The "human right" to miss work 118 days a year

The B.C. human rights tribunal has decided that it's a human right to skip work, and that a bus company that tries to get its slacker employees to show up for work violates that right.

Skim the ruling -- don't read it, you'll get too angry. According to an audit, B.C. Transit has an average absenteeism rate of 37 days a year. With some of the worse offenders -- see paragraph 189 for the woman who missed 118 days of work or paragraph 237 for the employee who missed 98% of work days -- the bus company tried such brutal tactics as asking meekly for a doctor's note.

The bus company was fined for such inhumanity.

These sorts of absurd judgments are a form of taxation on companies -- a hassle, a shakedown, in return for the privilege of doing business in Canada. It's awful, it's unfair, it's immoral -- but it's not going to bankrupt B.C. Transit, just as the case below didn't bankrupt Canada Post.

But now these same absurd commissions are directing their attentions to political thought and speech. And so they've gone from nuisances to dangers.