Three week update

Let's do a reality check of the last three weeks in the battle to regain our ancient civil right of free speech from the misnamed human rights commissions. The fight has been going on longer than that, of course, but three weeks ago is when things sped up, when I uploaded the videos of my interrogation at the hands of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. According to YouTube, those videos have been collectively viewed 464,000 times since then. (Fun statistic: that's more than the number of people in North America who watched Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs in its first three weeks; and it was pulled from theatres after 84 days and just 1 million views.)

What are some of the other ways to measure this battle?

1. Between 5,000 and 10,000 blog entries have been written on the subject. I haven't read them all, but my estimate is that 95% of them are opposed to the abusive forays into political censorship. Even most of my personal or political critics concede that these commissions are out of control.

2. A critical mass of mainstream commentators has weighed in, too, in newspaper Op-Eds and even in unsigned editorials, which reflect the "official" view of the newspaper. The left-leaning Toronto Star, Edmonton Journal and Eye Weekly were just as opposed to these commissions as were the more conservative National Post and Calgary Herald. From the Montreal Gazette to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald to the Globe and Mail and even the CBC, these commissions have had the worst PR-pummelling in their existence. I won't link to them all; you can probably find 50 of them here. They have been unanimous in opposing these commissions. I cannot recall another issue, let alone one supposedly as "divisive" as this, that has actually been so unanimous. It makes sense; the entire political spectrum is uniting against an illiberal force that seeks to destroy the concept of a political spectrum.

3. Senior human rights activists, too, have come on side. Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and many more junior civil libertarians, have come out against the commissions' excesses. That takes more courage than mere punditry; Borovoy and his colleagues actually created these commissions. To disown their creations now as Frankensteins involves a degree of self-criticism that isn't easy, and they have done so publicly and repeatedly.

4. Jason Kenney, the cabinet minister in charge of domestic human rights issues, has spoken out several times on this subject. I know, from personal contact, that many other government MPs and cabinet ministers -- and even staffers in the PMO -- share Kenney's view that these commissions are violating human rights, not protecting them.

5. Keith Martin, a Liberal MP with a strong human rights record (and a visible minority, to boot) has introduced a private member's motion decrying the section 13 "thought crimes" provision of the Act. It's not a bill that will amend it; the motion is merely symbolic. And it might not even get to a vote on the floor of the House of Commons. But the fact that such a progressive MP feels it important to register such a symbol of protest -- and that he refused to capitulate in the face of the first whiff of journalistic scrutiny -- is a sign that the aforementioned political and media achievements have not gone unnoticed by our legislators.

The first part of my suggested "fight back plan" is succeeding: human rights commissions are becoming "denormalized". They're not acceptable; they can't escape scrutiny merely because their names sound liberal. The word is getting out that they are quite illiberal, and their name is an Orwellian trick.

All of the foregoing is an amazing achievement in just three weeks. And, even if the next part of the fight-back plan -- the real political action -- were to go no further than Martin's motion, I believe that things have already changed:

1. Human rights commissions, like all bureaucratic organizations, are risk-averse, and will be more cautious about pursuing thought crime charges in the future, now that the country has been primed on the matter. In fact, it would not surprise me if the commissions swallowed their pride and acquitted Steyn and me, simply as an act of self-preservation. They've had the tar kicked out of them for three weeks for merely interrogating me. What would happen if they tried to interrogate Steyn, one of the most articulate communicators around? And what if they proceeded to a hearing against either of us -- and to an actual punishment? That's when the Keith Martins of the world would move from motions to bills.

2. Richard Warman has been outed as a serial abuser of human rights commissions, and an abuser of human rights himself. I think he will find it more difficult to ply his litigation of fortune, both because of external scrutiny and a new fear of political accountability within the CHRC.

3. This has been a "teaching moment" about freedom and human rights in Canada. It's reminded people that our freedoms are constantly being eroded, and that it behooves us -- especially those of us in the ideas business -- to be on guard. It was a lesson in the difference between real rights and made-up rights (e.g. the "right to not be offended"). I think it also gave many journalists in the MSM an opportunity to reassert their independence in the wake of their general failure to do so two years ago in the thick of the actual cartoon kerfuffle, when too many editors and producers censored themselves simply to avoid the hassle. That was an enormous setback for freedom; in that case, it was in the face of violent threats. Perhaps the new MSM boldness is because the threat is from bureaucrats, not terrorists.

That's a list of some of the successes to date. On the other side of the ledger we have... a Liberal lobbyist, on the outs with half of his own party, who knows only one tool: personal attacks. I don't mind being on the receiving end myself, but I'm less sure it will be persuasive in the Liberal caucus. I'm guessing that if Kinsella could get his phone calls returned by the OLO, he wouldn't need to resort to writing "public letters" on his blog, and trying to smear his own party's MP's. Kinsella might be able to spin a sympathetic reporter from time to time, but that's hardly an antidote to the denormalization of the commissions that has already occured. And look at his spin: he doesn't defend the commissions; he even acknowledges the cases against Steyn and me are bogus. All he's done is what he always does: a Michael Moore-ish stunt, trying to equate brown-skinned Keith Martin to white supremacists. Is that really the best he's got?

Let's see what the week ahead holds. Let's see if Kinsella's public abuse persuades his Liberal colleagues of anything. I doubt it will.

I'll end this long-winded post now. Tomorrow I'll give you my assessment of what the Tories are thinking.