Libsmasher
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- Jan 9, 2008
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the canadian charter of rights is being replaced by thought-control tribunals. 
From the June 30, 2008 National Review:
From the June 30, 2008 National Review:
Chilling Effect
The Great White North’s Brave New World
MARK HEMINGWAY
Canada is no longer a free country. That’s the inescapable conclusion for anyone following the country’s “human rights” tribunals.
For five days straight, starting on June 2, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal held a hearing in Vancouver to determine whether National Review’s Mark Steyn and the Canadian newsweekly Maclean’s should be fined or censured. The offense? Maclean’s printed an excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone.
The excerpt in question argued that, owing to demographic trends, the Western world will increasingly be forced to confront the problems of radical Islam. The Canadian Islamic Congress — a radical Muslim group whose founder, Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, once claimed on Canadian radio that all adult Israelis were justifiable targets of Palestinian violence — objected. The group filed a complaint with the national government’s human-rights commission, and those of two provinces.
These commissions were originally set up to address basic questions in discrimination law, such as discriminatory hiring or housing practices. However, the national commission’s overzealous prosecution of a white-supremacist leader eventually led to the 1990 Canadian Supreme Court decision Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor. Since the ruling, Canadian law has been interpreted to mean that human-rights commissions, whether at the provincial or national level, have the authority to impose civil penalties on those responsible for any “telecommunication” that is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
Ever since, human-rights commissions have been stomping all over the Canadian charter of rights; in their attempt to take on Steyn and Maclean’s, their hubris may have reached its zenith.
The tribunal in Vancouver was, as expected, a complete travesty. Such tribunals determine guilt, but are largely administrative in process: There are no evidentiary rules, no standards for due process, and no basic legal protections for the accused; truth isn’t necessarily a defense. Meanwhile, the state picks up the tab for the complainants’ representation, while the accused can incur tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s blogged the proceedings in real time, and his descriptions are, frankly, astonishing. Commissioners routinely recessed to determine the eligibility of evidence; the complainants’ lawyers would dash off mid-hearing to print Internet material to introduce as evidence five minutes later; an “expert” witness appeared whose chief credential may well be academic papers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and the complainants repeatedly accused Steyn and Maclean’s of being responsible for hateful blog comments neither had anything to do with.
And now, while Steyn and Maclean’s wait anxiously to learn what thought crimes they are guilty of, they’re staring down the barrel of yet another trial at the national level, complete with redundant penalties and yet more legal costs. (The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal declined to hear the complaint, because the province’s human-rights laws specifically forbid regulating the press — but the tribunal’s chief commissioner issued an unsolicited statement condemning Steyn and Maclean’s “Islamophobia.”)
There’s no obvious reason for optimism in the case of the B.C. tribunal, and the outcome of the national one is practically foreordained. In the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s 31 years of existence, not a single person or entity has been acquitted of the charge Steyn and Maclean’s are facing.
And while the Canadian and U.S. press shamefully ignored the goings-on in Vancouver, they paid even less attention when the Alberta Human Rights Commission ruled against the Rev. Stephen Boissoin. In 2002, Boissoin wrote a fire-and-brimstone letter to the editor of an Alberta newspaper calling gay people “wicked.” An impolitic opinion, but Boissoin’s letter contained no incitements to violence. Two years later, an anti-Christian activist filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission. In 2007, Boissoin appeared before a tribunal and was found guilty of, well, something.
The tribunal finally handed down its sentence at the beginning of this month. Aside from a $7,000 fine, “Mr. Boissoin and [his organization] The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” Boissoin is further not allowed to make “disparaging” remarks against Darren Lund, the university professor who filed the charges against him. At one point the ruling actually says, “Mr. Boissoin is to apologize for submitting the article and for his views on homosexuality.” (Emphasis added.) Boissoin’s views are unacceptable, and as such he is guilty of thought crime.
Perhaps the ruling shouldn’t surprise anyone. The year Boissoin wrote his letter, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ordered the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and Hugh Owens each to pay $1,500 to three complainants for running an ad that quoted Bible verses condemning homosexuality.
The good news is that the days of human-rights tribunals handing down such Orwellian rulings may be numbered. “I’m hoping that we lose this at the hearing level, and that we appeal it to a proper court of law — as opposed to these quasi-judicial tribunals,” Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s told National Review Online. “And at that proper court of law, that we make the constitutional argument that this is an infringement of our charter rights to freedom of the press. I believe that’s what we’ll do if we lose the case.” Maclean’s is a beloved institution in Canada, with 2.8 million readers, so the publication has both the bully pulpit and the resources to explore legal avenues.
Further, the grumblings are getting louder within the ruling Conservative party that something should be done about these star chambers. A Liberal party MP, Keith Martin, has introduced what’s known in parliamentary terms as a “private member’s bill” to strike the section of the Canadian Human Rights Act that deals with regulating telecommunications.
Unfortunately, despite some political opposition, there’s little evidence that these show trials will end anytime soon, and it’s highly unlikely anything will happen before Steyn and Maclean’s come before the national tribunal. For now, the Great White North remains a Brave New World: Woe betide the Canadian who dares to have an objectionable opinion.
