Why is tomorrow's hearing important?

Stop for a moment to reflect on how far our campaign to denormalize Canada's abusive human rights commissions has come in the past three months.

Last year, 99% of Canadians hadn't even heard of human rights commissions. That number's probably still 90%, but amongst the political and media class, the issue has become commonplace. Who could have predicted both the Globe and Mail and the National Post editorializing for reform of the HRC laws? Or even the CBC pounding away again and again and again and again (and again next weekend -- I'll let you know the details soon). And that the Can-Con glitterati would join the fray, too, and the Canadian Association of Journalists? As I mentioned last week, a communications director for a federal cabinet minister told me it was the second most popular topic of constituent mail his office was receiving.

As I outlined in January, political movement doesn't usually come until public opinion moves, so it shouldn't be surprising that, so far, only bold politicians have called for reform. But, again, three months ago, who would have thought that any MP would become so well-briefed -- and so feisty! -- on the subject as Keith Martin has become?

But all of this, I believe, has merely been the prologue to what's coming next -- starting tomorrow.

I've described at some length what's scheduled to happen tomorrow at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in downtown Ottawa. But even that is just a sliver of the ground that could be covered. I reviewed just one transcript, that of Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer Hannya Rizk. I haven't even had the time to go digging into the transcripts of the other two CHRC staffers who have been subpoenaed, Dean Steacy and Harvey Goldberg. (These are the transcripts in which the CHRC makes various objections to answering questions about their conduct; those objections have now been overruled or abandoned by the CHRC, and so tomorrow's cross-examination of Rizk, Steacy and Goldberg will fill in the gaps left in these tantalizing transcripts from last year's hearings.)

But now I'm not talking about particular HRC outrages that have been uncovered, or those that are sure to be uncovered soon. What I'm talking about now is that, unlike the testimony of Rizk, Steacy, Goldberg and others last year, to a nearly empty room, tomorrow's testimony will be witnessed by the first rank of Canada's press gallery -- including those who had to sue to get access to the hearing itself. That should already tell you something about their interest in the subject, and their views on the CHRC's predilection towards secrecy.

Tomorrow may mark the hundredth day that bloggers like me -- or the indispensable HRC-watch site, Free Mark Steyn -- has weighed in. Mark Steyn, who has been fighting these commissions like hell, will be there, as you would expect. But for many mainstream reporters, like Maclean's Charlie Gillis, it's the beginning of their HRC beat. The National Post's Joseph Brean is clearly just getting warmed up, too. I wonder who else will be there; I suspect CanWest will have a reporter there, if they don't pick up Brean's work. I wouldn't be surprised if the Globe's Peggy Wente attends, or someone from that paper's Ottawa bureau, simply to stay competitive with the Post on the subject. I think Debbie Gyapong is attending -- as usual, she's bound to pick up one some details that others overlook. 

In other words, as far as reporting this story is concerned, this is just getting started. And all this, as the Post's Jonathan Kay notes, for a politically marginal respondent, Marc Lemire. Imagine the media scrutiny when mainstream Maclean's and Mark Steyn are hauled before the federal and B.C. HRCs. And if you think the videos of my interrogation at the hands of the Alberta HRC raised a ruckus -- 538,000 views so far, according to YouTube -- imagine the attention that my actual hearing will bring.

I can't help but to chuckle about a blog entry that the CHRC's lonely defender, Warren Kinsella, posted two weeks ago, under the headline "the big free speech debate":