Time Immortal

Here are two examples of his salient, clear and rational thinking on issues facing Canada today.

First, on the nature of the committee decision that saw Henry Morgentaler awarded with the Order of Canada:

Like many, many, many Canadians, I took the appointment of Henry Morgentaler to membership in the Order of Canada — proclaimed on “Canada Day” — as a stick in the eye for everything we believe in. As a gratuitous insult to the memory of three million aborted babies.

It was intended as that.

…

A very dark thing was done, as such things are always done — in a very dark way.

Yet I think it may be for the best, in a longer view of things.

We might often grumble that the “ruling class” in Canada — the smug, self-serving, “progressive” political, legal, academic, and media elites, including that prime example in Rideau Hall — belong to some other world than the one from which they suck taxes. But seldom is there an event so stark, that we see them as they are. The Morgentaler award revealed that to so many Canadians.

The whole issue of Morgentaler getting the Order of Canada smacks of duplicity. It was obviously not a popular choice for many Canadians, and (what is more) the Governor General’s office had explicitly denied, back in February of this year, that he was being considered for the award.

The sudden reversal is enough to give one whiplash.

And as noted here and elsewhere, the decision to award Morgentaler — ostensibly for humanism — was not unanimous, a first for the committee that decides who does and does not receive the Order. At every step of the way, it seems, there has been a slippery, eel-like activity that has brought this travesty about, and perhaps that is somehow fitting for someone of Morgentaler’s character.

It’s still repugnant, and tells us something very troubling indeed about those who are “in charge” of this nation.

But then, we knew that much already from the travesty of the human rights commissions, and Mr. Warren has something very profound to say about them as well:

In the course of this last grim week, the Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty quietly announced a huge expansion of the , giving its apparatchiks enhanced powers of intrusion, removing the cap on fines, providing a new class of lawyers to assist in prosecutions, and opening 22 new “hearing and mediation rooms” around the province where these star chambers will conduct their quasi-legal proceedings.

As a writer who does not subscribe to the “politically correct” ideology, it is reasonable to expect that, sooner or later, they will come for me. Of course I also realize that, in making this statement, I will be mocked by the usual leftwing jackals. But in light of what has already happened in this province and country, my assertion is reasonable. Moreover, I write with the sincerity of a man who has already tasted the New Canadian tyranny, and the threat of imprisonment without due process, under the feminist rewrite of Ontario family law.

I was born a free citizen of the Old Canada, and before her God I declare, that I will go to jail rather than acknowledge the legitimacy of any “human rights” commission. I invite other journalists and indeed, every other Canadian, to declare likewise.

In the wake of Canada Day, one could not ask for a more stirring call to action than that; if there is anything left to feel proud of in Canada, it is that some Canadians — like David Warren, like Ian Hunter — are still able to articulate a clear moral standard in opposition to the received wisdom of the day, to the wind-blown sentiments of progressivism.

I take Mr. Warren’s closing sentences as my own here.

Update: Welcome, UnAborted readers!

I’m reminded of a Ron White joke when I read this. Talking about some reform to death penalty law in Texas, White quipped: “Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My states’ puttin’ in an express lane.”

*sigh*

Learning that the is going to skip the vetting process for complaints entirely, which means that all complaints will now be referred directly to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal instead, is not happy news to hear in the wake of Canada’s 141st year.

Until now, the Ontario Human Rights Commission acted as a gatekeeper. It would vet complaints, and decide whether or not to send them on for a hearing at the Human Rights Tribunal.

The commission only dismissed about 7 per cent of complaints, referring 93 per cent for a hearing. That was a rather low bar to jump, but somehow this arrangement caused delays. With the processing of cases through the commission bureaucracy and a shortage of adjudicators, a large backlog accumulated. A typical case took about five years to be heard and decided.

Henceforth, the commission will have nothing to do with specific complaints. It will be “proactive,” that is, it will be rather like a free-floating royal commission or public inquiry, choosing its own assignments, armed with daunting powers of search and seizure. Earlier this year, the commission anticipated this role in two separate episodes, showing itself too ready to attribute racism both to rural Ontarian anglers and to Maclean’s magazine (and its contributor Mark Steyn), without evidence that went through the test of a hearing.

Complaints will now go directly to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The government is adding to the number of adjudicators. Moreover, where once the commission’s staff shepherded complaints, in their stead the new legislation has established the Human Rights Legal Support Centre. Though the estimable Raj Anand (a former head of the commission) will be its chair, this amounts to a firm of lawyers provided free to human rights complainants by the public purse.

Yeah, I’m sure that will improve things.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, they think that the male puppet isn’t getting a fair shake from Muslim Canadian Congress head Tarek Fatah.

And after some obligatory digs at the MCC, Muneeza Sheikh and Naseem Mithoowani launch into a lengthy defence of themselves, fellow sock-puppet Khurrum Awan, and what they claim is their human rights complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

But here’s the most incredible part, for me: they manage to utterly avoid any and all mention of Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry, the actual plaintiff in the proceedings against Maclean’s, despite discussing in detail the reasons the complaint was brought. What is more, they have yet again wasted another opportunity to appear in a major national publication with yet another re-iteration of the same tired claims they always articulate.

They could have, you know, published an excerpt from the response they are ostensibly demanding the right to publish…which they claim is all they want in the first place. It is strange, O Reader, that they failed to do this.

They also say a few other things worthy of mention:

And that is our point; anti-Muslim prejudice is growing because of pieces like the one that Maclean’s published, and that led to our human rights complaints, in a context where there is an absence of Muslim (or other) voices to challenge the material in question.

Actually, no: what stokes anti-Muslim prejudice is not an absence of Islamic voices in any particular media forum, either to affirm or to challenge other printed material. What stokes anti-Muslim prejudice, more than anything else, is when Muslim themselves attempt to trample on the rights of Canadians by, in essence, demanding that the government (or, in this case, an unaccountable government agency) wrest control of the publication of a private magazine from the hands of those who are, by law, its actual owners and editors.

The limitless free speech model — that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech — does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate that: Maclean’s still refuses to publish a response to just one of over twenty articles that even the condemned as Islamophobic.

As is their right, given that they are (again) a private company.

The limitless free speech model is beautiful precisely because it does work for both the majority and the various minorities; indeed, the fact that Awan, Sheikh, and Mithoowani have managed to publish quite a large number of articles in various newspapers (notably the National Post) demonstrates that they, despite being members of a minority, are not being denied anything.

What doesn’t work, if anything, is the way that in this particular instance, the minority community in question is doing one of two self-ruinous things:

1. When given the opportunity to publish an article, the sock puppets can only think to re-iterate previously-made statements for the umpteenth time, when they could be using the space they are given to…say…publish the latest installment in their witty, scathing, and comprehensive response to the Steyn article.
2. The rest of the time, said community (or, at least, those who claim to speak for it) spend all their time demanding that the Canadian government hand over control of a private newsmagazine’s content to them.

Dear sock puppets: you’ve been given plenty of opportunities to publish your side, and have wasted them all. Also, if you claim to represent every Muslim in Canada and if, in fact, you are correct in that claim, you should have no problem raising sufficient private funds to begin your own newsmagazine in which you could do nothing but publish anti-Mark Steyn articles to your collective hearts’ desire! That you have done nothing but repeat the same claims, which most of the rest of us now have involuntarily committed to memory, suggests that your motives are other, and then more sinister and repressive.

So please shut up about debates and responses, because you’ve squandered every opportunity to engage in or deliver both.

And yes, I’d be this mad at you even if you weren’t Muslims.

And that is why free speech is not limitless in our democracy.

And that is why it should be.

Section 1 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that all rights in our democracy are subject to reasonable limits.

And those reasonable limits are: incitement. The Steyn article was not that.

The Supreme Court of Canada (not a bunch of Islamists*) properly recognized that free speech is not limitless in upholding our criminal and human rights laws regulating hate speech.

Because judges, like Allah, are infallible and never make mistakes!

In imposing these limits, the Supreme Court noted that hate speech undermines the equality rights and multicultural heritage guaranteed in our Charter.

So when Mohamed Elmasry made that remark about Jews over the age of 18…?