Who's Fr. de Valk?

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.