Canadian columnist Mark Steyn has some welcome news on the sorry state of free speech north of the border. (H/T Free Canuckistan) Specifically, the good news is from the western province of British Columbia, (contains Vancouver), home to one of the 3 worst Human Rights Commissions operating in Canada.
Steyn writes:
BC is a bit like Quebec in that it has a two-party system in which neither choice is conservative: in la belle province, it’s a choice between the separatists and the Quebec Liberals; on the left coast, it’s a choice between the socialists and the BC Liberals. So the right-of-centre vote in BC goes, faute de mieux, to Gordon Campbell’s party.
So, there really is no way that the provincial conservatives can win at the provincial level, and conservative voters ending up voting for the Liberals, just to keep the socialists out of power.
But suddenly, the provincial conservatives decided that the status quo was not good enough for British Columbians:
Or at any rate that’s the way it was until the upstart BC Tories decided to challenge Premier Campbell from the right in next month’s provincial election. Robert Jago spoke to their leader, Wilf Hanni, about the “Human Rights” Tribunal and got the following response:
A BC Conservative Government will reform the BC Human Rights Tribunal:
* So that any complainant will be responsible for the legal fees associated with his or her human rights complaint.
* To make complainants responsible for paying the defendant’s legal fees should the complainant lose their Human Rights Tribunal case.
* To disallow individuals and organizations from making Human Rights Tribunal complaints when Human Rights Tribunals in other Canadian jurisdictions are already investigating the same issue.
* To disallow cases dealing with freedom of speech under Section 2 of the Charter.
* To allow appeals, to a court of law, for any decision made by the Tribunal.
* So that the Tribunal cannot render penalties outside the boundaries of Canadian Laws.
We realize that it is neither fair nor equitable that complainants currently receive free legal representation no matter how frivolous the complaint, while defendants must pay their own legal fees.
Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.
The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:
– A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.
– A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.
– Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.
– A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.
The Heritage Foundation adds a couple more examples:
Specifically, in a society that redefines marriage to include same–sex unions, those who continue to believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman can expect to face three types of burdens. First, institutions that support the traditional understanding of marriage may be denied access to several types of government benefits, and individuals who work in the public sector may face censorship, disciplinary action, and even loss of employment. Second, those who support the traditional understanding of marriage will be subject to even greater civil liability under nondiscrimination laws that prohibit private discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status, and gender. Third, the existence of nondiscrimination laws, combined with state administrative policies, can invite private forms of discrimination against religious individuals who believe that marriage involves a man and a woman and foster a climate of contempt for the public expression of their views.
Canadian free speech activist Ezra Levant has a new book out. I am in the process of reading it right now, because I was lucky enough to get a copy as a gift, autographed! Ezra had to shell out six figures to defend himself from charges that he offended members of a special interest victim group. His new book tells his story, and the stories of many of the other victims of fascism in Canada.
Here is a video he posted this week of his interview with the libertarian Fraser Institute:
Here is his famous opening speech from his first hearing with the Alberta HRC:
Make no mistake. The left has no respect for individual rights. None. Today they confiscate your money to redistribute it to their favored special interest victim groups, while blaming you for working hard. Tomorrow, they arrest and imprison you for saying things that offend their favored special interest victim groups. Leftism is collectivism. Collectivism is fascism.
For more information about the book, the best thing I have seen is Denyse O’Leary’s twelve part series of posts. Part 12 is linked here and contains all of the other 11 parts and an introduction. Here are some excerpts:
The main reason that today’s human rights commissions feel so un-Canadian is that their operations violate the most basic principles of natural justice. As soon as a human rights complaint is filed, the deck is stacked against the accused. For most of Canada’s HRCs, taxpayers foot the bill so that government-paid bureaucrats can investigate complaints and government-paid lawyers can prosecute them. The targets of those complaints, on the other hand, don’t get any government help. Many are too poor to hire lawyers and private investigators. So they must fend for themselves against an army of public paper-pushers.
(A study of the cases in which the Canadian Human Rights Commission investigated allegations of hate speech, for example, foujnd that 91 per cent of the government’s targets were too poor to afford lawyers and appeared either on their own or with representation by a non-lawyer volunteer.) In other words, it’s a turkey shot for the government, with poor, intimidated targets fighting against the unlimited resources of the state. (p. 19)
It’s hard to believe, but government bureaucrats, paid with tax dollars, who are supposed to be promoting human rights and interracial relations, are spending their time becoming members of neo-Nazi websites and writing bigoted comments on the Internet. Their goal is to goad Canadian citizens into replying with their own hateful comments – which the human rights investigators can then prosecute as human rights abuses.
That would be like a police officer setting out lines of cocaine at party, snorting a few himself, then inviting other people to do the same – and then arresting them when they take him up on his offer.
The March 25 hearing was a disaster for the CHRC. Its staff had to admit, under oath, that they routinely went online under false identities to provoke reactions from neo-Nazis. The CHRC admitted that it had no controls over who had access to these CHRC neo-Nazi website membership accounts. Despite dozens of objections made by CHRC lawyers – apparently to run out the clock on the one-day hearing – the CHRC’s dirty laundry was aired in the national media.
The dirtiest fact of all: the CHRC had logged on to a neo-Nazi website by illegally hacking into a private citizen’s wireless Internet account at her home. It was a means to cover the CHRC’s tracks, so that the identity of the originating, government computers would be hidden. That staggering revelation came from Alain Monfette, a Bell Canada security officer, who had been subpoenaed by Lemire to find out who had gone on online as “Jadewarr,” one of the CHRC’s neo-Nazi codenames. Monfette disclosed to a stunned courtroom that jadewarr’s posts had been made thorugh the Internet account of Nelly Hechme …
Complainants don’t have to pay anything, while defendants are drained of tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. In fact, the defendants taxes go to pay for their own prosecution.
If you’re mad about something in your life, no matter how trivial – no matter if it’s your own fault – there really is no reason not to file a complaint with your unfriendly neighbourhood human rights commission. It doesn’t cost you a thing to start a complaint. Not even the price of a postage stamp – you can just fax your complaint in. If you win, you can get tax-free cash, and often some sort of government order that will try to assuage your feelings – like an order to make those darned pizza boys change the CD at work and stop hiding your stool. And even if you lose and the HRC vindicates your opponent, there’s the cruel satisfaction of knowing that you’ve punished your adversaries by putting them through years of legal hassles.
…when I read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago years ago, one thing that struck me was his testimony that, in general, the Soviet regime punished political dissidents much more viciously than it punished street criminals.
That makes sense in a certain kind of regime. Street criminals, after all, threaten only the citizen. Political dissidents threaten the bureaucrat – a much more serious crime.
And one more thing. Although Ezra is Jewish, he is a tireless defender of the free speech rights of Christians. I mean, he goes out of his way to defend our rights – more than highly-placed Christians have done. He is a real hero.
Buy. This. Book.
Further study
Ezra Levant defends free speech in these video clips from the Michael Coren TV show. And remember, fascist HRCs are bad for business, too.
WINTERY KNIGHT 