st-century western pluralism?” 

If you’re not familiar with Cardus, it’s probably worthwhile to gain at least a passing familiarity with the organization. In many ways, the folks at Cardus are just like us – educated, articulate, passionate, and working for a better Canada and world. There are, however, two crucial differences: 

1. Whereas humanists promote secularism in both the philosophical and political senses, Cardus is dedicated to injecting faith into every aspect of the public sphere, from law to media, from education to societal norms. 
2. Cardus is not led by volunteers. They are a well-funded organization, with several full-time employees and many close, personal connections with powerful and influential politicians.

Christian nationalism is on the rise in the United States. If the humanist/secularist/atheist/agnostic community is to be effective in preventing the same from occurring in Canada, we should be intimately familiar with the arguments of Christians so that we may more effectively counter them.

You may register for this public webinar here. Feel free to share the registration link with others who are interested in learning how faith groups make the case that religious belief should permeate more societal institutions. 

Please be polite and respectful if you attend. The goal is to gain knowledge, not engage in a debate. Only through understanding our social environment can we be effective in changing it. I look forward to continued efforts working with all of you to make Canada a fairer, more compassionate, and more secular society.

Cardus similarly keeps tabs on our community. They realize our goal of a secular society – promoting reason, compassion, and secular values (including government neutrality in matters of religion) – is antithetical to their aims. In November 2024, Cardus published a research report entitled “Why Religious Tax Exemptions Benefit All Canadians”. In it, they explicitly cite the Centre for Inquiry Canada’s Cost of Religion series of report as a motivating factor. 

Why has Cardus submitted a report to Canada’s Finance Committee?

Every year, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance publishes a report containing recommendations for the following year’s budget. The latest report, published in December 2024, contained Recommendation 430: “Amend the Income Tax Act to provide a definition of a charity which would remove the privileged status of ‘advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose.” (See CFIC’s House of Commons Recommends Ending Religious Privilege”.) 

Cardus’ recent submission to Canada’s Finance Committee advocates for more public expenditures on faith-based initiatives.

CFIC’s Cost of Religion series of reports details how Canada’s three levels of government already subsidize religious institutions by more than $5.5 billion every year, a cost borne by all Canadians. Religious charities appear to be worried. The Canadian Centre for Christian Charities argued against this series, claiming that the “Cost of Religion” reports paid insufficient attention to the purported benefits of religious institutions. Both CFIC’s and Cardus’ viewpoints were included in a Ryan Jespersen Real Talk episode, “Should Churches Pay Taxes?” 

Cardus has a strong incentive to maintain Canada’s current high level of taxpayer-funded proselytizing.

Let’s do this together

I have come to the conclusion that we, both as individuals and as secular / humanist organizations across Canada, need to work together to be effective. The ad-hoc group working on changing Canada’s census question is an excellent example. I would love to see more humanist coalition-building. I keep thinking of Aesop’s fable of the sticks: individually, each stick is easily snapped in two, but bundled together they are utterly impervious to attempts to break them. 

I look forward to continued efforts working with all of you to make Canada a fairer, more compassionate, and more secular society.

During this webinar Edgardo will present the paper he prepared last year published by Macdonald-Laurier Institute titled “Chasing the wind – The value of wind generation in a low-emission nuclear and hydro-dominant grid: the case of Ontario.” This paper tells the economic story of wind generation in Ontario. 

• First, providing an overview of wind generation’s impact on electricity costs, prices and subsidies. To keep prices low, Ontario subsidizes 70% of the cost of wind. 

• Second, demonstrating that the costs of wind far exceed its societal and climate benefits, based on regression and cost-benefit analysis for the 2020-2023 period. Due to its nuclear and hydro-dominant generation and elimination of coal, Ontario is already one of the lowest-emission large grids in the world and hence the climate benefit from any new zero-emission generation will be limited to the extent it can displace gas generation. Relative to other areas, Ontario’s wind capacity factors are modest and out of sync with gas generation, all resulting in a relatively low wind emissions offset. 
• Third, it was calculated that a cost-benefit “break-even” wind price is relatively very low for the 2027 – 2030 period, which means that wind cannot be cost-beneficial in Ontario in the short/medium term.

Edgardo has written extensively on the electricity sector. Last year he prepared a report on public ownership and re-regulation for the Alberta Federation of Labour. He has also written about electricity for Jacobin magazine, and TVO Today. Find out more on his “decarbonization website.”

Born in Chile, Edgardo received his B.A. (Honours) from the University of British Columbia and his M.A. from Queen’s University, both in Economics. He established Sepulveda Consulting Inc. in 2006.

Geoff Russell helps us to understand animals, food, energy, and climate using mathematics, evidence, and rational thinking. REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND THIS ZOOM MEETING.

Geoff Russell has qualifications in mathematics and has written software all of his working life, but in the past decade has devoted increasing time to writing non-fiction with a simple goal… make the world a better place. A three-decade vegan and member of the Animal Justice Party, his first book in 2009 was ‘CSIRO Perfidy’, a critique of the high-red-meat CSIRO ‘Total Wellbeing diet’; the most environmentally destructive diet on the planet. His concerns about climate change and the ineffectiveness of renewables led to a re-examination of his lifelong opposition to nuclear power. After considerable research he realised that the reasons people fear nuclear are built on obsolete knowledge about DNA and cancer. Geoff’s second book ‘GreenJacked! Derailing environmental action on climate change’ is an e-book available on Amazon.”

A free webinar looking at emissions, energy, and solutions globally presented by Todd De Ryck. REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND THIS ZOOM MEETING

How much energy do we consume globally today? What are the primary sources of energy? Are we using enough energy? Can we migrate to primarily low emissions sources of energy? Which are the primary low emissions sources of energy and how do they compare to high emissions sources? Which electricity grids have met a Paris climate target (less than 100 grams of CO2 emitted per kilowatt-hour, averaged on an annual basis) and how did they do it? What are some misunderstandings of existing energy sources?

All of these topics and more will be discussed and some “deep dives” of specific topics will also be included.

Todd De Ryck has been an advocate for nuclear energy since 2012.  After completing courses on the subject of nuclear power, supplemented by reading books and blog posts,  viewing documentaries, attending a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor conference, and email communications with nuclear energy experts, he became convinced that nuclear energy must play a major role in permanently displacing fossil fuel production all over the world. Since retiring in 2024 Todd has increased his nuclear energy activism and advocacy, including contributing to print and online publications, as well as presenting talks.