CTV Newsnet

I was delighted that CTV invited me to appear today to talk about my human rights commission interrogation. You can see the short clip here.

The interviewee who followed me was Khurrum Awan, one of the four students who are the front-men for Mohamed Elmasry's human rights complaint against Mark Steyn, since Elmasry himself isn't exactly, uh, suitable for media appearances. (Read Jason Kenney's gorgeous smack down of Awan and Elmasry here).

Most of Awan's comments were the same ones he and the rest of Elmo's Kids have been offering for months. But Awan said something bizarre, for the first time that I've heard. He claims that human rights commissions "are not government bodies" and that "it's completely false... to say [their penalties] amount to government censorship."

Huh?

Every human rights commission in Canada is part of the government. They were each created by a government law, directed by government appointees, funded by government budgets, staffed by government bureaucrats, and their orders have the force of the government behind them.

There are two possibilities here: Khurrum Awan is really that bad a lawyer, or he's lying through his teeth. It's hard to believe that, even with its affirmative action programs, Osgoode Hall Law School would admit someone so thick as to support the first possibility, or if they did, to graduate him. I believe the second possibility is more likely true: that, like his boss Mohamed Elmasry, Khurrum Awan will say anything and do anything to promote the cause of radical Islam and to undermine our Western freedoms. If that means lying to CTV and its viewers about the nature of a human rights commission, why, that's just a little bit of taqiyya.

Or maybe it's both option one and option two: because anyone who would utter such an easily checkable fib isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. When I first heard Awan was going to be on TV after me, I groaned. Not anymore: as far as I'm concerned, the more Canada hears from him and the rest of Elmo's Kids, the more damage they do to their credibility -- and, hopefully, to the human rights commissions themselves.