timeimmortal

But it’s not exactly a victory, is it? Nine hundred days, 15 government bureaucrats, and over $600,000 spent — $500,000 by the taxpayer-funded AHRC and another $100,000 by Ezra Levant in the course of his defence — brought things to a most unsatisfying result:

Is this a victory? I suppose, in a narrow technical sense, it is. I’m off the hook now for both of the HRC complaints. That’s two legal battles done –- though I’m still up to my eyeballs fighting defamation suits and other legal actions that the human rights industry piled on top of these complaints.

But I’ve read the dismissal letter three times now, and each time it makes me more angry. Because I haven’t been given my freedom of the press. I’ve simply had the government censor approve what I said. That’s a completely different thing.

Pardeep Gundara –- a second-rate bureaucrat, a nobody –- had to give me his approval for me to be allowed to go back to my business. For 900 days I was in the dock, waiting for this literary giant to pronounce his judgment on me. And I found favour in his eyes -– but barely.

Sorry. I don’t give a damn what Gundara or the HRC says. Getting his approval is not a success. I won’t legitimize his arrogant “authority” by saying “thank you, master”. I’ll say: “who the hell are you? Besides a busy-body bureaucrat?”

Look at his rationale for acquitting me: because the Western Standard met Gundara’s home-made tests of reasonableness. We published the cartoons in “context”; we published letters that “criticized” them; and my favourite, the cartoons weren’t “simply stuck in the middle” of the magazine. Gundara must have thought for ten whole minutes to come up with that list of journalistic do’s and don’t’s. And –- phew! -– he likes me. He really likes me!

Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.

The debate is far from over, and this victory is — as Ezra notes — only a technical one. The HRC has, in its rejection of the second complaint, nevertheless shored up its power as an office of Censorship at work in the province of Alberta.

That is as unacceptable now as it was when this all came to light.

Ezra Levant has all the sordid details, having received a letter back from Lindsay Blackett, the Minister for Culture and Community Spirit in Alberta. Yes, apparently that is a ministry within the Alberta government. *sigh*

You can read the whole thing over at Ezra’s blog, but here is, I think, the most odious line from Mr. Blackett’s response:

If Albertans feel that their rights are not being respected, they can discuss their concerns with the Commission.

This demonstrates, I think, that Mr. Blackett has simply not understood the question posed to him; his reply is empty and vacuous. Yes, the AHRC ostensibly exists to safeguard the rights of Albertans, but what if the Commission itself is the party which is abusing those rights (e.g. the right of freedom of expression)? Shall Albertans complain to the Alberta Human Rights Commission about…itself? Shall Albertans file a human rights complaint against…the very body with which they must file the complaint in the first place? Would the AHRC, which “is required to accept all complaints that fall within its jurisdiction”, decide…that the complait against it is within its own jurisdiction, and therefore take itself to trial?

It. Is. To. Laugh.

And this is the best response that the Alberta government can think to give?

Shameful. The government here really is comfortable with the idea of having an office of Censorship operating in its midst.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The Alberta Human Rights Commission hasn’t quite gotten to that point, and so is not quite on par with e.g. the government of Iran. However, it should be noted that the lengths that the AHRC is demanding that Christians go to in order to distribute materials or host a teaching retreat certainly smacks of the various controls and pressures that the Soviet state exerted on the Russian churches.

Consider:

The couple was very concerned about their freedoms here in Canada because they’re offering a teaching on Biblical sexuality that is based in the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) and a small part of their teaching does address homosexuality as sin. They were thinking about cancelling due to risk of prosecution but I encouraged them to keep it in the church and they should be ok. Still apprehensive, the couple decided to contact the Alberta Human Rights Commission to enquire about the legalities surrounding their presentation. You can read the phone log of the conversation with Ralph Roman an officer of the AHRC below.

An interesting point here is that this couple was advised by Ralph Roman to get a lawyer to draft a consent form and to also have the person declare that they will keep it private and not make the information public.” …PLUS…, she was advised to have the curriculum reviewed by the Police. Ralph Roman went on to inform her that even with a consent form there was still no guarantee that a complaint could not be filed IF someone was offended….like a teacher for instance.

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He said the following recommendations were the responsibility of the people who invited me, not my responsibility.

2. Ask the church to get a signed consent form from everyone, parents and children, everyone, stating that they are not forced to attend and are there of their own free will. Later he added that this consent should be drawn up by a lawyer who is familiar with the human rights Laws.

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4. The church needs to contact the education people and take a curriculum of the program and demonstrate that it is an educational program that is not unwelcome by the group there and everyone is there by consent. Also, the church needs to ask the education people if a license is required. At this point Ralph was uncertain and seemed to think a license would be helpful if problems occurred.

5. The church needs to contact the police to make sure they do not view the program as bordering on criminal activity—need to show them the curriculum so they know what is going on and do not arrive on the scene.

I told Ralph I would be dealing with the “hookup mentality” of this generation and teaching abstinence. He said that is a religious belief that lots of people have, but it cannot be forced on anyone and not taught to anyone who is not a part of the group.

I then told Ralph that the church had already distributed a CD of mine to each of their families to prepare for the retreat that had some statements on it about homosexuals. He said that they needed a consent form from each family that this was not unwelcome material and that their kids would not be talking about any of it in the schools.

Welcome to Alberta. You have papers, yes? Papers please!

So now it appears that it is legitimate for the state (here taken to mean the province of Alberta) to infringe upon, and to regulate, religious expression, subjecting each and every aspect of it to supervision and approval by the relevant state organ?

Good gravy…what country is this?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

BCF links to an article by Russ Brown, a professor of law at the University of Alberta (my alma mater) has an article up on the Faculty of Law blog concerning Pastor Stephen Boissoin’s “conviction” by the AHRC. And while Prof. Brown doesn’t agree with Boissoin’s views, he definitely understands Voltaire:

An earlier post referred to a recent case in British Columbia and argued that the functionaries who staff the country’s human rights commissions have no competence to determine the constitutional limits of expression.

The problem is not, of course, confined to British Columbia. The Alberta case involving Ezra Levant is notorious, and now comes the Boisson case - in which the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission ordered a youth pastor in Red Deer to write an apology abjuring (I presume untruthfully) his views on homosexuality and has also ordered him to refrain from making “disparaging” remarks about homosexuals. (It has been observed that for him to give a sermon in his church citing the biblical injunction against homosexuality probably violates the Commission’s order).

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What is astonishing about the Commission’s order is that it goes beyond what is, in my view, the already illegitimate regulation of expression by functionaries. This man is being ordered to actually engage in expression: specifically, to recant and, by abjuring his own views on homosexuality, to say something which is presumably contrary to the dictates of his own conscience.

It’s no small step to move from ordering thou shalt not say to ordering thou shalt say. Let’s hope a real court gets ahold of this.

Indeed.

He hits the nail exactly on the head. It’s one thing for the court to say to Pastor Boissoin: “you can’t say that anymore.” That would be bad enough, seeing as how it is Censorship of expression that does not appear to meet the necessary — and sole legal — criteria for the due limitation of expression: incitement to violence. But actually forcing Pastor Boissoin to speak something which is not a viewpoint he holds for himself is quite another thing, and then much more serious.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Stephen Boissoin himself writes in with a comment — and perhaps even a clarification — concerning the letter by him which was cited in this article.

Just so people are aware, that letter was not just some baseless anti-homosexual rant. The newspaper gave it the title and it was published in the middle of the heated gay marriage, hate crimes bill, gay school books being added to the public school curriculum yadayadayada debates all across Canada. Had the gay activist not pushed for so much and destroyed so many or my liberties, that leter would not have been necessary.

In my own Province, the gay group Alberta — PFLAG had received funds from the AHRC, the same group of thugs that prosecuted me, to promote their very biased agenda to young people that homosexuality was “normal, necessary, acceptable and productive and has been for thousands of years.” To top it off, a pro-gay teacher in my city, same guy who filed the complaint against me, was inviting a gay minister to come into the public school to teach what he called “the pro-homosexual interpretation of the Bible.” He refused to invite a minister that held the traditional view so as to ensure his students had a balanced presentation.

Enough was enough….that letter was written to open the Pandora’s Box. To get people thinking and asking questions about the present imbalance of ‘gay rights’ which are agressively hindering the rights of others.

That letter, though the cause of my present persecution, has done what it was designed to do and I thank God that I had the opportunity to stand for truth and do my part. Had [Darren Lund] not filed that complaint, the letter and my views would have been contained to my Central Alberta community and the debate would have most likely ended in 2002. Instead, the world has access to my letter and I have been provided with a global pulpit for six years going.

Blessings,
Stephen Boissoin

One could not, I think, ask for a better reason to speak out than Pastor Boissoin’s closing paragraph. The issue of homosexuality is a complex one, involving moral theology and natural law as well as many other considerations, and certainly the present progressive tendency to rush in “with guns blazing” to make homosexuality “mainstream” is very concerning. People should have a right to speak out about the issue from every angle, including the moral angle, and in defence of what could be called traditional sexual norms. As Chesterton noted, “progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative”, and progress for its own sake has in all ages of history been ruinous to the societies that have sought after it.

We, as Canadians, should have the right to have heady, long-winded, and powerful debates about matters which affect the fabric of our society, which threaten to alter it in ways that may be destructive to it. We should have had that debate about divorce. We should have had that debate about abortion, common-law partnerships, and a whole host of other things which have chipped away, little by little, and the centrality of the family in stable society. We need to have that debate about homosexuality, if only to avoid repeating past mistakes. When people are silenced, the opportunities for such debates shut down.

But silencing someone only works if a) you kill him or b) he agrees to be silenced. Pace what Ezra Levant noted previously, the one who speaks out anyway, in spite of being ordered to shut up, is something of a dashing rogue…and, as Pastor Boissoin notes above, it is precisely because he was initially silenced that he elected to speak out even louder, spreading his side of the debate much farther than it probably would have gone had events transpired even slightly differently.

It’s things like this which will, in due time, be the end of the human rights commissions — or, at least, the end of the role of HRCs as an office of censorship, both nationally and provincially. More and more, Canadians are beginning to wake up and realize that regardless of what the government says, human beings possess natural human rights that exceed those mere things which governments privelege citizens to do. These rights can’t be taken away by anyone short of God Himself.

So why not speak out? Why not act out? Like the Poles in the 1980s, the moral authority is not possessed by those who would demand order, censorship, and obedience to government stipulations and obscure tribunals. The moral authority belongs to the people who will not give up those rights which are theirs regardless of the government’s opinion. Let us not give that up.

Update: Welcome, Sleepy Old Bear readers, and thanks for the kudos, Stillman! I like that term of yours…”pansexual”. Mind if I borrow it occasionally for future use?

Meet the Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Ezra Levant’s case before the Alberta Human Rights Commission has passed its 800th day — that is, it has been over 800 days since Syed Soharwardy first filed his human rights complaint against Levant. That complaint was, of course, in regard to the publication of the Muhammed cartoons in the Western Standard magazine (now defunct).

Eight hundred days!

So we’re at more than 800 days since the HRC first received Soharwardy’s complaint.

So you can imagine my amusement today when my lawyer told me that the HRC asked him for a copy of my videotape of that interrogation.

Uh, what have they been doing these past four months? Did Officer McGovern not take notes?

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As the Alberta HRC boasts in its annual report, its case load of complaints has actually fallen by 15% in the past year. Albertans just aren’t bigoted enough for them, it seems. But it takes the HRC 7% longer to dispose of complaints — up from 382 days to 410 days. That’s a net productivity decline of 22% in a year. And their goal for next year: 435 days. Yes, the Alberta HRC actually wants to be less “efficient”.

(Imagine if the HRC was actually being used for its original purposes of helping people, say, kicked out of an apartment in wintertime because of their race. What good would “help” a year later do? But the HRCs long ago stopped pretending to be shields to protect people — now they’re swords to attack people for the crime of political correctness.)

So the average case takes 410 days. I’m at 800 days and running — and my formal hearing hasn’t even been scheduled. The only way I know my interrogators are still alive is that they called my lawyers to get a copy of my videos.

(Could you imagine if a real police officer grilled a criminal suspect for 90 minutes, and then four months later sheepishly called up the suspect and asked sweetly for a copy of that suspect’s notes on the interrogation? Imagine the peals of laughter!)

You know, I wonder if perhaps there isn’t a point to this delay, if it isn’t some kind of tactic on the part of the HRCs? Attrition, perhaps? We know that people called to account before a human rights commission have to pay their own legal fees, so could the AHRC be using this delay to try and magnify Levant’s costs, in the hope that he’ll eventually be crushed under the financial burden of defending his good name, and thus give in?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!