It's unanimous: section 13 has to be repealed

There are so many stories and editorials condemning the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and its section 13 censorship provision, I can’t even keep track of them. Here are a few – I already mentioned the Toronto Star’s editorial.

Dr. Keith Martin, the Liberal MP who got the ball rolling earlier this year with his private member’s motion on the subject, calls for Parliament to get cracking in an Op-Ed in the National Post.

The Globe and Mail writes what I think is their third editorial this year on the subject, here.

This must be the tenth editorial or column that the Calgary Herald, the Prime Minister’s hometown paper, has written calling for the repeal of section 13.

The Montreal Gazette weighs in, and not for the first time either. And here is the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, the London Free Press, the Windsor Star.

And then there’s the Metro paper – the daily free newspaper in seven Canadian cities from Vancouver to Halifax, with a readership of 950,000.

And it’s not just the big papers. Here’s the Brockville Recorder and Times. The Portage Daily Graphic.

Those are just the editorials. Many more papers ran straight news stories about Richard Moon’s surprise report calling for the scrapping of section 13. Google News says there are 146 hits when you search “Richard Moon”.

It’s safe to say that if you were reading the newspapers or listening to the radio over the past two days, odds are you read or heard these calls for freedom.

And you can be sure the daily news clipping services at the PMO and the Justice Minister’s office had copies of these – and, if they still do it like they did when I worked in Parliament, each clipping had the newspaper’s audited readership stamped on it.

And you know that the CHRC obsessively reads every one of them, too – desperately wishing there was some way to censor it all. Oh, how they yearn to go back in time, even just a year, when they could gag Canadians, violate natural justice and the rule of law, and generally do whatever the hell they wanted to, without any public scrutiny.

Those days are gone forever. This tidal wave of public resolve can’t be stopped. And a lot of the credit belongs to the blogosphere. Thanks and congratulations to all who have put their shoulder to the wheel.

But let’s not let up until section 13 is put in the dustbin of history!

P.S. Are you pumped up? (I am.) Take one minute to send two letters of encouragement about this.

Sent the first one to the Prime Minister, by clicking here. Tell him it’s not just politically safe to scrap section 13 – it’s politically dangerous for him not to, given the clear national consensus!

And send the next one to Michael Ignatieff, the likely next Liberal leader. He’s got a good track record on freedom of speech issues. His own MP, Keith Martin, has led the charge in Parliament. He should make this the non-partisan issue it should be, and come out for the repeal of section 13, too. Send him an e-mail – and remember: non-partisan!