Mohamed Elmasry's hometown paper gives him a proper shellacking

The Waterloo Record, the hometown newspaper for the Canadian Islamic Congress's Mohamed Elmasry, has come out all guns blazing against Elmasry's abusive human rights complaint against Maclean's and Mark Steyn. Here's an excerpt:

For five depressing days in a nondescript courtroom in Vancouver last week, one of the most important rights in Canada -- the right to free speech -- was repeatedly kicked in the head.

It was a shocking, demeaning and unsettling spectacle that would be more at home in a totalitarian state than a country that claims to be a liberal democracy. But the attack on Maclean's magazine for daring to publish the Oct. 20, 2006 article, The Future Belongs To Islam, was entirely permissible under British Columbia's human rights laws. It is time those regulations, indeed the nation's human rights regulations, are rewritten. Much depends on this...

In one sense, freedom is its own defence and the greatest justification of all for what Maclean's did.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that "everyone has . . . freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.'' The charter does not extend this freedom only to viewpoints that are accurate. And in any case, who are the members of a tribunal panel to determine the truth of a subject as massive as that as the role of militant Islam in the world today? Nor does the charter grant free speech only to those who do not offend, affront or cause anger. If that were the case, the nation's newspapers would be filled with white space and its airwaves silence...

In a free and open society, the kind of society Canada wants and claims to be, citizens have the liberty to discuss important and controversial subjects. In 2008, in the aftermath of attacks launched by Islamic extremists against the United States, Britain and other countries, it is imperative that Canadians learn about and talk about this great global faith and the violent minority who would hijack it. That discussion will be difficult, even rancorous at times.

But if it proceeds, it will lead to greater mutual understanding for all. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is impeding this discussion and the operation of a free press. The powers of this and other such tribunals should be curtailed so that the discussion goes on -- and true free speech in Canada survives.