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Anti-CHRC momentum builds in Quebec

By Ezra Levant on December 19, 2008 3:59 PM | Permalink | |

The appalling behaviour of the Canadian Human Rights Commission is now pretty well known in Canada's English-language media. The National Post's editorial excoriating the CHRC for giving Montreal bigot Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Al-Hayiti a pass for his anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-Christian book, "Islam and Fundamentalism" was excellent -- and it must have been the Post's tenth editorial on the subject of the CHRC's abuse of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the discredited censorship provision. Here's an excerpt from that Post editorial:

This is part of a pattern that has revealed itself over the last few years. Human rights commissions claim to be agencies that fight "hate" generically. But in fact, they are interested in a very narrow sub-category of alleged hatemonger -- the right-winger accused of homophobia, anti-Muslim bias or some other thoughtcrime. The more unvarnished and explicitly murderous forms of hatred made manifest in the publications of, say, Jew-hating Muslims and Hindu-hating Sikhs are of no interest to the thought police.

...Section 13 of the Human Rights Act should be abolished: We don't want Canada to be a place where publications are screened for "hatred" by a coterie of bureaucrats. But until those people are properly turfed out of their jobs, perhaps the CHRC could be a little less overt in their bias against conservatism and Christianity.

That's a hell of an editorial -- and it has become conventional wisdom in English Canada so much so that our Prime Minister himself has publicly stated that "everyone" knows the HRCs are out of control.

As I mentioned the other day, the real breakthrough in the CHRC's mishandling of the Al Hayiti case is that it's lit a fire in Quebec, which has so far not been focused on section 13 abuses.

I'm pleased, for example, to point to another excellent editorial by Mario Roy of Quebec's largest newspaper, La Presse. Roy has already weighed in against section 13, as you can see here. Now that the CHRC's corruption has a Quebec newspeg, he's digging in again, with this editorial, the headline of which translates into "The unbelievers". You can see a Google translation of his editorial here. Here are some excerpts:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission rejected a complaint filed under Article 13 on hate propaganda against a Montreal imam... outlining his vision of "unbelievers" in general, homosexuals, lesbians, Jews, non-Muslim women, children and non-Muslim feminists in particular.

The case was made public by the daily Le Devoir. The 357 pages of text is online for several months but has not attracted the condemnation of feminist groups, or defense of homosexuals, lesbians, children, Jews.

...As for the CHRC, she heard in the past few causes that have been noisy, one of them was an obscure white supremacist English Canada taking on Internet hate speech - in fact, rather pathetic and ridiculous - on immigrants and racial minorities.

In this case, the CHRC explains that the writings of Imam does not "identifiable groups" and does not show "hatred" or "contempt" in the sense that the Supreme Court of Canada hears these words.

...No identifiable groups or hatred or contempt, therefore, when the imam spoke of homosexuals and lesbians, calling on Allah to "cursing and destroy in this life and in the other" (page 181). Or Jews who "seek only the interests materials and money, apart from that they have nothing" (page 284). Or "unbelievers women who have been lured by the speech childish, naive and simplistic feminism" (page 161). Or "children of unbelievers who are the children who are most perverse" (page 156).

It is difficult to read this prose without giggle - just as in the case of white supremacist. But one wonders what the eye CHRC would read if it had been signed John Smith or Joseph Tremblay ...

There are three weeks ago, the Moon (the name of a law professor at the University of Windsor) recommended specifically to repeal section 13. It is a dangerous weapon of "censorship", considered Richard Moon, could justify "an extraordinary intervention by the state, which would seriously jeopardize the willingness of society to protect freedom of expression." Should we now add a weapon whose power varies according to fire the head of the customer?

We dare believe it. But, if necessary, it also argues strongly in favor of disarmament.

That translation is a touch mangled by Google, but the point is clear: Roy feels that both the absurd imam and the patently biased CHRC are ridiculous, and he calls for the "weapon" of section 13 to be disarmed.

I like this guy, and I get the feeling that, like the National Post, Roy will become a champion for freedom of speech against the CHRC in the months ahead.