So what happens now?

The blogging I’ve done lately has been focused on the big news of the week: the overwhelming support at the Conservative Party convention for repealing section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the “hate speech” provision that has turned the Canadian Human Rights Commission into a corrupt censor.

I should point out that the passage of the resolution was even more overwhelming than I originally noted. Dr. Roy Eappen, who attended the convention, notes that the sole speaker opposed to the motion in the plenary session (amazing, considering there were 2,000 delegates in the room) opposed it because “his point was the motion is more an administrative solution and the law itself must be changed”. Like Dr. Roy, I share that view. As I mentioned yesterday, only ten out of 2,000 delegates opposed the resolution, and now we know that at least one of those ten did so because the resolution wasn’t strong enough.

It was all but unanimous – 99.5%. The only people who can beat that percentage, of course, are the CHRC hate speech prosecutors themselves, who have a 100% conviction rate – they have never lost a case that has been heard before the tribunal.

I’ll have some thoughts this week about what should happen next. I’ll focus on the remarkable fact that the Justice Minister himself, Rob Nicholson, openly voted for the resolution, and what I think that means for him, his department and for the government. I’ll also write about what kind of trench warfare the CHRC will likely engage in, in the coming weeks. They know they’re losing, and these people have shown they’re not above any tactic or trick. Remember, a government audit criticized them for having no code of ethics – they’ll do anything to survive and keep their sinecure. I mean, really: if the CHRC knowingly hires a corrupt ex-police officer as their investigator, and if they approve staff joining neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront – and that’s just what they do in a normal day’s work! – do you really think they’d stop at anything to derail reform of their corrupt fiefdom? Get ready for the dirty tricks.

I’ll also write about the importance of keeping this matter non-partisan. The fact that it passed the Tory convention nearly unanimously shows that it appeals to a wide spectrum of people – from every province, from cities and the countryside, from every age group, racial group, religion, etc. We know repealing s. 13 has support in the Liberal Party – it was Keith Martin, the Liberal from B.C., who first made this an issue in Parliament – and we need to keep it non-partisan. That’s difficult to do, given the nature of opposition parties (that is, to oppose things) but Dr. Martin has made it possible.

I’ll talk more about these and other questions – basically: “what do we do now?” – but not tonight. Tonight, I want to take a moment to write a blog post about a journalist for censorship, one of only three in the country that I’ve been able to identify.