The worse, the better?

The worse, the better: that's an old revolutionary maxim, the first use of which I can trace to an old Russian socialist named Nikolai Chernyshevsky, though I'm sure others have made the point before him. Maybe even Moses.

The idea is pretty simple, though it's awfully pessimistic and even cruel: for people to be motivated to embrace change, things have to get even worse than they are now.

Which brings us to Barbara Hall, the awful new boss of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. She's the one who issued the guilty verdict against Maclean's magazine, without going through the trouble of having a trial of the matter. And, according to this interview with the National Post's Joseph Brean, she's just getting warmed up.

"I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that's a very low level," the activist lawyer and former mayor of Toronto said. In the long term she would like to see human rights complaints decrease, but in the interim they "may have to spike."

People aren't unhappy enough in Czarina Hall's Ontario. She will change that.

...she stood firmly by her position that media have a responsibility to put their writings through a "human rights filter" before publication, and said the commission is keen to call out those who do not, jurisdiction be damned.

Did you know that Canada's media now have a responsibility to Czarina Hall? That they can't just report the news, or express their opinions -- but that they must do both now through her own peculiar ideological prism?

"Every day we comment on things that aren't [formal] cases. Part of our job is to identify discrimination and to work to address it," Ms. Hall said. Often that is done through formal complaints, "but more often it is putting out a statement, having a debate, meeting with people, discussing and understanding the impact.

"Having a debate" -- that's my favourite. We've seen how she debates in the Maclean's case -- she accepts a complaint, and issues a defamatory verdict, without trifling to hear from the other side.

I believe Czarina Hall means every word she says. I believe that many people will be hauled before her, including Ontario media, even those who regard themselves as quite liberal.

I believe that things are going to get worse. She says so. Ordinary people who have never heard of the Ontario Human Rights Commission are going to hear about them, a lot. Czarina Hall will be a fixture in the media. She will become more famous than any other Ontario politician except perhaps the premier and mayor of Toronto. She will not govern herself, and so far no-one else has chosen to govern her.

It will be an awful few years in Ontario. But, as Chernyshevsky promised, because of that, the revolution will come more quickly.

It's hard to believe right now, but Barbara Hall is a greater force for the reform of these abusive commissions than any of the commissions' critics.