Time Immortal

Ezra Levant’s proposed new initiative:

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on my personal blog about the need for Canadian bloggers to form a mutual aid society to protect themselves from unwarranted attacks on their freedoms.

I have recently experienced one form of those attacks — an out-of-control government ‘human rights commission’ grinding me through a punitive, costly and arbitrary process for two years because I published cartoons that allegedly hurt someone’s feelings. And I’ve observed the other form, much more frequently: in the past few weeks alone, I’ve seen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 baseless threats of defamation against Canadian bloggers (plus 6, 7 against me), none of which have real merit, but all of which are designed to frighten bloggers (usually conservatives) into censoring themselves.

The common thread amongst all of these threats is that they’re not legitimate legal actions to remedy a real tort committed by bloggers. The blog posts in question all contain true facts and fair comments; no real defamation action lies against any of them. These threats are intimidation tactics — bullying — dressed up in legal robes.

And, unfortunately, they often work. Not because bloggers make a thoughtful decision, with competent legal advice, that they ought to retract a truly false and defamatory statement, but because bloggers make a panicked decision, without legal advice, in fear of the cost and hassle of a lawsuit, and in the hopes of appeasing the threatener. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about this sort of thing.

He’s even got his first case, before the Union has been formalized.

One one hand, it’s sad that something like this has to be announced and advanced. Not that it’s without its reasons or justifications, of course, and certainly in Canada bloggers like myself have more than ample reason to fear the possibility of frivolous legal action. More importantly, bloggers like myself are, for the most part, not legal experts, and won’t be well-equipped (as a general rule) if in fact someone like Warren Kinsella or Richard Warman files a suit (or a human rights complaint) against us. In that regard, at least, the need not only for a legal defence fund, but for legal advice, is obvious.

On the other hand, though, something like this could also serve as a focal point for the /HRC issue in Canada for as long as it takes to resolve the manner in the only acceptable way (i.e. the complete dissolution of HRCs in Canada, and the removal of Section 13 from the Canadian Human Rights Act). Disparate blogs commenting on the issue are all well and good, but a concrete organization devoted to freedom of expression is even better.