There’s a rule in nature that you can’t only do one thing. If you dam a river to make hydroelectricity, you will impede the fish trying to swim upriver to spawn. If you drain wetlands, flooding usually increases elsewhere. If you remove trees from steep slopes, erosion results.

In December, last year, Canada experienced the truth of that rule in another way. That’s when Parliament passed Bill C-3 to extend citizenship to those born outside of Canada.

The new rules retroactively restore Canadian citizenship to someone who was born outside of Canada before December 15, 2025 and who can prove that an ancestor, such as grandparent or great-grandparent, was a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947.

Called the Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, the bill was designed to fix a problem that arose after an Ontario court ruled the “first-generation limit” on citizenship was unconstitutional.

“As an observant Jew who was celebrating Shavuot, a holiday mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a time of rejoicing, I was shocked to open my paper on Friday morning to see our premier indulging in an antisemitic Christian trope — apparently being tough on drug dealers is ‘Old Testament,’ and having love and compassion for drug users is ‘New Testament’?”

That’s what a writer of a letter to the editor of the Free Press said last week. He was writing in response to a remark made by premier Wab Kinew about his approach to drug dealers and drug users in the province.

At an event on May 21, Kinew said Manitoba’s stance would be “Old Testament for the drug dealers, New Testament for the drug users.”

By that he meant there will be “harm reduction and compassion and recovery” for users, but “law enforcement” for those who deal drugs.

Decades have passed since We Shall Overcome was deemed the unofficial anthem of the American civil rights and anti-war movements, but the folk song — originally a gospel spiritual — remains as relevant today, and as frequently sung, as it was back in the 1960s. In the last few months alone, the song’s lyrics have loudly echoed through the crowds at non-violent rallies, protests and sit-ins around the world, and been performed onstage by renowned artists, social activists and community choirs.

One of those community choirs is the Canadian Mennonite University’s (CMU) Voices for Peace. Voices for Peace was launched in March 2026 as an extension of the Anabaptist university’s Singing Resistance program. That program had brought like-minded voices together earlier in the winter to sing in solidarity with those being affected by the ICE raids in Minneapolis.

“We started getting questions about how this work might extend to community protests,” says Anneli Loepp Thiessen, an assistant professor of music at the university and one of the choir co-ordinators. “So we began Voices for Peace as a mobile, rapid-response group that can share music for peace at protests or other community events.”

The mobile, rapid-response nature of the group means that it is not a traditional or typical choir.