A live-audio conversation with Canada's federal leaders against antisemitism and islamophobia, Irwin Cotler and Amira Elghawaby

Whoever coined the adage "Never meet your heroes" could not have met Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The hard reality is that Canadian horses and horsepeople suffer when our voice goes unheard in the corridors of power. The Guelph Equine Public Policy Group will ensure that Canada's governments understand how they can - and why they must - serve the equine community public interest.

The courts have ruled that the Ontario SPCA's police powers are unconstitutional. What is the future for animal welfare enforcement in Canada's largest province? Who can or will protect creatures who can not cry out for mercy?

All of us can wield a power that those who would divide us will never know: an ability to make common cause out of our common humanity and our common dignity, and a determination to join hands across the divisions that beset the human condition, to create a better world in the image of the better angels of our natures.

Addressing the United Nations was one of the more intimidating experiences of my life. I spoke on behalf of GOPAC's global alliance of parliamentarians, on our work to bring kleptocrats to justice.

Reuters reports on our efforts at the United Nations: There are some forms of corruption so grave, whose effects on human life, human rights, and human welfare are so catastrophic, that they should shock the conscience of the international community and mobilise the will of nations to act across borders. They are Crimes Against Humanity, and should be prosecuted in the highest national and international courts.

There is no worse cancer in a free society than the thuggish impulse to equate dissent as disloyalty... The greatest patriot is the person with the courage to be the lone voice in the crowd crying out that the Emperor has no clothes. The test of our society's democratic nature is our instinct to value the right of our fellow human beings to disagree with us.

Our capacity to do violence to one another is the worst tragedy of the human condition, but it makes our still greater capacity to forgive one another all the more powerful.

Gandhi and Bose were brothers in the hunger for justice, and both had followers who were willing to die for freedom rather than live as slaves. But one group was so blinded by passion for its cause, that it was willing to join hands with regimes whose very names have become bywords for evil in almost every spoken language on the planet.

Throughout our history, Canada has grown through the toil of generations of Canadians who were inspired by the belief that our country is free of the rigid class systems of the Old World, that Canadians' success or failure depends on our own efforts and our own abilities...But in recent years, we have come to doubt our faith in this meritocracy.