I'm pleased to report that Tim Hudak, considered a leading contender for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, has announced that he would abolish that province's human rights tribunal. Hudak becomes the second PCPO candidate to make that pledge, the first being Randy Hillier, which I wrote about here.
Hillier has it right: he'll simply do away with them. There is no need for HRCs; our civil courts already handle wrongful dismissal and landlord and tenant issues, and for anything more rambunctious than that, there's the Criminal Code. That's it.
Here's Hudak's announcement. In short, he'd abolish the kangaroo court aspects of the system, replacing it with real judges, bound by real rules of procedure.
That's half the problem -- as I experienced first hand. Had Syed Soharwardy, the anti-Semitic imam who complained about me, been bound by real rules of court, he likely never would have proceeded, out of fear of having to pay my legal fees for such an obviously abusive claim.
But merely replacing the HRCs corrupt system with a fairer court system is not the whole solution. I would have been no happier had a real judge heard the censorship case against me. It's the censorship that matters, too -- the counterfeit "right not to be offended". I don't want a real judge applying that fake right. I don't want anybody presiding over such a sham. So it's not just the process that's broken, it's the substance, too.
Hudak's announcement seems to address that -- he criticizes cases about "hurt feelings" and "political advocacy". I'd like to see the fine print -- if Hudak really is going to rein in the insane cases, and transfer everything else to real courts, perhaps he's accomplishing the same goals as Hillier is, but in a subtler fashion. That's fine by me.
There are two other candidates for the Tory leadership, of course. Christine Elliot and Frank Klees. Unless I've missed it, they haven't weighed in on the issue of HRCs, free speech and natural justice yet.
This news report by Karen Howlett quotes a single anonymous party "insider", who apparently is such an insider that he knows what the secret thinking is in both Elliot's and Klees's campaign.
For what it's worth, here's what that one party "insider" says about the two campaigns that have yet to announce on this subject:
[Hudak's and Hillier's] stand leaves them at odds with leadership rivals Christine Elliott and Frank Klees, who worry that the policy could hurt the party and be as ill fated as former leader John Tory's pledge to publicly fund all religious schools in addition to Catholic ones, said a party insider.
"I think they're going to look at this and say, 'you're pulling another John Tory move. You picked a hot-button issue that's going to blow up in our faces just as the school thing did,' " he said.
Let me chuckle one last time at the credulity with which Howlett quotes a party "insider" so awesome as to know the private "worries" of not one but two of the leading candidates. Gentle readers, if it was me with such awesome powers of perspicacity and perception, you'd be damned sure I wouldn't be showcasing my talents to reporters anonymously.
Anyways: on to the substance of our anonymous Uri Geller's extra-sensory perception of Klees's and Elliot's worries.
I accept that reforming something called a "human rights commission" or "human rights tribunal" isn't as politically easy as reforming something with a more honest name like a "board of censors" or a "kangaroo court". So it's not the easiest thing to do in the world. But it's pretty close.
Because whoever wins the Tory leadership will have many allies on their side. Let me list a few:
Barbara Hall. She's the Marxist activist who runs the Ontario HRT, and she's on a radical crusade. Not the most popular woman to begin with -- she was turfed as mayor of Toronto -- she's the dream opponent from a reformer's point of view. She's angry, in-your-face, biased and no-one in the whole province thinks for a moment that what she's meting out is "justice". It's politics.
Crazy HRC decisions. Have you heard the one about Gator Ted? He's the Burlington bar owner who has been harassed by Ontario's HRC for years because some pot head claims he has the "human right" to smoke up in Gator Ted's pub, over Ted's objections. I can tell you, millions of Ontarians have heard about him. How about the St. Catharines health club owner being sued by a man who claims the "human right" to change in the women's locker room? Not a month goes by when another crazy case doesn't hit the news. And people's response: derisive laughter. When they're laughing at you in politics, it's all over.
The entire Ontario media. Every single newspaper I can think of in Ontario has opined against their HRC. The mighty Toronto Star, by far the biggest-circulation daily in the country, has editorialized twice against the censorship provisions. The Globe and Mail's Peggy Wente and Rex Murphy between them have written enough to fill a small book. And then there's the National Post, whose editorial pages are HRC reform central.
And that's just opinion writers. There are now Ontario hard news reporters on the HRC beat -- like Joseph Brean and Charlie Gillis.
And that's just print. Ontario talk radio is uniform in its opprobrium to these kangaroo courts. I've probably appeared half a dozen times on John Oakley's show alone.
And then there's TV, from Michael Coren to BNN to Canada AM. Literally none of them are for Ontario's HRC.
Liberal NGOs. Conservatives don't always find themselves on the side of liberal non-governmental organizations. But when it comes to reining in HRCs, reformers will find themselves plenty of unusual allies. PEN Canada; Egale, the gay rights lobby; the Canadian Association of Journalists -- these are not right-wingers. But they're united in their love for the rule of law and free speech. And it's not grudging support, either -- free speech and the rule of law appeals to their genuine liberal principles.
The public at large. Eighteen months ago, I estimate that 99% of Canadians had not heard of HRCs. But after the shellacking they've taken in the press, I'd say that number has fallen to 90%. That might sound high, still. But it's actually an enormous achievement. I think "severely normal" people maybe haven't heard about HRCs and their abuses. But politics watchers, news readers, talk radio listeners, those who get involved -- that is, opinion leaders -- have. There is a public consensus out there. I haven't seen a poll on the subject -- though I bet a bunch have been done by various governments and political parties (and by scared HRCs themselves) -- but I bet the more people know about HRCs, the more they hate them.
To get back to the Amazing Kreskin quoted in the news story above, the five elements I've just listed form a poltical landscape that just wasn't there with John Tory's school funding issue. There was no appalling figurehead like Barbara Hall to run against; there wasn't a steady stream of easy-to-understand examples of appalling stupidity emanating from the object in need of reform; the media wasn't uniform on the matter -- and committed to it, as personal users of free speech; liberal NGOs weren't on side; and the public hadn't been primed on the subject for a good 18 months in advance.
I guess I do have one quantitative example of how the public in general feels about human rights commissions: my book sales. I had all the fears of the Tory "insider" when I wrote the book: I was radical; my proposals were extreme; I would be torn to shreds by my opponents; people would reject me and my ideas because of my partisan stripe, etc. To tell you the truth, I was thrilled that McClelland & Stewart agreed to publish the book -- I didn't think I was quite polite enough company for them.
But my pessimism was misplaced. The book has been a surprise best-seller, still at number four on the national list after two months on bookshelves. It's been critically well-received including by -- especially by -- liberals. I was pleasantly surprised. And my publisher's high hopes were obviously exceeded, too: the fact that they had to do three printings in the first month suggests that they had more modest expectations.
And the three biggest selling cities for my book, based on my 13-city book tour? Ottawa, Toronto and London, Ont., in that order. More than Calgary, Edmonton or Vancouver.
I'm going to call myself a "Tory insider" now, but I'll go on the record: Christine Elliot and Frank Klees have nothing to fear from embracing the reform or abolition of Ontario's corrupt and abusive human rights commission. They'll find what I've found, and what I'm sure Tim Hudak and Randy Hillier have found: freedom of speech and due process is a true Canadian value, a far more compelling one that political correctness.
It's my hope that Elliot and Klees make it unanimous, and come out with HRC reform platforms themselves. They should do it for the love of freedom -- and of true civil rights, not the counterfeit human rights promoted by Barbara Hall. And, speaking more strategically, they should do it to neutralize Hudak's and Hillier's advantage with the PCPO base on this issue.
