Human rights commissions on the defensive

Dr. Tom Flanagan has a crystal clear article in today's Globe and Mail about the flaws in Canada's human rights commissions. And he beautifully illustrates that it is the government -- not private citizens -- that is responsible for the mass of Canadian discrimination, historically. I'd expand on that: it's not just in Canada, but around the world, that mass butchery of people is at the hands of governments, not private citizens. I remember debating with a Rwandan exile in Ottawa; he said he wished there had been a human rights commission enforcing hate speech laws when he was a kid. I asked him: if a government thinks nothing of killing your family, do you really think they would be stopped by their own law against "hate speech"? Far from it -- if there had been such a law in Rwanda, it would have been used against the government's opponents -- anyone who tried to criticize them.

Enough from me; here's Flanagan, and here's some excerpts. I love his use of the word "jihad"!:

For the first time in a long time, human-rights commissions are on the defensive. The Harper government is taking away pay equity from the Canadian commission and University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon's report has recommended repeal of the commission's right to interfere with free speech.

Both federal and provincial commissions are suffering blowback from their unsuccessful attempts to muzzle media gadflies Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Mr. Levant, in particular, has declared a jihad against the commissions, drawing attention to the one-sided nature of the legislation under which they operate.

...we should remember that the existence of the commissions is itself an abuse. They have little to do with genuine human rights such as freedom of speech and worship, security of the person and ownership of property.

...In a competitive market, discrimination is costly to the discriminator. An employer who refuses to hire workers because of race, religion or ethnicity restricts his own choices and imposes a disadvantage on his firm. Meanwhile, his competitors gain by being able to hire from a larger pool. The same logic applies to restaurateurs turning away potential customers, or landlords refusing to lease to people of particular categories. (I'll never forget the experience of owning rental property in the recession of the 1980s; I would have rented to Martians if they had showed up with a damage deposit.)

...There is a long and dishonourable history of propping up discrimination in the private sector - refusing to enforce laws against violence (lynching), passing discriminatory legislation (Jim Crow laws in the American South) and authorizing business cartels (sports leagues) and labour cartels (trade unions). Satchel Paige would have been pitching against Babe Ruth if professional baseball had been a competitive industry.

...Think of the episodes in our history that make Canadians feel ashamed and for which our governments have been busy apologizing: disregard of aboriginal property rights; sending Indian children to residential schools; closing the doors to Jewish refugees; keeping out Chinese and Sikh immigrants; relocating the Japanese during the Second World War; interning Ukrainians during the First World War and Italians during the Second World War; eugenic sterilization of the mentally and physically handicapped.

Every one of these was an exercise of governmental power.

...Authorizing a government agency to stamp out discrimination in the private sector is truly setting the fox to guard the henhouse.

...There is discrimination in the private sector, but it is self-liquidating over time because of the costs it imposes on discriminators. Governmental discrimination, in contrast, perpetuates itself because it is backed by state coercion.