Canada and the idea of the Right to freedom of speech...

T

The Canuck

New member
Hey all, Wildalaska came up with an interesting idea on another thread and I am gonna run with it.

Some ground work...

Up here in the GWN (Great White North) we have a tribunal called the Canadian Human Rights Commission. These fine people are responsible for ensuring that peoples rights are not violated and that they enjoy a world free from hate. Good idea, huh? Well, you may think I mislabeled it a tribunal, but not in my opinion...

Nigel Hannaford said:
Nigel Hannaford
Calgary Herald


Tuesday, April 01, 2008


Bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart is alive and well, and works for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. And under an assumed name, it seems.

Even those of us advocating human rights commission reform, and thus inclined to think the less of them, have been amazed this week by what goes on at the CHRC, as revealed by a tribunal prosecuting alleged hatemonger Marc Lemire.

There we were, making abstract arguments about free speech and quoting Voltaire.

There the federal snivel servants were, logging onto Internet hate sites under assumed names, trying to conceal what they were up to by using the wireless Internet account belonging to a young woman who seems to be completely uninvolved in any of it and, according to Lemire, trying to entrap people who visited his site.

Only the unusual circumstance of these people being publicly cross-examined brought any of this to light.

Boy, did we ever not quite get it. We thought this was a high-minded disagreement over fundamental principles. Instead, we find the CHRC tolerates sleazy behaviours among its investigating officers that have no place in a free society.

A quick backgrounder.

Marc Lemire is a computer whiz, and also past-president of the late Heritage Front, a neo-Nazi organization. That is to say that while a quick glance at his freedomsite.org looks mostly concerned with free speech, he is not the ideal poster boy for it.

Enter Richard Warman, a former CHRC employee but now a serial complainer to it with a seemingly boundless vulnerability to offence. He complains about offensive comments on Lemire's web page.

Lemire is then charged under Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which makes it illegal to disseminate material on the Internet "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

For Warman, it is a familiar evolution; he has done this a dozen times before with other people, and is so far 12 for 12.

Lemire, however, suspects the commission itself may be the source of some comments.

Sure enough, at the tribunal, two CHRC employees admit logging in under false names to post provocative comments.

So, how do you feel about the Canadian state using agents as provocateurs? That is, people who will pretend to think like you, egg you on until you say something you might not otherwise have said, then haul you before a human rights tribunal? Is that the role of government?

Maybe it was in the Soviet Union, maybe it is in China.

But in Canada? That's assuming you accept the Canadian state has any business having an opinion about what you think in the first place.

What high and mighty servants we Canadians do have who, having cloaked themselves in a fake identity then presume to appropriate the Internet address of a private citizen, and use it to post messages to a site most people wouldn't want to have anything to do with.

If the police set up their radar camera in your driveway, you'd have a legitimate beef. It's like that, except these people aren't even policemen investigating a real crime, they're bureaucrats trying to convict somebody of a crime that's only "likely."

Yes, police go undercover to catch drug dealers. CSIS also has covert powers. But how many agencies do we really need spying on Canadians?

There is a totalitarian feel to this. The CHRC is not a secret police, but some of its people are playing at things secret police forces do. They are not necessarily even bad people, but the KGB and the Spanish Inquisition, to name a couple of enforcers of orthodoxy, have this in common: They all believed what they were doing was a good thing, even as they trampled all over liberty. Warman, for instance, is on record: "It's imperative individuals and groups take steps as strong as they can to defend human rights in Canada, because if they're not defended, they get undermined."

But of course, the same is true of free speech.

George Orwell: "At any given moment there is ... a body of ideas of which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing."

At times in Canada, it's been the Catholics, the Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists, Communists and gays whose views were thought beyond the pale. Today, it's people like Lemire.

But who's next? Victoria lawyer Doug Christie, who famously defended Jim Keegstra, once remarked to me that those who would limit speech should realize one can be in the saddle today and under the horse's heels tomorrow.

Live and let live is better. The CHRC has censored Canadians long enough. It should be confined to dealing with discrimination. And, if someone must play cops and robbers, let it be the real police, under the criminal code, not some guide to what's politically correct today.

Nigel Hannaford writes for the Calgary Herald.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
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The CHRC doesn't get it

National Post
Published: Tuesday, April 08, 2008


The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) still doesn't get it. The problem isn't the foulmouthed racists being investigated; it's the body itself.

As Joseph Brean reported in Saturday's Post, Ian Fine -- senior general counsel and director-general of dispute resolution at the CHRC -- began a recent interview by reading out loud some of the most poisonous bits of speech the CHRC has dealt with. The idea seemed to be that if the public could be made to realize how vile and mean the material before the CHRC can be, they would end their growing criticisms of the commission.

The defence misses the point. This editorial board and others who have called for an end to the CHRC's power to investigate hate speech are fully aware that much of the writing and speech the commission encounters is quite vicious. But we're also aware that if the right to free expression is to mean anything at all, then controversial speakers are entitled to its protection.

The CHRC might be wise to revisit philosopher John Stuart Mill's warning that when society squelches speech, everyone loses, not just the speaker: "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it." As Mill argues, the healthiest option for society is to give all opinions an airing, even those that are false and rejected by the majority. Otherwise, we lose out on "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

Never does one like to come out against "human rights." Perhaps that is why Canadians have been so patient with their federal human rights commission despite the intrusive and unhealthy limitations it puts on our freedom of expression. But with the recent high profile CHRC cases against Maclean's magazine and former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant -- which have highlighted the lack of due process in the CHRC's procedures -- that patience is finally starting to wear thin.

Unfortunately for the CHRC, reciting all the nasty speech in the world isn't going to win back public sympathy.
 
And now with that out of the way... let's examine a fellow known as Ezra Levant, a journalist and a publisher who used to print a magazine known as the Western Standard. Heard of it? I suspect you might, it was the only Canadian publication that had the cajones to print those cartoons about Mohammed made infamous by the irony of the situation.

Well, good ol' Ezra printed those and a fellow complained to the CHRC...

Let's take a look at where it all started for Ezra, shall we?

CTV.ca News Staff

Two Alberta publications are defending their right to reprint cartoon depictions of Islam's prophet Muhammad. The caricatures originally appeared in a Danish newspaper almost six months ago and have caused widespread rioting in the Middle East.

Calgary's Jewish Free Press printed three of the 12 cartoons on Thursday, while the Western Standard -- a conservative magazine also based in Calgary -- said it will print eight depictions today.

"I never published them to offend their religion," said Richard Bronstein, publisher of the Jewish Free Press.

"I published them to make a point, to inform readers that we deserve to see this material and to make up our own minds about the violent reaction to it."

The Jewish Free Press also republished anti-Semitic cartoons previously printed in other newspapers. Bronstein said he wanted to address a larger issue of respect for all religions, and didn't mean to single out followers of Islam.

"I stand very much behind my point of view, which is that it's not only about offence to Muslims," he said. "There's a lot of material out there which offends other religions. It's not just respect for Islam, it's respect for all religions."

Meanwhile, Ezra Levant, publisher of the Western Standard, said he is reprinting the cartoons so readers can make up their own minds about whether the depictions are offensive.

"We're a news magazine and the news story of the month are these riots around the world in response to some fairly innocuous Danish cartoons," he said. "It's tough to tell that story without showing the central fact -- the cartoons themselves."

Most Canadian publications have chosen not to print the cartoons, instead describing the images.

Some newspaper editors in Europe and Asia were fired after publishing some of the cartoons, and two editors in Jordan were arrested and charged under the country's press and publications law with insulting religion.

Islamic scholars are divided on whether the Koran strictly forbids any depiction of the prophet Muhammad, although the cartoons have been deemed offensive by the worldwide Muslim community.

One of the cartoons depicts the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a burning fuse.

However, Levant said some of the images are harmless.

"Some of these portraits are very bland," he said. "One of them is quite handsome -- the kind of picture you might see in a child's book of the bible."

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said publishers of the cartoons should apologize and added that they are abusing freedom of the press.

"They have to apologize in the newspaper, and they have to condemn their action, and they have to come to our centre and apologize to our congregation, too," he said.
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From here it gets bad.

Conservative who published Prophet cartoons faces rights commission
Calgary Herald
Published: Thursday, January 10, 2008
CALGARY - Outspoken conservative commentator Ezra Levant will be before the Alberta Human Rights Commission Friday defending his former magazine's 2006 publication of a series of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Members of Calgary's Muslim community were outraged when Levant's now-defunct publication, the Western Standard, published the cartoons in February 2006, shortly after their initial appearance in a Danish newspaper led to rioting and protests around the world.

Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, later filed a complaint against the Western Standard to the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Levant, the magazine's former publisher, will be on the hot seat today in Calgary during a commission investigation - a process he calls an "interrogation" - in which he'll be questioned extensively about the publication of the cartoons.

The human rights commission could then order a full hearing into the matter if it deems it necessary, he said.

"I object to the whole proceeding. It doesn't have any moral authority," Levant said Thursday in an interview.

"Free speech is a human right."

Soharwardy, who isn't expected at the proceeding, couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.
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But Ezra, a man of no small constitution was not to be cowed so easily...

Kangaroo court

By Ezra Levant on January 11, 2008 5:04 PM

I have just returned home from my session at the kangaroo court, called the Alberta human rights commission. Here is my opening statement that I delivered at the interrogation. I will post more details about the interrogation soon.

Alberta Human Rights Commission Interrogation

Opening remarks by Ezra Levant, January 11, 2008 – Calgary

My name is Ezra Levant. Before this government interrogation begins, I will make a statement.

When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Though the Western Standard, sadly, no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, ezralevant.com.

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words.

I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

I have read the past few years’ worth of decisions from this commission, and it is clear that it has become a dump for the junk that gets rejected from the real legal system. I read one case where a male hair salon student complained that he was called a “loser” by the girls in the class. The commission actually had a hearing about this. Another case was a kitchen manager with Hepatitis-C, who complained that it was against her rights to be fired. The commission actually agreed with her, and forced the restaurant to pay her $4,900. In other words, the commission is a joke – it’s the Alberta equivalent of a U.S. television pseudo-court like Judge Judy – except that Judge Judy actually was a judge, whereas none of the commission’s panellists are judges, and some aren’t even lawyers. And, unlike the commission, Judge Judy believes in freedom of speech.

It’s bad enough that this sick joke is being wreaked on hair salons and restaurants. But it’s even worse now that the commissions are attacking free speech. That’s my first point: the commissions have leapt out of the small cage they were confined to, and are now attacking our fundamental freedoms. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, a man who helped form these commissions in the 60’s and 70’s, wrote, in specific reference to our magazine, being a censor is, quote, “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons.” Unquote. Since the commission is so obviously out of control, he said quote “It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation.” Unquote.

The commission has no legal authority to act as censor. It is not in their statutory authority. They’re just making it up – even Alan Borovoy says so.

But even if the commissions had some statutory fig leaf for their attempts at political and religious censorship, it would still be unlawful and unconstitutional.

We have a heritage of free speech that we inherited from Great Britain that goes back to the year 1215 and the Magna Carta. We have a heritage of eight hundred years of British common law protection for speech, augmented by 250 years of common law in Canada.

That common law has been restated in various fundamental documents, especially since the Second World War.

In 1948, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada is a party, declared that, quote:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights guaranteed, quote

1. “ human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

(c) freedom of religion; (d) freedom of speech; (e) freedom of assembly and association; and (f) freedom of the press.
In 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed, quote:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
Those were even called “fundamental freedoms” – to give them extra importance.

For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values.

It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment. (At this point, I’d like to thank the magazine’s many donors who have given their own money to help us fight against the Saudi imam and his enablers in the Alberta government.)

It is procedurally unfair. Unlike real courts, there is no way to apply for a dismissal of nuisance lawsuits. Common law rules of evidence don’t apply. Rules of court don’t apply. It is a system that is part Kafka, and part Stalin. Even this interrogation today – at which I appear under duress – saw the commission tell me who I could or could not bring with me as my counsel and advisors.

I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians.

You may start your interrogation.
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And other people noticed...

Getting riled up goes with the territory when living in a democracy


By MIICHAEL COREN

Much has now been written about Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the now defunct Western Standard, and his decision two years ago to publish a set of cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. For those who prefer to forget, they were the Danish caricatures of the founder of Islam, implying a connection between Muslim fanaticism and terrorist violence.
In response to the appearance of the said pictures and their claim that Islamic extremism led to violence, Islamic extremists killed people, promised to decapitate their opponents and firebombed churches and embassies.
Not all Muslims behaved or thought thus. But anyone who argues that it was a mere handful is a liar, a fool or a Canadian leftist.
Some Canadian Muslims took a different path and simply complained to the Human Rights Commission that the cartoons transgressed their -- here we go -- human rights.
Human rights are a funny old thing. They tend to change shape and meaning depending on the day and place. Most of us, however, would agree that the right to life, freedom and movement are pretty obvious ones.

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But the human right not to be offended? The very idea, well, offends me.
So a handful of people complained and as a result journalist Levant is obliged to hire a lawyer and spend a great deal of time with an unqualified official who will decide whether freedom of the press is a good or bad thing.
DISGRACE
Actually the real disgrace here is that the Western Standard was the only Canadian publication to print the cartoons. They should have been featured in every media outlet in the country, in that they made international news. The ostensible reason that they weren't published was that they were, yet again, offensive.
So bloody what? Canadian newspapers publish cartoons that are offensive to Christians, for example, dozens of times a year. Tolerating that which offends is part of being an adult, being sensible and being part of an adult, sensible county with an adult, sensible culture. Or at least it was.
The real reason the cartoons were not published, of course, is that people were terrified of the consequences. In some cases editors had private security companies give them estimates of how much it would cost to protect their buildings. Which is not only cowardly, but deeply insulting to Canadian Muslims, who are some of the most moderate in the Islamic diaspora.
The editors at the good old New York Times pretentiously explained why they wouldn't publish pictures of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. They could, they said, adequately explain the cartoons in words. Odd, then, that in the same week they printed a photograph of an alleged artwork depicting the Virgin Mary covered in excrement. Suddenly their ability to describe had abandoned them.
The stench of double standard and fearfulness is as heady as the perfume from an Arabic harem.
We know they're lying and they know they're lying. And we all know that Ezra Levant has become an icon of hope in this nation. The mere fact that he has been called to account is obscene and it must be stressed that the outcome of this witch hunt is irrelevant.
Freedom seems so trivial when you possess it, but it's like water to a man in the desert when it is taken away.
Drink deeply, and loudly condemn those who would have you die of thirst.
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Just the tip of the iceberg, boys, this is the free speech story of the past 50 years!

The conservative blogosphere in Canada is under total attack too....

This is a highly complex issue. It all started years ago when the Canadian Jewish Congress started chasing holocaust deniers through these human rights commisions, then morphed into gays chasing priests, dope smokers chasing non dopers, serial offended by speech plaintiffs chasing conservative forums with a soupcon of nazis tossed in for sport and Human Rights Commision Investigators chasing Nazis on Nazi message Boards by posing as Nazis while hijacking unwitting folks internet accounts. Its all come to fruition now that offended Muslims are chasing Ezra "I live to be Obnoxious and Offensive" Levant and the bane of liberal kooks everywhere, Mark Steyn for "islamophobia"...they have tossed in McCleans magazine too.

Thrills, Chills, Farce!!!!!!

Get a flavor for it here:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogsection/14/128/

Now there are even lawsuits up there to stifle speech.

You guys talk about the 2nd as the line in the sand? Nope, it's the First...and every civil libertarian in the US needs to be inforrmed in detail about the shenanigans in the Great White North..its a long story that I have been following for a while....hope some of you guys enjoy it like I have!

PS...free speech is winning, so far...

WildgreatsubjectAlaska ™
 
Now on to Mark Steyn, a fellow who has a book published and all of a sudden is labeled as hateful. For his troble he has caught all kinds of hell...
I'll let you judge for yourself.

DON'T GET EVEN, GET MAD
By Mark Steyn

TUESDAY, 01 MAY 2007

from National Review

On the day the Royal Navy’s hostages were released, I chanced to be reading a poem from Reflections On Islam, a terrific collection of essays by George Jonas. The verse is by Nizar Qabbani, and it is his ode to the intifada:

O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness

Or as the larky motto you used to find on the wall of the typing pool put it: You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps. For the madness of the intifada and the jihad and Islamist imperialism is calculated, and highly effective. There is, as Jonas sees it, method in their madness.

Do you remember that little difficulty a few months back over the Pope’s indelicate quotation of Manuel II? Many Muslims were very upset about his speech (or his speech as reported on the BBC et al), so they protested outside Westminster Cathedral in London demanding “capital punishment” for the Pope, and they issued a fatwa in Pakistan calling on Muslims to kill His Holiness, and they firebombed a Greek Orthodox Church and an Anglican Church in Nablus, and they murdered a nun in Somalia and a couple of Christians in Iraq. As Tasnim Aslam of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad helpfully clarified, “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” So don’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you. As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.

But that’s a debating society line. Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for Islam. Likewise, it’s no stretch to feel affronted at the implication that you’re violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don’t prize debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you know – Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward – and put him on a late-night subway train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought.

The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I’m personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but after five years I’m a bit bored by having to respond to Muslim groups’ demands (in America) that I be fired and (in Canada) that I be brought before the totalitarian-lite kangaroo courts of the country’s ghastly “human rights commissions”. Publishers like hate-mail; they’re less keen on running up legal bills defending nuisance suits. So it’s easier just to avoid the subject – as an Australian novelist recently discovered when his book on a, ah, certain topical theme was mysteriously canceled.

That’s the advantage of madness as a strategy. If one party to the dispute forswears sanity, then the obligation is on the other to be sane for both of them. Thus, if a bunch of Iranian pirates kidnap some British seamen in Iraqi waters, it is the British whom the world calls on to show restraint and to defuse the situation. If an obscure Danish newspaper prints some offensive cartoons and in reaction Muslims murder people around the planet, well, that just shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. But, if Muslims blow up dozens of commuters on the London Underground and in reaction a minor talk-show host ventures some tentative remarks about whether Islam really is a religion of piece, well, that also shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. Do this long enough and eventually you’ll achieve the exquisite sensitivity of the European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. In 2003, their report on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe found that “many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups”, and so (according to The Daily Telegraph) a “political decision” was taken not to publish it because of “fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims”.

Got that? The EU’s principal “fear” about an actual ongoing epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could hypothetically provoke an epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims.

And so the more the enemies of free society step on our feet the more we tiptoe around. After the release of the Royal Navy hostages, the Right Reverend Tom Burns, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Armed Forces, praised the Iranians for their “forgiveness”. “Over the past two weeks,” said the Bishop, “there has been a unity of purpose between Britain and Iran, whereby everyone has sought justice and forgiveness.”

Really? In what alternative universe is that? Maybe the insanity is contagious. As the columnist Jack Kelly wrote, “The infidels Allah wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.” And so these twin psychoses – Islamist rage and our determination never to see it – continue their valse macabre on the brink of catastrophe.

National Review
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Steyn caught lots of flack. His reply...

Mark Steyn: 'Why don't you sue me?'

National Post
Published: Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Re: 'Extremists' And The Muslim Debate, letter to the editor, Jan. 31.

In their latest missive to you, Naseem Mithoowani, Khurrum Awan and Muneeza Sheikh refer to the excerpt from my book published in Maclean's, as a "defamatory article". OK, if it's defamatory, why don't you sue me? Cue crickets chirping.

It's precisely because the article is not defamatory that the "plaintiffs" have had to rig the game by going to (at last count) three of Canada's many "human rights" pseudo-courts. In none of their plaintive reprises protesting that they're only looking for a chance to "start a debate" have they or their patrons at the Canadian Islamic Congress questioned the accuracy of a single specific fact, quotation or statistic. If they wanted to "start a debate," they could start one, via a blog, column or book. Instead, they started a "human rights" complaint, which is what people do when they want to end the debate.

This isn't merely a "freedom of speech" issue. Canada's Charter, much to its shame, explicitly abridges freedom of expression. However, it does not abridge the presumption of innocence, which is guaranteed by the Charter, as well as by the UN Declaration on Human Rights and Magna Carta. Yet there is no "presumption of innocence" in Section 13 "hate" cases. Au contraire, there is a presumption of guilt, which is why no one hauled before the CHRC under Section 13 has ever been acquitted -- with the exception of the "Canadian Nazi Party," which got off scot-free on the quaint grounds that it did not, in fact, exist. (The fact that Richard Warman, "human rights activist" and the CHRC's serial plaintiff, is reduced to suing entirely fictional entities tells you a lot about how necessary Section 13 is to the Queen's peace.)

Alas, if you do have the misfortune to exist in what passes for the real world at the CHRC, then your chances of bucking the spectacular 100% conviction rate are a lot slimmer. So Maclean's and my book will be convicted because that's the only menu option available. Section 13 and its administration are a public scandal. I hope Canadians will support Dr. Keith Martin, MP, who has introduced a private member's bill calling for its abolition.

As for the Osgoode Hall students' patron - and, in fact, the real "complainant," at least in the British Columbia suit -- the Canadian Islamic Congress is headed by Mohamed Elmasry, who declared on TV that he approved of the murder of any or all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. Good for him: I don't begrudge him his freedom of speech. But, if he can dish it out so enthusiastically, shouldn't he be able to take it just an eensy-teensy-weensy bit?

Mark Steyn, Montreal.
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...So they did...

New York Post says the following...

CANADA'S THOUGHT POLICE

December 16, 2007 -- Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone."

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime" of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

If Maclean's, Canada's top-selling magazine, is found “guilty," it could face financial or other penalties. And the affair could have a devastating impact on opinion journalism in Canada generally.

As it happens, Canadian human-rights commissions have already come down hard on those whose writings they dislike, like critics of gay rights.

Nor should Americans dismiss this campaign against Steyn and Maclean's as merely another Canadian eccentricity. Speech cops in America, too, are forever attempting similar efforts - most visibly, on college campuses.

In fact, New York City itself has a human-rights panel that tries to stamp out anything deemed too politically incorrect.

Since 9/11, Americans have been alert to the threat of terror from radical Islamists. But there's been all too little concern for a creeping accommodation of radical Islamist tenets, like curbs on critical opinions.

That needs to change.
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Okay folks, I have inundated you with articles by prominent and well spoken journalists from both sides of our shared border regarding the idea of a commission to control speech in the interest of preventing people from having hurt feelings.

Now how does this tie into a predominantly gun related forum, you might ask. It is rather simple. We (By "we" I mean many of my fellow Canadians) have strange notion up here that rights are only rights as long as they don't hurt anybody's feelings. So how is it that we can possibly recover the gun rights we once had when the state gets its panties in a knot when somebody complains that thier feelings were hurt?

Isn't it interesting that my country severely restricts the rights of its citizens in regards to firearms and then all of a sudden can tell you what you can and cannot write?

I feel that the parallel is shocking. The second protects the first... protects the second... we are all in this together, but many of us don't get it.

Maybe we can reverse this. Levant and Steyn sure hope to.
 
I was not aware that free speech was winning. I thought that until the Ezra Levant case the Human Rights Commission had a 100% conviction rate.
 
It seems it is spreading to European countries too:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3174


Sweden’s Press Ombudsman Wants to Prosecute Bloggers
From the desk of Fjordman on Tue, 2008-04-15 16:05
Yrsa Stenius, the Swedish press Ombudsmann, wants to press charges against certain bloggers. She is worried about developments on the Internet, where anybody can just write anything they want. She says this has gone too far. She fears this trend could even spread to the mainstream media, unless something is done and a legal precedent is established to rein in unruly bloggers.

At the same time, the extreme left-wing thugs of Antifascistisk Action (AFA), who frequently physically assault critics of mass immigration, for instance members of the small party the Sweden Democrats, recently destroyed the car of a 90-year-old woman and wrote "nasse" (Nazi) on top of it. As it turned out, they picked the wrong car. Why doesn't Ms. Stenius and the rest of the establishment worry more about the violent activities of AFA, instead of "impolite" bloggers who do nothing more than write words on their websites?
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Very interesting and chilling thread, Canuck. Thanks for posting.

My friends, if you want to know where America is headed (and will be speeding toward if a Democrat is elected in November) you need look no further than across our northern border. It has happened in Europe, it's happening in Canada and in a few select states within our own boundaries.

Read up, learn and be afraid; very afraid. Then go vote your mind.
 
For hours of reading, ok, shouting at your PC and throwing things type of reading about the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal you can go here (please do it in a rubber padded room).

http://ezralevant.com/

The HRC tribunal is really about prosecuting speech that another could find insulting. It has been used to supress traditional values and prosecute those who point out problems in society. An example:

Anti-hate bureaucrats writing hateful things

Which brings us to the conduct of Richard Warman and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Last month, Dean Steacy, a CHRC “anti-hate” investigator, acknowledged that he and other CHRC staffers, including Warman, were not exempt from the prohibitions against hate speech – yet both of them went online and did just that. Under a sign saying ”White revolution – the only solution”, Warman wrote “I agree. Keep up the good work”, and signed off with Nazi shorthand for “heil Hitler.” On another post, Warman wrote that gays were “sexual deviants” who were a “cancer”.

Why is it legally okay for Warman and Steacy to join the white supremacist group Stormfront, and post bigoted remarks like that, but it’s not okay for other Stormfront members to do the same – even at the provocation of Steacy and Warman?

Do intentions matter?

The CHRC’s defenders might argue that it’s all about the intentions behind the publication – that Warman and Steacy didn’t really mean those bigoted remarks, they were doing it as some sort of weird “commit a thought crime to stop a thought crime” logic. But that’s not what section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act says. Intentions have nothing to do with it – it’s whether what you publish could expose someone to feelings of hate. What Warman and Steacy published meets that test regardless of what their intentions or excuses were.

A charge without a defence

In fact, the logic of section 13 is almost impossible to defend against – certainly, truth is no defence, for the truth or falsehood of a publication has nothing to do with whether or not someone can feel “hatred” after reading or hearing it. Judged against both the letter and the spirit of the law, not only are Warman’s and Steacy’s postings illegal thought crimes, but even the weird, self-destructive PR conference call that the CHRC big-wigs hastily arranged last week was illegal, too. That was the call where CHRC counsel Ian Fine started off by… reading out a litany of bigoted words, including n*gger. Perhaps Fine, the commission’s top lawyer, should read section 13 again – there is no exemption there to permit anti-Black, anti-Semitic bigotry in a press conference. What he did was illegal.

Even Kinsella repeatedly violates section 13. His own website is littered with swastikas – and one of his books has a swastika on the cover, too. Of course, a sensible person would see the context there – Kinsella is critical of Naziism. But, again, section 13 allows no such reasonable explanation. If a symbol could “likely” cause someone to feel “hatred or contempt” for another, it’s illegal. (Kinsella himself makes such a spurious and unethical charge against Steyn, by taking his use of various pejorative terms out of context; but Kinsella should not be our standard for ethics.)

We all know this is ridiculous. As Steyn has pointed out, to try to apply this impossible standard to all communication would result in the shutting down of, for example, every music store in America that contains rap lyrics with the word n*gger.

So what does it all mean?

No sane person would pretend that all utterances of the same words mean the same thing. Intentions mean a lot. Even the same physical act means different things with different intentions – bumping up against someone in a crowded alley is morally and legally different than purposefully assaulting them, though the deed is the same. An anti-racism pamphlet that uses the word n*gger is obviously not the act of racism that the use of that word by a Klansman might be. But Canada’s illiberal, censorious human rights laws don’t make that distinction – though Steacy, Warman and Fine might wish it were so if they’re ever charged for their bigoted words.

Even my own HRC interrogatrix, Shirlene McGovern, wanted to know what my “intentions” were behind publishing the cartoons – though the Alberta statute is as silent on intentions as is the federal one.
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Why is it legally okay for Warman and Steacy to join the white supremacist group Stormfront, and post bigoted remarks like that, but it’s not okay for other Stormfront members to do the same – even at the provocation of Steacy and Warman?
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Well look at that, the government using agent provocateurs to deny folks their rights

Read up, learn and be afraid; very afraid. Then go vote your mind.
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Truer words have never been spoken on this Board.

WildrealissuesherenotjusttinfoilwhiningAlaska TM

Think it cant happen here?

http://networdblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/never-in-america.html
 
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Have recently started reading a book that lays out a lot of the problem that pro-constitutional rights and pro-human rights people have been facing.

I don't claim that said book has all the answers but it will surely lay a trail that can bring you to the answers. I will also say at this time I have not finished reading the book but I like it.

The book is "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg

What it looks to be doing is giving a lot of the historical background on why things happened the way they do and will twist a lot of minds.

The war on our culture has been going on a lot longer that most people realize.
 
My father is a minister who has been active in the gay rights movement within his church. Several years ago Fred Phelps group came and picketed the church, they were in town for another high-profile event and decided to hit all the gay friendly churches too. This happened to take place on the Sunday when my dad was preaching his final sermon after over thirty years at the same church.

I stood and watched them, I've never seen people so full of hate, I'd never seen the dark side of humanity so clearly represented. I was furious because I know how much of himself my dad had devoted to his ministry, and he had always welcomed his critics with an open heart, I felt that Phelp's group was stealing the grace and respect that my father had earned- all because his retirement coincided with the good photo-op that had drawn them to town.

Last year my best friend, who works in marketing, made an honest mistake and ran an advertisement that was perceived to offend an ethnic group. This all took place in a racially charged environment that was created in the weeks before the ad ran by events that had nothing to do with my friend.

My friend is an open-minded person, until these events took place he was actually quite liberal and pc. Despite being able to prove that he had created the image that was perceived to be offensive without meaning to he was dragged through the mud. And he had no recourse, no way to defend himself. He had to submit himself to the whims of the pc police until they'd decided that he'd suffered enough. And now he lives in fear of creating anything.

I think about these two separate events as being linked because Fred Phelps and his tactics represent the boundaries of free speech, I've seen them in person and I've been deeply offended by them. But that is nothing compared to the fear that my friend lives with to this day.

We are living through a new Mccarthyism.
 
The first interaction Ezra Levant had with the Canadian Human Rights commission is destined to be a classic!

http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/kangaroo-court.html

I have just returned home from my session at the kangaroo court, called the Alberta human rights commission. Here is my opening statement that I delivered at the interrogation. I will post more details about the interrogation soon.

Alberta Human Rights Commission Interrogation
Opening remarks by Ezra Levant, January 11, 2008 – Calgary
My name is Ezra Levant. Before this government interrogation begins, I will make a statement.
When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Though the Western Standard, sadly, no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, ezralevant.com.
I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words.
I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.........Snip.......

I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians.

You may start your interrogation.
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He continued to slam the HRC in a very public way.
 
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