Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression are a joke
Have you heard of Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression?
I bet you haven't.
Because in the great Canadian free speech debate of the past few years, they've been as silent as church mice.
According to their website,
We boldly champion the free expression rights of journalists and media workers around the world. In Canada, we monitor, defend and promote free expression and access to information. We encourage and support individuals and groups to be vigilant in the protection of their own and others' free expression rights. We are active participants and builders of the global free expression community.
Of course, it's just not true.
If you relied on the CJFE for your news about media freedom and censorship, you probably wouldn't have heard about a little kerfuffle back in the fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006, after a Danish newspaper published a dozen cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
Things escalated to the point where in the single month of February, 2006, over 200 people were killed that in riots purportedly in response to those cartoons. It was the top story around the world.
Not for the CJFE -- they talked about everything and anything else, desperate to avoid giving offense to radical Islam.
In February of 2006, the magazine I published at the time, the Western Standard, reprinted some of the cartoons as a news story. We were slapped with two human rights complaints, another news story that continued for 900 days.
But the CJFE was still silent. They were hiding under their desks. Seriously: look at their 2006 news releases.
What cowards.
It wasn't until two and a half months later that they dipped their toe tentatively in the water by having a panel discussion -- featuring, amongst others, Haroon Siddiqui, one of only a handful of journalists in the whole country who actually support censorship and the power of human rights commissions to censor the media.
A panel discussion. No statement in defence of free speech. No "boldly championing" anything. No "defending and promoting" anything. Certainly no "support" or "active participation".
In other words, the CJFE is a bunch of cowards, and have been for years.
What an embarrassment they are, as compared to PEN Canada or the Canadian Association of Journalists.
If you look at the names of the directors of the CJFE, the source of their cowardice, wilfull blindness and hypocrisy is pretty clear: the bulk of them are the very editors and producers who themselves took part in the nearly-uniform censorship of the cartoons in the first place.
It would be quite some feat for the same "journalists" who executed the self-censorship to begin with, to then oppose that same censorship, wouldn't it be?
I don't know how up to date the list is, but the website includes plenty of high-ups at the CBC (which censored the cartoons) and even the editor of NOW magazine, which not only censored the cartoons, but has disgraced itself by being the only newspaper in the country whose official editorial position is in support of human rights commission censorship.
It borders on false advertising for such people to call themselves "Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression". They just aren't.
They've marginalized themselves. I mean, seriously -- have you ever heard them mentioned, anywhere, ever? They have made themselves obsolete.
I know I have ignored them.
But then I came across an item in the blog Free Canuckistan indicating that the sleeping lifeguards at the CJFE had awoken long enough to come to our rescue, some four years after we nearly drowned, by putting out some sort of report on the state of freedom of speech in Canada.
This would be quite something to see: after four years of pondering, what did they have to tell us?
You can see the report here (large file). Let's start with an astounding statement on page 5:
Any restriction on speech has to have a clear social benefit, and so we recognize the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for its decision in the Lemire case to deem the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Code to be unconstitutional.
So let's get this straight. Canada's self-described freedom-fighters accept censorship if it has "a clear social benefit"?
Is that the test now?
I have a question. Has there ever been a censor, in the history of mankind, who has not claimed "a clear social benefit" to his censorship?
Has there ever been a censor so stupid as to describe his motives as being bigoted or political or inappropriate, as opposed to necessary and salutary?
So the CJFE is willing to accept censorship if it is done in the name of a "social benefit"?
This is what we waited four years for?
Their report addresses human rights commissions again on page 9, and it's clear that they just don't have a clue.
The first thing that becomes obvious is that the CJFE thinks there is one "Human Rights Act" in Canada. They keep saying that; but in fact there are fourteen in the country, some of which include censorship, some of which don't. And those that do, do so in different ways -- section 13 of the federal law, for example, covers only telephone messages and the Internet. Some provincial laws cover magazines; some cover signs. I don't think the "journalists" at the CJFE even Googled this.
That's not a minor point, because if you haven't read the law, then you don't know how it's a threat.
So you just might write something like this, as the CJFE did on page 9:
The Human Rights Act deals with hate speech adjudicated by a tribunal of civilians based on a complaint that the speech is intended to lead to discrimination.
and later:
Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, on the other hand, is an anti-discrimination law, and suspected offences of speech are judged not on whether they are meant to incite violence but on whether they are meant to incite feelings of hatred or contempt that lead to discrimination
Uh, no. There is no mental element necessary for a conviction under the human rights act -- no guilty mind is necessary, as it is in the criminal law. Intentions have nothing to do with it -- and so good intentions are no defence. The target doesn't have to "mean to" do anything.
And the CJFE makes another mistake that someone who actually read the law wouldn't have made: they say the law requires that the evoked feelings must "lead to discrimination".
Again, no. And the fact that the CJFE doesn't get it is damned embarrassing. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and its provincial analogs, don't regulate real discrimination. They regulate feelings. That's it. Nothing has to come from those feelings, other than that they were felt.
No-one has to act on those feelings, and certainly not to discriminate. The CJFE just doesn't know what they're talking about.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present your self-described experts in freedom!
It just gets lamer. Still on page 9:
Under the Human Rights Act, a person or group that feels they are the aggrieved object of the published statement in non-criminal cases can seek relief before provincial or federal human rights commissions, which have the power to pass them on to a tribunal for adjudication.
Again, there's the weird implication that there is only one Human Rights Act, and that it applies both provincially and federally. Did these expert advocates really miss the fact that Mark Steyn was charged under three different laws in three different jurisdictions?
But again, there's a more important error: the CJFE thinks that only the "aggrieved" groups in question can file complaints. But that shows they're not paying attention. Every single section 13 complaint prosecuted before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the past eight or so years has been lodged by the same one person: a white male named Richard Warman. He's not Jewish, not black, not an immigrant, etc., etc., but he files complaints in the name of those "groups". He's not a victim -- yet he has been awarded tens of thousands of dollars by the tribunal for his pains.
Is the CJFE just making things up?
They sure are:
The tribunals are quasi-judicial, with as many as 15 civilian appointees hearing a case without a judge.
I'm going to give these "journalists" the benefit of the doubt and just assume they don't know how to write clearly. Surely they don't think that fifteen people actually hear "a case" together, do they?
Please tell me they don't think that "as many as 15" human rights commissioners judge a case. Please?
Turn to page 10 now, as the CJFE talks about Mark Steyn:
The case was dismissed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and the Ontario Human Rights Commission after Maclean’s submitted a brief of defence to each. But the British Columbia Human Rights Commission deemed the case worth adjudicating and held public tribunal hearings.
The CJFE says that Maclean's defended themselves before the Ontario and federal commissions. But the public record to date shows the opposite -- that the Ontario HRC rejected the complaint against Maclean's (but denounced Maclean's nonetheless) without receiving Maclean's defence, and that the CHRC did the same.
I'll stand corrected if the CJFE has done some actual research and found out new facts here. But given their laughable command of the facts so far, I think it's safe to assume they're just making this up, too.
Oh, and by the way -- there is no B.C. Human Rights Commission, despite the CJFE's claim that there is. It was abolished seven years ago. Now all cases go directly to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. But how would the CJFE know something like that!
Why does any of this matter?
I guess it doesn't. There are stupid journalists, just like there are stupid people in every trade.
But I'm not mad at the CJFE for being stupid. I'm mad at them for being cowards four years ago when the cartoons became the censorship issue of the decade. And I'm mad at them for this joke of a report now, that gives their OK for censorship of things, if someone can claim a "social benefit" to that censorship.
Stupid is fine. Stupid can be fixed. Stupid is not malicious. Stupid is not dishonest.
But cowardice goes to one's character. Appeasement goes right to the soul.
Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression are cowards.
After four years of silence, they have awoken to tell the government that censorship is fine as long as there is a "social benefit".
Let's all hope these buffoons go back to sleep for another four years.
Too much more help like this, and we're all doomed.
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