timeimmortal

I wasn’t following the Supreme Court of Canada as it heard arguments for, and decided on, the Rafe Mair/Kari Simpson brouhaha, but I think I have to agree with Ezra Levant: the decision definitely is a shift, in the law, toward greater freedom of speech. It would seem, at least, to expand the “fair comment” provision to such an extent that the advantage in defamation law has shifted to the respondent in any claim.

Which means that defamation law might become, in the future, a more powerful weapon against HRC decisions.

Gotta like the sound of that.

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…?

* Islamists? Maybe not. Dhimmis? Well…

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…but I will agree, to the end of my days, that he has a right to voice his opinions. And it’s good news indeed that the Supreme Court of Canada agrees with that sentiment, and will not hear an appeal to overturn a lower court’s ruling that Whatcott’s right to freedom of speech had been violated.

Whatcott’s tactics seem, to me, on the extreme side, but the fact that the Saskatchewan Association of Licensed Practical Nurses suspended and fined him for his off-hours, anti-abortion advocacy was detestable and a violation of Whatcott’s human rights.

Nurse Bill Whatcott staged his anti-abortion protest at the clinic in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2002, and Planned Parenthood subsequently launched a complaint against him at his professional association. Whatcott had earlier served jail time for demonstrating against an abortion clinic in Toronto.

The Saskatchewan Association of Licensed Practical Nurses found Whatcott guilty of professional misconduct, suspended him as a nurse and ordered him to pay C$15,000 ($15,150) in legal costs.

Whatcott argued that he had been demonstrating in his free time and that his protest was simply a case of free speech. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association had also weighed in on the debate, saying that while it favored abortion rights it was concerned over attempts to squelch debate.

He tried to run for mayor here in Edmonton a while back. Got about a thousand votes, as I recall.

Mark Frieman, writing in the National Post, seems to think so. Jay Currie has the details.

I’m short of time, so here’s the meaty bit out of Jay’s review of/response to the article:

It is a very intelligent and compelling argument and, I suspect, represents the political fallback position of the CHRC and its dwindling band of supporters. Freiman refers to “procedural lapses or errors” and suggest that these should not vitiate the powerful idea that the Canadian telecommunications system should not “be used as a vehicle for hate propaganda“.

Unfortunately, as the CHRC’s investigative methods and total lack of process, discretion and restraint are revealed in the Lemire case and in the Steyn matter, it becomes increasingly apparent the CHRC has long since abandoned any pretense of addressing the concerns the Supreme Court of Canada raised in Taylor. The highhanded conduct of the Member in Lemire, the fraudulent invocation of s. 37 of Canada Evidence Act by the Commission, the attempt on the part of Commission counsel to deny public access in that matter, the lying under oath of CHRC management employees, the arbitrary truncation of proceedings and cross examination based on no law whatsoever and a whole host of other gross violations of natural justice all suggest that the CHRC is not capable of properly and fairly administering s.13(1). In fact, the antics of the CHRC suggest is has become a greater ongoing evil than the de minimus evil it is seeking to suppress.

It’s that last bit that’s really relevant: the damage that the human rights commissions are causing to and in Canada is exponentially greater than the amount of hypothetical damage they might prevent. Hate crimes are a terrible thing, but stripping away — or imposing limits on — a fundamental freedom like the right to expression is actually even worse. Because while hate crimes lash out against groups or individuals, destroying or impairing freedom of speech attacks the nation as a whole.

Mark Mercier, in the Nova Scotia Chronicle-Herald, gives a brief historical refresher on Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

It’s…rather shameful to have to admit that Canadians should have seen the present HRC fracas coming almost twenty years ago.

Canadians heard a long time ago, at least as long ago as 1990, that they are not free to speak their minds as they see fit. 1990 was the year the Supreme Court of Canada ruled constitutional Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Section 13 says that it is “a discriminatory practice” to communicate “any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

…

A person of sense in 1990 could easily have predicted that s. 13 would soon be used, as it has indeed come to be used, to bully people away from saying what sitting commissioners happen not to want to hear.

The Supreme Court had three people of sense on it in 1990. The Court upheld the constitutionality of s. 13 by a mere 4-3 majority.

The Justices who got their way discounted their colleague’s fears. As long as authorities remember that hatred and contempt are extreme feelings, they said, and keep in mind that the purpose of the Act is to overcome discrimination, and not to censor speech, Canadians have no reason to fear that a chilly climate for opinion will descend on the country or that s. 13 will be used to control the expression of opinion and emotion. These Justices neglected the sage advice never to make a law that requires intelligence or goodwill on the part of those who administer it.

Happily, Keith Martin, the member of parliament for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, a riding on Vancouver Island, has introduced into the House of Commons a private member’s motion, M-446, to delete s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Unhappily, the matter of s. 13 hasn’t yet become a political issue. Unless a political party takes it up, M-446 will languish, and unless Canadians make s. 13 a political issue, no party will take up M-446. We need to communicate to politicians our support for M-446.

I don’t think it can be said any clearer than that. If, as Canadians, we value freedom — which means valuing freedom even for those we perhaps find distasteful — then the only option is to support Bill M-446. If we fail to do so, we knowingly abdicate any future claim to be free people.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Well, not that old…1990 to be specific.

I was particularly interested by this bit:

“The court ruled 4 to 3 that Section 13(1), while a restriction of the Charter right of freedom of expression, was a justifiable limitation on the part of the government. That would seem a problem for proponents of a rollback of Section 13(1), except for two factors.

“One, the court’s majority set the bar quite high for human rights bodies. A finding of hatred or contempt, the judges said, ‘refers only to unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification.’ With that understood, there was ‘little danger that subjective opinion as to offensiveness will supplant the proper meaning.’ But exactly what the majority said would not happen, in fact has.

“Two, the dissenters on the court said Section 13(1) was ‘too broad and too invasive and catches more expressive conduct than can be justified by its objectives.’ In essence, the three dissenting judges warned the section’s wording could result in overreach by the human rights body, which is, in fact, what we’re seeing. They also feared ‘the vagueness of the law may deter more conduct than can legitimately be targeted.’ In other words, putting a chill into people’s desire to speak freely.

On one hand, it’s a pity that the implications of Section 13 were obvious even back in 1990, and on the other hand it’s a shame that, by then, human rights commissions had been in operation for 15 years or so. Reading the dissenting opinion is rather like reading the current freespeecher copybook, and it’s interesting to note how the fears of the dissenting judges came to be realized. Freedom of expression is indeed being eroded, as a right, in Canada, specifically because things like HRCs blow a “chill wind” on the concept. Freedom of expression must necessarily mean that even people who say things that hurt others must be allowed to speak their part; anything less than that is not freedom.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…a Supreme Court of Canada decision sentenced millions of the unborn to a most horrible death. The Henry Morgentaler decision was Canada’s Roe vs. Wade…but unlike in that case, the pro-abortion personality in the Canadian equivalent has not since flipped to the pro-life side.

Since the 1988 Supreme Court of Canada decision vindicating Morgentaler and decriminalizing all manner of abortion, a political chill descends whenever the subject is broached. In the last federal election, Paul Martin exploited the fear of an abortion ban to demonize Stephen Harper, who pointedly distanced himself from any challenge to the existing non-law. And when Conservative MP Rob Merrifield suggested pregnant girls might benefit from pre-abortion counselling, feminists tore a strip off him, urging women not to vote Conservative on that basis alone. Other politicians took the hint and kept shtumm.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease on abortion, it seems, and not the 68% of Canadians who in a 2004 poll said they wanted legal protection for fetuses at some point in their development. Most Canadians are uncomfortable with the complete ban on abortion (including cases of rape, incest and severe fetal deficit) advocated by ardent pro-lifers, and as well with the complete lack of constraints on abortion we now “enjoy.”

Canadians should be informed that the Morgentaler decision produced disturbing outcomes. But there is no public forum to discuss them. Here are two of the many resulting media orphans:

1) Young women today are more careless about becoming pregnant, indicating an increasing psychological desensitization to the creation of new life. For example, in 1988, 16% of pregnancies in Quebec, Canada’s most abortion-friendly province, resulted in abortion. Today, 30% do. Girls are using abortion — tax-funded and easily available — as an alternative form of birth control. No morally aspirational society should feel complacent abetting this trend.

2) A less predictable outcome (in Canada, at any rate) was, with access to early and improved ultrasound technology, the use of abortion for gender selection — a popular strategy amongst cultural groups that privilege male children. If even the women’s rights-obsessed Morgentaler balks here — “It seems a bit awkward to eliminate a fetus on the basis of gender,” he said in an interview — there can’t be many who would support it, or at least not on the basis of women’s rights. Yet it remains perfectly legal.

Abortion is like medicare: Both need a policy change, but for no logical reason an old template has evolved into such a sacred national cow that their respective ideological guardians are able to drown out reasonable voices.

The average progressive does not believe in open dialogue about the abortion issue, and for good reason — open dialogue about the issue inevitable favours those who oppose the practice of abortion as immoral and murderous. There is simply no way to sidestep the fact that at its core, what the abortion issue is really about is whether or not, and (if so) at what stage(s) of development, it is considered legal for one human being to kill another.

For that is the plain truth about abortion. There is little point in denying — absent any religious consideration, mind — that the gestating child within the womb of a woman is, biologically, both of the species homo sapiens and genetically distinct from either of its parents. That is simply a more complex way of saying that the unborn are human. Likewise, the unborn are alive in almost every case, for in almost every case in which one is born the baby turns out to be alive (and, usually, quite vocally so). Abortion, then, in terminating the existence of the unborn, is killing a living human being.

But that is not the only way in which the abortion issue can be shown to be the horror that it is when the discussion about it is open and honest. Two more examples can be found above: the idea of “safe, legal, and rare” has been shown, in most cases, to be little more than a lie, while in many places around the world (even here in Canada), abortion is used to the detriment of women. Red China is the easiest example, where approximately 116 male children are born for every 100 female children (if I do remember the statistics from America Alone correctly) — and a part of the reason why this happens is because Chinese parents prefer their one allowed child to be male, and so abort any pregnancy in which the child is female. The same happens a bit further south, in places on the Indian sub-continent. And the same happens here.

But of course, progressives do not care to discuss this. They instead cling to the tired platitude that the ability to choose to have an abortion is “a woman’s right”. But to have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing that thing, and I think that is certainly true in the case of abortion. And indeed, bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind that the right of my fist to swing ends just shy of the right of my friend’s nose to occupy a point in space, perhaps we need to re-think whether women really have the right to choose to end the life of a living human being who is related to, but genetically distinct, from them, regardless of said human being’s current place of residence.