June 2008 Archives

I've been reading about the medieval prototypes of today's human rights commissions. Earlier this month, I cited the fascinating case of Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witch Finder Generall of Britain. If he was born a few centuries later, I'm sure he'd work for a Canadian HRC.

Today I read about auto-da-fe, literally "act of faith". It was the penultimate step in a trial of the Spanish Inquisition. After conviction, the guilty infidel would declare his faith, as a sort of penance. And then he'd be killed.

Which, other than the gravity of the sentence that followed, is exactly what Lori Andreachuk of the Alberta Human Rights Commission ordered Rev. Stephen Boissoin to do. The Spanish auto-da-fe was an act of Christianity; Andreachuk's order is an anti-Christian auto-da-fe, in which Rev. Boissoin must renounce his faith. That's a 21st century twist.

And then there's the Star Chamber. I was fascinated to learn that, among its other victims, entire juries were tried in the Star Chamber if they didn't render the politically appropriate verdict.

But the most striking analogy was a Star Chamber order of 1632, which is a template for the show trial of Maclean's magazine of 2008.

According to Wikipedia, 1632 is when the Star Chamber:

...banned all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in England was unfair. As a result, newsbooks pertaining to this matter were often printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country, until the ban was lifted six years later.

So foreign trouble-makers who objected to free speech and who insisted on politically correct versions of current events managed to censor the news. Plus ca change.

It's fascinating to me that Canada's human rights commissions defend themselves as progressive and modern and evolved. In fact, they're medieval throw-backs to an age when political and religious terror, censorship, and abuse of process still coloured political life. Those were the dark days; how terrfying that they are being revived now, by those claiming to be angels of light.

I was speaking with a friend in the PMO today about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's decision not to take Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn to trial under section 13, the thought crimes section of the Canadian Human Rights Act. (A trial would have meant certain conviction; in its 31-year history, not a single target of section 13 has ever been acquitted.)

My friend was delighted, and saw this as good news.

I suppose, in a very specific sense, it is good news.

I asked him if Father Alphonse de Valk, the editor of Catholic Insight -- another magazine that has been hauled before the CHRC -- will be let go, too.

"Who?" asked my friend.

And that's the problem here, isn't it? Maclean's magazine is enormous -- in size, in strength, in profile, in legal resources. And that is precisely why it was let go. It was such a big fish, it would have pulled the Bad Ship CHRC underwater, rather than be reeled in.

Not so with small fish like Fr. de Valk, so small he is being crushed by legal bills, so small my friend had not even heard of his case.

So small that the CHRC knows it can prosecute him with impunity.

So small that he shall not be afforded the politically-motivated "justice" meted out to Maclean's.

That's the problem here. That's why we can't let up. One of the fundamentals of the rule of law is that no-one is above the law, and no-one is below it.

The Canadian Human Rights Act is a bad law -- unconstitutional in its application, when tested against the Supreme Court's 1990 Taylor decision, that barred its application from political matters.

So Fr. de Valk should not be below the law.

But the CHRC thinks the law is good law, and so far, the Conservative government hasn't said otherwise. If that's the case -- and I submit it isn't -- then Maclean's shouldn't be above the law, by virtue of their wealth and power.

Whether the law is unconstitutional or not (I say it is), the case against Fr. de Valk and Catholic Insight is the same as the case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. That one was set free, while the other is persecuted, merely highlights the political corruption of the system.

Fire. Them. All.

I read my friend Debbie Gyapong's concerns here and here about the Supreme Court's recent ruling that expands the scope of fair comment in defamation law. As I wrote on Friday, the ruling tilts the law further towards free speech, including "outrageous" and "ridiculous" speech. As someone who is sometimes accused of both, I'm naturally pleased!

Debbie focussed on the fact that in the actual case that led to this decision, the plaintiff, Kari Simpson, was a Christian conservative, who had been likened to Nazis by the defendant, Rafe Mair, on his radio show. The judges said that might be extreme, but it's a fair comment. (That is distinct from a statement of fact. If Mair had said that Simpson was a member of the Nazi Party -- a false statement of fact, not a fair comment on a true fact -- then the defence of fair comment wouldn't apply.)

Debbie's worried that this might mark the start of open season on Christians, in terms of defamation. I have a few thoughts in response.

1. When was the last time a Christian sued an anti-Christian for defamation? I think it's exceedingly rare. So I don't think this SCC decision will suddenly stop Christians from suing in defamation law -- they weren't doing so frequently in the first place.

2. Anti-Christian bigotry was going full tilt before this ruling. I don't think this ruling will increase it. Defamation law, until this point, hadn't really been a barrier to Christophobia.

See update below.

Bernie "Burny" Farber, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has converted to Islam. I think it's a wonderful symbol of tolerance on the part of the Official Jews of the CJC that they let Burny continue in his post.

Other than a conversion, how else can you explain Burny's behaviour?

I first detected that something was up when Burny came out in solidarity with Mohamed Elmasry, the anti-Semitic president-for-life of the Canadian Islamic Congress, giving an intimate interview to the Toronto Star's resident anti-Israel pundit, Haroon Siddiqui, in which Burny accused anyone who criticized Elmasry's complaint against Maclean's of being an "Islamophobe".

Maybe Burny will get a "media award" from Elmasry, just like Siddiqui received!

But Burny was just getting started.

Just last week he hit the media circuit, hard, to rebut a news story that warned of Hezbollah terrorist attacks against Jewish targets here in Canada.

Burny was quoted in the Globe and Mail, the CBC and Canadian Press stories far and wide saying that specific intelligence information was not real, and not imminent. How does Burny know? Because, he says, "Canadian authorities" have "told me categorically". Yes, I'm sure that Canada's spy agencies regularly give Burny classified briefings all the time. No need to worry -- Burny says all is clear!

Burny's quote in the story -- denying that terrorism is a real threat, downplaying anti-Semitic violence -- is astonishing. It's factually unsupportable -- Muslim terrorists have torched a synagogue in Edmonton, a school library in Montreal, and were caught before implementing even more massive schemes. Tut-tutting the risk of Muslim terror usually falls to Elmasry and his fellow terrorism excusers. But they're not too credible. Why not get a Jew to do the "there's nothing to see here, go back to sleep" propaganda for them?

Particularly astonishing is the contrast between Burny's "don't worry, be happy" approach to threats of real violence, and his hyperventilation at non-violent, if offensive, language on the Internet. There is no racial epithet Burny doesn't want the Canadian government to prosecute (well, in fairness, he hasn't called for the prosecution of his friend Elmasry's epithets). So he's all for the prosecution of mere words. But a terrorist threat? Calm down!

I receive a half-dozen e-mails a day from Jews across Canada -- including senior members of the community, including senior fundraisers -- who are just scratching their heads about the CJC, and Farber in particular. I've heard from Jews in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto about trying to cut off their United Jewish Appeal funds to the CJC. It reminds of the grassroots revolt when the CJC prostituted itself to the government in 1992, and officially endorsed the doomed Charlottetown Accord. This time it's even weirder -- and grassroots Jews, the people Burny claims, without a mandate, to represent, are getting just as fed up.

I wouldn't worry too much about Burny, though. If the CJC actually listens to its "constituents" and gives the boot to Burny and his man-crush on Elmasry, he can always get a job with the Canadian Islamic Congress -- or even Al Jazeera.

UPDATE: I see by the comments that my attempt at satire was too subtle. No, I don't really think Burny has converted to Islam. I just think that he has become a dhimmi -- that he has become subservient to radical Islam. I think it's because his career has been so wedded to human rights commissions and their censorship, and now that radical Islamists are using his favourite vehicles, rather than renounce those HRCs as dangerous, he has done the mental gymnastics required to support their use of the HRCs, too. It's tough to repudiate one's past mistakes; too tough for Burny to do. But there are other voices in Canada's Jewish leadership that see the awful mistake made by the Jews when they endorsed political censorship.

 

A keen-eyed reader sent me more information about Lorna Pardy, the drunk heckler who is now suing a comedian in B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal for making un-funny jokes about her sexuality. That's her in the middle of the picture, while working as an extra on the set of the TV show The L Word. She's a lesbian thespian.

You'd think someone who is an aspiring actress would have a little bit more composure than Pardy exhibited; that perhaps she might have had a bon mot or two of her own in reply to comedian Guy Earle's admittedly foul rant. Instead, she ran straight to the government. How pitiful. How weak. How un-self-confident. Her attempt at looking cool and composed in the above picture must have mustered the totality of her acting ability. I prophesy she will never rise above an un-credited extra.

I'm pleased to see that at least one of Pardy's tribe gets it: on the website from which I took this picture, she is denounced thusly:

...shame on you for implicating all of us in this shameless dance with the insatiable beast of censorship. I still remember a time not that long ago when books deemed to have explicit gay and lesbian content were not allowed into Canada, and now, thanks to the foolish and shortsighted tantrum of one sadly insecure little lesbian hipster, we can all look forward to another walk down that dark path.

thank you for bringing this distinctly fascist distortion of liberal thought into our community.

And here is a more contemporaneous report on the subject, from the gay magazine Xtra West. Note this cowardly comment:

The couple refused to comment for this article, on advice from legal counsel. "I can't even give you my name [to be] printed," said one of the women, who would only confirm her first name as Lorna.

But look at this interesting tid-bit: Zesty's (the nightclub) has been home to a lesbian comedy show for years:

Accounts of the incident have been making the rounds on the internet, with some calling for a boycott of Zesty's, while others say any action should target the comedian, not the venue which has played long-time host to queer artists like the comedy troupe Laff Riot Girls.

"We're collateral damage," says Lee Ann Keple of the lesbian-run comedy troupe that has held its shows at Zesty's for the past seven years. Keple says she has always had a good relationship with Zesty's management, and does not support the call for a boycott.

No matter to Pardy and her angry friends. They're suing not just Earle, but the restaurant, too. Given that Earle lives in Toronto and, as a comedian, is likely penniless, but Zesty's is stuck in Vancouver and is obviously a going concern, who do you think will foot the bill here in the end?

Pardy is a disgrace. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the Gordon Campbell's government has given that disgrace a powerful legal weapon in the form of the BCHRT.

What a disgusting new chapter in the grostesque book of Stalinism being written by Canada's HRCs.

Fire. Them. All.

I came across this discussion of the legal ethics behind the assault on Mark Steyn and Maclean's. It focuses on Khurrum Awan, one of the PR puppets for the Canadian Islamic Congress's president-for-life, Mohamed Elmasry.

I've already asked a few questions about the propriety of Awan, who was not a complainant in the B.C. suit against Steyn and Maclean's, testifying at the hearing in place of Elmasry. I had never heard of someone sending in a surrogate "witness" before. Hell, why not hire a professional actor? And how could Awan be assisting the CIC's legal team, while also being a witness for them?

Not just a witness -- a soon-to-be-employee. Awan's examination in chief was led by Faisal Joseph -- even though Awan has said that he will start working for Joseph when he's done articling at the courts. And then there was the bizarre spectacle of Awan giving hearsay testimony about what one of his fellow student sock-puppets had told him months earlier -- while she was just sitting a few feet away in court, at the table reserved for the CIC's lawyers.

As Woody Allen would say, it was a travesty of a mockery of a sham.

But Australia's skepticlawyer asks another question: what was Awan doing acting for a private client (the CIC) while still working as a clerk for the Ontario Superior Court of Justice? Did the court know that one of their clerks was moonlighting as junior counsel?

That's not the first time Awan has taken liberties with his position. Earlier this year, he sent an angry letter to Jason Kenney, the Conservative cabinet minister who has stood up for free speech, and signed it using his job title. As you can see in Kenney's delicious smack-down, that was highly inappropriate -- and Kenney brought it to the attention of the Chief Justice. I am told that, after Kenney's letter was received by the Chief, all of the law clerks were assembled and read the riot act about abusing their offices.

It doesn't sound like it sunk in to our little sock puppet, does it? 

Here's the CBC's "At Issue" political panel discussing the end of the Parliamentary session. Lots of smart comments throughout, but my favourite (of course) was Rex Murphy's pick for the most under-reported news story of the year: the war against freedom of speech prosecuted by Canada's human rights commissions (scroll forward to 2:30 minutes in). Rex calls the Conservative government's acceptance of the HRCs "very disturbing".

It's true; I still encounter MPs who are oblivious to the situation; and I bet that 90% of severely normal Canadians haven't evern heard of human rights commissions. But six months ago, that number would have been closer to 99%.

With insane decisions like the B.C. prosecution of the "un-funny" comedian, I expect that more and more Canadians will become familiar with these kangaroo courts, and they will continue to be denormalized. Yesterday's decision by the Canadian Human Rights Commission not to prosecute Mark Steyn and Maclean's was not a legal decision, but a P.R. decision by them. Too little, too late -- the denormalization of HRCs is well underway.

Today's decision by the Supreme Court of Canada about defamation law has shifted the balance from plaintiffs to defendants -- in other words, towards greater free speech. The court calls it a modernization, which it is -- phenomena like talk radio shows, partisan TV panels and the Internet were not around when defamation law was developing (it actually goes back 400 years). It also brings us more in synch with the U.S. approach to free speech, and breaks away from the European model of soft censorship.

In other words, it should terrify Canada's human rights commissions. I had no doubt before this decision that Canada's HRCs were conducting themselves in an unconstitutional manner -- exceeding the narrow censorship powers granted to them in the 1990 Taylor decision. Now it's a certainty that section 13 would be batted down by this free speech-loving court.

The facts of this case involved B.C.'s radio legend Rafe Mair, and a conservative activist named Kari Simpson. But the law applies to all cases in Canada going forward, not just theirs.

The decision is written in pretty plain English, unlike some of the 200-pages of opaque gobbledegook the court became known for in the 1990s that were likely the sign of indecision as much as anything. This decision is pretty clear.

Here are some key lines from the ruling:

In my view, with respect, the Court of Appeal unduly favoured protection of Kari Simpson’s reputation in a rancourous public debate in which she had involved herself as a major protagonist... 

In the absence of demonstrated malice on his part (which the trial judge concluded was not a dominant motive), his expression of opinion, however exaggerated, was protected by the law.  We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones.

...Mair has a reputation for provoking controversy.  With controversy has come a measure of commercial success.  His listeners expect to hear extravagant opinions and, according to his counsel, discount them accordingly.

...There is concern that matters of public interest go unreported because publishers fear the ballooning cost and disruption of defending a defamation action.  Investigative reports get “spiked”, the Media Coalition contends, because, while true, they are based on facts that are difficult to establish according to rules of evidence.  When controversies erupt, statements of claim often follow as night follows day, not only in serious claims (as here) but in actions launched simply for the purpose of intimidation.  Of course “chilling” false and defamatory speech is not a bad thing in itself, but chilling debate on matters of legitimate public interest raises issues of inappropriate censorship and self-censorship.  Public controversy can be a rough trade, and the law needs to accommodate its requirements.

...In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists.  The media regularly match up assailants who attack each other on a set topic.  The audience understands that the combatants, like lawyers or a devil’s advocate, are arguing a brief.  What is important in such a debate on matters of public interest is that all sides of an issue are forcefully presented, although the limitation that the opinions must be ones that could be “honestly express[ed] . . . on the proved facts” provides some boundary to the extent to which private reputations can be trashed in public discourse.

The decision doesn't end defamation suits, of course. It merely moves the fulcrum a bit, by widening the scope of what constitutes "fair comment". Fair comment must still be rooted in true facts; but if those facts are clear, and the defamer's comments are clearly his own views, the court will give latitude to even "outrageous" and "ridiculous" opinions.

The rule of thumb for writers -- and bloggers -- remains: get your facts straight. But the good news for free speechniks is that, if your facts are accurate, you can be dramatic, critical and even wrong in your opinions. It's good news for bloggers -- and bad news for censors everywhere. 

 

UPDATE: You can watch the video by clicking here and scrolling down.

UPDATE 2: See below.

Congratulations to CHCH TV out of Hamilton. They had me on a show today, along with a comedian, debating the decision by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to put a comedian on trial for unfunny jokes about lesbian hecklers. I say congratulations, because the CHCH editors managed to find someone in Canada who was willing to defend the BCHRT's decision to have the trial. That's impressive.

They found this support in the personage of Susan Cole, the senior entertainment editor of Toronto's NOW Magazine, pictured at left. She's smiling -- I think -- which is odd, because Cole has a very particular definition of what's funny.

She called the remarks by the comedian in question "hate speech" and "discrimination", and said they "weren't funny". That's pretty impressive, given that there hasn't been a trial yet. But I think Cole understands the human rights industry just fine -- everyone's guilty; it's just a matter of who's unlucky enough to be charged.

Until now, HRCs have tried to dress up their political censorship as something else -- not as political hygiene, but as eradicating "hate". That's a neat trick, given that hate, like love, is an innate human emotion, and can't really be eradicated through laws -- though hate can surely be exacerbated by them. But now HRCs -- with Cole's delighted support -- are now taking it upon themselves to determine what is or isn't "funny", even at a comedy night.

Finally, we have some top talent looking into the matter of what is or isn't funny. Forget about Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno; we've got the dour sourpusses at the HRCs on the file. Once they come up with the magic recipe, wannabe comedians around the world will simply have to follow the instructions of the HRCs, and -- presto! -- the laughs will follow. At least that's the logic of a government agency that seeks to be the arbiter of what is or isn't funny.

I was asked by the host how this would affect Vancouver; I said I doubt the Just For Laughs Festival would be visiting anytime soon -- talk about a frenzy of hate crimes! And I asked if Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock, both of whom use the word n*gger the same way you and I use the words "and" and "the", would be allowed into town.

Cole had a quick answer: yes they would. Because they're allowed to make Black jokes, even using the word n*gger. But Whites can't. I'd have to read the transcript to be sure, but I think Cole implied that not only would the same joke told by a White comedian be illegal, it wouldn't even be funny. This, from the "senior entertainment editor" of an arts magazine.

That's nuts, of course. But, from a "human rights" "law" point of view, Cole is actually spot on. Under our "human rights" "jurisprudence", Mark Steyn and Maclean's were subjected to a five-day "hate speech" trial for "Islamophobia" in Vancouver for quoting radical Muslims. The radical Muslims who made the offensive remarks weren't charged (though the BCHRT asserts its jurisdiction not only nationally, but internationally); but Steyn and Maclean's were charged for repeating them. That's actually Cole's logic: a lesbian can crack a joke about lesbians. But a straight woman, or a man, can't. Same joke; but only a special victim group is allowed to tell it.

That's perfect politically correct logic for you -- and it's why, for example, Canada's feminists have been largely silent about the Muslim honour killings, polygamy and even female genital mutilation in Canada. Because Cole is merely a white woman; her poker hand is trumped by women of colour; and nothing beats the full house of a foreign-born, visible minority, Muslim. So traditional liberal values like free speech, the equality of men and women, and non-violence towards women, take a back seat to the politically correct value of not insulting "the other".

Cole was genuinely excited about this comedian being charged with "hate speech" for making fun of lesbians -- all the while acknowledging that the same jokes would be fine if the joke-teller was lesbian. What a horrid world Cole wants us to live in.

It got me thinking, though. What kind of jokes could Barack Obama tell? His mom was White; is he Black enough to tell Black jokes? How about someone who is one quarter Black? One eighth? Are they only allowed to tell gentle Black jokes, but the really tough ones are reserved for very black-skinned Blacks?

Could a straight woman pretend to be a lesbian in order to tell jokes about lesbians? How would Susan Cole propose to check her bona fides? And how about bi-sexuals?

Could a transexual -- a man who "became" a woman -- tell jokes about women? Even if he was still six feet tall, and looked pretty masculine?

Can anyone tell a joke that begins "a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar", or would you need two people to tell that one?

Can you convert to Islam, tell some Muslim jokes, and then convert back when the show is done (provided you're not executed for apostasy)?

If a lesbian tells a joke about lesbians, and it's not funny, do you still have to laugh? If you don't, is that discrimination?

There are so many rules about the "new comedy". All of which are lustily supported by a very angry woman named Susan Cole, and soul mates on the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. I'm sure that the comedians of the world will be hanging on their every word, and following their position papers on what jokes are funny and what jokes aren't.

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, was sentenced by a troika to eight years in a labour camp for writing a joke about Joseph Stalin -- he made fun of Stalin's moustache, calling him "the whiskered one". An estimated 200,000 Russians were sent to the Gulag for making jokes. 

It is a mistake to think that freedom only grows; that once achieved, it always remains. The malign human instinct to control one's neighbours, to silence one's foes, is eternal. There are Stalins in every generation; they must be met with Solzhenitsyns in every generation.

UPDATE 2: Susan Cole said in the clip that George Carlin never said anything hateful. Uh, okay. A commenter provides this clip of him responding to a heckler. I'm not saying it's pretty; I'm just saying Cole is clueless.

Here's a friendly review of the fight for free speech in this week's Eye Weekly, a Toronto magazine with an arts/left-wing flavour. A few excerpts from a great big article:

..Complaints were filed [about the Western Standard's publication of the Danish cartoons] with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, to which Levant responded politely — hoping that they could work things out. But the complaint by the Edmonton Muslim Council wasn’t going away, even though the Western Standard did, suspending its print edition — and annual boat cruises — last October, after losing around $4 million in four years of operation.

That opened a window of opportunity for Levant to investigate the investigators: for prosecuting the publishing of images of Muhammad, was the Canadian government facilitating the enforcement of sharia law? How could the 15 bureaucrats handling his file be experts in every field, as their jurisdiction required them to be? And why was he expected to take their opinion seriously?

...The curtain rose in January of this year, when his defiant appearance before a human rights investigator was filmed — and promptly posted online, putting Levant’s daily blog diatribes in context. The debate that sparked the complaint has been eclipsed by a different one, turning Levant into a foe of the Jewish status quo, which has historically availed itself of similar Canadian bureaucratic channels to shut down outlets for anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, he finds himself being supported by left wingers squinting to see beyond Levant’s well-cultivated partisan persona. “My personal temperament is that of a scrappy guy. I won’t say I don’t enjoy fighting back, but there are real costs involved with me doing this — even if I’ve received support on the legal side, there’s also the matter of stress, and time.

...Censorship of objectionable content seemed to be a recurring theme in Canada when material classified as pornographic would have to be physically imported across the border to be seen, heard or read. First they came for the art movies, then they came for the rap albums, then they came for the lesbian bookstores… and then, over time, dangerous artistic ideas were no longer put on trial.

When it comes to human rights commission tribunals on the editorial content of magazines, however, it seems the wake-up call is coming from inside the house. Like the earlier battles around border bureaucrats, the human rights commission fight, pivotally, is one of justice administered outside the criminal and civil courts. In human rights tribunals, unlike in hate crime or libel proceedings, the accused has no right to be judged by a jury of peers, no right to confront the accuser, no method of recovering legal costs in cases of frivolous prosecution, and none of the traditional defences for speech violations — fair comment and truth, notably — are available to defendants. If a complaint is deemed worthy of investigation, the tribunal becomes simultaneously investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury — a situation, critics point out, hundreds of years of constitutional tradition has removed from Western justice systems.

 Levant feels his case deserves to be taken at least as seriously as the proposed amendment to Bill C-10, which threatens to withdraw tax credits from Canadian filmmakers who cross a moral line, resulting in protests from the arts community. Gradually, he’s gained support from organizations like PEN Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and gay rights group EGALE — strange bedfellows for someone mostly recognized as a ranting neo-con stereotype. Yet he shoots down any suggestion that his world-view might be perceived as quirky.


...Omar Ha-Redeye, a 29-year-old University of Western Ontario student who contributes to the blog Law Is Cool — where human rights commissions aren’t being dismissed out of hand — feels Levant has abused his high-profile platform.

“The only distinguishing feature between this case and the previous ones is that the respondent has taken it upon himself to start a campaign against the human-rights commissions, rather than resolve it quietly and efficiently,” says Ha-Redeye. “Had he taken on the issue prior, there’s a possibility they would have summarily dismissed the complaint as a frivolous retaliation for his activities.

“The problem is that Levant has conflated this issue with other HRC issues, and quite deliberately. These commissions have done enormous good in Canada in the past — their informality, which he criticizes, is intended to provide flexibility.”

At the other end of the spectrum sits Denyse O’Leary...

“The commissioners strike me as middle-class busybodies anxious to meddle in anything they can,” she says. “Failed professionals who will blender into any area, and then assess that. It seems to me that they lack a sense of boundaries, and imagine that they can remake society into whatever they think it should be.

“No society can be free if being upset is seen as a source of harm. Part of being an adult is to deal with what upsets you. I see things that upset me all the time.”

And what Ezra Levant seems most upset with are the people he feels have betrayed him most — the “official Jews” who turned hate monitoring into a career, making celebrities out of people espousing unpopular views in far-flung places, like Hitler-loving First Nations chief David Ahenakew.

Leo Adler, director of national affairs for Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre showed up to heckle Levant, claiming that since the number of anti-Semitic websites based in Canada has gone from one to 8,000 over the course of 13 years, the law is therefore more necessary than ever. The quarter century separating Adler from Levant may well just be a generation gap, however. Does the power to post something online equate to actual power?

“The biggest problem is that people like him want to re-fight World War II,” says Levant. “However, the threat is no longer Hitler’s Holocaust — it’s Ahmadinejad’s.”

Remember, an attempt to make this point by republishing cartoons is what sparked this issue in the first place. The book that Ezra Levant signed a deal last week to write was spawned by his months of research into human rights commissions in Canada, putative experts in everything from public pot smoking, to transsexual labiaplasty, to the editorial content of magazines. Told he could solve his case with a cash settlement, Levant balked, and turned it into an investment in his public profile. But he insists that it’s not all about him. “The story is about human rights used as a sword to hurt people rather than shield them, and how there are massive abuses in this parallel justice system.

“I refuse to be the latest in an assembly line of people ground into powder.” 

See update below.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did.

With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing their own political death sentence.

So they blinked. Against everything in their DNA, they let Maclean's go. That's the first smart thing they've done; because the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can't afford Canada's best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country's literati.

"There's nothing to see here, people! So turn your TV cameras off, and let us continue on our work without your scrutiny! We promise not to target famous Canadians -- at least not for a little while. We'll keep picking on under-lawyered weaklings. We'll continue to build up our jurisprudence, continue our 100% conviction rate, continue building legal precedents. So when we come for Maclean's next time, we won't have to blink."

Here's Maclean's reply, which is far more polite than I would have been:

...Though gratified by the decision, Maclean's continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.

The only question remaining is whether Heather MacNaughton, chief kangaroo of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, will convict Maclean's. The "jurisprudence" is there; Maclean's surely is "guilty" of "likely" "exposing" someone to "hatred or contempt". Everyone's guilty of that; so the only question is who gets charged.

Will MacNaughton save her skin -- and preserve her tax-funded sinecure, like the CHRC is trying to do? Or will she continue her Stalinist approach to speech? Tough call; her decision in the comedy case shows she's as nutty as a Snickers Bar. But I'm still betting she'll acquit Maclean's. She'll throw that big fish back into the sea, so she can continue to haul in lots of smaller ones with political impunity.

UPDATE: Several readers ask if this means that section 13, the thought crimes section, no longer has a 100% conviction rate. No -- it still does. Because that 100% conviction rate is at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The agency that refused to run with the complaint was the Canadian Human Rights Commission. They're the pretend police and prosecutors; the CHRT are the pretend judges. Every single section 13 case the CHRC has brought to the CHRT has resulted in a conviction, and there's no reason to think the Maclean's case would have bucked that trend. The CHRC blinked, and decided not to prosecute. They knew that to do so would have been political suicide. Better to keep going after powerless, and often lawyerless, targets.

 

 

Guy Earle, a Toronto comedian, must now stand trial before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal on the charge of telling unfunny jokes.

That sounds like a joke itself, but it's not.

In May, 2007, Earle was hosting a comedy night at Zesty's restaurant in Vancouver. He says a couple of lesbians came in, got drunk and starting making out right in front of the stage. He said they also heckled him and other comedians.

In other words, like anyone else -- gay, straight or otherwise -- they set themselves up for some wise-cracks. And crack wise Earle did.

But didn't he know he was in the People's Republic of British Columbia?

Lorna Pardy, one of the humourless lesbians, filed a complaint against Earle and Zesty's. In B.C., unlike other human rights commissions, it is possible to make a preliminary application to dismiss a complaint.

That application to dismiss was rejected this week. Here is the ruling, that commits the matter to go to trial.

Take a look at who wrote it: Heather MacNaughton, the same tribunal member who chaired Mark Steyn's show trial earlier this month.

In that trial, too, the funny-ness of jokes became an issue. The Canadian Islamic Congress said that some of Mark Steyn's jokes weren't funny, but they also insisted that the CBC's awful "sitcom", Little Mosque on the Prairies, was indeed funny, and if Steyn didn't think so, he was a racist.

So MacNaughton feels comfortable in her self-appointed role as government joke-tester.

Oh, there's a joke here alright.

I lament this further loss of freedom and loss of common sense. I lament the fact that one thin-skinned radical lesbian activist is perpetuating the new stereotype of gays as intolerant of any criticism or dissent. I'm sure that EGALE would oppose this lawsuit, because they know it just looks bad, bad, bad on their community who themselves use trangressive art, including comedy, to deal with difficult issues. What do you think Rosie O'Donnell would have done -- whine to the government, or heckle back?

But, as I've said before, in this battle, the worse the better. Just days after George Carlin died -- the comedian who broke boundaries about what could or couldn't be said in comedy -- we have this stunning example of censorship. Not just censorship, but a clear swipe as the entire theory of comedy, the anything goes realm where society's foibles are mercilessly poked and prodded -- and where connoisseurs of humour freely attend, knowing they'll likely have an ox or two of their own that's gored. If comedians are no longer allowed to offend -- let alone respond to rude hecklers -- then comedy will cease to exist.

I think Heather MacNaughton has just made herself -- and the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal -- a punchline in a thousand jokes to come.

This goes to the theme I've mentioned before: once you start censoring "offensive" ideas, there's no stopping, and no-one is safe, because the word "offensive" is so vague. Once it was neo-Nazis; then it was conservatives and Christians, now it's comedians who pick on drunk hecklers.

Here's a video clip of Earle talking about the case. Is it rude? Sure it is. Is it funny? Funny is in the ear of the beholder. Is this any of the government of British Columbia's business? Hell no. 

We've talked about Pearl Eliadis before. She's a member of the human rights jet-set -- a former director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a woman who has seen the world on our dime, fighting against what she calls hatemongererers. Here's my introduction to Eliadis.

As I mentioned recently, she gave a rant at the luxurious HRC get-away the other weekend at beautiful Niagara-on-the Lake.

A friend has sent me a copy of her PowerPoint presentation, which you can view here.

It's the kind of thing that human rights grantrepreneurs love to do -- give a self-serving PowerPoint presentation to other human rights workers, in a five-star hotel, on the government's tab. I'd like to know how many thousands of dollars Eliadis got paid for that, on top of a lovely weekend by the lake, but I'll likely never find out.

Let me draw your attention to a few things in Eliadis's presentation that offer us a window into the mindset of the HRC industry.

Look at her description of the media response to recent HRCs' attacks on freedom of speech. She calls it "hysteria."

My first thought, of course, was to file a human rights complaint against her. Hysteria is rooted in the Greek word for uterus, and it was considered a women's malady. In other words, Eliadis is engaging in both sexism and able-ism. But I digress. I know what Eliadis means. Media hysteria simply means things she disagrees with. Just like "hate speech", means political ideas she disagrees with, and "discrimination" means Canadians' day to day choices she disagrees with. It's a lot easier to denounce someone as mentally ill (hysteria) or criminal (illegally discriminating) than to argue with them. That's a trick that Bernie "Burny" Farber knows.

But look at what she claims is hysterical: the use of the phrases "thought police", "convictions" and even "prosecutions".

But what else is the order from Alberta's HRC, telling Rev. Stephen Boissoin that he must renounce his religious views, if not the work of thought police?

And what do you call the issuance of such an order, along with thousands of dollars in punitive fines, if not a "conviction"?

And, to take my own case as an example, what is an 850-day, 15-person investigation by the government, if not a "prosecution"?

Is that really evidence of "media hysteria"? Or is Eliadis's name-calling simply her way of avoiding a difficult debate?

On her next page, Eliadis says that this subject has gone from "an interesting debate" to a "storm of controversy". I guess the difference, for her, is that what she called an interesting debate was when no-one was challenging her. Now that her arguments are being demolished by the blogosphere and mainstream media alike, it's mere controversy. Whatever gets you through the night, I guess.

On page 9 of her presentation, Eliadis tries to make the case for strict regulation of speech, claiming that it's "the most powerful human act". I suppose in an intellectual sense it is. But I'd say that murder is a more powerful human act. My point being, speech itself never killed anyone. The Jews of the Holocaust weren't killed by name-calling; the were killed when they were killed by violence. Their "right" not to be hated wasn't a real right. Their right to property, mobility, freedom of association, self-defence and ultimately to life were taken away. Speech couldn't touch them, other than their feelings, until Germany undid the real human rights protecting Jews.

Eliadis calls speech a "powerful weapon". But that is only true metaphorically, just like TV's "Crossfire" is not really a cross-fire, and a media "scrum" is not really a scrum, etc. Eliadis is being deliberately tricky; she is using a metaphor for violence, a metaphor for a true crime, to try to criminalize mere speech. It's a common trick, and you see it often with the mis-use of phrases like "gay bashing", which are used interchangeably to mean mere criticism, and actually physical "bashing". It's a deliberate attempt to blur the lines between words and violence. On page 11, she does this again, claiming that speech "poisoned" the environment. Again, poisoning someone is a real crime, which is why those words are stretched and misused to cover mere rudeness.

On page 13, Eliadis hints at her real agenda: hijacking and commandeering Canada's media, and subjecting them to HRC meddling. She wants "poisonous" -- hell, why not just say "murderous" while you're at it! -- speech in the mainstream media to lose its "immunity" from Eliadis and her group of would-be editors. She loved Rick Salutin's comment that "money controls the media", a Marxist complaint that seems touchingly quaint, in the era of the Internet. Neither Eliadis nor Salutin spring to mind when I think of the word "modern", so they probably don't know much about how the Inter-Webs work, but money is no substitute for good ideas, as the New York Times's shareholders are discovering.

As happens quite often, Eliadis reaches for foreign legal traditions when she wants to supplant our own legal traditions of liberty. Readers will recall that Ian Fine did so in his debate against me on CPAC -- he complained that we're out of synch with the United Nations -- run by such moral exemplars are China and Iran. So, too, Eliadis excuses her soft fascism by appealling to an obsolete, unCanadian foreign treaty, on page 14, claiming that we need to impose "special responsibilities and duties" on our media. Needless to say, those special duties will be in fulfilling Eliadis's world view.

Perhaps the most telling page in Eliadis's PowerPoint is on page 16. She is obviously referring to Mark Steyn, when she talks about Muslim demographics and "controversy entrepreneurs". That's quite a comment coming from a grantrepreneur like herself. Just a reminder: Steyn didn't file the complaints against himself that cause the "controvery"; the Canadian Islamic Congress did, and three human rights commissions humoured them. As a leftist might say, Eliadis is blaming the victim.

(I think the world needs "controversy entrepreneurs". To me, that means someone who helps the public work through controversial issues of the day. That includes scholars, the media, politicians, think tanks -- anyone who deals with spicy matters. The human rights commissions would shut down any meaningful disagreement over controversial matters. If that's the choice, I'm on the side of people who actually plumb disagreements, not paper them over.

But do HRCs actually paper over controversies? These days, HRC positively advertise for controversy -- whether it's Barbara Hall's call to have racial complaints "spike", or Alberta's 60,000 brochures teaching new immigrants how to bitch about life to HRCs. I think the real controversy "entrepreneurs", in the bad sense of the word, were in the hotel with Eliadis.)

But look at what she says then: it's largely irrelevant that Steyn's facts are true. If Steyn uses those true facts to "vilify" someone -- say, radical Muslim terrrorists -- he's still guilty of a human rights crime. Truth is not a defence. Eliadis compares Steyn to Rwandan radio stations exhorting murder. That's an execrable comparison -- Steyn has not been accused of inciting murder; again Eliadis blurs mere speech and violence. But, again, it wasn't a Rwandan radio station that killed people. It was soldiers with machetes.

Let me conclude as Eliadis does, with the quote she wanted to leave her fellow HRC activists with:

"there is no real freedom of speech if the media do not provide an outlet for other viewpoints more nearly equal to the outlet they reserve for their own."

Again, it's a Marxist comment; and it's hopelessly outdated in the era of the Internet. But it shows the lean and hungry eye with which the HRCs look at Canada's media.

I'm glad that every journalist in the country (except Bernie "Burny" Farber's friend, Haroon Siddiqui) gets it: they're coming for Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn today, and for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star tomorrow.

UPDATE: A commenter or two points out that Eliadis engaged in outright fibbery in one of her PowerPoint slides. She claimed that, as part of the "media hysteria", the Ontario Human Rights Commission's guilty-verdict-without-a-trial was called a "drive-by shooting". Uh, no it wasn't. It was called a "drive-by verdict" (by Mark Steyn himself), which is actually funny, and true.

But that fact isn't quite useful enough for Eliadis, as she tries to portray her critics as violent, is it? So she amends the truth; changes the facts; and then presents it to her echo chamber of fellow human rights jet-setters. What a liar.

Fire. Them. All.

Mohamed Elmasry, the Jew-hating president-for-life of the Canadian Islamic Congress, somehow managed to get an Op-Ed in his hometown paper, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I hear it's part of a series devoted to "marginalized voices". I understand that David Duke will have a column next week.

Let's point out the usual lies in Elmasry's column. Here's one:

...four Canadian Muslim law students launched human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn. The Canadian Islamic Congress, of which I am president, acted as a facilitator.

That's a lie, of course. Those students were PR puppets; the actual "style of cause" of the suits was Elmasry vs. Rogers. It's a useful lie, because it allows Elmasry to avoid direct contact with the press, other than through scripted Op-Eds, for fear he'll be asked about his comments approving the murder of Jews.

Here's another lie:

On March 30, 2007, the law students met with Maclean's senior editors and proposed that the magazine publish a balanced response to Steyn's article from a mutually acceptable source.

The response was that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt."

That, too, is a convenient lie. As I reported from the courtroom of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Khurrum Awan, one of Elmasry's PR puppets, admitted under oath many, many, many, many, many, many times that the CIC never asked Maclean's for an article to be published, written by a "mutually acceptable source". It was to be an author of the CIC's own choosing. Their claim of wanting a "mutually acceptable" writer was a lie, a PR trick, to make them seem slightly less unreasonable.

Either way -- mutually acceptable choice or not -- it was still an outrageous shakedown, a violation of Maclean's property rights and freedom of the press, and quite possibly extortion. The fact that Elmasry still lies about it is not surprising -- a man who justifies of the murder of Jews wouldn't blink at merely lying. What's surprising is that the K-W Record would publish such exposed lies, to their own discredit.

Elmasry's last comment is instructive:

Nevertheless, media attacks against the complainants, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the human rights commissions have continued, non-stop since the case against Maclean's was made public earlier this year.

He's right on that one. The Canadian Islamic Congress has received near-universal condemnation in the media for its shakedown and prosecution of Maclean's. Elmasry would like to ascribe that to "Islamophobia". Uh, no. It's not that he's Muslim that makes us feel "hatred and contempt" for him. It's that he's a fascist, a censor, a bully and a destroyer of our liberties. The fact that he does so in the name of all Canadian Muslims (the actual sign on the court room in the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing read "Mohamed Elmasry on behalf of Muslims in British Columbia") is a pity, though, for, no doubt, many people watching Elmasry's hijacking of our legal system in the name of Islam would indeed feel antipathy towards not just Elmasry, but to Islam and even B.C. Muslims. How unfair to them, when it was a lone bigot from Ontario who instigated that trial, illegitimately using the name of all Muslims.

But I cannot end this post without agreeing with Elmasry on a particular point: he argues that his fascist approach to censoring his opponents was not invented by him. It was built by Canada's Official Jews, especially by his friends at the Canadian Jewish Congress. He writes:

In 1998, someone representing Canadian Jews filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission against North Shore News columnist Doug Collins. The commission ordered Collins to pay $2,000 in damages to the complainant for "injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect." The commission also ordered the North Shore News to cease publishing statements that expose Jews "to hatred and contempt."

A lawyer with the Canadian Jewish Congress was quoted by the Jewish Independent on Dec. 21, 2001, saying the decision reflects Canadian legal precedents which recognize that certain types of speech are not legally permissible, especially if they are seen to cause public harm.

I regret that Elmasry is correct on that point. Bernie "Burny" Farber has long argued for the right to censor one's political and religious opponents. That he has done so in the name of all Jews is a scandal, and one that all Canadian Jews are paying for with their reputations.

Farber has about as much democratic legitimacy to speak for "the Jews" as Elmasry has to speak for "the Muslims". Both of them share a love for the bullying power of the state; both of them would rather gag their opponents than debate them; both of them are eroding our Canadian values with their own soft fascism; both of them are bringing the public name of their religions into disrepute.

The difference is that Elmasry knows exactly what he's doing: using Burny Farber as a "useful idiot", a PR cover, just like Elmasry used Khurrum Awan as a useful cover. The end game is the gagging of opposition to radical Islam. What luck for Elmasry that he has a damned fool like Burny Farber to take the flak for him.

Rob Wells is an anti-Christian bigot. That's fine -- Canada is a free country, and people are free to be bigots, just as long as they don't get violent about it. Hate isn't against the law. (Well, actually it is, under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. But no-one has ever been charged under that law for saying anything anti-Christian. It has only been used against Christians. And, while we're on the subject, not a single Muslim has been charged under that law, either.)

Wells has filed a series of complaints with Canada's human rights commissions, trying to bully Christians into silence. He's sued the Christian Heritage Party. He's sued Catholic Insight, a magazine. As usual, Wells doesn't have to pay a penny for this persecution -- the government happily provides the investigators and lawyers to do so. The CHP and Catholic Insight have to pay their own bills, and they won't be compensated even if they win.

All of this is old news, as are the other petty abuses rained down upon those unlucky enough to be trapped in Canada's grotesque HRC system. But what struck me in this interesting story in the Sun, was Wells's hubristic view that he is the arbiter of what is Catholic doctrine or not. Forget that Benedict XVI fellow over in Rome, and forget Catholic Insight's own editor, Alphonse de Valk, a man who also happens to be a priest. Look at this excerpt from the story:

[Wells] argues the material on [Catholic Insight's] website "does not represent Catholic teaching" and wants the human rights commission to proceed with his complaint expeditiously.

"It's hateful, discriminatory and it has to be challenged," argues Wells, who adds the controversy is not about religious freedom.

"I don't care what they say from their pulpit," he says. "But when they put hate messages or messages that are likely to expose minority groups to hatred or contempt, it's against the human rights legislation."

There are more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and there are countless denominations and orders that "represent" a spectrum of interpretations of Catholic teaching. Fr. de Valk represents one way, a way that is surely more in synch with that of the Vatican than Wells's views, which are overtly heretical.

Freedom of religion -- as well as freedom of speech -- means that Fr. de Valk can believe whatever he wants to, even mere Christianity, the bedrock of Western civilization. But Wells would have the government of Canada, through its agency, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, order Fr. de Valk to censor himself, on the basis that his views were not "representative" of true Catholicism, or were otherwise illegal.

It's one thing for Wells to harbour the delusion that he's the pope, and that he knows better what being Catholic means than a Catholic priest. But it's quite another for the Canadian government to humour Wells's conceit, and grind Fr. de Valk through months of procedure and tens of thuosands of legal fees while they consider Wells's absurd anti-Christian gambit.

The second comment by Wells is equally revolting. He says that he doesn't care what Catholics say in church, only what they say in public, such as on the Internet. That's logically inconsistent, of course -- if he's truly worried about "hate", it makes no sense to approve of it in a building but not in a newspaper. That's not important; Wells has the right to be an illogical twit. Again, what's troubling here is that he would have the government of Canada, through the Canadian Human Rights Commission, sweep Christians out of the public square, and into the silence and seclusion of their churches. And anyone who knows the history of ghettoes knows that's probably just the first step.

Again, Wells is allowed to have his bigoted views that Christians can be quietly Christian, but ought not to be able to share their views publicly. That's just "hatred and contempt", and as long as Wells doesn't get violent about it, that ought to be his right. But for him to petition the government to enforce his bigotry -- and for the government to consider it for the better part of a year -- is the scandal.

Every society has its haters, like Wells. But only when those haters have access to the power of the state are the rest of us truly in danger.

That's what's happening now. It doesn't feel like Canada, does it?

Here's a powerful public letter from Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary to Ed "Ed" Stelmach, the Premier of Alberta and overseer of the bigoted human rights order against Rev. Stephen Boissoin -- including a lifetime ban on that pastor from commenting on moral issues, and an order for him to publicly renounce his faith. (If you think the previous sentence is a typo, or fiction, see my blog post here.)

Bishop Henry himself was the subject of a shakedown by the Alberta human rights commission a few years back. He settled that claim by "clarifying" his statement on gay marriage. I think that he regrets that act of compromise, since it obviously emboldened the HRC. If they could roll the Bishop, they could surely roll a poor, low-profile pastor. Bishop Henry is making up for lost time. Some excerpts, with some of my favourite parts in bold:

Dear Premier Stelmach:

I have raised the issue of the Alberta Human Rights Commission several times with you in the past 18 months. On each of those occasions, you said that you understood the issues and shared my concerns. However, the situation is continuing to deteriorate across our country and the various levels of governments are seemingly non-responsive...

Each judgment emanating out of our various human right commissions seems to be more brazen and bizarre than the one that preceded it. However, for inane stupidity and gross miscarriage of justice our own Alberta Human Rights Tribunal deserves to take first prize for its treatment of Stephen Boissoin.

June 2008: The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal fined Stephen Boissoin, $5,000.

Section 30 of the Alberta Human Rights Act states: "Evidence may be given before a human rights panel in any manner that the panel considers appropriate, and the panel is not bound by the rules of law respecting evidence in judicial proceedings."

It would also seem that this panel is also not bound by reasonable argument or the elementary rules of logic but is free to skewer anyone not espousing and proclaiming politically correct views.

Darren Lund, the complainant, said that Boissoin's words in his 2002 letter to the Red Deer Advocate were hateful, and furthermore, an assault on a gay teenager three weeks later could be connected to them. No proof of either was presented.

Lori Andreachuk, the chairperson of the tribunal, agreed that his words were "likely" to expose gays, "a vulnerable" group to hatred due to their sexual orientation. No court in the land would connect the letter and the assault but this silly tribunal did.

Andreachuk acknowledged, "In this case, there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward."

However, she also wrote: "Dr. Lund, although not a direct victim, did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harassment as a result of his complaint. The panel finds therefore that he is entitled to some compensation." One might ask on what grounds?

She concluded that Boissoin "shall pay to Dr. Lund an award for damages, jointly and severally, in the amount of $5,000." Lund wasn't the victim of any kind of discrimination and yet he is handsomely paid and, subsequently, was feted as Gay Pride Parade marshall in Calgary.

The tribunal effectively stripped Boissoin of his right to freedom of speech. "Mr. Boissoin . . . shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals."

What is meant by "disparaging"? This is tantamount to ruling out honest debate and a plurality of views in the public sphere lest someone be offended by a differing viewpoint.

...The tribunal decided to extract a further pound of flesh by way of public humiliation. "Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. provide Dr. Lund with a written apology for the article in the Red Deer Advocate which was the subject of this complaint." What happens if Lund is not satisfied with the apology?

Mr. Premier, we have talked enough about the inadequate provisions of and appointment to the Alberta Human Rights Tribunals. It is time to repeal Section 3(1)(b) of the Alberta Human Rights Act and to protect the rights of religious freedom. Every person has the right to make public statements and participate in public debate on religious grounds.

Gentle reader, what do you think? Do you think that Stelmach will continue to ignore and stonewall on this issue? Or do you think that Bishop Henry's letter will elicit a response? And, if so, what response?

 

The Globe and Mail weighs in with yet another editorial calling for the abolition of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act -- the "hate speech" section. An excerpt:

...Like its sibling in the B.C. Human Rights Code (at the core of the Maclean's hearing in Vancouver earlier this month), section 13 of the federal statute is aimed at what is "likely to expose" people to hatred or contempt because of ethnicity, religion and other specified factors. Evidence of such a likelihood - in the absence of a solid science of mass psychology on which to base expert testimony - is bound to be dubious, and there are no defences of the kind found in civil lawsuits about damage to reputation, such as fair comment.

Back in 1990, a case from the federal human-rights commission about the hate-message section made its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Khurrum Awan, one of the instigators of one of the trio of complaints against Maclean's, has portrayed the court's decision in that case as an active recommendation of section 13, in preference to the hate-speech sections of the Criminal Code. In fact, both the majority and the dissenting minority were troubled that the hate-message section is not limited to cases where there is hateful intent, though the majority was sufficiently comforted that the Human Rights Act's penalties were less drastic than the Criminal Code's.

Whether or not the future belongs to Islam, as Mr. Steyn fears, both the present and future belong in large measure to the Internet. A statutory provision that once restrained racist cranks who were putting telephones to wicked uses now threatens public debate in the press on matters of concern to all Canadians. It may well have been too broad in 1990, as three out of seven Supreme Court judges then thought; it is much too broad in the 21st century.

I like that argument a lot. It's philosophically principled. But it also refers to the pragmatic problem: in the era of the Internet, such vague and far-reaching censorship is bound to fail.

Here is Glenn Reynolds, professor of law and Instapundit:

When the stormtroopers wear clown shoes instead of jackboots, it's easy to forget that they're still stormtroopers.

I like that, too. Because it's right: when Canadians (and Americans) start to ridicule the human rights commissions, we're well on the way to reforming or abolishing them. But, until that change is wrought, they're still brutal censors.

 

 

As per Michael Teper's comment, I poked around some of the expense reports on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's website.

My favourite -- no surprise -- is that of Athanasios Hadjis, their chief censor.

Allow me to draw your attention to two entries.

The first is a lunch that Hadjis had last fall with Heather MacNaughton of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. She was the chair of Mark Steyn's show trial last month in Vancouver. I can only imagine all the tips and tricks Hadjis -- who boasts a 100% conviction rate for "hate speech" -- was sharing with her.

But what's more telling is that Hadjis filled out the forms and submitted his expense request... for $11.

Nothing is too small or petty to bill to taxpayers. I bet that $11 reimbursement cost $100 in bureaucrat manpower to process. But the man is entitled to his entitlements.

If only all of Hadjis's bills were so trivial.

Last year alone, Hadjis dinged taxpayer more than $40,000 to travel around. That's a staggering sum -- about what many Canadians earn in a year's work. But it's also surprising how few trips it took for Hadjis to hit that mark.

I guess that sort of thing happens quickly when you rack up more than $3,200 for 24 hours in Saskatoon.

Gutting Canada's tradition of freedom of speech isn't just an ideological crusade. It's a huge industry, with plenty of perks. I wonder if Hadjis keeps all the frequent flyer points he racks up on our dime.

UPDATE: Some commenters point out that flying first class is sometimes done in business. Sure -- in some businesses it is. Most businesses are small businesses, who fly economy. But that's not the point: the point is to emphasize that there are a lot of collateral reasons why this censorship endures. It's an industry, and for hundreds of Canadians, it's what they do instead of real work. If Hadjis had to run his own law firm, instead of jaunt around the country censoring people, I doubt he'd fly first class on his own dime, or even on the dime of most clients. The CHRC/CHRT/HRC industry is a gravy train.

 

Joseph Brean's report from the human rights commission conference in luxurious Niagara-on-the-Lake is fascinating for other reasons than his recounting of the Canadian Islamic Congress's defamation of Mark Steyn. Such conferences, invariably paid for by taxpayers, are one of the perks for those working in the $200-million/year human rights industry.

(Take a moment to see how hard Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, works. She jets off to Africa, at a cost of $5,800; then Geneva, for a mere $8,300, Australia, for a bargain of $7,500. I can't remember the last time I spent $90 on breakfast, but then again I don't work for the CHRC. Maybe the reason she goes overseas so often is she can't handle the CHRC's "organizational conflicts" -- though a $150 lunch on the subject must have made her feel better. My favourite expense of hers has to be the $1,300 to get from Ottawa to... Toronto. Let me guess: it's a "human right" to have a chauffered limousine.)

Conferences and expensed meals are certainly a perk for Pearl Eliadis, who was a guest speaker at the Niagara conference, and who, like Lynch, has travelled the world on the public dime. Readers of this blog will remember Eliadis for her semi-literate Op-Ed in the Montreal Gazette back in February. In that creative column, she had moved the Danish cartoons to Holland and introduced the English language to the word hatemongererer. But more seriously, she simply decided to do away with the 800-year-old priniciple that a man is innocent until proven guilty. See my take-down of her tripe here.

Well, Eliadis is back -- and she's angry!

According to Brean's report,

...Ms. Eliadis had harsh words for the growing contingent of bloggers who lambaste the commissions, and have been invigorated by the prominence of the Maclean's complaints.

Ms. Eliadis singled out one in particular, blazingcatfur.blogspot.com, as "poisonous" for referring to her panel at the conference as a "Texas cage match."

She said it was evidence of the "appalling tone" that is "illustrative of how badly this debate has gone."

My thoughts about this, in no particular order are:

1. It's a delight to know that the grassroots campaign for freedom of speech, started on the blogosphere, irritates the professional "human rights" industry so much. I take that as incredible encouragement to keep it up.

2. I'm enormously jealous of Blazing Cat Fur. Good heavens, what do I have to do to get notice by Eliadis? I've been charged with the hate crime of publishing cartoons. What has BCF, that whippersnapper, ever done?

3. Look at Eliadis's complaint against BCF, what Eliadis calls "poisonous" and "appalling": BCF called Eliadis's debate with the great Alan Borovoy at "cage match". Besides a troubling glimpse into the fragility of Eliadis's own self-esteem, it's an insight into just what these HRC workers consider to be "hateful". Because, really, what's the big difference between "hate speech" and speech that is "poisonous and appalling"? It's actually quite a revelation: Eliadis's own words show us that she's about political censorship, about squelching criticism, about muzzling her opponents. She's not even pretending that it's about real human rights. She doesn't want her world view to be criticized, and so she wants to criminalize dissident views.

I said it before, back in February when I first heard of Eliadis: we are lucky to have such thick-skulled, thin-skinned, politically tone-deaf opponents. 

But I'm still jealous of Blazing Cat Fur.

The Canadian Islamic Congress is back in the news, comparing Mark Steyn to James Keegstra, a convicted criminal and Nazi sympathizer.

Of course, it wasn't Mohamed Elmasry, the president-for-life of the Canadian Islamic Congress, who uttered that defamation. He doesn't like to talk to journalists -- they're too prone to ask him about his comments on national TV that any adult in Israel deserves to be murdered by terrorists.

It was Wahida Valiante, Elmasry's deputy.

She was speaking at a conference of Canada's human rights commissions, paid for by tax dollars.

Stop right there for a moment: the CIC, which currently has two live cases before Canadian HRCs -- the case that just finished a five-day hearing in British Columbia, and a pending case at the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- was on a panel at a conference organized and paid for by human rights commissions.

The CIC is still suing Maclean's. It is a party before two HRCs. And yet the HRCs invited the CIC as their guest -- surely paying for her expenses, if not an honorarium.

In other words, they invited one side of the lawsuit. They didn't invite Maclean's or Mark Steyn.

It's the moral and legal equivalent of a judge in a criminal trial inviting the police and prosecutors over to his home for dinner while the trial is still going on.

Such an act of bias would immediately lead to a mistrial, and disciplinary action for the judge. But that's real courts, and real trials -- you know, with boring old rules written by dead white men. That law stuff about being "neutral" isn't for kangaroo courts.

According to this report:

...Wahida Valiante, national vice-president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said the commissions are the only recourse available to minorities treated unfairly in the media.

She repeated the CIC's complaints that membership in press councils is optional, and that criminal hate speech charges require the consent of the federal Attorney-General, which leaves human rights commissions as the only option.

She compared Mark Steyn, the author of the Maclean's article in question, titled The Future Belongs to Islam, to James Keegstra, an Alberta high school teacher who taught and tested his students on how Jews "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy."

"They basically talk about the same theories," she said. "This is not a civil dialogue."

She said that, in Germany, long before the Holocaust, "it was the words that set the stage for what happened later on.... We may end up with the same fate, and that is at the heart of why [the complainants] wanted to take this on."

It is staggering chutzpah for a member of an officially anti-Semitic organization like the Canadian Islamic Congress is, to invoke the memory of the Holocaust. The CIC are avid supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who proudly brags about the next Holocaust, one that he's planning. And the CIC themselves endorse Jew-killing, as Valiante's own boss, Elmsary, told us on TV.

But put aside her Jew-hatred for a moment; and put aside the outrageous bias that the HRCs show by feting her at their conference.

She's comparing Mark Steyn to James Keegstra, a convicted criminal. She says that Steyn's theories are "basically the same" as Keegstra's neo-Nazism. I have no doubt that Valiante received applause from the assembled HRC bureaucrats, especially from the Muslim supremacist who works for Alberta's HRC, Arman Chak, if he was there.

Mark Steyn is a great man, with international success. He is invited to meet with presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, with leaders of industry and media and charity. He operates at the highest levels. So it might not make sense for a man of his stature to stoop down so low as to file a defamation action against Valiante.

But I'd love to see that little Jew-hater on trial, explaining how Steyn -- a philo-semite and Zionist if ever there was one -- was "basically the same" as an anti-Semite of the rank of James Keegstra.

It would be a waste of Steyn's time and a distraction from his more important work. But I think it would be a useful missile into that anti-Semitic rats nest.

And: Steyn has a precedent to follow. Several years ago, Valiante wrote a similarly defamatory remark about Daniel Pipes, the American scholar who studies Islam. She said nearly the same thing about him -- claiming that he supported a Nazi-style genocide against Muslims in America. Needless to say, Pipes said no such thing, and the bigoted CIC, fearing a massive loss in court, agreed to publish an apology on their website, which you can read right here:

In the April 29, 2005 edition of the Friday Bulletin, the Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Wahida Valiante published on its website an article entitled Worth Repeating: Med