Posted on 05/05/2009 9:14:54 AM PDT by Clive
Three years ago I was the publisher of a magazine that printed pictures of some Danish cartoons of Muhammad. They were newsworthy because those cartoons sparked riots in the Muslim world that killed more than 100 people. We wanted to show our readers what all the fuss was about.
But by doing so, I was charged by the government of Alberta with “hate speech,” and prosecuted for 900 days by 15 government lawyers and bureaucrats at Alberta’s human rights commission (HRC). I was finally acquitted, but not before spending $100,000 in legal fees.
Funny: I thought freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion were human rights! While I was being hunted by the government because of my political views, I researched these HRCs and discovered a whole underground legal system — 14 commissions across the country, with 1,000 full-time staff, and an annual budget of $200 million. HRCs rarely make the news, and their procedures are nothing like real courts. They’re not even run by real judges, and they lack the procedural checks and balances to make sure we don’t commit injustices.
Perhaps the most terrifying thing I learned in my research was that in the 32 years that the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission has been prosecuting “hate speech” cases, not a single person had ever been acquitted of the charge.
A 100 per cent conviction rate is something you’d expect from a country like China or Iran, not Canada. Then again, banning words — even offensive words — isn’t a Canadian tradition, either. We debate people we disagree with, or we ignore them. We don’t have the government prosecute them.
My case, and a similar case involving Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, brought the hidden worlds of HRCs into the light. Since then, politicians and journalists alike have condemned them for their un-Canadian attempts to censor citizens.
Freedom of speech is something we take for granted, so we rarely think about it. But the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
We’ve got to reform these HRCs, to get them out of the censorship business. And we’ve got to remind Canada’s other censors — from university “speech code” enforcers to the radio and TV regulators at the CRTC — that freedom is a Canadian value and we won’t give it up easily.
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I didn’t know you two were the same.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Appalling story, by the way, to say the least.
No "loser pays" in Canada, eh?
Thanks for the ping.
But this is an administrative tribumanthat was originally set up to protect presumably disadvantaged complainants in matters of discrimination in employment or accommodation. As such, the complainant does not have to do anything beyond making a handwritten complaint. The commission then takes it from there and "investigates" the complaint, proposes a settlement and if the person complained against fails to accept a settlement, the commission will prosecute the case before its own tame tribunal.
There is no parity between the parties. As such the system is heavily biased against the subject complained against.
It becomes a means of extorting money and a mea culpa, even from an innocent defendant as the legal fees go way beyond what the settlement would have been, let alone the harassing effect of a process that can take years and in which one is up against a number of paid government litigators.
Only someone as determined as Levant or Steyn or a corporation with as deep a pocket as Macleans Magazine can stand a chance of successfully resisting.
I am sure that the lawyers for Steyn, Levant and Macleans had, as their first bit of advice, independently told their several clients that it wouuld be cheaper and less troublesome and probably less embarrassing to simply cave, confess and pay.
Why? I thought Mr. Harper was a conservative. Why not "forget" to put that money in the budget?
A Prime Minister who gets outvoted on a Budget or Supply matter has thereby automatically lost the confidence of the House. That brings down the government and provokes a general election.
At best it is a "moderate coalition."
Harper is a master parliamentarian. He plays off the opposition against each other, picks his fights and constructs his budget papers and legislation such that the opposition has to go along with most of his agenda or possibly face an angry electorate on an issue which Harper had picked.
But he does have to carefully pick his battles.
Also, the lighyt of publicity shone on this issue by Steyn, Levant and Macleans has aroused opposition to the federal Human rights commission in both the governing party and the Official Opposition party. I expect that changes will be made, probably on a private member's bill introduced from the opposition back bench and supported by government and opposition memebers.
The problem is that there are also provincial Human Rights Commissions. Levant's case was before the Alberta one.
Or is it all about what is offensive to the government? The government should not be in the business of defining what is offensive to itself, nor prosecuting someone for what it finds offensive.
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