By Lloyd Mackey

CONNECTING the dots between social justice and strong families was a major exercise at a meeting staged March 12 within the figurative shadow of Parliament Hill.

Close to 150 people took in the conference, spearheaded by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC), a family-focused think tank and research group established half a decade ago in the national capital.

The conference was one of several policy-based meetings organized by Christian or Christian-influenced groups over a two week period in early March.

Two of the key speakers for the one-day IMFC event were Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain, and Gabor Mate, a Vancouver physician who writes regularly for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail.

Both the topic and the speaker choice were in marked contrast to the social conservative links of IMFC's initiator body, Focus on the Family, founded by Colorado psychologist James Dobson.

Mate, who spoke to one of his areas of speciality, parenting and attachment, is well known for his involvement in Vancouver's safe injection site and his stance against the federal government's opposition to the site. Duncan Smith is presently known for his development of the Centre for Social Justice.

Duncan Smith readily admitted to the Ottawa meeting that "the term 'social justice' is seen to belong to the left."

He told the group that "five issues: educational failure, economic dependency, addictions, personal debt and family breakdown" have all contributed to an increase in poverty and its negative social impacts in the past few years.

One of Duncan Smith's tasks, in establishing the CSJ in 2004, was to conduct some 300 public hearings throughout Great Britain, exploring the implications of the five issues in considerable depth.

The hearing and subsequent survey conclusions pointed to the role that non-government organizations -- among them churches and charities -- can play. And there is great potential, he said, in moving many of those options from state control to voluntary action.

For his part, Mate contrasted the relationship between attachment and parenting with what he sees as the "stunting effect and the undermining of learning" that occurs with strong peer orientation.

Attachment, he said, is "the drive for closeness and contact -- both physical and emotional." It helps to "make a model of the parent . . . keeping the child close in, (so the parent) can be the primary cue giver."

By contrast, he suggested that peer orientation -- children looking to each other for values and direction -- can lead to "aggression . . . the making of bullies and victims (and) unteachability."

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In explaining the rationale of the conference theme, IMFC executive director David Quist noted: "We are all concerned with the eradication of poverty, minimizing and supporting the number of single parent families, decreasing the level of youth and gang violence in our inner cities, and addressing the substance abuse."

And Andrea Mrozek, IMFC's research and communications manager, added that the conference was intended to bring "a new vision and fresh vision for social justice, (along with a recognition) that family structure matters when you think about poverty and welfare."

Two weeks before the Ottawa event, Mrozek wrote about Duncan Smith's upcoming visit, in an Ottawa Citizen op-ed piece that appeared February 27.

She concluded that piece, entitled 'Marrying social and fiscal conservatism: Our Tories should look to England for an example of a strong, workable social justice message,' with the following quote: "The vision presented by Duncan Smith and his fellow U.K. Conservatives is one for a better community. There's an opportunity here for Canada's Conservatives -- understanding that strong families are the way toward a smaller government and greater freedom. Who knew social issues (properly understood) were the way toward fiscal responsibility."

The IMFC event was not the only one helping to fill the calendars of some politicians and their aides during the first two weeks of March.

Three faith-oriented academics, John Redekop, Paul Bramadat and Cornelis Van Dam, were in the capital, as was family values advocate Charles McVety.

Redekop, political science professor emeritus of Wilfred Laurier University, lectured on 'What does God expect: of governments and of citizens?' at Trinity Western University's Laurentian Leadership Centre in Ottawa.

Van Dam, an Old Testament professor at the Theological College of Canadian Reformed Churches, spoke that same week on 'God and Government: A Biblical perspective on the role of the state' under the auspices of the Association for Reformed Political Action.

Bramadat, director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, spoke both to a few dozen MPs and another 50 or so of their support staffers, at a Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences breakfast.

His topic was 'Political Minefields: Religion in Post-secular Society,' and his main points grew out of a study he had co-edited with Matthias Koenig, a German sociologist of religion, entitled: 'International migration and the governance of religious diversity.'

McVety, for his part, was attempting to raise awareness on the polygamy issue, as it expressed in both fundamentalist Mormon and Muslim communities.

McVety's Ottawa visit was triggered by the British Columbia government's recent decision to prosecute two alleged polygamists in Bountiful, a fundamentalist Mormon community in the southeastern sector of the province.

But to draw Canada's Muslim community into the issue, McVety formed a temporary coalition with Farzana Hassan, president of the progressive and secular-oriented Muslim Canadian Congress. Hassan is opposed to polygamy, because, as she puts it: "Woman are always short changed when polygamy is allowed to flourish."

March 19/2009