More fibbing from the HRC's defenders

You know we're winning the battle in the court of public opinion when the defenders of the human rights commissions resort to fibbing. We've seen that from the radical Canadian Islamic Congress, whose spokeschildren actually claimed that these HRCs are not government agencies, and so there's nothing to worry about.

I watched the new TVO show about HRCs -- kudos to them for covering the subject again -- and HRC defender Len Rudner of the Canadian Jewish Congress plain old made up facts.

Rudner claimed that HRCs follow the same procedures and standards that regular civil courts do. But that's just not true. The civil rules of court don't apply; civil rules of evidence don't apply; HRC "investigators" have stunning powers -- including search and seizure powers without warrants -- that do not exist anywhere in civil procedure. And the "burden of proof" necessary for a conviction in HRCs is not at all like civil courts. The standard is the absurd "pre-crime" standard of "likely to cause" hurt feelings, and that standard is applied inconsistently by HRC tribunals, which are staffed by non-judges. No wonder the federal HRC has a 100% conviction rate under its thought crimes provisions.

The fact that advocates of HRCs like Rudner have to resort to such fibs, in a way, is a good sign, like the secrecy of the March 25th hearing. If the HRCs are so embarrassed about what they actually do and how they do it, all we need to do to win this fight is to keep shining sunlight on them, to expose them for what they are, to "denormalize" them in society.

I've argued in the past that radical mullahs like Syed Soharwardy may think they're promoting Muslim interests, but in fact they create anti-Muslim sentiment, because they're so un-Canadian in their attempts to censor Canadians and make our country more like Saudi Arabia. I'd say the same thing about people like Rudner -- their smug self-righteousness, along with their paternalistic idea that they can handle "hateful" words (but we mere mortals cannot) actually breeds resentment against Jews, or at least Official Jews.

I'll write more about the TVO program later, but I'm going to listen to Cross Country Checkup now -- and I'll be on the show at 4:40 ET/2:40 MT.