It's against the law to call our censorship, censorship

I got a few laughs from the audience out of my speech in New York a couple of weeks ago. The biggest laugh, though, was nothing that I had written. It was when I simply read aloud section 3 of Alberta's human rights law in which I have become tangled for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

Section 3(1) is what I'm charged under. Its wording is thus:

3(1)  No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or

(b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt

because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons.

In other words, it's the Alberta version of the section 13 thought crimes provision of the federal Canadian Human Rights Act, under which Maclean's magazine and others are charged (and under which not a single defendant has ever been acquitted).

But that's not what got them laughing in New York. Section 3(2) of the Alberta law did:

3(2)  Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject.

Stop and read that again, this time slowly.

The law doesn't guarantee "the free expression of opinion on any subject". It doesn't say that section 3(1) operates only until it threatens the free expression of opinion, at which point the free expression of opinion trumps the censors. It doesn't say, "notwithstanding section 3(1), every Albertan has the freedom of expression", etc.

No, section 3(2) simply "deems" any section 3(1) censorship as not to have happened. Section 3(2) creates a legal fiction. A plain reading of section 3(1) allows censorship. A plain reading of my case, or Rev. Boissoin's (see para. 357 here), would show that's its effect. But section 3(2) simply declares that censorship not to have happened.

Section 3(2) is legal pixie dust, declaring that if any freedom of expression is infringed, the law will just "deem" that it never happened. Keep moving, nothing to see here. After all, who are you going to believe -- section 3(2), or your lying eyes?

The government just told you, in advance, that whatever it does with section 3(1) won't be "deemed" to interfere with freedom of thought. It doesn't quite say who is supposed to believe that fiction, or how that fiction is to be enforced, or whether it is a crime not to believe that fiction.

Clearly, my interrogator, Shirlene McGovern, believes that fiction. She grilled me for 90 minutes about my decision to publish the Danish cartoons. She evidently believed she had a license to censor -- section 3(2) told her so.

It got a laugh in New York. But it's not so funny when you're in Alberta.