Topic: Human Rights Gone Awry

[DBA]

I also notice the Alberta legislation is very Orwellian. It specifically calls expressing any of the listed opinions as being against the law. I can't see how this would pass a charter challenge as it very specifically discounts fundamental rights listed in the charter by just pretending it can ignore them.

HUMAN RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP
AND MULTICULTURALISM ACT

Discrimination re publications, notices

3(1)  No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

                                 (a)    indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or

                                 (b)    is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt

because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons.

(2)  Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject.

Seems like double speak to me, write a paragraph taking away fundamental rights and then follow it with one saying they weren't taken away.

[Brad Sallows]

If the right to freedom of expression doesn't include expression which others find unbearable, it's worthless.  It isn't the freedom to say sweet things about everyone else that needs safeguarding.

"3(1)  No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any ... symbol, emblem or other representation that..."

From the full passage as written, I assume it must be illegal to publish, issue or display a Nazi swastika on the letterhead of a neo-Nazi propaganda rag (which is to say, in a context other than one defensible on academic or artistic grounds) - which is, frankly, bullshit of the highest order.  I hold no brief for Nazis but this has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with people who have decided there are some things they just don't want to hear and see, but more to the point, they don't want others to hear and see.

[Thucydides]

And now it comes to this. Will the Panamanians eventually be the ones to say "none is too many....."?

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2008/01/free-dominion-moves-to-panama.html

Free Dominion moves to Panama

Free Dominion has decide to move to Panama to avoid the tyranny of the human rights commissions. It is pretty sad that free speech is becoming a memory in Canada.

HM Government needs to adjust the law on human rights commissions to make sure they
have to do as the courts do and consider free speech the fundamental good. The hrc's have become a board of inquisition to silence free speech and will soon be prosecuting thought crimes. Maybe thats what Ezra should have done,published his magazine from Panama. How very sad.

Free Dominion-dot-Panama

Canada's largest independant political blog site has been sold, and is no longer Canadian. Mark and Connie Fournier, who started FreeDominion.ca seven years ago this month, have sold the site to a company in Panama. The website will continue to operate, and will continue to host thousands of comments every week on Canadian politics and society. The difference, according to Mark Fournier, is that people will now be completely safe to leave their comments without having to worry about threats or intimidation from government bodies like Human Rights Commissions or other agencies. "Human Rights Commissions and others have been trying to exert pressure on Connie and I to reveal information about our members so that they can also prosecute or persecute our members. The only defense our members have had so far from having their identities revealed and having this abuse heaped on them is Connie and I standing the line and saying 'No, we're not going to give them (up)'."

[Welshy]

On a related note, I ran into a case yesterday against Ezra Levant, for putting those cartoons of Muhammud in his magazine in 2006. The Alberta Human rights commission order him to appear, so that they could investigate allegations of discrimination against him. I watched the videos of the interview on his site, and he just gives it to the interviewing officer (if you can call them that). I was pretty outraged when I found out that they are trying to persecute freedom of speech and media.

http://www.ezralevant.com/

[George Wallace]

Welshy

Scroll up......way up....to the start of this topic and read more links to his "hearings".  There are more being added every day.  Stay Tuned for more news on the trials and tribulations of Ezra Levant.

[Welshy]

My bad, didn't read the whole topic, just the last few posts.

[Thucydides]

This is not a slam at Welshy, but I feel the reason these things can happen in Canada has a lot to do with the fact most Canadians don't "scroll to the top" , learn and understand the background and facts behind what is going on.

Almost any topic discussed on these threads will need a "drop 200" response when trying to discuss it with most Canadians, they are willfully ignorant of what is going on practically at their doorsteps, much less what happens in Kandahar.

[RangerRay]

I watched the videos of Mr. Levant's "interrogation" by the HRC, and I was deeply impressed.

However, at one point, I thought he shot himself in the foot.

When asked about his intent, he gave a very good speech about how intent should not matter in a free society, and explained how in previous interviews, he gave nuanced, reasoned arguments (which I have previously heard) for his intent.

However, he then goes on to say that, for the record, his intent was to offend the radical imam who is the complainant in this case.

It seems to me that by saying for the record he intended to offend, will not help him in his "trial".

I agree with the point he was trying to make.  But I don't think that statement will help him.

[Thucydides]

From Australia

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23058214-5013450,00.html

Too many rights make a wrong
   
Janet Albrechtsen | January 16, 2008

CANADA: It was one of those rare, particularly sunny days in Vancouver in September when, addressing an audience at the University of British Columbia, I suggested that multiculturalism and its partner in crime, moral relativism, were leading to the demise of Western values.

"But you must understand," implored a well-intentioned woman in the audience, "multiculturalism is Canada's gift to the world."

If Australia is set to follow Canada, then thanks, but no thanks. Call me ungrateful, but we should have returned the gift to Canada long ago. I say that as someone who has long adored Canada. Its politics may be as dripping wet as Vancouver, but the people are warm and funny, and there is something sweet about the US's insecure, slightly wimpy northern neighbour. Yet there comes a point when weakness morphs into a reckless death wish.

That point is about now. I'm back in Canada and the distinct chill is not just in the air. Last Friday, conservative commentator Ezra Levant was hauled before Alberta's Human Rights and Citizenship Commission for publishing the infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons two years ago in the Western Standard.

Syed Soharwardy, the head of Canada's Islamic Supreme Council, complained that Levant had incited hate against Muslims.

Levant's opening statement was a tour de force as far as punchy defences of free speech go. Apparently viewed almost 200,000 times, it is one of the most-watched clips on YouTube in recent times. It's also on his website, www.ezralevant.com, where he describes the chilling process: "No six-foot brownshirt, no police cell at midnight. Just Shirlene McGovern, an amiable enough bureaucrat, casually asking me about my political thoughts on behalf of the Government of Alberta. And she'll write up a report about it, and recommend that the Government do this or that to me. Just going through checklists, you see ... a limp clerk who was just punching the clock. She had done it dozens of times before and will do it dozens of times again. In a way, that's more terrifying."

It was, said Levant, the epitome of Hannah Arendt's warning against "the banality of evil".

Refreshingly, Alan Borovoy, general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the chap who helped found these commissions in the 1960s and '70s, was equally appalled. Writing in the Calgary Herald, he said "during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech". Pointing to the empire-building frolic of the commissions, Borovoy advised that the legislation needed to be changed to make it clear that these commissions had no business investigating and making edicts about thought crimes.

Borovoy's warning about the alarming expansion of the jurisdiction of these rights bodies adds another and very timely warning for Australians about the implications of human rights law. Expressed in impossibly platitudinous and therefore vague language, these so-called human rights bodies effectively decide how far their reach extends.

Canada shows where we will end up in due time: with a system of governance where large swaths of social policy have been delegated by parliament to the unelected grey bureaucrats, who get to implement "progressive" policies that could never get through a body of elected politicians.

As the jurisdiction of these commissions expands into areas never originally intended, fundamental freedoms contract. When state bodies start enforcing the religious prohibitions of Muslims, which forbid the depiction of the prophet Mohammed, it destroys a few fundamental Western values, namely the separation of mosque and state and, more critically, the freedom of speech.

This is not simply a defence of Levant because he is a conservative columnist. Far from it. If a bleeding heart on the Left was dragged before a human rights commission for thinking and saying unpalatable things, even stupid things, the defence would remain the same. Defending the right to say the right things is easy. Defending the right to say the wrong things, even offensive things, is what counts if we are serious about free speech.

That's why, some years ago, I wrote in defence of my colleague Phillip Adams when he was accused of racial vilification by an American who was offended by Adams's assertion that the US was one of the most violent nations on earth and was largely to blame for the events of September 11. The comments were daft but Adams has a right to be wrong and so it was important to stand up for his right to say it.

Allowing a state body to investigate it as a speech crime sends a chill down the spine of Western progress. As Levant argued, "Freedom of expression is only meaningful when it trumps other values, such as political sensibilities, or religious dogma, or personal sensitivities. Indeed, Western civilisation's progress in all realms, ranging from science to art, to religion, to feminism, to civil rights for racial minorities and gays, has come about from the free expression of ideas that necessarily offended some earlier order." In short, self-criticism is at the core of the West's progress. The battle of ideas may be no place for the faint-hearted, but it produces exceptional results by thrusting forward the better ideas.

In the Canadian multicultural zeitgeist, where bland political correctness is preferred, those on the Right tend to get hit more often by ludicrous complaints to human rights commissions. A bunch of law students marched off to a Canadian human rights commission complaining about Maclean's for running an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

Steyn, like Levant, can defend himself. As Steyn wrote on his blog: "I don't want to get off the hook. I want to take the hook and stick it up the collective butt of these thought police." But what about the little guys put through the human rights commission wringer? Failing to complain about the quotidian incidences of oppression by human rights bodies only encourages the egregious examples to occur.

Take the case of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Tribunal drafting an inane apology last November to be run by the Mission Beach Advertiser for publishing an admittedly unpleasantly anti-gay letter that offended the catch-all Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Intersex Anti-Violence Committee.

Or when the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal upheld a complaint against The Australian's opinion page editor, Tom Switzer, for saying perfectly accurately, if somewhat colourfully, in 1998 that the Palestinians were "vicious thugs" who were derailing the peace process.

So, we need to watch Canada. As it goes, so will we. And even if you can stomach the idea of handing over power over social policy to unelected bureaucrats and self-opinionated lawyers, you might like to hang on to free speech. Oh Canada, where are you taking us?

janeta@bigpond.net.au

[Welshy]

Good article Thucydides.

Following the theme of multiculturalism,today I went to a rally against racism at Queen's University. Thats all good and well because I don't tolerate racism, but within 30 seconds they had switched to how Queen's has a "culture of whiteness" and that we need to have more diversity. They went on and on about how being white is bad and that we should be ashamed. I was actually quite offended that this rally was hijacked in the name of multiculturalism. It would seem that the school has set out what its ideal racial quotas are and that we must meet those to be considered diverse. I don't think I should feel ashamed because I am Caucasian. I actually felt that the school was being racist against whites, something that I've never really felt before.

I guess it should be expected when I'm at university, that the Left tries to make me feel bad for being a white male.  If I can get a hold of the transcript I will post the link.

[sledge]

Welshy, maybe you should file a human rights complaint.

[Welshy]

HAHAHAHA

As Ezra Levant put it, "I will burn in hell before I" do that. It really doesn't bother me that much, but my point was that they can't see that they are going against precisely what they are preaching.

[Thucydides]

Something not so funny, the HRC is not only investigator, prosecuter and judge, but is now demonstrated to be provocateurs as well.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogsection/14/128/

Steynposts 
Thursday, 17 January 2008 

At his website today, Werner Patels refers to me as a Super Agent Provocateur. Introducing me at a speech at 21 in New York recently, Frank Gaffney also hailed me as an "agent provocateur", and I politely demurred, on the grounds that for me the phrase tended to evoke an undercover cop in the men's room at Minneapolis Airport.

However, as it happens, the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission controversy is not short of agents provocateurs. Want some names?

Okay, step forward, senior CHRC "human rights investigator" Dean Steacy, last heard from in these quarters explaining that "freedom of speech is an "American concept". Mr Steacy likes to hang out at the "white nationalist" website Stormfront and post under the name "Jadwarr", as the CHRC quietly conceded just before Christmas:

1. Do any investigators post on Stormfront.org?

 I am not aware of any investigator other than me, who has posted on Stormfront.

2. Getting back to Jadewarr, do Commission employees sign up accounts on Stormfront, under pseudonyms such as "Jadewarr"?

I used the Jadewarr email address to create an account on Stormfront. I am not aware whether or not other investigators have created other accounts on Stormfront.

3. Do you know who Jadewarr is?

Jadewarr is not a person,  it is an email address and a user account on Stormfront.org. I created the Jadewarr email address on yahoo.ca and the Jadewarr account on Stormfront. I have used the Jadewarr email address and the Jadewarr account on Stormfront on occasion, in the course of investigating complaints. I am not aware of anyone else having used the Jadewarr email address or account.

4. To your knowledge, is Jadewarr a Commission employee?

See above.

5. As part of your duties, have you ever signed up with a message board and made postings?

Yes, I have done so using the Jadewarr account in investigating section 13 complaints. 

So let's see if I understand this. Canada's "Human Rights" Commissions have managed to get anonymous website comments designated a crime and its investigators now go around leaving such comments themselves? Is that right? Traditionally, an "agent provocateur" in the men's room has to entrap the guy in the adjoining stall into propositioning sex. In other words, the target still has to commit the actual crime. But in the case of the HRCs the agent provocateur can, in effect, commit the crime himself and then charge the target with it.

Nice work if you can get it. Agent Steacy and other current or former CHRC employees who do likewise would undoubtedly insist that they're nice liberal progressives posing as anti-Semitic white supremacists. But who's to say it's not the other way round? Maybe someone should take them to the CHRC. 

The HRC scandal is not primarily to do with me, Ezra, Muslims, Christians, gays, white supremacists or anybody else. It is about the corruption of justice. The genius of the English legal system is the balance it strikes between the components of any trial - judge, jury, prosecutor, etc. The CHRC system muddies all the distinctions to the point where an ex-investigator is the serial plaintiff and a current investigator is posing as a perpetrator to create "crimes" in which there is no presumption of innocence.

Many of the other posts on this site are also illuminating and written in fine style. Follow link.

[FascistLibertarian]

As well I think its important to note that as much as these HRC's try their fascist speech and thought control they are failing and are behind the times.
Mark Styens article can easily be found online (and I wouldnt have read the future belongs to islam if the CIC hadnt filed the complaint), The Free Domonion has moved to the free country of Panama
these cartoons that Ezra published can be found online.

I mean these HRC's are clearly unelected unaccountable thought and mind control pc liberal bs, but the fact is, none of their attempts to control what free Canadians say or publish has really worked (besides maybe that letter to the ed. in Alberta by the homophobic priest, which I havent been able to find).

[GAP]

How the complaint came about
By Ezra Levant on January 17, 2008 9:11 PM
 Article Link and video clip

The first time I met the complainant, the radical Muslim imam Syed Soharwardy, was when I debated him on CBC radio, nearly two years ago. The subject was the Danish cartoons.

As a part-time pundit, I do debates like that every week, but Soharwardy doesn't, and he wasn't used to being challenged so vigorously. I went about the rest of my day as usual; Soharwardy went to the police to ask them to arrest me.

They laughed him out of the police station, but the human rights commission welcomed him, and has chased me for two years now, using tax dollars and government bureaucrats. How much do you think that has cost Alberta taxpayers? $100,000? And we haven't even had the full hearing yet.

I discuss this sequence of events in this video clip. You can follow along in Soharwardy's absurd, chicken-scratched complaint here (my written response is here).
More on link

[Brihard]

I've watched the videos of Mr. Levant's castigation of the HRC inquisitor; I wanted to stand up and applaud.

I've donated $20 to his defence fund in hopes that he can achieve his wish of pushing this into the real courts and getting a proper precedent set in defence of free speech. With any luck, eventually the SCC will have the opportunity and the cojones to hear it and to support his position.

[TCBF]

... With any luck, eventually the SCC will have the opportunity and the cojones to hear it and to support his position....

- Why would the SCC want to do that?  That would not be "progressive".  They will refuse to hear the case - a right they should not have.

[Roy Harding]

I watched the videos of Mr. Levant's "interrogation" by the HRC, and I was deeply impressed.

However, at one point, I thought he shot himself in the foot.

When asked about his intent, he gave a very good speech about how intent should not matter in a free society, and explained how in previous interviews, he gave nuanced, reasoned arguments (which I have previously heard) for his intent.

However, he then goes on to say that, for the record, his intent was to offend the radical imam who is the complainant in this case.

It seems to me that by saying for the record he intended to offend, will not help him in his "trial".

I agree with the point he was trying to make.  But I don't think that statement will help him.

It is often my intent to offend whoever I happen to be sparring with (verbally or otherwise).  Why should this be seen as "shooting himself in the foot"?

You can see examples of this right here on Army.ca - many left-wing anti-military types come here and intentionally offend the membership.  It is a crude but effective tactic - offend your opponent and he may be provoked into actions which can then be deemed to prove that he is not in full control of his senses - and it works.

I don't see intent to cause offence in the same league as "incitement to hatred" - the one is legal (and properly so), the other is not (again, properly so).

[RangerRay]

It is often my intent to offend whoever I happen to be sparring with (verbally or otherwise).  Why should this be seen as "shooting himself in the foot"?

You can see examples of this right here on Army.ca - many left-wing anti-military types come here and intentionally offend the membership.  It is a crude but effective tactic - offend your opponent and he may be provoked into actions which can then be deemed to prove that he is not in full control of his senses - and it works.

I don't see intent to cause offence in the same league as "incitement to hatred" - the one is legal (and properly so), the other is not (again, properly so).

I agree with you, Mr. Harding...I personally see nothing wrong with offending someone.  Nor do I see "intent to offend" as "incitement to hatred".  However, these kangaroo courts do equate the two.

These Star Chambers inquisitors will see this as an "admission" on the official record that Mr. Levant intentionally sought to "offend" an identifiable group, therefore guilty of the sin of "offending their human rights".

I agree with the point he was making, but I believe the commission will use this statement to take him down.

[Roy Harding]

I agree with you, Mr. Harding...I personally see nothing wrong with offending someone.  Nor do I see "intent to offend" as "incitement to hatred".  However, these kangaroo courts do equate the two.

These Star Chambers inquisitors will see this as an "admission" on the official record that Mr. Levant intentionally sought to "offend" an identifiable group, therefore guilty of the sin of "offending their human rights".

I agree with the point he was making, but I believe the commission will use this statement to take him down.

I think you miss the irony in his statement.

Should these clowns indeed (as they may) use this "intent to offend" as an excuse to "take him down", then he will  have proved his point.

[Thucydides]

Mark Styen:

http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080117_24131_24131&page=1

It's all very odd, 'that's for sure'
Why should Richard Warman be the only citizen to have his own personal inquisition?
MARK STEYN | January 17, 2008 |

Our lesson for today comes from Shirlene McGovern:
"You're entitled to your opinions,  that's for sure."

Clichés are the reflex mechanisms of speech — "Yeah, sure, it's a free country. Everyone's entitled to his opinion, right?" And we get so careless with them that we don't even notice when they become obsolescent.

But Shirlene McGovern should. Because it's her job to determine whether you — yes, you, Gordy Schmoe of 37b Hoser Crescent — are entitled to your opinions. Miss McGovern is a "human rights agent" with Alberta's "human rights" commission, and she was officially interrogating Ezra Levant as to why, in his capacity as publisher of the Western Standard, he had reproduced in his magazine the so-called "Danish cartoons." As you'll recall from a year or so back, these were representations of the Prophet Muhammad published in the widely unread newspaper Jyllands-Posten, but which nevertheless prompted the usual surprisingly coordinated campaign of vandalism, death threats, mayhem and murder by the more excitable Muslims in various parts of the world. I doubt, had I been the editor of Jyllands-Posten, I would have published the original cartoons, because most of them weren't terribly good. But once the drawings became an international news story it seems absurd to publish reports on the controversy without also showing what all the fuss is about. CNN did show the cartoons, but with the Prophet's face all blurry and pixilated — the first time, I believe, that this familiar technique of investigative TV journalism has been applied not to a human being but to a, er, drawing, as if the cartoon Muhammad had entered the witness protection program.

In reality, it was the CNN guys who were hoping they were in the witness protection program. Back in Jutland, the cartoonists had originally accepted the Muhammad assignment in order to test the boundaries of freedom of speech in Denmark. And they failed only insofar as the episode tested freedom's boundaries not in Denmark, where nobody has been prosecuted; nor in the U.S., where CNN's craven straddle artfully finessed the issue; nor in France, where the sole editor to publish the cartoons was subsequently fired by his boss, as is a private employer's right; nor even at the European Union, whose commissioner for justice and security proposed a "media code" that would encourage, ah, "prudence" in the way the press covers, ahem, certain touchy subjects, but who was at least at pains to emphasize that these restraints would be "self-regulated" by the press themselves.

No, the Western jurisdiction in which the Danish cartoons have most comprehensively demonstrated the constraints on free expression is our own decayed dominion: only in Canada have the commissars of the state launched an official investigation for the alleged "crime" of publishing the cartoons. Last week, sitting across the table from Shirlene McGovern, Ezra Levant launched into an impassioned denunciation of his interrogation. He took the quaint view that his "freedom of expression" was not the generous if qualified gift of Trudeaupian bureaucrats but his inalienable right and one bolstered in this country by 800 years of English Common Law as well as more modish innovations such as the 1946 UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Canada likes that last one so much it sticks it on the back of the $50 bill, even though we are in sustained and systemic breach of its provisions on free expression. Yes, yes, I know: so are Sudan and North Korea, but come on, is that really the league you want to play in?

In the course of his interrogation, Mr. Levant also pointed out that the time and money Canada's "human rights" pseudo-courts cost publishers has a broader "chilling effect" — on all the stories that will never see the light of day because at the back of some editor's mind is the calculation of the cost of fending off Shirlene McGovern. And, at the end of this exchange, Agent McGovern, licensed to chill, looked blandly across the table and shrugged: "You're entitled to your opinions, that's for sure."

No, sorry. That cliché is no longer operative in Canada. Today you're only entitled to your opinions if Agent McGovern says you are — "for sure." Ezra Levant was of the opinion that he should publish the Danish cartoons. That opinion is now on trial. Ken Whyte, the executive honcho at Maclean's, was of the opinion he should publish an excerpt from my book. That opinion comes up for trial at the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal in June, and at the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal shortly thereafter, and most likely at the Ontario "Human Rights" Tribunal a little way down the road.

Because I've always been opposed to "human rights" commissions in theory (I like proper courts with things like "due process"), I failed to appreciate until Maclean's present predicament how much worse they are in practice. These commissions were supposedly intended to investigate discrimination in housing and the like, but then came the very poorly drafted Section XIII, which makes it a crime to communicate anything electronically "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." "Likely," eh? What does that mean? Well, according to the key determination, subsequently endorsed by the Supreme Court, in Canadian legalese "likely" now means "highly unlikely." That's to say, notwithstanding the absence of any evidence by the plaintiffs of anyone at all ever having been exposed to actual hatred or contempt, nor even any coherent argument as to why there is a hypothetical possibility of someone unspecified being exposed to theoretical hatred or contempt in the decades ahead, a commission can still deem such hatred or contempt "likely."

In the three decades of the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal's existence, not a single "defendant" has been "acquitted." Would you bet on Maclean's bucking this spectacular 100 per cent conviction rate? "Sentence first, verdict afterwards," declares the queen in Alice In Wonderland. Canada's not quite there yet, but at the Human Rights Commission, it's "Verdict first, trial afterwards." So I'm guilty and Ken Whyte's guilty and Maclean's is guilty because that's the only verdict there is.

Who has availed themselves of the "human rights" protected by Section XIII? In its entire history, over half of all cases have been brought by a sole "complainant," one Richard Warman. Indeed, Mr. Warman has been a plaintiff on every single Section XIII case before the federal "human rights" star chamber since 2002 — and he's won every one. That would suggest that no man in any free society anywhere on the planet has been so comprehensively deprived of his human rights. Well, no. Mr. Warman doesn't have to demonstrate that he's been deprived of his human rights, only that it's "likely" (i.e. "highly un-") that someone somewhere will be deprived of some right sometime. Who is Richard Warman? What's his story? Well, he's a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission: an investigator. Same as Shirlene McGovern.
 
Isn't there something a little odd in a supposedly necessary Canadian federal "human rights" system used all but exclusively by one lone Canadian who served as a long-time employee of that system? Why should Richard Warman be the only citizen to have his own personal inquisition? You can hardly blame the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and no doubt the Supreme All-Powerful Islamic Executive Council of Swift Current, Sask., for now figuring they'd like a piece of the human rights action.
 
In a free society, justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. And when you see what's being done at the CHRC it's hard not to conclude that the genius of the English legal system — the balance between prosecutor, judge, and jury — has been all but destroyed. The American website Pundita has a sharp analysis of Section XIII, comparing it to Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel The Minority Report, set in a world in which citizens can be sentenced for "pre-crime" — for criminal acts which have not occurred but are "likely" to. Who needs futuristic novels when we're living it here and now in one of the oldest constitutional democracies on the planet? What kind of countries have tribunals with 100 per cent conviction rates that replace the presumption of innocence with the presumption of guilt and in which truth is not only no defence but compelling evidence of that guilt? Consider this statement, part of the criteria by which the star chamber determines when a Section XIII crime has occurred. What does it look for as evidence?

"Messages that make use of allegedly true stories, news reports, pictures and references to apparently reputable sources in an attempt to lend an air of objectivity and truthfulness to the extremely negative characterization of the targeted group have been found to be likely to expose members of the targeted group to hatred and contempt."

Read that again slowly. Citing news reports, reputable sources, facts, statistics, documentation, quotations, references, scholarly studies, etc., has been "found" to be clear evidence of your "likely" "pre-crime."

Canadians are uncomfortable even confronting what's going on in their name. On last week's letters page, Lauren Demaree of Windsor seemed closest to "mainstream" "moderate" Canadian opinion:

"Placing limits on free speech is a slippery slope, but that is not the only issue in play here. There is often a fine line that is crossed between opinion and hate propaganda and our laws need to reflect this more effectively. Where do we draw the line? When a group of people is harassed or when someone is beaten? How about killed? When your writer Andrew Coyne sits on a high horse spouting the ideals of free speech, he doesn't stop and think about the consequences of his words."

Who has been "killed" or "beaten" or "harassed" by Coyne-Steyn "hate propaganda"? The killings and bombings, as Ezra Levant pointed out, occur in countries without freedom of expression — because when you criminalize words the only expression left is action. How sad to see Canada pursuing, as the federal "human rights" commission puts it, "A Watch On Hate." Not "hate crimes" or even "hate speech," but just "hate" — thoughts, feelings. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress is a world-class hater who thinks all Israeli civilians over 18 are legitimate targets for murder. Bully for him. Yet, in his pursuit of Maclean's, Lauren Demaree sees the hater as the pin-up crusader who'll abolish hate. No free society can do that. But it can certainly abolish, incrementally, freedom of expression and the presumption of innocence in relentless pursuit of such a banal happy-face chimera. The arbitrary absurdity of Alice-in-Wonderland's queen yoked to the Cheshire Cat smile. This is your fight, too, Lauren, even if you don't yet know it.

[Thucydides]

And now, the solution to this problem. Read Ezra Levant's suggestions carefully, and do your part to the best of your ability to get these Star Chambers removed from the body politic.

http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/what-can-be-done.html

What can be done?
By Ezra Levant on January 16, 2008 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (49) | Trackback

I'm fighting the human rights commissions from inside the belly of the beast. I appreciate the generous help I have received towards my legal bills. (Thank you.) But what can people do besides help with my case?

I can think of two things:

1. Denormalize the commissions; and

2. Press legislators to act.

The first makes the second possible.

By "denormalizing", I mean bringing the public's perception of these commissions in line with the awful facts about them. Denormalizing the commissions means demonstrating how they disrespect Canadian values, showing how they have become a sword, attacking human rights, rather than a shield protecting them.

These commissions aren't normal. It's not normal to haul publishers before the government to ask them about their political thoughts. It's not normal for a secular state to enforce a radical Muslim fatwa against cartoons. These human rights commissions are counterfeits; they improperly benefit from the reputation of real courts, but they also destroy respect for the whole legal system -- that's just what counterfeit currency does amidst real currency.

Denormalizing the commissions is important, especially since most people have never heard of them, and when they do, they hear three positive words: "human rights commissions". It's sort of like the old Communist countries, like the "German Democratic Republic", which was neither Democratic nor a Republic, but it sounded good. Same thing here.

Denormalizing the commissions is something the blogosphere can be particularly good at, by spreading information widely and inexpensively. I think the reason my YouTube videos were so popular (320,000 views so far) is because they contained information the public has never seen before about how a commission actually works, and it was startling. Of the eight videos I've uploaded so far, the most popular has been the one where Officer McGovern asks me about my intentions -- what Orwell called a "thought crime". We should all be encouraged by the public reaction to these videos. Now let's just change that number from 320,000 people to 3 million or more.

Denormalizing the commissions can best be done by highlighting the two central qualities of the commissions:

1. They erode Canadian values such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and diversity of opinion. I'd call this the substance of the commission -- what they're trying to achieve; their mission or purpose. It's unCanadian.

2. They erode Canadian values such as fairness from a government agency. This is not about the purpose of the commissions; it's how the commissions achieve their purpose. It's the means to the end; their internal procedures and rules. Those are unfair -- they reward nuisance suits, violate normal Canadian rules of procedure and evidence, etc.

Over the past few days, I have posted a great deal of evidence demonstrating both the foul substance and foul procedures of these commissions. Other than the videos, I think the best resource is to actually read the crazy decisions these commissions make. Here is a list of the Alberta decisions. This is where you'll find cases like the restaurant that was fined $4,900 for firing a kitchen manager who had Hepatitis-C. Tour through them -- they are bizarrely inconsistent. To me, the worst decision was the one I mentioned in several of the videos, the Boissoin case. That's the case where panellist Lori Andreachuk ruled that the right of busy-body activists not to be offended trumped a Christian pastor's right to write a letter about his religious views. (It's also the first time I have ever encountered the word "trisexual" -- see paragraph 44.)

Here is a list of the federal decisions. Click on the complaints by alphabet; you'll find that nearly 50% of all complaints under the "hate" section of the federal act are filed by one individual complainant, a former staffer of the human rights commission, Richard Warman.

My YouTube videos, and these primary documents, are a good starting point to illustrate the unCanadian purposes of the commissions, and their unfair processes. A great place to get current commentary on these matters is here. 

The goal of denormalization is to build a public demand for change -- to make the commissions unacceptable to Canadians.

That's where legislators come in.

There are human rights commissions in every province and federally, so any legislature in Canada could start making changes. B.C.'s Gordon Campbell should get credit for dismantling that province's commission. The tribunal still exists (that's the panel that hears cases) but the commission (the officers, like Officer McGovern, who go out and hunt for cases) has been disbanded. It's a good start. If I had to guess the governments most open-minded to change, I'd list B.C., Saskatchewan and the federal government.

B.C. has already done something bold by eliminating the commission, and B.C.'s civil liberties association -- true libertarians, not leftist censors like the U.S. ACLU -- is the most principled in the country. Saskatchewan would probably be next; they just elected a new, freedom-oriented provincial government, and their commission has made some appalling decisions recently that have hurt their reputation (call it self-denormalization). Finally, the federal Conservatives despise the commissions -- Stephen Harper himself called them totalitarian, before he was Prime Minister -- and they might be open to whatever changes are possible, given their minority government. (Here's a good barometer of the cabinet's feelings on the commissions' recent adventures in censorship.)

I'd list the following items on a legislator's to-do list, starting with the easiest, moving to the hardest to achieve:

1. Appoint true civil libertarians to the commissions.

These commissions are staffed by commissioners appointed by their respective governments. To date, they have made appointments from the same stale pool of leftist activists -- people who view the commissions as political weapons. Since filling appointments is a regular and natural occurence, why not choose libertarian commissioners, rather than mindless bureaucrats or outright censors?

2. Send lawyers to intervene in cases.

In the Boissoin case I mentioned above, the government of Alberta sent a lawyer to intervene against Boissoin's freedom of speech. It was truly appalling. Why doesn't the federal government send a lawyer to intervene on behalf of Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn in their upcoming hearings -- on the side of freedom?

3. Introduce an amendment to the human rights acts to protect freedom of speech and thought.

If it were precisely worded, such an amendment to these commissions' governing statutes would be difficult for detractors to characterize it as an assault on "human rights". In fact, the amendment could be called The Human Rights Expansion Act or something like that -- and it would be worded clearly, to enshrine and protect freedom of speech and thought as fundamental human rights. It would be hard to imagine anyone but the far left wing of the NDP opposing such an amendment -- but I think the public (and the media, who would be amongst the chief beneficiaries of the amendment) would love it.

4. Abolish the commissions, but keep the tribunals.

This is what B.C. did. The tribunal -- the quasi-court that hears cases -- still exists. But the commissioners -- the trouble-making, problem-hunting recruiters of complaints, like Officer McGovern who interrogated me, were all fired in B.C. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a giant step forward. And it's not just "pruning" the commission, like adding sympathetic commissioners would do -- it's digging it out by its roots.

5. Abolish both the commission and the tribunal.

That's the only permanent solution. There is no need for government censors in Canada. Nor is there any need for the other jobs of the commissions, which were meant as solutions to problems that are now largely obsolete. We already have labour law and employment law to deal with people fired for improper reasons. We already have landlord and tenant law to govern housing. These might have been issues forty years ago, but they're largely solved now, which is why the commissions have moved on to other, ignoble tasks, like persecuting pastors or censoring cartoons.

Far better for a government to abolish those commissions, and take those budgets and invest them in civics programs -- teaching Canadians, especially new immigrants, about the most precious and valuable human rights around, the ones we have inherited from 800 years of tradition in the free west. It is not a coincidence that the two recent complaints against free speech were filed by radical Muslim immigrants from Egypt and Pakistan. Basic civics classes -- not partisan political indoctrination, but a basic primer in the rule of law; fundamental freedoms; the equality of men and women; non-violent solutions to problems, etc.

A week ago, I would have thought that this last option would have been politically impossible. But, given the overwhelming support I have received from the general public -- and the positive reception from even liberal and many left-wing commenters -- I think that an abolition of the commissions and their tribunals would be well-received.

I'd invite people to help with this process. Denormalize these commissions to build a demand for change, and then press politicians to deliver that change. In the meantime, I promise to keep fighting like hell in my own case before Alberta's commission.

(I'm going to refine this post over the next day; feel free to send me your advice in the comments section.)

[DBA]

The Monday Jan 21 episode of TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin that discussed this is available online now. First part was a discussion with Ezra Levant and second was round table discussion with others. Should be available for a week so so.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin

[Blindspot]

Man, am I ever in a tight spot. I'm in my final semester for a Graphic Design program in Ontario. One of my courses (perhaps the most 'important') of the entire program is titled "Design for Social Change". It just so happens that the class has been tapped by the Ontario Human Rights Commission to craft a multi-pronged campaign to promote the entire Ontario human rights system. I even had the luxury to sit through a three-hour lecture by a OHRC lawyer. I should call it a three-hour police bash-fest, actually as he spent his time equating cops to knuckle-dragging racists. If I had my choice, I would rather not work on this project as I'm squarely in the Steyn-Levant camp. However, it'll be impossible to graduate without fulfilling this project. Perhaps I should offer my services pro-bono to one of these counter movements in order to assuage the guilt I feel for compromising my own ethics and the offence I suffered during these socialist indoctrination lectures. 

[Roy Harding]

Man, am I ever in a tight spot. I'm in my final semester for a Graphic Design program in Ontario. One of my courses (perhaps the most 'important') of the entire program is titled "Design for Social Change". It just so happens that the class has been tapped by the Ontario Human Rights Commission to craft a multi-pronged campaign to promote the entire Ontario human rights system. I even had the luxury to sit through a three-hour lecture by a OHRC lawyer. I should call it a three-hour police bash-fest, actually as he spent his time equating cops to knuckle-dragging racists. If I had my choice, I would rather not work on this project as I'm squarely in the Steyn-Levant camp. However, it'll be impossible to graduate without fulfilling this project. Perhaps I should offer my services pro-bono to one of these counter movements in order to assuage the guilt I feel for compromising my own ethics and the offence I suffered during these socialist indoctrination lectures. 

Perhaps you should assuage your guilt by offering to present the OTHER side of the issue?  Either personally or by recognized proponents of that particular point of view.

From my perspective, Universities and other institutions of higher learning should be places where ALL philosophies are presented (in the non-technical disciplines). 

From what you're posting, this is not the case.