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Lawrence Park Community Church

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Lawrence Park Community Church

LPCC is a Christian church with progressive values, an interest in asking questions, great music, and a commitment to social justice. That’s what we’re about.

We meet in person and online, on Sundays, and throughout the week. Welcome to Lawrence Park Community Church. Smart sermons, great music, and a passion for justice. Where are we? Well, physically we’re located in North Toronto, in the Lawrence Park neighbourhood, but we also live, hang out, pray, talk and explore online. We are an affirming congregation, which means we welcome people of all gender

s, s*xualities and abilities. We’re a vibrant congregation of people who like to ask questions, and push our faith to be relevant to life in our times. We like to ask questions, talk about difficult issues, and make a difference to our lives and the lives of others. So, we have online groups that delve into the Bible to discover its wisdom, which is often buried in stories that seem impossible. These discussions are called The Bible for Busy People, and we meet twice a month online, at two different times. We also explore social justice issues, in theory and in practice:

We have regular discussion groups about issues like anti-Black racism, Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people, and those who are oppressed for their gender/s*xuality and different abilities. These groups discuss books, movies and talk with guest speakers. For the past 18 months this has happened live online via Zoom. We also like to put our money and labour where our faith leads us. That means helping people in the local homeless shelter get household goods for when they get apartments ( this is the Welcome Basket project). In 2021, we fed over a hundred families in a neighbourhood hard hit by Covid, and then led a project to deliver 400 backpacks loaded with school supplies for their kids. We have also been delivering hot meals to a shelter for youth. We like to know what’s going on, and then step in to help, and be in relationship with the people we are helping. Like most churches, we worship every Sunday morning. We value smart sermons that wrestle with the Bible and apply it to the modern world in a way that is insightful and useful. We have a great music program, with live musicians and singers. We broadcast our services from our beautiful, modern sanctuary, and we have congregants in house when allowed. You can check out past services on our YouTube channel, and past sermons on our website ( you can also read them there). We also gather to worship and be in community during the week online. On Mondays, there is a very popular meditation group. Every Wednesday at 3 pm there is a short prayer service held via Zoom, so people can add their prayers, and talk afterwards. On Thursdays, there’s a live hymn sing, which features a very eclectic variety of music, stretching the definition of what qualifies as spiritual music in really interesting ways. Fill your kitchen with your voice! On Tuesday mornings, there is a drop in chat. All of these events are held live on Zoom so everyone can participate. And we have a podcast that comes out a few times a month. In it, I, Rev. Stephen Milton, talk to people about justice, spirituality, current events, and what it would take to make this world more fair and just. It is called The Rooster Crows LPCC podcast, and can be found on Spotify, Google Play and Apple, as well as on our website. We also have a very active social media presence, so please check us out on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. So, feel free to look at what we’re like by browsing our website, our YouTube Channel and our social media. It would be lovely to meet you live at one of our online gatherings, too. And if you just want to talk to get to know more about us, please send me an email. I hope you find something here that ignites one of your passions. Peace be with you,

Rev. Stephen Milton

09/08/2026

I have been told that it is odd that as a Christian minister, I like horror films. But I do. I am not into slasher films, which strike me as a just a celebration of gory violence for its own sake. But give me a film that makes my skin crawl with unease, and I’m in. If part of my calling is to have insights into human nature, then horror films are a great place to go. They scare us because they reveal our deepest anxieties. But something interesting has happened to horror films lately: they’re not about monsters, aliens or supernatural creatures. Now, what scares young movie goers is something that used to be normal: long term romantic relationships.

When I was growing up, horror films were usually about teenagers or s*x, usually both. Most of the popular films, like the Hallowe’en series or The Nightmare on Elm Street, and later, the Scream movies, featured young people in high school or college who were coming of age and wanted to get laid. Sometimes it was too soon, sometimes it was just in the air, other times it was with the wrong person. The anxiety of who to have s*x with was then externalized into some kind of murderous monster tearing young bodies apart in a small town. This wasn’t a new theme - Dracula movies were always implicitly about s*x, something the later Twilight series milked to death, as it were. S*x and horror went together like peanut butter and jam.

But in the past few years, horror films have changed. Films aimed at people in their 20s and 30s now focus on the anxiety of getting into a committed romantic relationship. For example, in last year’s film Together, a young straight couple get afflicted by a local curse which causes their bodies to literally stick together. The anxiety of sticking with your partner “‘till death do us part” becomes explicit and terrifying.

Then there are films where young men want a relationship focused on their needs, but which go horribly wrong. The breakout hit Obsession is an incel nightmare. A young man loves a woman in his friend group, but he lacks the guts and relationship savvy to express his true feelings. So, when he finds a magical box in a curio shop, he decides to see if it really can grant wishes. He asks for her to be obsessed with him, to the exclusion of all others. A bubbly, intelligent, independent young woman slowly becomes utterly, dangerously devoted to this underserving man, with all sorts of horrifying complications. The same kind of dynamic is at work in the film Companion, where a seemingly nice guy’s relationship with his utterly devoted young partner turns out to be much creepier than it seems. In both films, the men seem like nice guys, but they are revealed as utterly shallow, unable to make real relationships work. They can’t handle real women, but their desire for cloying devoted women backfire in terrible ways.

It is no coincidence that the rise of these kinds of movies coincides with the decline of the classic romantic comedy film. In 2019, 42 percent of single people under forty had never been in a committed relationship. By contrast, in the 1950s most straight people usually got married by age 23, and were having babies by age 24. That stage of life is now delayed well into the 30s for many people, if it happens at all. Romantic comedy films rely on the assumption that falling in love and having a long term relationship is a good thing. But, Covid, social media and screen addiction have seriously impaired the younger generations’ ability to socialize and to date. Relationships which were once inevitable and desirable are now seen as a strange and scary deviation from single life, and one which may not be worth it.

This problem is now infiltrating even non-horror films. Just check out The Drama, where marrying Zendaya of all people becomes a problem, or The Materialists where even the beautiful Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson have a hard time getting together. A committed long-term relationship, not s*x, is what scares young people now, and it is showing up in films that might have had happy endings in a previous generation. There is no simple answer to this. But, it would certainly help if the Internet stopped promising men impossibly submissive women, and if young men took the risk of getting to know real women in all their complexity. They are much more interesting and worth knowing - and loving. Peace.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto

08/31/2026

Lately, as someone who lives on the shore of Lake Ontario, I have been thinking about the fate of human civilization. Looking back on human history, it’s pretty clear that that societies regularly fall prey to megalomaniacs who think of themselves as gods. Sometimes, this is baked into the system. The leaders are officially semi divine, like the Roman Emperors and the Egyptian Pharaohs. Other societies fall victim to power hungry maniacs who refuse to leave after they reach the throne. They keep their families in charge for generations, no matter how foolish their royal decisions may be. And others, like the American president, are mentally ill, and were voted into office by a country that should have known better.

For most of the last century, we told ourselves that the West defined history, that dictators were either an aberration or a vestige of the past, doomed to die out. We arrogantly ignored the fact that most governments on Earth had been authoritarian, and still are. How could we believe things are going well as long as the Taliban denies the basic humanity of all women? Or when North Korea can’t keep its lights on at night? We told ourselves that human progress is a straight arrow. We assumed those authoritarian forces would never again rise to power in the West. Yet, now we see a would-be dictator in the White House. If this can happen in the land of the free, it can happen anywhere, and it will keep happening.

This idea comes as an affront to secular society because it believes in progress, but Christianity offers a different view which currently looks more realistic. It argues that there is something wrong with human beings. We are not as we were originally created. Long ago, something went wrong and impaired our moral compass. That idea is embodied in the Garden of Eden myth. The fifth century theologian Augustine argued that every human being genetically inherits a compromised moral state from Adam and Eve due to their disobedience in the garden. He came up with the idea of original sin as Barbarian armies attacked Rome. Augustine believed the Fall explained the persistent cruelty humans inflict on one another. In our time, progressive Christians doubt this genetic theory. We prefer to believe that humans are born good, but society has such a long history of being immoral ( racism, s*xism, classism, homophobia, etc…) that innocent children are corrupted through socialization. Nice kids become racists and homophobes, and are integrated into oppressive systems. In this view, God makes us good, but society makes us bad.

Either way, Christianity tells us that we shouldn’t be surprised when governments are corrupt, or when leaders become meglo-maniacal cry babies. That’s how people are. In some humans, it gets magnified and encouraged all the way to the Oval Office. Most people are told to keep it to a minimum to fit in. But the fault is still there, learned or inherited. And it can explain why “nice” voters can elect a disastrous leader who gave them plenty of warning.

It’s for this reason that Christianity does not expect humans to be able to fix the human condition on our own. Although we don’t talk about this much at church, our religion does not share the Enlightenment’s faith in progress. We don’t really believe that better technology and trade policy is going to give rise to a utopia, here, or on some future Musk Mars colony. We’re already living in a science fiction future compared to the life of any peasant two hundred years ago. Yet, we still have tyrants and pointless wars that feed the egos of leaders and break mothers’ hearts when soldiers don’t return home. Not that much has changed.

Christianity teaches that if we want to find our true life, we have to lose the compromised life we are living now. We have to want to change. It is a call to escape the Fall, which we believe Christ made possible on the cross. To admit that Human 2.0 isn’t good enough, that we need help getting back to Human 1.0. For secular people and non-Christians the challenge is the same. We have to admit we have been oppressing people long before this, usually Black, Indigenous and q***r people. We need to ask if future policies will benefit everyone, not just the few, or the whites, or the middle class.

Back in the Nixon years, the lay theologian William Stringfellow argued that the best indicator of the Fall was how much our conscience had been dulled. When we can tolerate the suffering of the homeless and the poor, then we know we are less human than we were meant to be. To change to the system, we have to change how we see ourselves and have higher standards for what society should achieve. Everyone has to matter, not just the people with money and homes. This shift is not easy, nor will it happen overnight, but it’s better than living on the shores of Lake America. Peace.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

08/30/2026

CarFit is a community-based educational program that allows older drivers to assess how they “fit” in their vehicles. It provides safety information and raises awareness of resources, such as adaptive devices, that can help drivers become more comfortable and confident behind the wheel. Its primary purpose is to educate drivers and share safety information. This is done through a 12-point Checklist that reviews important safety issues related to the fit between a driver and their vehicle such as mirror and stirring wheel placement. The CarFit team is made up of CarFit technicians and Occupational Therapists.

We are hosting CarFit on Saturday September 12th from 0900-1300 (rain or shine) at Lawrence Park Community Church at 2180 Bayview Ave, North York ON M4N 3K7

This is a free event and the CarFit will take approximately 20-30 minutes.
Please see the EventBrite link for more information or to register. Please email [email protected] with any questions!

Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/carfit-tickets-1997773515363?aff=oddtdtcreator "

08/28/2026

Today is the anniversary of Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream ” speech. He delivered it on this day in 1963 in Washington, in front of the reflecting pool, with the statue of Abraham Lincoln behind him. King dreamt of a world where his children would be judged by their character and merit, not by the colour of their skin. Leap forward to our time, and the Trump administration and its supporters claim that their attack on diversity and equity policies are fully consistent with King’s dream. Race should not matter in hiring or schooling.

In a better world, it would not. But in the United States and Canada, it still does. Black people still face discrimination based on their skin colour in hiring and in renting apartments here in Toronto. Reno-eviction rates are higher in the Black neighbourhoods than elsewhere in the city. Blacks are over represented among the homeless, and in jail, too. We’re a long way from realizing King’s dream, and it is a dream worth striving for. But to get there, the work can’t fall only to Blacks and people of colour. Systems have to change to eliminate racism, and that includes the decisions made by landlords and schools. I am glad that King phrased his aspiration as a dream - dreams float through time, like prophetic visions. They can remain inspiring even decades later, when reflecting pools are drained, and no longer reflect anything.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

08/24/2026

On this day in 1968, 750 Catholic bishops gathered for an historic meeting. They gathered in Medellin, Colombia. The conference led to a new emphasis in Catholic theological thinking, now known as liberation theology. Now, before you stop reading, the theological issues they debated have everything to do with how the United States is acting under Trump, now. In fact, a meeting among politicians in Washington this past June debated these theological issues to illuminate why the American government is making life so much harder for the poor. What those Catholic bishops embraced in Colombia in 1968 is what the Trump administration and its enablers explicitly reject now.

Let’s start with that Washington meeting in June. Rep. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, met with Senator Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is also happens a Black Protestant minister. Warnock had publicly questioned the Christianity of politicians like Johnson when they passed bills that were so clearly a disaster for poor Americans. Johnson objected to this, and requested a meeting. Johnson is a member of the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination.

During the meeting, Warnock reminded Johnson that in the Gospel of Matthew, there is a famous passage where Jesus says that anyone who cares for the sick, the poor and the prisoner is also caring for Christ, and would have a place in heaven (Matthew 25). Didn’t Johnson see that the U.S. government has a duty to help the poor around the world and at home?

Johnson replied that the way he understood that passage, it only applied to Christian followers of Jesus, not everyone. Hence, the United States is not expected to help the poor at home or anywhere else. If churches and individuals want to do that, fine, that would be very Christian. But governments are under no such obligation, according to how Johnson understands the passage, which he explained in detail in a post on X. Rep. Warnock disagreed, as do most progressive Christians today. They believe that governments do have a duty to help the poor.

Among Catholics, and in theology generally, this duty to help the poor received a major boost in 1968. When the bishops met in Colombia, most of Latin America’s population was poor, and 50% were illiterate. The top 2-3% of the population controlled most of the wealth, and there were few trade unions with any power. Military dictatorships ruled most of the countries, and more were to come. Before 1968, the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America was mostly in the business of saving souls, but not changing society. The Medellin conference changed that.

Over two weeks, the bishops took stock of the deep poverty and oppression experienced by their parishioners. They declared that it was the Church’s duty to work to end this oppression. Jesus calls for all people to be live in dignity, which is impossible when they are poor and uneducated. Indeed, the bishops declared that Jesus does take sides in political matters. He is on the side of the poor, and wants them to be liberated. This became known as Christ’s preferential option for the poor.

In the bishops’ declaration from Medellin, they wrote that Christians must “ defend the rights of the poor and oppressed according to the Gospel commandment, urging our governments and the upper classes to eliminate anything which might destroy social peace: injustice, inertia, venality, insensibility.”
This call to change society, to challenge its oppressive systems and governments became known as “liberation theology.” It sparked a major change in how Catholics saw their role in the world. It was no longer enough to simply pray for the poor. It became necessary to work with them to oppose the oppressive military rulers and corporations which kept citizens in poverty.

This new militancy was not welcome by the ruling classes. Indeed, when Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador embraced this cause in the 1970s, it led to his assassination. Later Popes, like Benedict, criticized it as too marxist. Pope Francis, by contrast, was clearly highly influenced by liberation theology.

Not surprisingly, members of evangelical right in the United States have opposed liberation theology, and persist in thinking that the role of the church is to support the spiritual welfare of individuals, and not to change the systems which keep people impoverished. The Medellin conference played a major role in pushing Roman Catholic and many non-Catholic theologians towards a more social justice oriented focus, long before that became “woke.” The bishops advanced the cause of social justice in Christian theology in a way that is just as relevant today as it was back in 1968. Peace.

Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

08/23/2026

Our annual Christmas Market is happening again this year on November 22nd! If you or someone you know is interested in being a vendor, please get in touch with us at [email protected]

08/10/2026

I gave a sermon about Christopher Nolan’s film “The Odyssey” yesterday in church, which may seem like an odd choice. After all, the film is based on an ancient Greek poem that was written many centuries before Christ. It features pagan Greeks who worship Zeus and the other gods on Mount Olympus. It seems about as unChristian as a story can get ( it also features a lot of bloodshed). Nonetheless, I think Nolan has created a Christian film, despite this being an old story about a hero who lives in a world full of pagan gods.

In the original poem, written by Homer, the gods are everywhere. They decide when it will rain, if a storm will hit Odysseus’ ship, and whether he will stay on an island for a day or seven years. Some gods want him to get home, others hate him and make his life hell. Anytime someone catches a break, the human characters say it was because a god helped them. If they experience misfortune, it is because a god has cursed them. Humans in the ancient Greek world were seen as the pawns of the gods. But that is not the way Nolan wanted to tell the story.

In Nolan’s film, the gods are pushed off stage. We hear a rumbling of thunder a few times, suggesting that Zeus is unhappy, but we never see him or any other god on screen, with one exception. In Nolan’s film, the goddess Athena, played by Zendaya, is barely more than Odysseus’ invisible friend, his pacifist conscience. This is not at all the way she appears in the poem. In Homer’s tale, Athena is a mover and shaker, lobbying Zeus for Odysseus, tricking human beings, and even joining in battle on his behalf. At one point, she even demands that Odysseus be more violent, not less. But Nolan isn’t interested in telling a story where the gods are in charge. He has created an action film, where the hero is the star of the show. If he has opponents, they are ones he can overpower, kill or escape. Nolan is not interested in a story about powerless humans.

And that attitude about the gods is personified by his hero, Odysseus, played by Matt Damon. In Nolan’s film, Odysseus wants as little to do with the gods as possible. He acts as though humans can make their own way in life without divine intervention. At one point in the film, Odysseus’ ship and crew are engulfed in a terrible storm. A character begs him to make a sacrifice to placate Poseidon, the enraged god of the sea. Matt Damon’s Odysseus just stares back, unmoved, No way, José. Nolan’s Odysseus is a man’s man, whose fate is in his own hands, he’s not any gods’ pawn. This makes Nolan’s Odysseus a good action hero, but it has nothing to do with the original story.

The film’s hero is more like a middle American Christian of the early 21st century. He’s a family man who never fools around on his wife, unlike the original Odysseus. He’s violent towards enemies and home invaders, as Americans are in our time. Like a good Christian, he doesn’t believe in any of that pagan god stuff. He just wants to get home to his wife and son. And, unlike Odysseus, Nolan’s hero feels remorse for the violence he has committed. Nolan even shows him confessing his sins in a scene that looks like a Catholic confessional booth. Nolan is a lapsed Catholic, and the values he learnt as a school boy have shaped his version of the Odyssey.

Nolan has presented us with a Christian Trojan horse of a movie. Matt Damon’s Odysseus suggests that civilization is being torn apart by deception and a lack of kindness towards the poor and strangers, a fine Christian sentiment. This is a serious departure from the original story, as critics like Emily Wilson have pointed out. But, it is also a wonderful rebuke to the current American Christian nationalist vision of power. It claims that strangers and immigrants should be feared and mistreated, and that violence can solve most international problems. Ezra Klein rightly argues that Nolan’s film reworks the Odyssey to be a kind of Christian morality tale in disguise. For that reason, I am glad that so many people are going to see it and are talking about it. This is what good art does. We don’t have to agree about whether we like it, or even what it means, but it should be worth discussing, and even talking about from a pulpit. Peace.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

08/07/2026

Come to LPCC Aug 16th for a FREE concert after service!

08/06/2026

Today is the anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. At the time, the Allies celebrated it as a quick way to end the Second World War, saving the lives of thousands of American soldiers by bringing the war to a sudden end, after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. What was less obvious at the time was the toll this new weapon would have on the Western psyche, a scar we continue to live with today.

Some years ago, Bob Dylan told an interviewer that Hiroshima was responsible for the birth of rock n’ roll. He said that before Hiroshima, if you wanted to kill a lot of people, you needed to do it face to face. But the atomic bomb made it possible to kill hundreds of thousands of people with just the flick of a switch, dropping a single bomb from high above. "The atom bomb fuelled all aspects of society," he said. "I know it gave rise to the music we were playing. If you look at all these early performers, they were atom-bomb-fueled. Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran…”

The bomb introduced anger into pop music. Before 1945, popular music could be sad ( the blues), happy ( swing music), maudlin, sentimental, but it was rarely angry. But after Hiroshima, anger was everywhere in pop music. Rock is suffused with it, so is hip hop and rap. Metal is nothing without rage. Dylan’s point was that the bombing of Hiroshima was traumatic. It unnerved America and the West, and all those unresolved traumatic feelings of guilt and fear went into popular music.

But those emotions also shaped how the Baby Boomer generation worked, played and partied. They grew up with a constant fear that each day could be their last. That generation burned through the world’s resources with little thought for the future, or what all that pollution would mean for future generations. Corporations run by baby boomers hid evidence that ci******es were deadly, and that fossil fuels were causing climate change. Boomers ( I am one) acted like there was no tomorrow, so we should just party like it’s 1999, in Prince’s words. That refusal to consider future consequences was deeply influenced by the idea that civilization could end at any time. That starts on August 6th, 1945, with the bombing of Hiroshima.

Today, in 2026, we need to make a choice about how we will achieve safety: will it be through fear or care? The authoritarians of the world keep choosing fear, telling us peace can be achieved through bombing, with every day proving them wrong. There’s lots of money to be made in building bombs, but the psychic price is too high. Health and education suffer financially and personally when a society invests in death and fear.

We need to rekindle the flame of peace, where we dream of a world that can negotiate fair deals between nations without a bomb on the table. That may seem impossible right now. Our skepticism is simply the measure of how deep a hole we’re in, and how impoverished our imaginations have become. That’s why we need to dare to dream of a way out of the hole. We need to imagine a way back to the daylight, where children can imagine a future that is worth living. And they can sing with joy, not fear nor anger.

Peace be with you.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

08/05/2026

Recently, the Trump government slapped tariffs on almost all of its trading partners, accusing these countries of sending goods to the U.S. produced with forced labour, a.k.a. modern slavery. In some cases, like Brazil, countries is accused of using child labour for picking crops. In other cases, the alleged practice is indirect; the Netherlands is accused of making chocolate using cocoa beans picked with child labour in other nations. Canada is also on the list. We are accused of inadequately enforcing our own laws banning imports from countries that used forced labour. Yet, one country that definitely uses forced labour at home hasn’t been part of the debate: the United States. They have a longstanding system of forced labour, which is written right into their constitution, which makes their current tariff an extraordinary exercise in hypocrisy.

The United States doesn’t talk about this much, but their prison system is a form of modern slavery. Shortly after the end of the Civil War, the Americans revised their constitution to make slavery illegal. They added the 13th amendment, which states that slavery is illegal unless one is a convict in prison. In that case, slavery is still permitted. Almost immediately afterwards, Southern states passed vagrancy laws to make it easy to arrest Black men when travelling. They were thrown in prison, forced to work on chain gangs, sometimes in the same plantations where they had been enslaved.

This may sound like a historical footnote, but this same form of convict labour is now a major feature of the American economy. Private and state prisons rely on it for cheap labour, as do many private corporations. It is standard practice in American prisons for prisoners to work for pennies a day, or no pay at all. If they refuse to work, they can be punished, including long stints in solitary confinement. Forced labour is a crime in most countries, since it is a modern form of slavery. To this day, Blacks are over represented in the prison population. In 2023, A United Nations report on the American prison and justice system stated that it was “ astonished by evidence stating that this access to free or almost free Black work force, through free or poorly paid prison forced labour, exists to this day in the United States, constituting a contemporary form of slavery.” The Americans have the world’s largest prison population, with almost two million people behind bars.

Now, you may object, prisoners should be expected to work while they are doing time, after all, they need rehabilitation, and they owe a debt to society. And it is true that many countries in the West expect prisoners to work while they serve their time. Some get paid market rates for their work. Here in Canada, the Stephen Harper government reduced convict wages back in 1981 to $6.90 a day ( not per hour), and the rates have not risen since. Canadian prisoners do not have the right to collective bargaining, or workplace safety benefits, and most of their meagre pay is deducted to pay for services within prison. Some prison rights advocates here have argued that the Canadian system also qualifies as forced labour, although the most recent U.N. report did not make that case.

The Americans, on the other hand, the ones who levied the forced labour tariff on their major trading partners, do have a prison system that qualifies as a form of modern slavery. Their constitution admits as much. This is not news to the Canadian government. Over a century ago, laws were enacted to block imports of goods made with American prison labour. In April, a report by the International Human Rights Program of the University of Toronto demanded that Canada do more to block these imports. President Trump has not spoken out against this system, despite claiming to defend the rights of those in forced labour elsewhere. It is likely that Trump just likes tariffs, so when courts knocked down his last tariffs, he came up with the forced labour pretext to reimpose them.

In one way, Trump has done us a favour. His new tariff has brought the question of forced labour back into the public eye. We should be concerned about children who are forced to be soldiers, or work on plantations. We should be concerned about people who are the victims of s*x trafficking, here in Canada and all over the world. And we should be concerned about the coercion often experienced by temporary migrant workers, here in Canada and elsewhere. Forced labour is a real problem, and it should be addressed. But it would help if the Americans put themselves under the same microscope, and recognized that slavery lives on in their own country, even if under a different name. Peace.

- Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.

Address

2180 Bayview Avenue
Toronto, ON
M4N3K7

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 3pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm
Saturday	9am - 5pm
Sunday	8am - 1pm

Telephone

+14164891551

Website

http://www.lawrenceparkchurch.ca/

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