Friday updates -- and a look ahead to my own show trial

1. Keep up to date on the final day of the Maclean's/Mark Steyn hearing at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal by visiting Andrew Coyne's blog.

2. Here's a radio interview I did yesterday on John Gormley's top-rated talk show (from my cell phone, as I was rushing noisily between meetings -- sorry!)

3. Here's a very important editorial in Calgary's newspaper of record, the Calgary Herald. It holds Premier Ed Stelmach to his campaign promise to review Alberta's Human Rights Commission. You really ought to take a few minutes to read the whole thing, but let me excerpt a few lines. The reference to Boissoin is to a Christian pastor ordered by the Alberta HRC to stop talking about homosexuality, and to apologize -- against his conscience -- to a gay rights activist:

Finally, Boissoin is to provide Lund with a written apology for the sincerely held opinion he published in the Advocate.

As apologies that do not spring from changed minds mean nothing, this must be seen for what it is: the kind of recantation squeezed by an inquisition from some unfortunate, a denial of conscience for the sole purpose of grinding the dissenter's face into the dust, the better that he may eat his words.

In its present form, Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act is profoundly anti-liberty, leaving Albertans the right to say only what does not offend their neighbours on any of 13 different grounds.

It has been used to guillotine legitimate discourse on matters of immediate public importance, and removes from men and women that most basic of all human attributes -- the right to their own opinion.

Premier Stelmach, do something for liberty, now. Repeal Section 3(1)(b) from Alberta's human rights act.

And then the Herald's editorial did something unusual: they put out a call to action to their readers, telling them to get behind the campaign for liberty, and to write to the premier. That's pretty rare, and it shows the impressive depth of commitment the Herald has for freedom. Here's the end of their editorial:

To stand up for our hard-won freedoms and western way of life, write to:

Office of the Premier

Room 307, Legislature

Building

10800 97th Ave.

Edmonton, Alberta

T5K 2B6

(No stamp is necessary.)

Or phone: 1-780-427-2251

Fax: 1-780-632-6888

To call toll free call: 310-0000

E-mail: premier@gov.ab.ca

I wonder if Stelmach will indeed do a review of the HRC, like the federal Conservatives are now promising to do. Frankly, I doubt it -- the Alberta Tories are a pretty sluggish bunch; they just went through an election, and are feeling particularly impervious to public opinion. How impervious? They just granted themselves an enormous pay raise, making themselves the highest-paid provincial legislators in the country. And they haven't been ideologically conservative since Ralph Klein's first term.

So what does that mean? I think I know, because I've seen in happen with my own eyes in Vancouver.

I predict that the Government of Alberta will continue to ignore this issue. They'll say it's only animated by a few hot-headed conservative bloggers, and some obsessed editorial writers in a few newspapers. So they'll keep hitting the snooze button on their alarm.

And then my trial will come, as Mark Steyn's did. And then the thousands of Albertans who have been briefing themselves on this subject, and getting angrier and angrier, will have the same spectacle as Vancouver is now having. And the national media will come to town -- well briefed, well prepared, especially after Mark Steyn's show trial in Vancouver.

And then the Alberta Tories -- rudderless, boring -- will have an enormous issue thrust upon them, an issue they could have neutralized in advance.

The Vancouver show trial of Maclean's and Mark Steyn was spectacular, but only because of the buffoonery of the kangaroo "judges" and the stupidity and outright lies of the Canadian Islamic Congress. The respondent, Maclean's, was quite well behaved. They didn't put forward provocative testimony; their lawyers were very sober and buttoned-down; they tried to make it as proper a procedure as they could. Mark Steyn didn't testify, or even "live-blog" the event. The circus aspects of the hearing were all from the CIC and the tribunal itself.

And it was still an amazing show, that grabbed national attention, and even foreign interest.

Dear reader, imagine what an Alberta show trial, over the Danish cartoons, would look like if the respondent chose to misbehave a little bit.

Oh, nothing illegal. Maybe even nothing that could count as "conduct unbecoming". But what if the respondent in that Alberta show trial decided to put on a bit of a show himself? No-one from Maclean's testified. Reader, do you really think I would decline to speak on my own behalf? Do you think I'm genetically capable of remaining silent in the face of such unmitigated crap?

Do you think that I would go quietly? Do you think I would bite my tongue? Do you think that I would be modest, and moderate, and cooperative? Do you really think that I would allow, without acid comments of my own, the kind of corruption we witnessed in Vancouver?

I did not request a show trial. I did not convene the circus. But if Alberta is going to have one, well then, by God, I'll take the role of P.T. Barnum. We already know who the kangaroos are. And the plaintiff is a bit of a clown.

Memo to Premier Stelmach: You've got a few months to spay your own kangaroos and shut down the circus. Stop counting your money from your pay raise, and get to it.

Memo to the national new media: Stelmach will do nothing, and so the show will go on. Bring your cameras. If it's to be a show trial, I promise you a helluva show.

UPDATE: A commenter has a premonition: