Posted on 03/28/2008 2:32:37 AM PDT by Clive
Earlier this week, I argued that Canada's human-rights censors have managed a seemingly impossible task: They've found a way to rehabilitate the image of neo-Nazis, transforming them from odious dirtbags into principled free-speech martyrs. Case in point: At this week's much-anticipated human-rights hearing in Ottawa, a team of journalists and bloggers were campaigning openly in support of hatemonger Marc Lemire. The villains were Canadian Human Rights Commission (HRC) investigator Dean Steacy and the other apparatchik who've made a career out of parsing Lemire's phobic Web postings.
Tuesday's hearing probably won't change the outcome of the case against Lemire: Like a five-star hotel that guarantees its guests full satisfaction, the HRC provides handpicked complainants with a 100% success rate on hate-speech cases. Better than that: The commission actually lets certain complainants waltz into its Ottawa facilities to fiddle with the online evidence-gathering. As Ezra Levant writes on his blog: "If this were a real investigation of a real crime with real police, and the alleged 'victim' were to walk right into the crime lab, hop on the officers' computers, and poke around the evidence, a judge wouldn't have to throw the case out --prosecutors would be too embarrassed to even bring the case to trial. Not so at the commission."
But even if the HRC nails Lemire, Tuesday's eight-hour hearing will still be remembered as a landmark disaster for the commission. Despite efforts by Steacy and others to stonewall on specific questions of HRC procedure, observers were nonetheless able to extract a fairly detailed picture of commission work practices. The impression that emerges is an overstaffed shop in which unionized desk jockeys sit around "investigating" obscure web sites in search of some scrap of actionable hatred. When they don't find anything, they log on and try stirring things up themselves -- a practice Lemire describes as entrapment. This amateurhour version of The Wire would be funny -- if the HRC weren't spending millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, and turning the lives of the accused upside down.
I don't have any problem with the government running electronic surveillance on, say, drug gangs or terror suspects -- or even hatemongers, if there's proof that they're engaged in actual violence. But of course, that involves showing probable cause, and getting a judge to issue a warrant. HRC types have no time for that sort of due process. Nor, in fact, do they have any real legal training.
In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote "human rights," the HRC's agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?" -- to which he replied "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)
Privacy is another concept that the HRC seems to find confusing. The most scandalous disclosure to emerge on Tuesday involved the manner by which investigators logged on to Lemire's Web site. In what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to avoid revealing the commission's IP address, they tapped into the unsecured wi-firouter of a 26-year-old Ottawa woman who lived near the commission's 344 Slater St. headquarters. At Tuesday's hearing, a Bell Canada employee read out the woman's name, address and phone number to shocked audience members. A National Post reporter contacted the woman and found that she'd never heard of Lemire, Steacy, or his investigations. Unless she is secretly working undercover for Steacy, it appears that the commission cynically invaded the privacy of an innocent citizen in order to pursue an obscure Web-trawling vendetta; and then caused her name to be read out to the Canadian public, thereby identifying her as an unwitting conduit to neo-Nazi Web sites. One likes to imagine that the privacy commissioner will be having a chat with Dean et al. in coming days.
This is the beginning of the end for Section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act, the legislation that (nominally) mandates this kind of hate-speech fishing expedition. For years, Canadians have averted their eyes to the shenanigans going on at our nation's human-rights commissions under the theory that any means used toward such a noble end as "human rights" must somehow be justified. What we saw this week turns that conceit into a pathetic joke.
jkay@nationalpost.com
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Since Canada doesn’t have a Second Amendment, it’s not suprising that it doesn’t have a First.
Isn’t what they did technically considered WiFi theft?
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;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
26. The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.
See my Reply 4
I’m looking forward to Steyn’s case before the HRC.
While primarily about the odious action filed against our sister site, I have included many links and quotes here, regarding the laughably-misnamed “human rights commission(s)” plaguing our Canadian brothers & sisters:
( scroll back )
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929538/posts?page=437#437
A lawsuit has been served against our Canadian “sister” site, Free Dominion.
Free Dominion ^ | 11-23-07 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
That should be a good one. In that case the complainant took on a syndicated columnist and author with an established reputation and Canada’s most prominent news magazine.
Yes, not to mention one of the sharpest minds and wits on the planet.
They should televise it.
Steyn was at this hearing, observing it as a journalist. He was holding court and signing autographs before scrums of admirers durning recess breaks.
I think that the HRC industry may also have bitten off more than it can chew with Levant complaint as well.
They will rule against Steyn and Levant but will destroy their credibility in the process.
Hopefully these egregious attacks on freedom will give Liberal and NDP Members of Parliament the courage to vote for a private member's bill repealing S. 13 that has been put forward by a Liberal member.
...
The NDP will NEVER vote to repeal 13.1; their main complaint about it is that it doesn’t go far enough. As for the Tories, they’re being shrewd by staying quiet and letting the Libs write the bill to repeal it, because if it were Conservative legislation all of the usual suspects would scream racism but the Liberals always get a free pass.
I’d pay to see that Pay-Per-View.
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