With the far-left desperate to silence any criticial discussion of the Toronto District School Board's anti-discrimination curriculum, it was only a matter of time before things came to a head.
With the Toronto SUN printing the controversial ad by Charles McVety's Institute for Canadian Values, even after the National Post was cowed into printing an apology for it, the activists desperate to conceal the authoritarianism underlying the anti-discrimination curriculum have finally decided to swat a fly with a sledgehammer.
The open letter, written by one Kim May of Sarnia, ON, actually includes some rather remarkable ramblings that seem entirely disconnected with the content of the ICV ad:
"...you would have them drawn and quartered if you could...since you are ignorant and intolerant of difference."
"Have you learned nothing from WWII. You can't ship different people off to an camp somewhere, simply for being different. This has been tried in the past."
The extent to which the imaginations of such people has utterly run away with them.
The demagogues and would-be demagogues, crusaders and would-be crusaders, of the far-left have become so indifferent to the concerns of others that they are now demanding that such people be silenced by the state.
If the full scope of the authoritarianism of the far-left wasn't on full display in the TDSB's locking out of parents, it's certainly going to be on full display if -- more likely when -- the Ontario Human Rights Commission decides to pursue far-left vengeance against Charles McVety in all its kangaroo court glory.
Juast as they have so many times before, they will take Charles McVety and make him a sympathetic figure in the eyes of freedom-loving Canadians. All this while they are so blinkered by their own ideology that they can't even see it.
When the Ontario Progressive Conservative party was choosing its leader in 2009, a quiet battle was waged over the future of Ontario's Human Rights Commission.
Randy Hillier had promised to scrap the tribunals altogether. Fellow contender Christine Elliott offered a more sobered program of reform.
Hillier wound up supporting Hudak after he promised to support his position on the matter. But now it seems that Hudak has changed his mind.
Speaking in Ottawa, Hudak promised reforms that would reduce the backlog of cases before the human rights tribunal and reduce the number of frivolous complaints. He would also institute rules of procedure closer to those of an actual court of law.
For many of those who accept that human rights commissions have a legitimate role to play in Canada, this is a welcome development. However, many of those who were enthused by Hudak embracing Hillier's policy promise are now feeling betrayed; among them is, unsurprisingly, Sun TV's Ezra Levant.
Interestingly enough, Hillier himself doesn't seem to feel betrayed.
On one hand, there seems to be a real air of pragmatism under Hudak's seeming shift. With an election expected to be held in autumn 2011, the McGuinty Liberals can be expected to campaign hard on this issue, fear-mongering the entire way.
On the other hand, Hillier gathered a great deal of support on the back of his promise to shut down the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for good. Those who backed Hillier -- then Hudak -- on the strength of that promise may feel that Hudak is turning his back on them.
Moreover, considering some of the ridiculous rulings to come out of Human Rights Tribunals across Canada -- the Guy Earle case is just one recent example -- support for abolishing these institutions outright is almost certain to grow. Hudak may be preemptively acting to cut himself off from those supporters.
In the long run, Ezra Levant may not be the only one angry about Tim Hudak's change of heart.
Certainly, Stephen Harper has always been more of a Margaret Thatcher type than a John Major type.
But in the wake of winning his first majority government, Harper may be about to face his greatest challenge yet: the "vision thing".
Now, more than ever, Harper will have to navigate between the hopes of his supporters and the fears of his detractors. Harper, has to date, approached this majority government with humility, declaring that it's now up to his government to earn the trust of Canadians.
"My friends, it's been a long campaign but now we can turn the page on the uncertainties and repeat elections of the past seven years and focus on building a great future for all of us," Harper declared. "Canadians have chosen hope, a united Canada, a strong Canada. We must be the government of all Canadians, including those that did not vote for us. We shall be faithful to the trust that you have proposed in us."
But now Harper will be expected to deliver on the expectations of social conservatives. Admittedly, it's been these expectations that have been at the core of darkest nightmares of Harper's detractors.
"Stephen Harper has said no (to abortion laws) but a lot of his caucus is pro-life, a lot of his supporters are pro-life," Krayden declared. "I think it's time for those who don't think abortion is not on the table to realize it's catch-up with the rest of the Western world where there are some restrictions on abortion."
Krayden's voice is joined by Joseph Ben Ami of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.
"I know professed atheists who are strongly pro-life and at least would like to see the government allow a dialogue," Ben Ami added. "If I had a wish list, top of my list would be the opportunity to have an intelligent debate about human rights commissions and tribunals."
"We should be having an open, honest and intelligent debate about immigration; I don't think we have a well-managed immigration policy," he added.
Both Krayden and Ben Ami seem to hunger for a government more conservative than Harper has been to date.
"This is an opportunity to have a truly conservative government," Krayden announced.
"At some point in time, you have to stand for something more substantial than the mere fact you are not the Liberals," Ben Ami agreed.
Krayden and Ben Ami may be pleased to learn just how many Canadians agree that these are issues that must be addressed. What Canadians have yet to make clear is just how far they think Canada should go on these particular issues. Neither David Krayden nor Joseph Ben Ami are likely to get everything they want on any of these issues. They will have to compromise.
By the same token, however, so will the social progressives who have championed the far-left cause. In fact, they will have to compromise for the first time in nearly forty years. It's far overdue.
But compromise is precisely what Harper's vision will have to be from this point forward. If he successfully reaches a compromise on the issues that truly matter to Canadians, it will be the gateway to a larger majority government. If he fails, it will be the gateway back to a minority, or to political oblivion altogether.
From 2011 onward, the "vision thing" matters more than ever. It's up to Stephen Harper to deliver.
No sooner had Ezra Levant's show, The Source, gone on-air on Sun TV than he was once again digging up some old fights. Or perhaps even picking them.
During the April 18 episode of his show, Levant again showed the infamous prophet Muhammad cartoons. However whereas he was previously publishing them in the Western Standard, he's now broadcasting them on Sun TV.
Now Rockwell's gone solo. The results have been truly remarkable.
“If he wants freedom of speech why doesn’t he go up to a black man and use the N-word?” Rockwell asked angrily. “There is no absolute free speech. With freedom of speech there are rules.”
Rockwell suggested that the media has a special tolerance for Levant's antics because his targets are Muslims, not Jews. Jews, you see, control the media.
“If he were to show 100 Jews in flames with soap coming out of the other end he would not have a job the next day!” he declared. “Why doesn’t he show his Jewish cousins being fried by the Nazis?”
Wow. Just wow.
Levant countered by noting that anti-Semitic cartoons are published so frequently, and the reactions to them are so relentlessly tame, that they are practically a non-story.
“Anti-Semitic cartoons run in newspapers around the world all the time,” he remarked. “If they were the cause of riots and 200 people dying you are darn right I would run them.”
It seems entirely fair to wonder whether or not Levant is deliberately attempting to provoke a complaint with one of the Human Rights Commissions his Islamist opponents previously used against him.
But one could be a long time waiting for such a complaint. When Levant was the editor of the Western Standard, it was one thing. Now that he has Quebecor behind him, it's unlikely that Steve Rockwell or anyone else will attempt to take him on in that forum.
Which basically demonstrates that that the proponents of Human Rights Commissions have been banking on the financial vulnerability of their targets for their success. When tye go after an organization like Macleans, who have some real money to defend themselves with... well, we've already seen the results.
With the Canadian left constantly willing to trot out Prime Minister Stephen Harper's early support for the Iraq War, one can only wonder how Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's early involvement in the planning of that war will impact the electoral prospects of the Liberal Party.
It will probably hurt them. But it honestly shouldn't.
On its face, the suggestion that Ignatieff was involved in war planning would suggest that he was helping select targets. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ignatieff's involvement was as part of an academic advisory group whose goal was integral to any attempt at responsibly prosecuting such a war: namely, the reduction of civilian casualties.
Of course, this hasn't stopped Ignatieff from being critical of pre-war planning.
"First of all, there was some real failures in post-invasion planning," Ignatieff declared in a 2003 Charlie Rose interview. “I saw matrices, you know, checklists compiled by, you know, the department of the army and army planners. They had some of the stuff that you'd want on a good post-invasion checklist, but what I think happened on that side was the military victory occurred so quickly that the post-invasion followup just didn't get generated fast enough."
Considering that Ignatieff was involved in planning the campaign, he could bear some responsibility for that failure. Then again, details are not clear as to whether or not Ignatieff was actually involved in any post-invasion planning.
The work Ignatieff and the Carr Centre did for the Pentagon is extremely laudible work. It should be a credit to Ignatieff.
But considering the stance his party has repeatedly taken toward the Iraq War, it will be hard for Michael Ignatieff to avoid. Which is genuinely a shame.
Readers of the Nexus may have begun to think that Chickenwanker CK of Sister Sage's Musings was getting a free ride of late.
Were that the case, it certainly wasn't by intent.
The most recent dispatch smuggled from the far side of the Blogging Iron Curtain has CK complaining about the ongoing Conservative-sponsored Senate inquiry into free speech in Canada that has been so splendidly covered by Blazing Cat Fur and shows that CK has a very different take on Canada's Human Rights Commissions than their most reasonable proponents.
The most reasonable propnents of HRCs treat them as an institution dedicated to fighting against and remedying matters of clear discrimination. CK, apparently, has a different vision in mind for Canada's HRCs: that of making bigotry illegal.
That is, frankly, what one feels most temped to take away from something like this:
Contrary to what CK may believe -- and desperately want others to believe -- Canada's Human Rights Commissions do not, by any means, make it not OK to be a bigot.
Rather, existing social norms are what make it OK to be a bigot.
Rather, Canada's Human Rights Commissions -- and their tribunals -- have been abused by a number of activists who would love nothing more than to censor people with bigoted attitudes.
The problem is that such censorship doesn't render bigoted attitudes non-existent. Nor does it even reduce the prevalence of such bigotry. All censorship does is obscure that bigotry from public view.
But as with so many things, one is utterly unshocked to learn that, to CK, this is really just about her hatred of conservatives, and of conservatism:
For someone who is so keen on human rights law, one is actually surprised to learn the full extent to which CK is actually ignorant of it.
For one thing, remarks such as "let's torture the Brown people" and "let's kill all Gays" both meet the definition of hate speech under the criminal code. Complaints over remarks like this would actually have no place in an HRC. Rather, they're a matter for criminal courts.
Likewise, one is surprised to find that CK doesn't seem to understand that just because a school teacher believes that the Holocaust never happened doesn't mean that he can teach that to school children. The curriculum, after all, is decided not by individual teachers, but rather by provincial ministries.
The belief that the Holocaust never happened would certainly challenge the qualifications of a teacher -- particularly in fields such as history. Further, that would be a matter for licensing authorities, not for HRCs.
But in the end, apparently CK's ignorance isn't to blame for her outrage over the notion that her precious institutions of censorship may be eliminated. Rather, we're supposed to blame "evil" Stephen Harper.
As per usual, when CK has lost the narrative, she simply makes up her own.
Individuals like Ezra Levant -- who she also accuses of "selling out" his own people by defending Marc Lemire -- have complained not that the protesters made use of their freedom of speech. Rather, they have complained that the University of Ottawa acted preemptively to cast a chill over the free speech of Ann Coulter, and that the protesters themselves made the event itself unmanageable and unsafe -- even going so far as to set off a fire alarm.
As for Coulter and George Galloway, CK may be shocked to learn that the difference between the two is that Coulter has never directly provided funds to an organization that is listed on Canada's registry of banned terrorist organizations. George Galloway has.
Moreover, CK seems to have omitted the fact that is a bureaucrat at Public Safety Canada -- a public servant -- that ruled Galloway inadmissable to Canada.
In the end, CK concludes, none of this could possibly because conservatives cherish freedom and want to preserve it against the tender mercies of an encroaching thought police-like institution. Rather, it's just because conservatives are hateful, and want to facilitate hatespeech.
In Saskatchewan, changes may be coming for the province's Human Rights Commission.
Notably, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal may shut down.
Justice David Arnot, Saskatchewan's Human Rights Commissioner, has recommended that Saskatchewan's Human Rights Tribunal be discontinued.
"Currently human rights law, I think it's fair to say, is evolving," Arnot said. "It's becoming more and more complex and the Human Rights Commission believes that judges are best placed to deal with those complexities rather than an administrative tribunal that really doesn't have any dedicated officers or assigned staff and has really little infrastructure."
Saskatchewan Justice Minister Don Morgan has suggested that, if the tribunal is scrapped, that its cases will be forwarded to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench.
"This is a recommendation that's come forward and is a recommendation that, in fact, may have some merit. There are criticisms that the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal may be seen as too close to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission," Morgan explained.
Yet NDP MLA Frank Quennell decided to overlook the recommendation from Arnot, suggesting this all may be politically motivated.
"I think there are supporters of the Saskatchewan Party (government) who aren't happy with decisions of human rights tribunals over the years and that is part of the motivation here," Quennell grumbled.
Yet whether Quennell cares to admit to it or not, Canada's Human Rights Commissions and their Tribunals have been a matter of significant contention in Canada. Saskatchewan has been no different than any other province.
Saskatchewan is hardly known as a national leader on conservative issues. Should the province decide to scuttle its Human Rights Tribunal, it will have taken leadership the the rest of the country will not be able to help but consider.
Several Conservative Senators have arrived late to the battle to reform Canada's Human Rights Commissions, but they have arrived all the same.
Partially in response to a controversial letter written by University of Ottawa provost Francois Houle to Ann Coulter in advance of a planned speech there (which was cancelled just minutes prior to its scheduled start), Senators Doug Finley, David Tkachuk, Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy have begun to speak out against the censorious labours of Canada's human rights regime.
The four have begun to lead a Senate inquiry into freedom of speech in Canada -- drawing long-overdue Parliamentary attention to the excesses of Canada's Human Rights Commissions.
"Despite our 400-year tradition of free speech, the tyrannical instinct to censor still exists," Finley announced. "We saw it on a university campus last week. And we see it every week in Canada's misleadingly named human rights commissions."
"Too many Canadians, especially those in positions of authority, have replaced the real human right of freedom of speech with a counterfeit human right to not be offended," he continued.
Tkatchuk blamed Houle not only for the letter to Coulter, but also for the mob mentality of the protesters who eventually managed to shut her event down.
"The mob took its cue from the provost," Tkachuk said, and noted (in not-so-charitable language) that Houle's letter was a little extreme. "The letter closed with a line that could have come straight out of the re-education camps of Pol Pot's Cambodia."
Mike Duffy noted that, in cases like those pursued against Ezra Levant and Macl
eans Magazine, the Human Rights Commissions have clearly overstepped their authority, both actual and intended.
"Prosecuting the actions of journalists was clearly not the intention of Parliament when it passed hate speech laws," he noted.
Finley stated that the intention of the inquiry was to draw Parliament's attention to the excesses of the human rights commissions. Even if the inquiry results in no more than that, it has already been successful.
"If we can rededicate our parliament to protecting this most important right, we will have done our country a great service," Finley announced. "But if we fail to stop and indeed reverse this erosion of freedom, we will have failed our most basic duty — the duty to uphold our Constitution and the rights it guarantees for all Canadians."
"In a pluralistic society like Canada, we must protect our right to peacefully disagree with each other," Finley concluded. "We must allow a diversity of opinion — even if we find some opinions offensive," Finley said. "Unless someone actually counsels violence or other crimes, we must never use the law to silence them."
Doug Finley has clearly found the right cause to fight for on Parliament Hill. The battle to reform Canada's Human Rights Commissions will not be won easily -- nor should it be fought quietly.
As the battle over Canada's Human Rights Commissions has gone on, one of the great tragedies over the matter has been the sheer number of times Canada's human rights commissions have been used to prepetrate political stunts.
The most recent of these stunts is set to be a complaint Ann Coulter has promised to file over the cancellation of her scheduled speech at the University of Ottawa.
“I’m sure the Human Rights Commission will get to the bottom of it,” Coulter announced. “I think I’m the victim of a hate crime here. Either what (Francois Houle) did was a hate crime, or the whole commission is BS.”
Houle, a provost of the University of Ottawa, wrote Coulter a letter recommending that she familiarize herself with the limits of free speech in Canada.
"We, of course, are always delighted to welcome speakers on our campus and hope that they will contribute positively to the meaningful exchange of ideas that is the hallmark of a great university campus," Houle wrote. "Promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges."
Ezra Levant, who has been accompanying Coulter on her speaking engagements, described the letter as a veiled threat.
The venue for Coulter's speech had to be evacuated after a fire alarm was pulled.
The experience must have been frustrating for many of Coulter's admirers. Speeches by left-wing firebrands like Ward Churchill have taken place at many Canadian universities without terminal interruptions. During her Monday night speech at the University of Western Ontario, Coulter complained about a double standard that may facilitate such differences.
"It’s almost like there is one standard for conservatives and one completely different one for liberals," Coulter complained. "A word is either offensive or it’s not. In a world of political correctness, all words are banned unless they’re used against conservatives."
This is, of course, the language of self-imposed martyrdom. Coulter's remarks to a Muslim student at UNO seemed designed to provoke some sort of reaction, and she would up getting what she wanted.
Now, she clearly intends to use Canada's Human Rights Commission as a venue for a political stunt -- one likely not unlike the one Syed Soharwardy perpetrated against Levant, when he withdrew his complaint over Levant's publishing of the infamous Prophet Muhammad cartoons after Levant had spent an exorbitant amount of money defending against the complaint.
At the end of the day, however, Francois Houle and the University of Ottawa have given Coulter what she desires most: publicity, and means by which to elevate herself into martyrdom again.
In the soon-to-be-immortal words of Adrian McNair: way to go, bozos.
The hot debate over Canada's Human Rights Commissions hasn't been particularly firey recently.
That being said, if anyone can be expected to have a particularly strong opinion on the CHRC and its provincial counterparts, it's University of Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper.
Cooper, whose published work -- both with and without his frequent collaborator, David Bercuson -- focuses on the politics of public virtue, seems to see the HRCs as the most utterly blatant embodiment of the embedded state. Consequently, he seems to find a great deal of affinity for the opponents of the HRCs:
"For those who have never taken the time to read dry legal documents, consider that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act declares that hate speech is constituted by words that are likely to expose somebody to hatred or contempt - and what that has meant for Canadians.
In early October, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant gave testimony before the House of Commons justice committee, currently considering whether section 13 should be repealed. Their remarks, available on You Tube, provide a short but thorough examination of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and its works.
They argue that the censorship implications of section 13 are an abomination in a constitutional democracy, that section 13 is the reason for so many complaints, and is why the entire administrative structure of this taxpayer-supported, government-backed human rights industry is broken past the point where it can be fixed. Any country, at least where freedom of expression and speech is truly valued, would have dissolved this outfit years ago."
Whether or not the censorship facilitated by section 13 is warranted or justified is a matter for some debate.
Most Canadians would likely agree that protecting minorities in Canada -- whether they be defined as such by their ethnicity, sexuality or religion -- is worth reasonably curtailing free speech in cases where the intent is evidently to incite hatred or contempt against them.
The trouble is there's no objective test for the intent to incite hatred or contempt. More Canadians still would likely agree that a more worthy course of action would be to censor cases where speech clearly intends to incite violence is likely another matter altogether.
Even Levant and Steyn would likely be more than happy to support that.
Of course, it's important to note that Steyn and Levant can hardly be considered impartial judges of the Commission, considering their run-ins with it:
"Both Steyn and Levant have encountered Canada’s human rights bureaucrats first hand and written about their hair-raising experiences. The larger story, of an out-of-control bureaucracy that transformed itself from an organization charged with conciliation of differences among citizens into a politically motivated attack organ, should also trouble Canadians."
Levant's and Steyn's troubling experience with the HRCs -- finding themselves having to defend themselves against complaints that should have been summarily dismissed -- have revealled that the CHRC has taken on the most eggregious features of the embedded state.
Yer if Steacy had consulted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- the law that the CHRC is charged with upholding -- he would see that the right to freedom of speech and expression are enshrined within that document. In his eager embrace of the role of speech/thought police, Steacy had disregarded the purpose for the Commission's existence.
In its place, Steacy and his fellow Commissioners seem to have replaced the continued existence of the commission itself and the preservation of its censorship powers as the raison d'etre of the CHRC.
Out of genuine reverence for the concept of human rights and true detestation of discrimination, Canadians have approved of the existence of these commissions, but have often been shocked at the HRCs' excesses:
"Because most of us are in favour of human rights, Canadians have accorded the benefit of the doubt to anything calling itself a human rights commission. That favourable impression has depended on maintaining a veil of ignorance over how these bodies actually operate. After Steyn and Levant (among others) made their operations public, it is clear to all but the willfully blind that their reason is entirely undeserved.
Instead of dealing with genuine civil liberties, Canada’s human rights commissions have taken upon themselves such tasks as censoring cartoons and jokes, preventing RCMP instructors at Depot in Regina from raising their voices at recruits, or compelling a fast-food restaurant to keep an employee whose medical condition makes it impossible for her to comply with the company’s hand-washing policy.
They have invented new categories of crime and imposed lifetime bans on uttering opinions that hurt the feelings of someone or other. Senior counsel for the CHRC has advanced the opinion that their job is to end hate, a very human, though not particularly, edifying emotion.
They aspire to become more than a thought or speech police; they seek to be an emotion police.
In order to achieve these ambitions, members of the CHRC have joined neo-Nazi websites and posted messages on them in the hopes of provoking some dim-witted hatemonger to post something equally vile. Then one of their friends or even colleagues would be able to lodge a complaint.
In a real court (and to common sense) this is entrapment by an agent provocateur. In the kangaroo courts of Canada’s human rights commissions, it’s standard operating procedure.
Moreover, the CHRC employees are perfectly aware that what they are doing cannot stand the light of day. On at least one occasion they hacked their way into a wi-fi account of an Ottawa woman and posted their musings from her account. Incidentally, all this malfeasance by your tax-supported servants has been documented in sworn testimony by CHRC staff."
The methods employed by the CHRC have proven to be very successful.
"With such procedures at their disposal, it is no wonder that, until last month, the CHRC had a 100 per cent conviction rate -- the envy in this respect of North Korea and Cuba, which occasionally stumble in the administration of justice. Naturally the CHRC announced it would appeal this stain on its perfect record."
As it turns out, however, one of the most striking issues surrounding the HRCs is the manner in which they often exceed their mandate. The task of conciliating two conflicting parties has often been cast out the window in the preference for punishing them.
"At the centre of the power of the human rights bureaucracy is a justification of the censorship provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, namely section 13. It is based on a massive yet legally untested expansion of a nearly 20-year-old decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, in the 'Taylor case.' In that decision the Court decided that hate speech by a neo-Nazi meant 'extreme feelings of opprobrium and enmity' against a group, and not 'subjective opinion of offensiveness.' Today human rights officials have completely reversed the ruling."
With the many, many valid questions that have been raised about the CHRC by its growing stable of critics, one would expect that the Commissions would be prepared to meet some of that criticism by opening their organization to the light of day.
Instead, the CHRC has indulged itself in Nixonian politics, replete with an "enemies list" drafted by its Chief Commissioner:
"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the controversy over the human rights commissions is the response of the Chief Commissioner of the CHRC. She has complained long and loud of unfair criticism and announced: 'I have a file' on her critics. 'I’m a public servant ... and I’m not going to sit by.' As Terry O’Neill, who is on the list, wrote in the National Post early in October: 'Big Sister’s been watching me.'"
This represents just another embedded state tendency by the CHRC. Instead of coming clean about the Commission's excesses and promising to do better, Jennifer Lynch is instead investigating her critics.
With all of these troublesome facts about the HRCs afoot, it's unsurprising that Cooper comes down firmly on the side of abolishing them altogether:
"The duty of Parliament is clear. Remove not just the offensive section 13. Dismantle the entire Orwellian structure."
But Canadians recognize the key role that the CHRC and its provincial counterparts play. Abolishing the commissions would be throwing this baby out with the bathwater.
Reforming the commissions, toughening the standard of evidence required in panel hearings, and placing stronger constraints on the censorship powers of the commissions is a course of action that would be preferable to all Canadians.
Regardless of what Canadian Human Rights Commissioners may want Canadians to believe, the status quo is simply not tolerable.
All the way back in January of this year, many many Canadians had a bone to pick with Erik Millett.
Millett, as some may recall, was the principal of Belleisle Elementary school, where singing of "O Canada" was scaled back to one per month. He had also been a Green Party candidate in the 2008 federal election -- apparently only the most recent of many to embarrass his party.
Millett's decision prompted significant criticism, including by Conservative MPs Mike Allen, Keith Ashfield and Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson, who noted that Millett had proved that "he has no appreciation for the sensitivity of some issues."
Like the national anthem.
Thompson, who is so outraged over the response to his decision to scale back "O Canada" that he has reportedly taken issue to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission,
"I have contacted the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission and I will be pursuing the question of accommodation around this issue of through the Human Rights Commission and hopefully some clarity will come from the ruling they provide," Millet said at the time.
Of course, considering the activist nature of Canadian Human Rights Commissions, Millett must full well expect that the ruling that is handed down will be in his favour -- even if it means that, paradoxically, his school will fail to accommodate the parents of the vast majority of students in his school.
Millett has apparently become so bold in his one man dissent-busting mission that he's threatening to sue Greg Thompson over his comments, complaining that they are defamatory.
Yet one can suspect that the parents of Belleisle elementary school who signed a petition to force the daily singing of "O Canada" back into their childrens' school would likely share Greg Thompson's opinion -- that Millett has been extremely insensitive to their views on the singing of "O Canada", all in the name of placating the tyranny of a minority.
If Erik Millett doesn't want his character defamed, he shouldn't defame his own character by making decisions that justify the criticisms made of him.
From across Canada, different courses are being proposed for the country's contentious Human Rights Commissions.
Some, like Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership candidates Tim Hudak and Randy Hillier, are proposing that such commissions should be abolished.
Others have proposed a radical new course for the HRCs -- a course that Alberta's Progressive Conservative government has chosen to follow with the passage of Bill 44.
Certainly, there are many practical issues with Bill 44. As some have noted, teachers could find themselves facing charges in an Alberta Human Rights Tribunal if a parent decides that they didn't receive sufficient warning about an upcoming lesson on almost anything. This is a serious problem with the legislation.
But as Lafleche notes, Bill 44 is only the most recent move in a political chess game over how Canada's Human Rights Commissions should function -- or if they should exist at all.
In Ontario, as Lafleche notes, the Ontario Human Rights Commission "has been all about the right not to be offended". In many cases it's been the same in Alberta. But in noting that Bill 44 seems to reinforce the "right to be a dullard", Lafleche misses one key point: the "right to be a dullard" seems not only to be about "the right not to be offended", but also about a parent's right to make decisions about their childrens' education.
Parents have long been lectured about the need to manage what their children are or are not exposed to. Disclaimers on television shows warning parents that "viewer discretion is advised", film rating schemes and parental advisory stickers on CDs have long been part of efforts to empower parents to control the extent to which their children are being exposed to violence, foul language or controversial subjects.
Now, for good or for ill, parents are being given an opportunity to make similar decisions in regard to their childrens' education.
Not all Canadians -- and certainly not all Albertans -- will empathize much with the religious conservative who pulls their children out of class because they insist that their children be given abstinence-only sex education. Nor should should they.
But many would agree that morality should not be taught in the classroom. If anyone has the right to teach morality to their children, most people would agree that a child's parents are the only ones who possess that right.
Yet many attempts have been made to smuggle left-wing morality lessons into the classroom. Most Canadians would almost certainly roll their eyes at a religious conservative's complaints regarding a tolerance-minded lesson plan that may try to teach children that homosexuality is normal. But it's impossible to overlook the fact that teaching children that homosexuality isn't immoral -- and in this author's opinion, it most certainly isn't -- is still teaching morality in the classroom.
Any parent uncomfortable with this -- whether most Canadians agree with their reasons or not -- has the right to blow the whistle on this.
But there is a flip side to the entire affair. Bill 44 could be used by parents in Catholic school divisions to pull their children from classrooms in Catholic Schools whenever they are taught that Catholic doctrine dictates that abortion is wrong -- certainly a right that one would expect moderate Catholics to exercise. The same parents could use Bill 44 to pull their children from any lessons in which homosexuality is said to be wrong. Similarly, atheist parents could use Bill 44 to pull their children from lessons related to religion.
Again, Bill 44, in its application, could turn out to be a stalemate, in reality favouring neither side of the so-called "culture war".
This is how it should be considering that liberal democratic governments have no business taking sides in social or cultural affairs.
Elliott has joined fellow PC leadership candidate Frank Klees in calling for reform of the OHRC. Elliott has yet to articulate any concrete proposals for that reform. Klees, meanwhile, has proposed repealing Section 13 and taking away the Commission's ability to effectively act as a censor, and allow it to focus on clear cases of discrimination.
Of those out to chart a new course for the HRCs, Elliott and Klees are certainly the least radical among them. Alberta's Bill 44 may have charted a course into a pragmatically-tenuous position, but at least the Alberta PCs haven't charted them a course to oblivion.
Those hoping for a lively Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership contest, with definitive matters of policy to debate, may finally have gotten their wish.
After many tranquil weeks Tim Hudak, one of the two individuals with a real opportunity to win this contest, has kicked off a political firestorm by mimicking Randy Hillier's pledge to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Christine Elliott -- the other candidate with a realistic chance to win -- opposes the move.
“It would be a gift to the Liberals, one they would exploit as ruthlessly as they did with faith-based funding,” said Elliott. “Just like faith-based funding, this is a policy that was made with the short term goal of winning a leadership campaign. Why on earth would we want to expose ourselves by plunging recklessly into such a controversial issue?”
“If we’re going to beat the Liberals, we have to show better judgment than that.”
Of course, there are numerous good reasons to support the OHRC. Defeating the McGuinty Liberals isn't really one of them.
If anything, the OHRC is becoming a battlefront in this contest between centrist progressive conservatives, like Elliott, and fiscal and social conservatives, like Hudak and Hillier. In a party recently battered by John Tory's election pledge to provide funding to faith-based schools -- something that many Ontarians seem to forgot is actually constitutionally entrenched -- real questions lurk over whether or not the party can afford to embrace any other social conservative-leaning policies.
Elliott and fellow candidate Frank Klees firmly oppose Hudak and Hillier's intention to abolish the OHRC, instead preferring to reform the commission.
The battle lines within the Ontario Progressive Conservatives couldn't more obvious when one examines the prominent endorsements already handed out -- Elliott has collected an endorsement from Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, and Hudak has recieved an endorsement from former Ontario Premier Mike Harris.
Regardless of which side emerges victorious in this tussle over the party's policy in regards to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Tories will have taken a stance regarding the shape and form that Ontario's democracy will take -- one in which an institution arguably used to show state favour will be eliminated in the name of reinforcing the neutrality of the state, and one in which neutrality of the state may be, to some degree, compromised in favour of ensuring a more just society.
One way or the other, the party will have made a statement that won't be easily rescinded.
Writing in an op/ed column in the Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan attempts to make the case that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is, essentially, obsolete and should be abolished.
In many ways, as Flanagan notes, Canada's Human Rights Commissions are largely responsible for their own current predicament -- that of a lack of public credibility:
"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. For example, commissions pay expenses for complainants but not respondents; successful respondents cannot sue complainants to recover costs; commissions allow complaints for the same alleged offence to be lodged in multiple jurisdictions, amounting to double jeopardy."
There's certainly a case to made for this. The extremely self-destructive behaviour of many of the CHRC's investigators, including the one who was unscrupulous enough to hack the wireless internet connection of a private citizen, has made the CHRC extremely suspect in the eyes of many Canadian citizens.
The toll taken on the commissions by Levant alone has left the CHRC struggling to maintain its public sense of credibility.
But continuing Flanagan's analysis of the predicament confronting the CHRC hits an incredibly fatal flaw, when he attempts to analyze the phenomenon of discrimination -- with the CHRC is meant to combat -- in the same manner as would an economist:
"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.)
The argument applies no matter how rampant prejudice and discrimination may be. Those who discriminate impose burdens on themselves and confer advantages on their competitors. Competitive markets don't immediately abolish discriminatory practices, but they tend to erode them, not by trying to enlighten bigoted people, but by making discrimination unprofitable."
Flanagan overlooks two basic truths: one of economics, and one of discrimination.
Economics proceeds from the assumption that most people make rational choices. In any particular situation, they will make the decision that benefits them most fully -- or at least believes will benefit them the most.
Discrimination, meanwhile, is not rational. And although Flanagan's argument that discrimination is self-defeating and thus unsustainable in a competitive environment is an elegant argument, it overlooks the fact that discrimination has often taken place in some extremely competitive environments.
In Canada, few things have ever been as competitive as the sport of hockey. Yet the disadvantage of discriminating against the most talented or hard-working players on the basis of race or ethnicity has often proven to be a less-than-convincing incentive to not discriminate.
Canadian hockey offers numerous examples of this.
Perhaps the most little-known is the discrimination against the Winnipeg Falcons, the Canadian team that won the first Olympic Hockey Championship in 1920. The Falcons had won the Allan Cup as the champions of a league in Winnipeg staffed entirely by players of Icelandic descent. Players of Icelandic descent in Winnipeg had to start this league because other leagues wouldn't allow them to play because of their Icelandic heritage.
Their triumph at the Olympics -- which also won them a World Championship, as the World Championship was awarded to the winner of the Olympic tournament -- eventually won them a warm, if uncomfortable, welcome back in Winnipeg.
Players like Herb Carnegie -- who played excellently in training camps for the New York Rangers but were never allowed an opportunity to play for the club -- were discriminated against for the colour of their skin. Carnegie won MVP honours in the Quebec Provincial League in 1946, '47 and '48. The New York Rangers had won a Stanley Cup in 1940, but could have well won another with a player like Carnegie, whose skills were often considered comparable to those of Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau.
If discrimination could be defeated by the self-interested rationality of those who need top-caliber talents to excel in highly competitive environments, as Flanagan insists, one would have to imagine that such historical episodes never would have happened.
The truth is that there is nothing rational about discrimination. It's predicated on emotional responses to evident differences between people, and in cases of racism doesn't even necessarily rely on differently-coloured skin.
Discrimination proves to be one of those instances where the free market isn't enough to ensure justice for those involved.
Flanagan is eager to argue that cases wherein discrimination turns out to be profitable are so because of government interference in the free market:
"Government can use its coercive powers, however, to protect discriminatory practices in the private sector from being undermined by competition.
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.
Government, using its monopoly of coercion, imposes the costs of discrimination on its hapless targets. 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. Political majorities undoubtedly approved at the time, but public opinion did not relocate the Japanese or send Indian children to residential schools. Governmental authority did, backed up by the coercive monopoly of the state. Authorizing a government agency to stamp out discrimination in the private sector is truly setting the fox to guard the henhouse."
Yet the Winnipeg Falcons were the victim of discrimination within an amateur league, unprotected by government legislation, and that Carnegie actually excelled within a Quebec league that was.
As Flanagan notes, discrimination in the private sector may well be self-liquidating over time, as those who very much do disadvantage themselves by discriminating against those with valuable talents inevitably lose out.
But that does absolutely nothing for those being discriminated against today. That is where Human Rights Commissions come in handy, and that is a valuable role that they fill.
While few Canadians will pretend that Human Rights Commissions are perfect, fewer still would pretend that those imperfections couldn't be rectified with a program of reform, not abolition.
In a move that could either put him over the top with Ontarian conservatives or seriously harm his party's chances in the polls, Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Tim Hudak has proposed abolishing Ontario's Human Rights Commission.
Describing the commissions as a "tool for political advocacy", Hudak has proposed this abolition, possibly in an effort to preemptively undermine the leadership efforts of Randy Hillier, who is expected to perform poorly on the first ballot and be eliminated.
"The abolition of the Human Rights Tribunal has been a huge draw for us,” said Hulak's campaign manager, Tristan Emmanuel. Hillier's campaign has been supportive of the move as well. “Hopefully that means it will find a home in this party regardless of what happens.”
Those supportive of Hudak's promise to abolish the OHRC may echo the sentiments of Robert B Talisse, who notes that any institution that could be argued to show bias in favour of any particular political ideology is actually distinctly at odds with the very idea of liberal democracy -- political neutrality of the state is considered to be a key principle of liberal democracy.
Those who disagree with this promise -- including this author -- would remind such individuals that human rights commissions can serve an important role in fights against injustice, and that the real problem with these human rights commissions is the methods by which some of them operate.
The province of Ontario has proven to be particularly troublesome in this regard.
What is truly necessary is reform of human rights commissions that would obligate them to operate more in the manner that courts of law operate. Tim Hudak's promise would likely do more harm than good.
In what will certainly wind up being an extremely controversial decision, David Ahenakew has been acquitted of inciting hatred against Jews.
In the trial, stemming from a 2002 speech and media interview given by Ahenakew, Justice Wilfred Tucker found that Ahenakew hadn't intended to incite hatred in his comments.
Reading the news coverage of the decision seems to indicate a will on Tucker's part to find Ahenakew not guilty.
In his ruling Tucker echoed Doug Christie's extremely curious reasoning, agreeing that Ahenakew couldn't have intended to promote hatred of Jews if he hadn't planned to speak about that topic.
"There was no consent to an interview about Jews or the question of whether they started the Second World War. That is not the subject that anyone would have foreseen," Christie reasoned. "He consented to an interview about the consent form that Natives were required to sign in order to get medical treatment. And that was the thing that got him and a lot of other Native people very upset and he expected to talk about that, and that's what the judge found."
Reportedly, Ahenakew tried to end the interview before he made the comments, but Star Phoenix reporter Betty Ann Adam insisting on asking him about his previous speech, in which he accused Jews of starting the second world war.
That's when Ahenakew uttered the infamous words.
"How do you get rid of a disease like that, that's going to take over, that's going to dominate?" Ahenakew asked. "The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe."
"That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know," Ahenakew insisted. "Jews would have owned the God-damned world."
Christie's argument -- clearly accepted by Tucker -- regarding whether or not Ahenakew's comments were premeditated is complete and utter nonsense.
For one thing, Canadian criminal law doesn't require premeditation in order to prove intent. Second degree murder, for example, requires an intent to kill but not necessarily premeditation.
In other words, premeditation doesn't define intent.
It's hard to imagine that anyone who would describe another group of people as a "disease" doesn't intend for other people to view them with similar revulsion. The words really do speak for themselves.
But Ahenakew's acquittal also speaks for itself. It also speaks for the extremely tenuous nature of Canada's hate crime laws, and speaks to very different results attained in very different venues.
In a Human Rights Commission Ahenakew would have had no right to legal counsel and his complainants would have been subject to extremely lax rules of evidence. In a Human Rights Commission, Ahenakew would have very likely been convicted.
Of course, Tucker's decision shouldn't be confused for condonation of Ahanakew's remarks.
"The opinions distorted historical facts and general views expressed by the accused can only be viewed with revulsion and disgust by ordinary Canadians," Tucker announced. "That anyone would characterize the murder of millions of innocent human beings as 'getting rid of a disease,' or 'trying to clean up the world' is incomprehensible to decent people."
In contrast to rulings by Canada's various Human Rights Commissions, Ahenakew has walked away from this one without even having to apologize.
"I'm still the same guy that was born, that served the world, that served the army, that served the people. I'm still that same guy," Ahenakew said. "And I'm too damn old now to change anyways."
That's a far cry from the mandated apology and ban on commenting on Jews that could have been ordered by a Human Rights Commission.
Whether or not Ahenakew's acquittal is a setback for Canada's hate speech legislation is something that will remain to be seen, as those facing similar charges in future will almost certainly look to it as a precedent under which they, too, can be acquitted.
In the meantime what will almost certainly fall into greater question is whether or not these laws should be kept at all.
As Patrick Brazeau prepares to formally take his seat in the Canadian Senate, a scandal is emerging that may cast a shadow over the entire affair.
Jade Harper, a former employee of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, has filed a grievance against Brazeau alleging that he allowed drinking and sexual exploitation to take place in the offices of the CAP.
"There was a lot of drinking at the office," Harper said. "Once I put my grievance in, I would get the dirty looks in the office. No one would talk to me. Patrick wouldn't ...They just totally shut the door on me completely."
Harper alleges that she was sexually exploited by a senior CAP employee. She had a "personal relationship" with that individual.
As if Harper's allegations weren't bad enough, Brazeau himself is facing a sexual harrassment complaint that dates to the same time as Harper's complaint.
However, Walter Menard, the CAP executive board member from Manitoba, insists that the investigation was not transparent. Indeed, the Harper case represents the second time that the CAP had such allegations made against during that period of time, and the second occasion on which the CAP simply investigated itself.
Of course, such issues tend to be extremely contentious, and are rarely resolved to the satisfaction of the complainants unless the accused is found guilty. That the matter would find itself before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal as opposed to a court of law is also fairly troubling, considering the extremely dubious activities of some of Canada's Human Rights Commissions.
Considering the timeframe of the two complaints, there is no question that they should be investigated by an outside agency. However, the CHRC is absolutely not the place for such an investigation.
More interestingly, however, Brazeau wants to wants to remain the chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples even as he sits in the Senate.
As a spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation noted, that is definitely a serious no-no.
"At the end of the day, if the money's coming from taxpayers, it's double dipping of a kind," the spokesperson announced, referring to the $100,170 Brazeau recieves as the CAP Chief and the $130,400 salary he would recieve as a Senator. The CTF spokesperson also rightly raised the very real probability -- not mere possibility -- of a conflict of interest. "To actually be a member of the government that he's advocating to would strike me as inherently conflictual."
There's very little question that it would. As the Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples Brazeau's first responsibility is to Canada's off-reserve aboriginal population. But as a Senator, his first responsibility is to the people of Canada as a whole.
While most Canadians like to believe that almost any issue that arises between Canada's aboriginals and the country as a whole can be worked out to the mutual satisfaction of each party, history has far too often taught us differently.
While Brazeau's voice within Parliament and within the government in particular is valuable to aboriginal Canadians, the truth of the matter is that he cannot reasonably be expected to live up to the obligations of each role. Especially when one considers the near inevitability of conflict between the two.
Brazeau needs to decide how he can best serve his country and his people. Then he needs to make his choice.
He cannot be both a Senator and the Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.
Since successfully convincing a Turkish court to block access to Richard Dawkins' website, it would seem he's been a very busy man.
This week Oktar was successful in getting the website of the Vatan newspaper blocked in Turkey.
Once again, Oktar cited personal abuse and defamation as his reason for seeking the ban. "The reason for this block is a court decision sought by Adnan Oktar due to reader comments on an article printed on our site about his 'community'," Vatan explained.
Once again, Canada's pro-Human Rights Commission crowd has been eerily silent on Oktar's use of the notions of "defamation" and the "encouragement of hatred" to silence critics of his writings.
But this predominating silence is so eery because Canada has its own equivalent to Oktar -- Richard Warman, a multiple-time litigant under the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who has sought to silence many of his critics via legal action.
Of course, Warman himself has had his conduct scrutinized and been found wanting. In a country like Turkey, where the notion of free speech seems to carry so little influence with leaders, one has to wonder how likely it is that Oktar's conduct in his pro-censorship quest will receive the same scrutiny.
Not terribly likely.
Ironically, one would think that Canada's pro-HRC crowd would have a little more to say about this. After all, Oktar's targets, to date, have been Richard Dawkins, beloved atheist du jour and a liberal Turkish newspaper.
Then again, to deal with the issues being raised by Oktar's litigious nature would only shed additional light on their own warts -- and that is something that all too many of them simply could not bear.
In what must certainly be regarded as a rather bizarre twist for many supporters of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, global atheist heavyweight Richard Dawkins' website has been banned in Turkey.
In what appears to the rational mind to be a rather befuddling and childish complaint, well-established Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar -- also known by his pen name, Harun Yahya -- complained that Dawkins insulted him on numerous online forums and blogs.
"We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people," said Seda Aral, Oktar's press assistant. "We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not."
Oktar has described Dawkins' criticisms of Oktar's the Atlas of Creation as "defamatory" and "blasphemous".
Interestingly, many of Richard Dawkins' most fervent supporters in Canada were also wildly supportive of the complaints filed against Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant when he published the infamous "Prophet Mohammad cartoons" that had incited riots in Denmark.
The nature of the complaint was that the cartoons in question were "defamatory", and "encouraged hatred".
Meanwhile, Oktar also attempted to have Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, claiming that it encourages hatred of religion. Fortunately, Oktar was unsuccessful to that end.
It should be interesting to see how the pro-Dawkins, pro-CHRC crowd will react to this little nugget.
But if they have any sense in their heads whatsoever -- and in some cases, that has yet to be seen -- they may be persuaded to take a new stance toward the runaway CHRC.
"In the words of the late great Colonel Sanders: I'm too drunk to taste this chicken."
When the Canadian Islamic Congress filed a complaint against Levant for his publishing of the Danish Prophet Mohammad cartoons, one may have expected that the typically lopsided enviornment of a CHRC hearing room would have discouraged him just a little.
Given the rather severe beating he heaped upon the hapless Human Rights Commissioner who drew his case, one may have wondered what would happen if he could set his sites on a CHRC official in open field.
Now we know the answer to that.
One almost has to feel sorry for Ian Fine. He's so utterly defenseless against the revelations of the intransigent indiscretions of his organization that all he has to respond with is pure ideological rhetoric.
Certainly, everything Fine says about the CHRC rings true. But his refusal to speak to the allegations levelled against the investigators working under his employ in favour of spouting empty platitudes doesn't say good things about the CHRC's willingness to address the very serious problems within that organization.
Which is why one almost feels sorry for Ian Fine. But doesn't. Not quite.
