timeimmortal

Angelweb posted a copy of a letter received from Rob Nicholson, the Canadian Minister of Justice, over at FreeMarkSteyn.com. The text of the letter is, frankly, damn promising.

Dear [name removed] :

The office of the Prime Minister has forwarded to me a copy of your correspondence concerning the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). I regret the delay in responding.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental freedom enshrined in the Canadian , which, in a free and democratic society, may be limited only when such an action is justified.

The Government of Canada is committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. To that end, the Government has introduced in Parliament Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, which calls for the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) to apply equally to all Canadians. Bill C-21 would repeal section 67 of the CHRA, which currently shields some actions of the federal government or First Nations entities from the application of the CHRA. The repeal of Section 67 would extend the rights of First Nations people, primarily those living on reserve, to file complaints with the CHRC.

Canada’s record on human rights is second to none; it is a record of which all Canadians can be proud.

As you may be aware, the CHRC, which administers the CHRA, operates at arm’s length from the Government of Canada and reports to Parliament independently.

However, I would like to inform you that my caucus colleague Mr. Rick Dykstra has tabled a motion that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights examine and make recommendations with respect to the CHRC, including its mandate, operations, and interpretation and application of provisions relating to Section 13 of the CHRA, which addresses hate messages. I look forward to that review.

Please be assured that your concerns have been given proper consideration. I appreciate having had your comments brought to my attention.

Yours truly,

The Honourable Rob Nicholson

This is, as I said, damn promising — it re-affirms that the Canadian government is coming on-side against the HRCs and their flagrant abuse of (and transgressions against) a fundamental human right that is a cornerstone of every free society: freedom of expression.

Also, I think it’s time to put out a new banner:

(I direct the Reader to the media page)

About bloody time!

The Conservative government has introduced a motion to Parliament’s Justice Committee proposing an investigation into the abusive, corrupt practises of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The motion specifically refers to public “concerns” about the CHRC’s “investigative techniques” and their “interpretation and application” of the Section 13 thought crimes provision.

The resolution, which you can read here in both official languages, was put forward by Rick Dykstra (pictured at left), the Conservative MP from St. Catherines, Ontario, with the knowledge and approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson. Here is an e-mail from Nicholson, sent to a voter just today, in which you can read his change of approach. An excerpt from Nicholson’s letter:

I would like to inform you that my caucus colleague Mr. Rick Dykstra has tabled a motion that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights examine and make recommendations with respect to the CHRC, including its mandate, operations, and interpretation and application of provisions relating to section 13 of the CHRA, which addresses hate messages. I look forward to that review.

Smashing news. A little late to the party, but smashing news all the same. This is a much-needed, very welcome reversal on the part of the government.

So that would be the Privacy Commissioner, the RCMP, and now the government of Canada who will be launching investigations into the human rights commissions.

There’s hope.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I would bet good money that pretty much every member of this Facebook group (”Keep your censoring hands off of Canadian film and TV! No to Bill C-10!”) would nevertheless support keeping subSection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) intact, and would condemn Liberal Party MP Dr. Keith Martin as an associate and abettor of hatemongers and Nazis.

In other words, another pack of whiny little liberals who have the physiological appearance of being all grown up, but who have the capability for rational thought of elementary-level schoolchildren.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I wrote about PEN Canada previously, noting that:

PENCanada — a Canadian non-profit organization that lobbies on behalf of writers, internationally, who have been forcibly silenced or imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression — defines freedom of expression thusly:

What do we mean by “freedom of expression?” Many definitions are out there. However, although the wording varies, the substance is the same. In its essence, freedom of expression is the right to say freely what you please, as well as the related right to hear what others have stated. This includes the freedom to create and distribute written works, movies, pictures, songs, dances and all other forms of expressive communication.

And on their list of obstacles to freedom of expression, the fourth item (after assault, threats, and murder) is:

Censorship (State or otherwise imposed)

Canadians lobby — and in many cases risk their freedom or their lives — on behalf of writers world-wide who have been denied what even the UN recognizes as a basic human right. Will these same Canadians now lobby on behalf of their fellow countrymen, who are being subjected to what amounts to state censorship?

It turns out that they will. It seems that PEN Canada has put forth a statement calling for both the removal of Section 13 from the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), and for the dismissal of the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s. They also decry the complaints filed against Ezra Levant.

PEN Canada calls for changes to human rights commission legislation February 4, 2008 — PEN Canada calls on the federal and provincial governments to change human rights commission legislation to ensure commissions can no longer be used to attempt to restrict freedom of expression in Canada.

Recent complaints in Alberta against journalist Ezra Levant and in Ontario against Maclean’s magazine and its writer Mark Steyn raise disturbing questions about the degree to which human rights commissions have taken it upon themselves to become arbiters of what constitutes free speech.

PEN Canada believes this is not the role of human rights commissions and that governments across the country need to make that clear both to their commissions and to Canadians.

Neither Mr. Levant nor Maclean’s magazine and Mr Steyn published anything that incited violence against the Muslim community although both have been subject of complaints to commissions. Nor did their comments violate anyone’s human rights.

…

Neither complaints should ever have been accepted by a human rights commission and both should be immediately dismissed.

To ensure there is no repetition of such attempts to constrain freedom of expression through the guise of human rights legislation, PEN supports calls for removal of subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act which states that it is discriminatory when individual or groups say or write anything that is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

Similar wording in provincial human rights statutes should likewise be removed.

When I wrote the previous article, it was my hope that this group of Canadian intellectuals and lobbyists would not do the “typical” thing and demand freedoms for people in foreign nations whilst simultaneously ignoring affronts to those same freedoms within Canada.

And fortunately, they have proven consistent in their beliefs. PEN Canada is to be applauded for issuing this statement and for adding their voices to the increasingly lengthy list of people speaking out against state-sponsored censorship as enacted by human rights commissions.

What’s truly impressive, though, is the list of names attached to the statement: John Ralston Saul, Edmontonian Todd Babiak, David Cronenberg, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, and more besides. Big names all — it’s a powerful thing that all of these people (many of them hard leftists, to be sure!) have spoken out in defense of freedom of speech in Canada.

It kind of makes the other side look pitiful by comparison — the best supporters they can muster are a group of anti-Semites, a misogynistic imam and a terrorism supporter. Oh, and Warren Kinsella.

I’m dead tired this morning, so this will kind of just be a list of things that I noticed on my morning browse through a few parts of the internet. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, ideally.

Apparently, the Milky Way is twice as thick as was previously thought — 12,000 light years, instead of 6,000. That’s kind of interesting, admittedly, although also rather “ho hum” — given the massive distances we’re talking about here, what’s a factor of two? Apparently, the researchers at the University of Sydney were just doing some basic fact-checking on internet-available data and realized the error after a few hours of computation. Guess it just goes to show: science is never 100%.

Moving on to more terrestrial matters, it appears that Danish “youths” — “mainly with immigrant backgrounds” — are burning things again, mainly cars, but also schools and trash bins. Officially, it’s not clear what caused the riots to trigger. Personally, I’m thinking that this is another case where we can strike out the words “immigrant youths” and replace them with “Muslims.” Probable cause? Here’s one guess:

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: RightGirl)

Speaking of Terrorism (since really, what else can we call it when Muslims are rioting and burning things?), the possibility is emerging that those undersea cables that got cut, thereby denying Internet access to millions of users across the Middle East and Africa, may have been destroyed in an act of sabotage, not in an accident as previously thought.

I hope nobody is too surprised by that.

In a follow-up to yesterday’s post about demographic winter, I see that Vox Day has added his own thoughts on the phenomenon to the virtual din.

You can’t completely grasp the extent of Europe’s post-Christian decline until you walk through the ghost towns of Italy, populated by no more a dozen elderly women and one old man sleeping in the sun. It’s not something that any tourist is going to see in Florence, Venice or Rome, much less Milano, but go outside the tourist tombs and the desolation of demographic winter is impossible to miss. And the imported African hookers scattered along the truck routes in the countryside are hardly adequate compensation for what were once famously vibrant family units.

There’s a large and spectacular church on the outskirts of a town near which we like to wander. Its doors are only unlocked for an hour or so every month, because despite its gorgeous interior architecture and painted ceilings, there’s not only no one around to attend it, there’s not even anyone left to visit it.

There is no cause of the demographic decline that is now afflicting much of the West that has done more to exacerbate the problem than secular progressivism and related ideologies. Put plainly, the societies we have built for ourselves (and, indeed, most human societies in general) are predicated on the expectation of a populace that maintains an almost “Catholic” birthrate — an average of 2 to 3 kids per woman. Our present fad of 0 to 1 kids per woman, and then usually one “designer” baby at age 35 (I shamelessly crib Mark Steyn’s phrasing here) is, quite frankly, insufficient to sustain Western society. To keep up our end, we need immigration.

That will, I think, be our untimely end.

Should Canada require its immigrants to “earn” their citizenship?

In the past, simply having lived in Britain for a sufficient length of time was enough to qualify a person for citizenship there. Now, a move is afoot to have immigrants “move on” through a system that encourages citizenship by encouraging the adoption of national traditions and values (possibly at the expense of the traditions and values those immigrants have brought with them from the “old country”), at the end of which they may achieve citizenship…or may be asked to leave, if in fact they do not integrate satisfactorily.

Methinks we need something like that in Canada.

According to the Associated Press, pro-lifers and other ‘domestic’ extremists account for “most of the damage” from terror-type attacks committed on American soil, to a larger degree than even Islamic terror.

As a pro-lifer, I’m pretty accustomed to having all manner of lies told about me and my beliefs — it comes with the territory. But the above assertion is pretty egregious, if somewhat easily refuted. Just for context, Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in one day back in 2001, and destroyed two of the tallest skyscrapers in America in the process. Since 1973 (the year of Roe vs. Wade), misguided pro-lifers have killed just seven people in the U.S.

But clearly, those pro-lifers account for “most of the damage” done in acts of terror on American soil. The newsman says so!

Ezra Levant remarks that since it’s clear that Stephen Harper is gunning for an election, the Conservative government might as well try passing a few different pieces of increasingly more ambitious legislation, all via confidence motions, until Stephane Dion finally slips up and stops trying to avoid bringing the government down.

Gun control, the Wheat Board, tax cuts — and how about a gentle amendment to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act?

The irony is that last bill wouldn’t be controversial at all. Other than a lone Liberal lobbyist who hasn’t been in the party’s good graces for four years, and a fringe ethno-political special interest group, I don’t think anyone in the country would even consider such an amendment controversial.

As they say in the funnies…”it’s just crazy enough to work!”

And speaking of pro-life issues, the ladies of ProWomanProLife are suggesting contacting the Governor General directly to let her know that Henry Morgentaler does not deserve the Order of Canada. Fully 85% of online respondents to the Globe & Mail’s poll on the issue said “no,” and while that can hardly be called a truly “representative” number, I think it does indicate rather clearly that a majority of Canadians think that giving Morgentaler this sort of official recognition is a very bad thing.

The PWPL ladies also provide the names of the various people who sit on the “independent” advisory council that considers nominations for the Order of Canada.

Update: Suzanne Fortin sends in the following additional information by email. Here’s the process one can follow to contact the Governor General’s office:

It’s easy.

First call the Governor-General’s Office. Phone numbers:

Ottawa: 613-993-8200

Rest of Canada: 1-800-465-6890

You will get a receptionist.Ask to speak to Madeleine Proulx (pronounced “Prew”). She deals with the Order of Canada. When I phoned today, I got a voicemail and I have been told by another pro-life caller that calls about Henry Morgentaler are being re-directed to her voicemail. State your name. Tell her that you want to register your objection to Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada. State the reason why. Please try to be neutral in your tone– calling him a bloodthirsty murderer probably won’t gain us a lot of credibility. I stated that he’s a symbol of inequality as he is the reason that unborn children have no legal status today and that I believe in the equality of all human beings, and that he fought this struggle in my name as a woman, and I resent that.

And that was it.

If you’re a pro-lifer, O Reader, or even if you aren’t but nevertheless think that Henry Morgentaler doesn’t deserve the Order of Canada, I encourage you to follow the steps above. Be civil and be articulate, and choose your words carefully. Calling him a murderer with blood on his hands might seem like a reasonable objection to raise, but it’s also a very good way to ensure that your phone message gets ignored. Present your case fairly and without appeal to emotion or horror, and it will be listened to.

Did you know that, O Reader?

…But the surprise came from Duffy himself: he reminded viewers that the Canadian Human Rights Act does not apply to Canadian Indians. Right now, section 67 of the CHRA explicitly exempts Indian reserves from the application of the law.

This has been a long-time grievance of Aboriginal women, not because they have a hankering to file complaints about “hurt feelings” under the (recently-added) “hate speech” provisions of the Act, but because there has historically existed on many Indian reserves significant, real discrimination — such as the wholesale disenfranchisement of women who marry non-Indians, cutting them off from government funds and other rights as band members. Unlike for the rest of us who live in a free society, the libertarian solution to discrimination — simply move on to another restaurant, apartment, job, etc. — doesn’t work when the entire economy, and all property, are owned communally and are apportioned by fiat by chiefs and councils. That’s how it works under Canada’s Indian Act.

And guess what? Just last week, Liberal MPs tried to delay a Conservative initiative to extend the Canadian Human Rights Act to Indian reserves. Liberal Anita Neville showed the soft bigotry of low expectations, arguing that Indians just aren’t culturally ready for the kind of laws that apply to the rest of us.

Ms. Neville said there’s “a real ideological divide” over the issue of individual versus collective rights in the repeal legislation. “There doesn’t seem to be, on the part of the government, a willingness to respect the tradition of collective rights for First Nations on reserve.”

So, in the same week that we have Stephane Dion demanding that his MP, Keith Martin, rescind his private member’s motion to remove the “hate messages” provision of the CHRA, Dion’s MPs are blocking the entire CHRA from applying to hundreds of thousands of Canadian Aboriginals.

Hypocrisy from the Liberal Party? Perish the thought!

On a more serious note, however, I was actually unaware of the “exemption” provided under the CHRA for Natives. Personally, I think that’s absurd that this is, in fact, the case, and Ezra Levant enumerates a number of very real, and very good, examples why that is (above). Bigotry does not just flow one way, and there can be an immense prejudice on reservations against those who “go outside” the reservation in some way (the issue of marrying non-Natives is one example). Many people on reservations are very disenfranchised, precisely because of these reasons. Many people on reservations are denied basic human needs, and basic human rights, by usurious and greedy band councils.

I’m not saying that Natives should file more human rights complaints (if in fact they could) — the tribunals have to go, and nobody should patronize them. But the tribunals are one small part of what the CHRA deals with, and many of its other provisions are both relevant to the situations on many reservations, and also necessary tools for combatting those situations. And it’s shameful that Canada does not extend the legitimate protections of the CHRA to the Native people of this country.

Doubly shameful, of course, is that the Liberal Party has been attempting to block a Conservative Party attempt to extend the CHRA to include Natives and the reservations. Levant asks:

So which is it? Is the Canadian Human Rights Act so sacrosanct that not even a single section can be amended? Or is the Act so unimportant that Canadian Aboriginals can be denied all of its provisions for years to come? Mike Duffy pointed out this contradiction today; I wonder if any other journalists will follow up.

Personally, I very much doubt any of them will — our media is, as a general rule, terrified of printing anything that might result in a swell of support for Stephen Harper’s government. Which is a shame, because the hypocrisy of the Liberals over this issue is staggering.

Update: Welcome, Steynians and FreeDoMinions!