Nigel Hannaford in today's Calgary Herald

Nigel Hannaford was for freedom of speech before freedom of speech was cool. Here's his latest column in the Calgary Herald. An excerpt:

Even those of us advocating human rights commission reform, and thus inclined to think the less of them, have been amazed this week by what goes on at the CHRC, as revealed by a tribunal prosecuting alleged hatemonger Marc Lemire.

There we were, making abstract arguments about free speech and quoting Voltaire.

There the federal snivel servants were, logging onto Internet hate sites under assumed names, trying to conceal what they were up to by using the wireless Internet account belonging to a young woman who seems to be completely uninvolved in any of it and, according to Lemire, trying to entrap people who visited his site.

Only the unusual circumstance of these people being publicly cross-examined brought any of this to light.

Boy, did we ever not quite get it. We thought this was a high-minded disagreement over fundamental principles. Instead, we find the CHRC tolerates sleazy behaviours among its investigating officers that have no place in a free society.