Libel chill as a tool of human rights commissions

Mark Steyn points out how Rev. Stephen Boissoin, the defendant in the infamous Lund v. Boissoin ruling last year (see p. 357 for the HRC's ruling that the right of an officious bystander not to be offended trumps Boissoin's freedom of speech and freedom of religion), has been blackballed in the press, especially in his hometown of Red Deer.

But it's worse than that. Almost any mainstream newspaper in the country, especially the newspaper of record in a city like Red Deer, would normally give someone like Boissoin a chance to publish a rebuttal, even a simple letter to the editor, when he has been so pilloried, by name. Of course, the Red Deer Advocate has the right to blackball Boissoin or anyone else -- like Maclean's magazine, it's private property, and if their editors want to be "offensive" or "unfair", that's for their owners, readers and advertisers to take up with them.

But in Boissoin's case, the Red Deer Advocate's editors are not freely making their own decision. They're acting under duress from the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

You see, the original complaint was not Lund v. Boissoin. It was Lund v. Red Deer Advocate and Boission. But, when faced with the prospect of a five-year legal battle, unlimited legal fees, and a near-certain conviction, the Red Deer Advocate did what any bottom-line-oriented company would consider doing: they cut their losses, and struck a plea bargain with the Alberta HRC. The full terms of that deal are not known; if it's anything like most other HRC plea bargains -- including the one the Alberta HRC offered to me in the cartoon case -- it would involve a cash payment to the complainant, an apology, and some sort of re-education seminar. I doubt that it was brazen enough to specifically include an undertaking to blackball Rev. Boissoin, but it didn't need to be; after the expensive and time-consuming hassle the HRC put the Red Deer Advocate through, they wouldn't be foolish enough to go printing anything smacking of Christianity or conservative morality again in a hurry.

Over the past few months, I've pointed to human rights commission cases that make it to the Tribunal stage (in Alberta, the "police", "prosecutors" and "judges" are all called the "commission") as examples of the absurd and illiberal nature of these commissions. But the vast majority of their nefarious work is done without any public record, let alone a hearing in a kangaroo court. Reading the annual reports of various HRCs, it seems like twenty cases are settled for every one that goes to a hearing. So for every Western Standard or Maclean's fight, there are a dozen or two Red Deer Advocate surrenders.

It's not libel chill -- because libel chill is fear of defamation suits, and defamation suits are only to be feared by newspapers that get their facts wrong. True facts are no defence to human rights complaints. And a dismissed defamation suit comes with legal costs payable to the roughed-up defendant -- not so for "victorious" human rights respondents (of which there haven't yet been any, under the federal CHRC).

I hate the unconstitutional infringements of free speech these HRCs are championing. I hate their kangaroo court procedures. Those punishments are limited to the poor souls who are actually dragged before the HRCs. But everyone in Canada -- especially other media -- are victims of HRC libel chill. That's why Stephen Boissoin can't get his letter of rebuttal into the Red Deer Advocate. They know what happened to them once, and they don't want it to happen again.