Oh, Ann. Say it ain't so.

Word is circulating that American conservative political commentator, Ann Coulter, is considering making a complaint to the Canada Human Rights Commission because she was “threatened” by a letter from the Provost of the University of Ottawa.

Coulter is on a three-University speaking tour. She spoke at the University of Western Ontario without a lot of fuss and she was supposed to speak at Ottawa yesterday, but her appearance was cancelled because about 2,000 protestors showed up to try to prevent her from speaking. They succeeded.

The Provost sent her a letter prior to her travels to Canada lecturing her on responsible speech and advising her to bone-up on Canadian free speech limitations and libel law before she opens her mouth. Some people think the disclosure of this letter in the media and blogosphere probably encouraged the protestors to go out and close her down.

Coulter is now claiming she is a victim of discrimination and abuse because of this letter.

My advice to Coulter is to nix the complaint.

I didn’t read the letter as threatening in any way. It was stupid, no doubt about that. And maybe the real complaint should be why the taxpayers are expected to fund Ontario universities when they employ people of the limited intellectual caliber of this Provost. But, that is not Ann’s issue.

The reason I would advise against proceeding in this manner is that she will just act to legitimize the HRCs. Mssrs. Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn have spent a lot of time “de-normalizing” (Levant’s conceit) these PC monsters and by submitting to their jurisdiction, Coulter gives them license to once more try to stifle free speech.

I think the Provost was perfectly entitled to express his opinions, just as Coulter was. She should not be an agent acting to prevent his right to free speech by resorting to the government to enshrine her “victimhood”.

The larger issue, which we need to consider, is how we prevent mobs from shutting down free speech on our campuses. Clearly, it is a problem the universities are unable to solve. We have to solve it for them. No longer should we view them as these private enclaves of entitlement governed solely by their own rules.

ADDENDUM: When I wrote the foregoing, I was unaware that Allan Rock was the President of the University of Ottawa. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes and I understand why this whole event got completely out of hand.

The breezes are beginning to blow the other way

Sometimes it is hard to spot differences between Americans and Canadians, but sometimes not so much.

In the United States something called “the race card” is often played to settle an argument before anybody can dissect the real issue too closely. We saw it happen when Johnny Cochran played it in the O.J. Simpson murder trial to discredit a police officer’s testimony. A more recent example involved Professor Gates in Cambridge, Mass., screaming both race discrimination and privilege at the same time as he was being hauled off by a pissed-off policeman.

In fact, under President Obama, the race card seems to have risen to new heights, but that is for another posting.

In Canada, it does not have the same resonance. What plays well here, however, is “the victim card”. We seem to be a society obsessed with finding victims, and usually victims in a collective identity rather than an individual one. If you are aboriginal, a Jew, a Muslim, a black, a Hindu, a gay, a woman, handicapped, homeless, etc., you will at one time or another been identified as a victim because of that status. Naturally, following such identification are the suggested public policy solutions to either sustain your victimhood (the homeless) or to rectify it (gays).

Clever political operatives always know how and when to play the victim card to their advantage.

In an earlier posting, June 23, I cautioned Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn about the danger of playing into Jennifer Lynch’s public relations campaign to portray herself and her Canadian Human Rights agency as the victims of the likes of Messrs. Steyn and Levant:

My suggestion to Levant and Steyn is to cool the sophomoric name-calling you regularly employ. No more “Commissar Lynch” or “Queen of the censors.” This only plays to her position that you folks are unreasonable and “unbalanced”, and that she is the real victim.

And stop attacking her about her spending habits and making her out to be a ninny. She has both inertia and an uninformed parliament on her side, and even if they are informed, there are enough of the bleeding-heart liberals to tip the balance to keep CHRC exactly as it is, or, worse make it bigger and more powerful. It happened in the bastion of conservatism, Alberta, and it could happen in Ottawa.

You keep up the personal attacks and you may be, as they say, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Since neither one obviously reads my utterings, or if they do, simply dismiss them because I am not one of the fully-fledged members of their cheerleading squad, they continued, bull-in-china shop fashion, to personally attack Ms. Lynch.

Well, according to this posting by Levant, the breezes are beginning to blow the other way. A former free speech supporter of Levant’s, an influential westerner, and, importantly, according to Levant, one of the card-carrying liberal left he waxed on about getting onside, Janet Keeping, has broken ranks and has attacked Levant for his personal broadsides against Lynch.

What does Levant do? Of course, he now attacks the credibility of his attacker, accusing her of that new philosophical no-no, “false moral relevance.”

Keeping’s column may open the doors to other journalists, editors and other opinion shapers who have to date held their noses by siding with obnoxious Levant on free speech. If Keeping has the balls to break ranks to defend the victim Lynch, how can others be so crass as to not rise to the occasion and balance out the personal attacks?

And, if they do, it will not be possible for politicians to safely dismantle the CHRC.

Cream pies and free speech in Canada

Richard Warman mocks Ickes

We have heard a great deal over the last year from Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn about free speech, the craven media, and the activities of Jewish award winner, Richard Warman, a former Canadian Human Rights Commission investigator who appears to have made a handsome financial return from the human rights industry in Canada by posting racist comments on websites and then complaining about how he was offended by postings on those websites.

This link takes you to a fascinating British documentary on a fellow named David Ickes who has a worldview not in keeping with the norm. He may be a kook, but, in my view, he is entitled to say what he thinks. The video is 50 minutes in length, and the last half is devoted to Ickes’s reception in Vancouver, where a coalition of Jewish activists tried to shut him down.

He was kicked out of Canada’s largest book chain when he went to a book signing that he had been invited to and he was booted from a radio station that had invited him to a morning talk show. He did manage to appear on television, but the host started the questioning with an on-the-street university professor who pronounced Ikes a kind of a nutter. Normally, you would ask your studio guest to elaborate his theory before turning to others to challenge him.

Altogether, it was a very poor showing from the Canadian media establishment and Canada’s Jewish establishment, particularly since Ikes never says anything that is anti-Jewish. The Jews are persecuting him for a perceived metaphor.

However, what becomes clear, as he progresses through Vancouver, is the general good sense of the ordinary Canadians who clearly recognize the value of free speech and discount the efforts of the establishment and the elites to muzzle Ickes.

Watch for Warman to equate an attempt to throw a pie in the Icke’s face, intended to interrupt, humiliate and discredit him, with an exercise in free speech. Lost on Warman is the idea that Ickes should be free to speak without a pie in the face.

Unfortunately for Canada, I think the intellectually-warped Warman mentality prevails amongst the establishment and the elites.

Why do our courts of justice enforce pure politics?

There is an interesting story in today’s National Post about the efforts of Jennifer Lynch, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to “re-normalize” (to paraphrase a conceit of Ezra Levant) the mandate of the CHRC, and by extension that of all the other HRCs in Canada, in the matter of the pursuit of hate speech. Lynch has been all over the media in the last week or so after the tabling of a report to the Parliament of Canada, delivering very much the same message.

This is what she had to say:

“Canadians are uninformed and deliberately misinformed about the hate speech provisions of human rights law, and are engaged in a debate that is "completely unbalanced."

To people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant this utterance would be open season for snorting down their noses. They think they have the upper hand and have this woman on the run. I think they are misreading the situation and are in danger of being outflanked by a wily fox. I think she is getting some pretty good PR advice that, no doubt, we are paying for.

When Ezra Levant published his book, Shakedown, I had an occasion to speak about it at an annual meeting in Toronto of a volunteer association made up of some very knowledgeable, well-educated and socially active people, about 40 in number. These are the kind of people one would normally expect to be up on news and current affairs and they represented a broad section of the community in ethnicity, gender and age.

I was making a proposal regarding Levant’s book and was met by blank stares, followed by a moment of silence. Then a U of T professor of science, with Phds up the ying-yang, put up her hand and asked, “Who is Ezra Levant?” There were only two people in that room who knew the Levant story and I was one of them.

So, when Lynch says that Canadians are uninformed, don’t be dismissive. I think she is right about that. And the other woman who would agree is Christine Elliott, a Whitby lawyer, a member of the Ontario provincial legislature, and current contender for the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.

She has poo-poohed a couple of her rivals who want to dismantle the Ontario Human Rights Commission, claiming that this would be a no-win policy platform, much like the ill-fated campaign of former leader, John Tory, to fund faith-based schooling. It would only be a no-win if the electorate are not up to speed on the whole hate speech debacle. She senses they are not.

One thing that might be informing this opinion is accusations that increasingly appear by leftie supporters of HRCs, like lawyer, Mary Cornish, who frames the discussion this way: “The conservatives are against human rights.” That mud could stick in an election campaign.

Of course, the second part of Lynch’s comment contradicts the first assertion. If Canadians are uninformed, then how can they be engaged in a debate? But, leaving aside the logic, it is the accusations she continues to make that her enemies are engaged in a misinformation campaign that is most troublesome.

How does she handle this misinformation problem? She sends the issue to Parliament, where she says,

"We welcome this debate. We want it to be an informed debate in the right forum, a place where people can have an informed dialogue. [That place is] Parliament, and parliamentary committees. This why we did a special report to Parliament [last week]. That's the appropriate forum."

Many people would agree with that. So, it isn’t necessary for her to appear opposite Ezra Levant on a split screen to debate point by point every little unsettling matter concerning the CHRC, because the real debate, as far CHRC is concerned, will be held by parliamentarians.

Levant can splutter and fulminate all he likes, but she has finessed the public debate and need only appear in the media to spread her propaganda.

Clearly, she has staked out the victim territory and intends to defend it. We all know that being able to portray yourself as a bigger victim than the next guy plays well in Canada. So far Steyn and Levant have come as far as they have by pointing to their victimhood and telling Canadians “this too could be you.”

Now Lynch is saying that the whole defense of human rights will be sacrificed by these media bully types; in code, “conservatives want to get rid of human rights”. The valiant human rights defenders are the real victims, and she is biggest victim of all.

“We have experienced 16 months of invective hurled at us, and at any time when anybody has tried to speak up and correct misinformation, gross distortions, characterizations, then the very next day there's been some full-frontal assault through the blogs, through mainstream media. I have a file. I'm sure I have 1,200, certainly several hundred of these things," she said.
"There is an agenda out there, and I’m a public servant responsible for giving effect to the principle that 'individuals should have the right equal to others to make for themselves a life they are able and wish to have,' and I'm going to do it. I'm not going to sit by. Others are afraid to speak out because they know they're going to be attacked. If you Google my name today you'll see how I've been attacked."

She could win this with this strategy.

My suggestion to Levant and Steyn is to cool the sophomoric name-calling you regularly employ. No more “Commissar Lynch” or “Queen of the censors.” This only plays to her position that you folks are unreasonable and “unbalanced”, and that she is the real victim.

And stop attacking her about her spending habits and making her out to be a ninny. She has both inertia and an uninformed parliament on her side, and even if they are informed, there are enough of the bleeding-heart liberals to tip the balance to keep CHRC exactly as it is, or, worse make it bigger and more powerful. It happened in the bastion of conservatism, Alberta, and it could happen in Ottawa.

You keep up the personal attacks and you may be, as they say, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Keep you arguments focused on the evil; i.e. the suppression of free expression.

The thing she said that really did make me laugh out loud, however, was this gem:

"The Criminal Code plays a very valid role. However, when we look at the statistics, we find that there aren't a lot of specialized [police] hate teams across the country. To cede, to remove our jurisdiction, would leave a gap that might persist for years or a lifetime because it would require numerous jurisdictions to step into a gap, and they may or may not be willing to resource that, etcetera, etcetera. So [the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act] is an important section. It does serve a purpose."

So the reason why you don’t see many prosecutions under the hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code is because the police forces don’t have hate speech specialists?

I don’t suppose the requirements of the criminal justice system that the prosecutor prove “beyond reasonable doubt” the elements of the crime, the presumption of innocence of the accused, the onus on the prosecutor to prove the case, including the intention of the accused, proof of harm rather than “likely to cause offense” standard, the defenses available to the accused of truth and the honest belief in the truth of the statements made, have anything to do with the paucity of hate crime prosecutions.

Of course, like the MO of the HRCs, if you reverse all of that and make the accused responsible for proving their innocence, eliminating intention as an element of the offense, and removing truth and the honest belief in truth as defenses, you very likely will get a larger number of prosecutions

But you won’t get justice. And that is the precious commodity in a liberal democracy you don’t get from the HRCs.

A few weeks ago on the TV Ontario current affairs program, The Agenda, a panel of lawyers, all of whom, in one way or another feed at the trough of the human rights industry, vigorously defended the role of the Ontario HRC.

Hmmm. I wonder why?

Some of them made the point that the HRC should be viewed as a specialist agency like the Ontario Labour Relations Board or the Ontario Workmens’ Insurance Board, where the staff is specialists. Specialists in what? Well, in discrimination, for one thing, and in Jennifer Lynch’s world it would be in hate speech.

Consider the following assertions:

Homosexuals
• Homosexuality is a "perversion"
• Homosexuals "spread disorder on earth"
• Homosexuals and lesbians should be "exterminated in this life"
• "Homosexuals caught performing sodomy are beheaded"
Infidels
• Most Infidels “live like animals”
• "they are evil people, they love perversity", and "they are our enemies"
• "sending our sons and daughters to the schools of the Infidels has devastating effects on their beliefs, their behavior and their character. For the children of Infidels are the most pervert children. At a very early age, they adopt the behavior of their parents "
• "Moreover, attending schools with Infidels may lead to friendship in their heart for Infidel children, which contradicts the foundations of Islam. Because Islam prohibits befriending even the closest relatives if they are Infidels"
• "there is no doubt that it is not permissible for a Muslim to love or to take as friend whoever follows a religion other than Islam"
• "Infidels say they are open-minded, but in reality they have opened their mind to garbage and filth, and closed it to all that is pure and right !"
Men are superior to women
• "men are superior to women and better than them". In general, "men have a more complete intellect and memory than women"
• "Infidels acknowledge this reality, but they do not want to accept the truth because they are blinded by their passions"
Muslim women are superior to Infidel women
• "The veiled Muslim woman is a light in the darkness of the 20th century, she carries the torch of modesty, of chastity and of Islamic values"
• "She brings the liberating message of "LA ILAHA ILLALLAH" to the poor western woman who has lost her femininity, her dignity and her honor and who is now crying for her savior"
• The consequences of immodesty are "rape, venereal diseases, AIDS, herpes, single-parent families, crime, poverty, ignorance and many others"
• "Infidels will never admit that these social problems are the result of their refusal to submit to Allah, because they are consumed with pride"
• "... male Infidels wanted to liberate women only for economic reasons (cheap labor) and to sexually exploit them"
• “male Infidels will not be happy with us until our women are in their beds, in their magazines and in their dancing clubs !”
• "If a Muslim woman marries a non-Muslim man ... their marriage is invalid, in fact it is adultery"
Ethnic groups are not equal• "Can we doubt the superiority of Islamic principles over the corrupt principles of Eastern and Western cultures ? Culture is based on the beliefs of a nation. The superior culture is the one closest to the revelation of Allah !"
• "This is the reason why ethnic groups are not equal"
Muslims are superior to Infidels
• "... a Muslim must never put his brother in Islam at the same level as an Infidel. In fact, to place Infidels at equality with Muslims is one of the greatest form of ignorance and injustice"
• "The rule is that the most disobedient among Muslims is better than the most virtuous, the most polite, the most honest and the most loyal among the Infidels"
• "The Muslim nation is actually the most balanced and the most righteous"
Christianity
• "It is because of this religion of lies, which goes against human nature, that the West is now full of perversity, corruption and adultery"
Jews
• Jews "spread corruption and chaos on earth"
• Most Jews "seek only material goods and money, apart from that, they have nothing"
• Jews "unjustly occupy" Palestine for the sole purpose of "filling this land with corruption and transgress the laws of Allah in the name of secularism"
Slavery
• "owning slaves is not prohibited"
• "Allah has allowed men to marry two, three or four women, but one who fears he will not be fair can marry only one or have slaves."
Democracy is contrary to Islam. Jihad is a duty of sedition• "Democracy is a system in total contradiction with Islam"
• "... freedom is unknown in Islam, it contradicts Islam, therefore it is a false concept"
• "[freedom] serves to justify corruption" and "stooping to the lowest levels of bestiality"
• "Freedom of conscience is actually freedom to leave Islam !"
• “Anyone who leaves Islam, cut his neck”
• "no matter how it is understood and applied ... secularism is a pure negation of Islam"
• "If Muslims are strong and they have the ability to fight the Infidel ruler, to overthrow him from power and replace him with a Muslim ruler, it is mandatory for them to do so. This is part of Jihad in the path of Allah"
• "injustice will never disappear from the face of the earth before Islam and Sharia are properly applied throughout the world"
• "Islam commands us to destroy all idols", i.e. "democracy, human rights, secularism, freedom, equality, and modernity"
• in an Islamic state, Christians and Jews can keep their religion but they must pay a sum of money, the Jizyah. "The purpose of the Jizyah is to humiliate and punish Infidels to encourage them to accept Islam." The other Infidels (Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, etc.) have no options but to accept Islam or “be killed"

If I published a book in Canada with those kinds of statements would you not think they would be viewed as expressions “likely” to cause some people to be held in contempt or to stir feelings of hatred towards them? Do you not think the Canadian Human Rights Commission, with its specialists in hate speech, would be all over this?

Well, you would be wrong on all counts. Such a book was published by a Saudi-trained Montreal imam, and a formal complaint was lodged with the CHRC, and was summarily rejected as being without merit. See this website for fuller details.

Just how much expertise in hate speech does one need to be employed on the public dime?

The problem this Montreal decision highlights is that what HRCs adjudicate is politics, not justice. HRC orders are filed in real courts and are enforceable under our justice system.

So the big policy question: why do we permit the justice system to enforce politics?

Only in Canada you say!

Jennifer Lynch, head of the CHRC and renowned international gadabout.

This is nothing short of incredible. But, this is also Canada.

What a country!

Here is the background.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), which has been under fire and public scrutiny for the last 18 months, has issued a report to the Canadian Parliamentary Judicial Committee recommending that, among other things,, not only should it continue in the business of prosecuting hate speech, but that the defense of honest belief in the truth of the statements being prosecuted should be removed from the Criminal Code of Canada.

In case you are not up to speed. Hate speech is a criminal offense in Canada under its uniform criminal code (applies to all of Canada). It is aimed at very serious speech; e.g., something that would advocate violence against an identifiable group, say Jews or Muslims or gays.

But, like any criminal offense under the code it has all the protections that have been incorporated in our criminal justice system since the 13th century. Aside from issues such as burden of proof (the prosecutor’s), beyond reasonable doubt (the prosecutor’s), and the presumption of innocence which attach to criminal prosecutions, it also has statutory defenses; like, it is a defense that the accused honestly believed the truth of the statements made, or that the statements were, in fact, factually true.

None of these applies to prosecutions under CHRC, which is why we have had numerous prosecutions under that mandate, and very few pursuant to the criminal code. Therefore, the thrust of the CHRC is that the criminal justice system should bring itself more in line with the Human Rights tribunal’s protocol rather than the reverse.

This is nothing short of astonishing, given the history of this debate.

When the CHRC came under attack for its attempts to muzzle free speech in the media, it commissioned what it thought would be a self-serving report from Professor Richard Moon, of the University of Windsor, a known human rights advocate. It paid $50,000 of your money for that report.

Money well spent if you are a taxpayer, but not if you are a recipient of an income from the public trough, like the folks who work in the CHRC. Moon recommended that CHRC should get out of the hate speech prosecution arena and leave it in the hands of the police.

Sorry, message not received. Answer, commission the report we really want and didn’t get from Moon. How much? About $100,000 of your money.

Now here is the funny part.

Yes, there actually is something funny.

The head of the CHRC, Jennifer Lynch, (pictured above), who globe trots on your dollar quite a lot to bring herself up to speed on human rights was invited by the national television network, CTV, to discuss her recommendations on a public affairs program. This was good, because she recommended a public debate of the issue of free speech versus hate speech and she agreed to appear.

Then she discovered that the television network had also invited Ezra Levant, who has been the subject of prosecution by human rights bodies and who has written a best-selling book critical of the human rights industry (in Canada, that is an appropriate term). She would have nothing to do with the program if Levant was allowed to debate her – the queen of censorship proclaiming censorship of Levant. She sent a nice young flunky in her place, but he was instructed not to debate Levant (presumably on pain of job loss – oh, how censorship weaves itself into all sorts of nooks and crannies), and was only to spin the public relations line of what a wonderful contribution the CHRC makes to Canadian democracy.

Think I am making this up? Paste the following link in your browser and watch the video for yourself. It’s about 14 minutes in length and starts with a short commercial, so be patient, because what follows is priceless.


http://watch.ctv.ca/news/power-play/friday-june-12/#clip182578











http://watch.ctv.ca/news/power-play/friday-june-12/#clip182578

Now it's Canada's turn to hide its face in shame

This member of the British Parliament, George Galloway, appears to be a publicity-addled extreme left-wing nutbar (he laments the dissolution of the Soviet Union), with a whiff of corruption attaching to him, and his views are likely too extreme to be popular with anybody outside of the membership of the NDP.

However, he should have been admitted to Canada to say his piece and, if in the course of saying it, he violates any criminal law he should be arrested and charged. How he can be a security risk to this country escapes me.

So what if he supplied aid to Hamas? He didn’t come here and raise the money and if he were to do so, then he could be charged under the anti-terrorist laws.

I am surprised that Ezra Levant would line up on the side of the government on this one and I think his reasoning is just so much sophistry. There is less reason for the Canadian government to bar Galloway than there was for the British government to bar Geert Wilders – at least in Britain’s case there was at least a threat of public disorder.

Sorry Ezra, but I'm just not buying it

I see that Ezra Levant is bursting at the seams over a book he has just written about the human rights racket in Canada. He would like everybody to buy it, not just because it shows how very smart he is and how stupid other people are (reason enough to write it), but because he is also faced with law suits and needs the money.

Now I appreciate Ezra’s battle for the preservation of free speech in this country and in other circumstances I would be inclined to line up and buy it. But I am not going to do that. I will certainly read it. I will borrow it from the library when it becomes available, or from a colleague or a neighbour, but I won’t fork out my money for it.

Ezra wrote a blog posting mocking the atheist bus ad campaign, calling the atheists behind it “cowards”, dumping on the slogan of the atheists and even going so far as to make fun of the physical appearance of a spokesperson for the campaign.

Lost on Levant was the issue of free speech prompted by this campaign, a subject about which he fancies himself as the leading Canadian expert (if not international expert, since he addressed the U.S. Congress).

The same sort of pencil-necked government bureaucrats that he has been whaling on for the past 18 months turned down the atheists’ ads in the cities of Halifax, Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, Ottawa and London, Ontario. The city council of Ottawa has since reversed the decision of its transit authority.

They may be a different set of bureaucrats to the ones in the HRCs, but they march to the same drumbeat. They couldn’t run the ads because they might “offend” somebody.

Indeed, they were aided and abetted in their back room deliberations by utterings of Dr. Charles McVety, Canada’s leading evangelical spokesperson, the Catholic Bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, and even Ezra’s old Muslim pugilistic pal, Imam Syed Sohawardy, also from Calgary, who all jumped in to tell people how they were offended.

One would have thought when the imam spoke it might have prompted Levant to take a second look and reconsider what he wrote. Nope.

So, I have to assume from this record that Ezra Levant is all for free speech unless it happens to be the views of atheists, for whose rights he doesn’t give a shit.

Sorry Ezra, as an atheist, I have decided I’ll hang onto my 15 bucks and spend it on something more deserving, or on somebody more deserving.

And I hope that other non-religious people who read this will follow suit.

So, Ezra, where are the Muslims radicals?

On February 3, I took issue with Ezra Levant for mocking atheists with their bus ad campaign. Ezra’s main point was that atheists should be attacking Islamists.

I tried to put paid to the notion that Islamists were a problem for atheists in Canada, that atheists still had issues with the majority Christians.

Since that post, the Canadian initiator of the campaign, Justin Trottier, has written an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen pointing out that the neutral reference to God in the ads could just as easily apply to the God of Jews, Muslims and Christians. He is correct. He is also correct in stating that the purpose of the ads was not to attack any religion, but simply to promote discussion around the concept of God and morality.

I have been following the editorials across the country on this matter, as well as the letters to the editors, and in each and every case where a religious person weighed in on the issue, either for or against, they were Christians. I have yet to see an opinion expressed by a Muslim. I think this vindicates my view that Christians are more concerned with atheism, and its potential impact, than are the other religions.

Oh, yes, and as far as I been able to determine to date, Ezra is the only Jew who has commented. Unfortunately, he found himself on the wrong side of this one.

Professor Moon in the Amethyst Room with a self-interest

I see that Professor Richard Moon is all over the news and blogosphere today. He is a University of Windsor law professor who was paid to write a report for the federal Human Rights Commission concerning the controversy brought on by the CHRC’s administration of Article 13 of the Canada Human Rights Code. This is the one that allows identifiable groups; e.g. gays, Muslims, etc. to bankrupt individuals or corporations if members of the groups can say they were offended by the comments of the individuals or the corporations.

I first met Professor Moon in a Green Room at a television studio, last spring, a short time after it was announced he had this CHRC gig.

The Professor and I were invited guests on a talk show to debate the impact of religion on politics, but, having been following and contributing to the raging free speech debate, I was more interested in sounding him out on the subject. He was understandably not that forthcoming, since he had not started to write it. However, when I suggested that I didn’t think that HRCs need necessarily be abolished he seemed both agitated and surprised that such an idea would even be considered. In fact, I got the impression it was the first time anyone had suggested such a thing to him.

He casually remarked that Ezra Levant had been bombarding him with questions, which led me to believe that he wasn’t really paying attention to Levant who has made it quite clear that he thinks HRCs should go.

The other thing that struck me from Moon’s telephoned testimony to the MPPs yesterday was his comment that the poor Muslims had no platform to rebut Steyn’s “glib” and “juvenile” writing. He claims he would not censor Steyn, but Steyn's views should not go unanswered.

The Professor, who professes to want to go back to hiding under a rock, is more than disingenuous with this.

First, he cannot be so dissociated from the real world not to know that Elmasry and the sock puppets got more international ink and air time to counter Steyn and Mclean’s than any allegedly offended group in history. The fact that they wasted their 15 seconds of fame trying to claim Mclean’s was unfair for not turning itself into an Islamic rag, instead of doing the right thing and defending Islam, is not Steyn’s or Mclean’s fault.

Second, he sounds very much like Ontario HRC Commissioner, Barbara Hall, in making these kinds of comments, which leads me to the next observation.

Any university professor who can augment his annual salary with a special report in his area of expertise for $50,000 would be remiss if he didn’t make the same noises as the person who hands out these contracts (Hall) and if he didn’t defend the very institutions that would be most likely to send another one his way (HRCs).

In short, his testimony was a very opportune free advertisement for his services to HRCs, courtesy of the Ontario taxpayers. He admitted that he wasn’t much interested in testifying until he learned that the centre ring attraction, Mark Steyn, would be there. To get the same advertising for his services would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Steyn should consider sending him a bill for marketing services, since Steyn traveled there on his own dime.

Ezra doesn't get it

The normally sound and enjoyable Ezra Levant kind of went off the rails with this one.

He is a Jew and therefore evaluates life through the prism of the religion he was taught. Not for him is there any concern that in public institutions: universities, schools, governments, and other taxpayer supported or subsidized entities, the God of the Christians still reigns supreme. This country is not supposed to have a state religion, but, when you add up all the public places that God and his alleged will intrudes, there is a de facto state religion if not de jure one, and that religion is Christianity.

Why should a mild bus banner campaign bring out accusations of cowardice simply because atheists identify Christians as their major opponents?

He is right that the message is to prick Christians, but he is wrong to think that there is no point in doing so. Christians are the majority in this country, by a long shot (70%), and they call the shots. Islamic radicals are few in number and don't have much political clout or significant public support. Not so Christians.

When atheists finally get what they need from the Christian majority, which is to say, respect, then we will turn our attention to radical Islam.

As Abraham Lincoln concluded, when it looked like the U.S. might end up fighting Britain during the Civil War, "One war at a time."

Christians are more afraid of atheists than they are of anything else and if Ezra is really that concerned about challenging radical Islam, he might want to take some time off from bashing his fellow Jews (and now atheists) and ask the more interesting question of why Christian leaders pay such deference to Islam, but spend most of their political capital fighting atheists.

Statement by Minister of Immigration on recent Hamas and Hezbollah rallies

One of the shocking things I have noticed that is a change in the character of the streets of our cities is the marches in support or denunciation of participants in international conflicts. Once people marched for peace. Now they march for hate.

I picked up this quotation by the federal Minister, Jason Kenny, from Ezra Levant's website. Levant, who is Calgary-based, has been commenting about Hezbollah-Hamas supporters regularly showing up in a Jewish neighbourhood in front of a Jewish-owned mall in Calgary. He compares the experience to that of the Jews in Germany when the Ernest Rhom's brownshirts first marched into Jewish neighbourhoods in German cities. According to Levant, Jews who live in the neighbourhood where these marches are being conducted by outsiders are cautioned by the police that they will be charged if they cause the marchers to become violent.

Jason Kenny:

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, today issued the following statement regarding displays of hatred and violence at recent protests across Canada:

“Like many Canadians, I am deeply concerned about allegations of the incitement to hatred and violence at recent protests across Canada.”

“It is shocking to think that flags of banned terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah are being flown in the streets of Canadian cities. The ideals these terrorist organizations preach are abhorrent to the fundamental values of the Canadian people and of all civilized peoples: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

“The open incitement of hatred has absolutely no place in Canadian society. We offer our condolences to all innocent victims of armed conflict and to those affected by repeated acts of terror. We remain vigilant in upholding fundamental Canadian values.”

The Government of Canada lists Hezbollah and Hamas as banned terrorist organizations under the provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code."

Ezra Levant's presentation to the U.S Congress

Yesterday Ezra Levant appeared before the human rights caucus of the U.S. Congress and presented on the unfortunate state of human rights in Canada. He posted his speech on his website and I thought it was very well done and deserved the widest dissemination. I hope he doesn't object to me reproducing it on this site.

Thank you for that kind introduction, and for the invitation to be here today. It’s an honour to be asked to give a briefing at the U.S. Congress, and especially to the Human Rights Caucus. Your work is very important.

My expertise in the subject matter of today’s session was not acquired voluntarily, but by unhappy experience: I have been the subject of government persecution for my political and religious views for nearly 900 days. Unfortunately, stories like mine are not uncommon in the world. But they’re not supposed to happen in Canada, one of the freest countries.

In February of 2006, I was the publisher of a Canadian magazine called the Western Standard. We published a news story about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and the riots in the Muslim world that followed. To illustrate what all the fuss was about, we accompanied the story with pictures of several of those cartoons. It was a news story in a news magazine.

Before our magazine even hit the streets, a radical imam named Syed Soharwardy asked the police to arrest me – for blaspheming against Islam. The police didn’t, of course. But the Alberta “human rights commission”, a government agency, accepted Soharwardy’s complaint, and then an identical one from the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. The government has been investigating me ever since, including summoning me to a 90-minute interrogation. According to access to information documents, no fewer than 15 bureaucrats are working on my case. I’m a major crime scene!

Since then, Canada’s largest news magazine, called Maclean’s – our equivalent to Time magazine – was sued in three different human rights commissions for writing about the demographic growth of Islam in the West. And the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the largest newspaper in Atlantic Canada, is being pursued by Nova Scotia’s human rights commission for printing an editorial cartoon depicting a local Muslim activist in a niqab – even though that is how she dresses.

In other words, Canadian human rights commissions -- secular government organizations -- are prosecuting religious fatwas. It’s a soft jihad against any criticism of radical Islam. It’s called “lawfare”, and it’s a greater danger to our western values of freedom, religious pluralism and the separation of church and state than the hard jihad of terrorism is. Even if targets like Maclean’s eventually “win”, they lose; the process is the punishment – and the chill affects everyone else.

Canadian human rights commissions, however, are not respectful of the sensitivities of all religions. Less politically correct faiths are regularly prosecuted by them. This May, an Alberta pastor named Stephen Boissoin was given a lifetime gag order, never to say anything critical of homosexuality – not in a church sermon, not even in private e-mails. As well, in what can only be called a Maoist verdict, he has been ordered to renounce his religious beliefs, and to publish a self-denunciation in the local newspaper.

This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba.

How did this happen? How did Canadians lose their rights, on the one hand, to criticize radical Islam, and on the other hand, lose their rights to practice Christianity?

The answer is a combination of good intentions and bad intentions.

The good intentions came from do-gooders who, thirty or forty years ago, set up these human rights commissions with the noble ideal of promoting harmony amongst different religions and races. But those good intentions came with the power of the law to censor people who said rude, even racist things. So it became illegal in Canada to say anything that was regarded as hateful, even if it was non-violent. We invented “thought crimes”.

The actual wording of the laws is to ban anything that is quote, “likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt”. Note the word “likely” – you don’t actually have to do anything wrong. You can be convicted for a “pre-crime”, something that hasn’t happened yet. And look at what’s illegal: causing emotions. Not real harm or damages. Just exposing someone to feelings. By the way, the truth of what you say is not a defence. And at the Maclean’s magazine trial last month, half a day was spent determining whether their jokes were funny. They even had a joke expert.

Don’t laugh – literally. Just three weeks ago, a comedian was ordered to stand trial for telling off-colour jokes in a night club. Warning to Chris Rock: don’t bother coming to Canada.

According to Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, even a documentary about the Holocaust is against the law, since it could, possibly, cause people to have feelings of contempt for Germans.

At first, these thought crimes were targeted at people so odious, no-one spoke out in their defence. Neo-Nazis mainly – including an 80-year-old man named John Taylor who served 9 months in jail for having an anti-Semitic phone message.

We don’t like anti-Semitism or other bigotry; I certainly don’t. But instead of the traditional answer to offensive speech – more speech, better speech, truer speech – Canada took the easy way, and simply outlawed hurt feelings. Instead of doing the hard work of building a truly tolerant society, we thought we could wave a magic wand, and legislate bad feelings out of existence.

But legal precedents cut both ways. So, after thirty years of prosecuting people who were critical of Jews, now Canada’s human rights commissions are being used by radical Muslims to prosecute people who criticize radical Islam – and being used by gay rights activists to prosecute pastors like Reverend Boissoin, religious newspapers like Catholic Insight, and even the Bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, for a letter to his diocese against same-sex marriage.

To paraphrase Father Martin Niemoller, first the human rights commissions went for the neo-Nazis, but I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a neo-Nazi. Then the human rights commissions went for the fundamentalist Christians, but I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a fundamentalist Christian.

Because we didn’t fight for freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for people who were hard to like, now we’re having to fight for those fundamental freedoms for ourselves. It’s always better to fight in the first ditch rather than the last one.

The legal onslaught against freedom of speech and religious pluralism continues. There are 14 human rights commission in Canada, employing 1,000 people, and with an annual budget of $200-million. It’s an industry, and it needs social strife to stay in business. So it positively drums up discontent. This spring in Alberta, 60,000 new immigrants were taught English as a Second Language using a workbook all about how to file grievances, including against un-funny jokes.

I’m pleased that a political backlash is growing in Canada. Across the political spectrum, from both the Liberal and Conservative parties, from newspaper editorials on the left and the right, and from NGOs ranging from EGALE, Canada’s largest gay right lobby, to the Canadian Association of Journalists, to the liberal Muslim Canadian Congress, public opinion is waking up to the dangers of these human rights commissions and their thought crime laws. The public is starting to revolt.

So why should Americans care? I can think of three reasons. And what should Americans do? I can think of two things.
1. Americans should care because Americans have always cared about liberty around the world, especially political and religious liberty. It is one of America’s greatest characteristics: a love for the well-being of otherThank you for that kind introduction, and for the invitation to be here today. It’s an honour to be asked to give a briefing at the U.S. Congress, and especially to the Human Rights Caucus. Your work is very important.

My expertise in the subject matter of today’s session was not acquired voluntarily, but by unhappy experience: I have been the subject of government persecution for my political and religious views for nearly 900 days. Unfortunately, stories countries. Being a Good Samaritan is in your nature, and the world is freer because of it.

2. America should care because what happens in Europe and Canada soon comes – or tries to come – to the U.S. When it comes to censorship, we’re a laboratory for bad ideas. And the coalition between foreign trouble-makers and domestic busy-bodies is an idea that is spreading here, too.

3. Despite your First Amendment, human rights commissions are popping up all over the U.S.

The city of Philadelphia’ s “human relations” commission has a staff of 33, and a multi-million dollar budget. Last year, they prosecuted Geno’s Steak House because they put up a sign asking customers to order their Philly Cheese Steaks in English. We might agree with Geno’s sign or disagree. But to have a government agency prosecute them is a threat to the First Amendment. And, if it’s a steak house today, it could be a news magazine tomorrow. And if it’s do-gooders today, I can assure you it won’t be for long.


So what can Americans do?

1. The first thing you can do is what you always do: continue to monitor the erosion of freedom around the world, including through Congressional committees like this one. Publish annual reports shaming foreign countries for their abuses of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Put Canada on that list, to let our government know what they’re doing isn’t acceptable.

2. And rededicate yourselves to your First Amendment. Understand that the erosion of freedom doesn’t always happen with a bang – it can happen with a whimper. And that, when it comes to free speech, it’s usually unpopular people who are censored first. But if they can go for a neo-Nazi yesterday, it’s Geno’s Steak House today, and then a Christian pastor or a news magazine tomorrow.

I believe in a pluralist society where I can be Jewish, he can be Christian, she can be Muslim, and we all get along peacefully – we can agree to disagree about political or religious matters. The use of our own Western laws to crush such disagreement, and end healthy debate, is a threat to all of us, and the U.S. Congress should be on guard.


Thank you.

The fate of the children of politically incorrect parents

Ezra Levant debated a Toronto lawyer, Jonathan Rosenthal, on CTV over the issue of the Winnipeg social services removing children from the home of white supremacists after one of the children, a 7-year old, showed up at school sporting a swastika.

Levant started well, noting the danger of authorities making politically correct decisions and taking children away from their parents because the latter espouse politically incorrect ideas. Rosenthal lowered the tone by suggesting that Levant needed psychological counselling and hoped Levant’s wife would do her duty and get him some.

Rosenthal came across as everything Levant accused him of being: an arrogant, puffed-up, left-lib Toronto lawyer. However, Levant needs to stop rising to the bait each time somebody rubs him the wrong way. He has a lot of good solid stuff to say, but he allows himself to start personalize the argument too often. He should learn to develop the art of being “a class act.”

One thing missing from their debate is this thought. When I went to school, the school boards had dress codes. One school I attended (I went to 23 different schools across the country – I am a military brat) did not allow blue jeans. That should give you some idea of how old I am. If you showed up dressed inappropriately in accordance with the posted codes your parents were notified and you were sent home with instructions to come back when you can (or will) comply with the code.
Whatever happened to that? The punishment should fit the crime.

This girl should have been sent home by school authorities to dress appropriately for class. Letting social services remove the children of the family for the improper dress of one of them is way over the top. I think school boards have a pattern of wanting to duck their responsibilities and lay them off on some other agencies.

I hope Rosenthal has no pretensions to one day becoming a judge. He fails to see the slippery slope he is advocating. Judges are required to look down the road to consider how their decisions in one circumstance may inadvertently bite someone else in the ass. Occasionally they fail at the task, like the Supreme Court of Canada in the John Ross Taylor decision concerning Article 13(1) of the Canada Human Rights Code.

Following Rosenthal’s reasoning, one could make an argument that children are brainwashed by the religion of their parents that teaches them to despise others and they should be protected from religious indoctrination by their parents until such age as they are mature enough to evaluate which truths they wish to pursue.

In fact, that argument has already been made by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in their best selling anti-religious books.

Don't keep the faith, pass it on

I linked into Ezra Levant's blog today and discovered that he is sending out a challenge to other "Internet publishers", if you like. He has reprinted Rev. Boissoin's diatribe letter against homosexuality that got the clergyman into so much doo-doo with the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

He would like the rest of us who believe in free speech to emulate him. Don't just talk the talk, walk it. So I have.

Before you read what follows, I wish to make a disclaimer.

I think the Rev. Boissoin is cuckoo. I am an atheist and have no truck and traffic of any kind with any moral position that is supposedly based on what "God says", especially when it is a mortal man who wants to tell me what God says.

Furthermore, I like homosexuals and in my time have had a few of them as friends with whom I have socialized. When I was younger and looked less like Clint Eastwood now looks, I had a few gays come on to me. I was actually flattered by this since I know that gay men fancy attractive men. You can't trust women in this respect because they may like you for your money, you power and influence, or even your sexual prowess (in this regard, I speak of other men -- but hey, 2 out of 3 is not bad).

I believe homosexuality to be a genetically derived condition, not a moral choice. The sex drive is the most powerful of all human motivations. To take the Catholic Church position that you love the sinner but condemn the sin is nonsense. If God made us, he made homosexuals too, and gave them their sex drive.

I have no problem with equal rights for homosexuals, including the institution of marriage, nor am I aware of any sound scientific study that suggests that children who are reared in homosexual households suffer emotional damage from this circumstance. After all, homosexuals who have children obviously want them. Many a hererosexual couple regret the outcome of their passions. Being wanted is the first and most important emotional support a child can have.

WARNING: If you are homosexual what follows will be very offensive. It is not being published to offend, but to support the traditon that a liberal-democracy values free speech. If you do CHOOSE to read on, I suggest that the Reverend's appeal to Edmund Burke's famous dictum equally applies to the issue of free speech in this country. Remember, my gay friends, if they can shut this guy up today, they can shut you up tomorrow.

The text in italics is Levant's sentiments, and Boissoin's anti-homosexual comments are set out in block quotes.

There's something ineffable about being a free man, about saying what you want, about not being afraid of what someone else thinks.

It feels pretty good.

I'd encourage you to try it.

Go ahead.

Publish Rev. Stephen Boissoin's hate crime. I don't care if you're Christian, or gay, or both. I don't care if you agree with it or not. Just republish it. Do it because you're not supposed to do it. Because Lori Andreachuk and Ed Stelmach and Darren Lund say you can't. Do it because the Red Deer Advocate caved in and copped a plea bargain, instead of fighting like Rev. Boissoin (and Maclean's and Mark Steyn) did.

Do it to show that you have natural rights that predate, and exceed, any "human rights" given or taken away by Alberta's human rights commission.

Do it to show that you're alive. To feel alive. To show that democracy and freedom are still alive.

I have to tell you, I feel great. I'm going to post it again, right now.

Homosexual Agenda Wicked

The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship. I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.

Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.

My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date - God and the "Moral Majority." Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage that you have caused. Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term "morality."

The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, "I'm just not sure where the truth lies," or "If they don't affect me then I don't care what they do," abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.

Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is have their future aggressively chopped at the roots.

Edmund Burke's observation that, "All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.

Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.

Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?

Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn't rooted in protecting homosexuals from "gay bashing." The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It's time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.

Rev. Stephen Boissoin

Letter to A-G re: Freedom of Speech

This is a copy of an e-mail I sent today to the Attorney-General of Canada. It would be nice if the Conservatives were in front of this issue instead of reacting to a Liberal MP.

Dear Mr. Nicholson:

For some months I have been following the unfolding drama of the human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine, Ezra Levant and by implication, Mark Steyn.

The guiding case in this matter is a 4 to 3 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, John Ross Taylor et al. v. Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Attorney General of Canada , 1990.

The key weakness in the majority decision is the following Polyanna utterance supporting the court’s opinion that section 13 is a reasonable limit on the free expression guarantee of section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“

The phrase "hatred or contempt" in the context of s. 13(1) refers only to unusually strong and deep‑felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification and, as long as human rights tribunals continue to be well aware of the purpose of s. 13(1) and pay heed to the ardent and extreme nature of feeling described in that phrase, there is little danger that subjective opinion as to offensiveness will supplant the proper meaning of the section.”

I have read Mr. Steyn’s book, America Alone, an excerpt of which in Maclean’s prompted these human rights complaints. I did not find him expressing “deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification”, unless one were to take exception to the truthful information he provided about the potential of Islam overtaking European societies; in short, if one doesn’t like the fit of the shoe when one tries it on.

We have now been treated to the spectacle of the Ontario Human Rights Commission declining to pursue the complaint but issuing a condemnation of Maclean’s in any event, without calling any evidence. Further, Barbara Hall, head of the OHRC has opined that, with only 2,500 complaints a year, there must be a lot more hatred in Ontario that has be rooted out. My own experience is that Canadians are generally not a hateful people and the thought that someone operating an intrusive government agency with that mindset bothers me. It should bother all of us who believe as I do.

When we look at some of the disgraceful conduct of the Canadian Human Right Commission, apparently relying on pro-active entrapment procedures by employees and ex-employees, and the testimony of one employee that he pays no attention to free speech (the most fundamental of human rights!) because that is some “American concept”, one begins to wonder what HRCs in what country the SCC had in mind when it said “as long as human rights tribunals continue to be well aware of the purpose … and pay heed to the ardent and extreme nature of the feeling described.”

Now, I recognize that these are two different matters; what the HRCs are delving into, and how they do it. But, these are related in the sense that they are evidence of a systemic breakdown in the protection of human rights, specifically free speech, which needs to be addressed.

Some wish to abolish Section 13 altogether. Some wish to abolish Human Rights Commissions. Perhaps there is a compromise option. Why not simply build into Section 13 the normal defenses one would have in a court of law: presumption of innocence, fair commentary on matters of public interest, truthful statements, reasonable belief in the truth of the statements, etc.? I would also be inclined to remove the word “likely” from the qualifications for causing harm. It is far too subjective.

The idea behind HRCs was to give quick and simple redress for discrimination in housing and employment, and there may still be validity to keeping them around for that purpose. However, this business of restriction on free speech and public comment affects a far broader constituency (everybody) and goes to the heart of our liberal democracy. It deserves a better and fairer airing than these “make up the rules as they go along “HRCs are prepared to give it.

Finally, I would urge you to consider the opinion of the dissenting judges in John Ross Taylor. I find their reasoning far more compelling, and, as events are now unfolding, almost prescient.