Two good editorials
...we have the
odd spectacle of a government agency committed to promoting equality twisting
logic into a knot so it doesn't have to prosecute some-body who comes right out
and says ethnic groups aren't equal, and some are corrupt, perverse, evil and
so forth. We all know what happens to members of the dominant culture who say
such things about minorities. (Just ask former Red Deer pastor Stephen
Boissoin, whose comparatively mild harangues about the gay agenda cost him a
lot of money and his freedom of speech in front of the Alberta Human Rights
Commission.) One can therefore only speculate why the CHRC would turn a blind
eye to these hateful ramblings from a member of an ethnic minority.
But,
whatever dreads afflict its quavering heart, the CHRC has given Canadians one
more reason --to go with its dirty tricks scandal earlier this year, and more
abstract arguments about the threat it poses to free speech --to demand its
reform.
If the
so-called defender of equality won't defend equality, what good is it?
And here's Alan Shanoff of the Sun Media newspapers with his encouraging review of the legal news of 2008. He says free speech issues are the top three legal stories of the year. I think he's right -- both in the court of law and court of public opinion, Canada is moving towards freedom of speech. I'd go further and say that the days of section 13 and the CHRC's abusive censorship are numbered -- and I'd put that number at under 300. An excerpt:
1. What a
year it's been for freedom of expression. First we had the Canadian Human
Rights Commission decline to hear the complaint against Maclean's magazine in
respect to the Mark Steyn book excerpt titled Why The Future belongs To Islam.
Next we had the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal dismiss the same
complaint after holding a very strange three-week hearing.
Even the
Ontario Human Rights Commission declined jurisdiction over the Maclean's
complaint. Of course, they had no jurisdiction under the Ontario legislation
but that didn't stop Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall from condemning the
article without the benefit of a hearing. That's no mistake by the way. The
same complaint was filed and considered in three jurisdictions in Canada. With
our patchwork of human rights codes the same complaint can be filed in multiple
jurisdictions. If it was a court case, multiple proceedings would be seen as an
abuse of process, but not in our world of human rights.
2. The
Canadian Human Rights Commission retained law professor Richard Moon to review
section 13, the oft-criticized hate speech section of the Canadian Human Rights
Code. In what must have been a huge surprise, Moon recommended the hate speech
section be repealed and that we should leave hate speech prosecutions to the
purview of the criminal law. He recommended we prosecute hate speech that
"advocates, justifies or threatens violence."
We know his
recommendations will be ignored by the CHRC but perhaps it will spur the federal
government to do something about section 13. As Moon stated, "Religious
beliefs or values (and I would add, political beliefs and values) cannot be
insulated from debate and criticism, even that which is harsh and
uncivil."
3. Freedom
of expression laws also took a huge leap forward in the courts, at least in
theory. The Supreme Court of Canada broadened the fair comment defence which is
used to defend defamatory expressions of opinion.
The Ontario
Court of Appeal has given the media a new defamation defence called responsible
journalism. This defence is supposed to protect the media when it publishes an
erroneous statement in circumstances where the media has acted in a responsible
manner. It still remains to be seen the extent to which either development will
have a practical impact on defamation lawsuits. It also remains to be seen
whether these developments will protect all speech, or only politically correct
speech.
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