One of the controversial cases
Bindel highlighted was that of Canadian male to female transsexual, Kimberley Nixon, who was
rejected as a counsellor by the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter. Nixon then made a formal human rights complaint to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which ruled life experience as a woman was not a necessary prerequisite to be a counsellor to raped and battered women and ordered the shelter to pay her $7, 500 for hurt feelings. The BC Supreme Court subsequently overturned the decision.
If it sounds ridiculous that's because it is but the Nixon case is in fact the tip of the iceberg. There's something very strange going on in Canada and many of us on this side of the pond don't know anything about it. That's going to change. You're about to find out why so many Canadian bloggers have Free Mark Steyn logos affixed to their blogs.
First some background. In the 60s and 70s human rights commissions (HRCs) were set up in Canada charged with investigating discrimination in housing and employment. Then in 1977 the Human Rights Act was passed which, under section 13, allowed them to hear complaints about material "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" by reason of race, age, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, etc." It sounds frighteningly well-intentioned, vague and since the commissions are entitled to act against "offensive" speech, likely to conflict with the basic democratic right to freedom of speech. And so they do.
Sure enough, a number of the human rights complaints have been characterised by their frivolousness and - significantly - every section 13 complaint ever referred to the federal human rights tribunal has been upheld. They have an 100% success rate. This may not be unrelated to the fact that Canadian HRCs are are quasi-judicial bodies and not, therefore, bound by the strict standards of procedure to protect defendants as normal courts.
In 2002, an Evangelical pastor, Stephen Boissoin wrote what sounds like a dotty letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate, in which he described the "homosexual agenda" as "wicked". So far so normal and the normal thing to do would be to write a letter of reply pointing out how silly the sentiments in his letter were. But instead an activist made a complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission which finally published
its decision this June. The tribunal agreed that Boissoin's green ink screed was not a criminal act but ordered him to "cease publishing in newspapers,
by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals." I'll emphasise the point so you can see how crazy it was.
He was ordered not to express his own dotty opinion even by private email. Boissoin was also ordered not to make "disparaging remarks" about the activist who'd made the complaint about him and witnesses who'd supported the complaint
and ordered him to provide the complainant with a written apology for his original letter
and told to "request their written apology for the contravention of the Act be published in the Red Deer Advocate"
and pay the complainant $5,000. About they only thing it didn't order him to do was stand in a corner with a dunce's hat on. The decision was rightly derided as "Stalinist", by critics. Oh and the Red Deer Advocate ran a thunderous Op-Ed about the entire farce, making clear that it had no intention of publishing an apology by Boissoin even if he were minded to write one.
In February 2006 the Western Standard reprinted the controversial Jyllands Posten cartoons of Mohammed. The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and the Edmonton Council of Moslem Communities complained and the magazine's co-founder, the ascerbic conservative commentator, Ezra Levant was duly hauled before an HRC. On the same day that Levant appeared before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission he defiantly republished the cartoons on his website. He delivered an even more
defiant speech in his interview with human rights investigator, Shirlene McGovern which has since become a
Youtube classic. As it was such a compelling speech it's worth quoting some of it:
"It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights."Maybe it's because Levant is a well-known public figure and his case became such a cause célèbre that the complaints were later withdrawn and dismissed.
Something similar happened to Mark Steyn, who wrote a controversial article entitled "The Future belongs to Islam" which was published in Maclean's magazine. In 2007
a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) , charging that the article and the magazine's refusal to allow a rebuttal violated the complainants human rights, with further complaints being filed at the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT). The complaints were eventually
dismissed but not before the head of the CHRC, Jennifer Lynch, wrote a prim public letter to the editor of Maclean's which showed that she'd kind of missed the point:
"Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free reign. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."Spot the spelling mistake? It's Lynch's, not mine and somehow very fitting.
Bloggers have also been caught up in this bizarre frenzy of litigation, with five conservative bloggers - Ezra Levant, Free Dominion.ca, Kate McMillan, Jonathan Kay and Kathy Shaidle - all being
sued for libel by Richard Warman. Warman, a lawyer who used to work for the CHRC, has been dubbed "Canada's most sensitive man" for his propensity to Section 13 litigation. Apparently, the British Columbia government even had to pass a law protecting public libraries from Warman's litigiousness. Warman says he's fighting hate and it's true that he's targeted a lot of neo-nazis in his time
but his critics say he's a menace to civil liberties. According to Ezra Levant, "It’s impossible to criticize section 13 without criticizing Warman, because without Warman, section 13 would have been defunct years ago – almost no-one else in this country of 33 million people uses it." He added: "Warman’s goal is breathtaking in its chutzpah: he wants to muzzle the Canadian conservative Internet." You can read more about it all
here.
What's been the net result of all this?
Well, for one thing, it's made Ezra Levant and others into vigorous campaigners for free speech. In July Levant was invited to make a presentation to the U.S. Congress's bi-partisan human rights caucus.
It makes for powerful reading. He accuses the Canadian HRCs of prosecuting religious fatwas on the one hand and persecuting believers on the other and points out that Canadian human rights legislation is so sweepingly vague that a documentary about the Holocaust could be against the law, since it could, possibly, cause people to have feelings of contempt for Germans. "This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba," he declared. And this is what he urged his audience to do about it:
"Publish annual reports shaming foreign countries for their abuses of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Put Canada on that list, to let our government know what they’re doing isn’t acceptable."
Some may ask why we should care. After all, what does it matter if a few religious fundamentalists and neo-cons get slapped down for their offensive opinions?
Because we should, is the answer. This isn't about a bunch of conservatives bitching about the political-correctness-gone-mad world of tabloid cliche, there are important points of principle at stake here. Fundamentalists, neo-cons and everybody else for that matter are, or should be, entitled to hold and express whatsoever opinions they fancy in any liberal democracy worthy of the name. Definitions of what is or is not offensive are arbitrary and if we cede our free speech rights to the state there's no telling where it will stop. Today it may be the wacky streetcorner preacher who is told to shut up, tomorrow it may the anti-war protester, or the person who holds quaint views about proletarian revolution. It is emphatically not the job of human rights commissions to police speech. That's not what human rights are supposed to be about. The drive to classify pungent opinions as human rights abuses brings the very noble notion of human rights into disrepute while doing precisely nothing to address the very real human rights abuses perpetrated across the globe. Imagine you were some tinpot dictator living a gold-plated lifestyle while imposing a rule of fear on the populace, controlling the press, using the police as private army of thuggish enforcers and intimidating political opponents with long stretches in jail, torture or execution, in other words that you were doing exactly the kind of thing that tinpot dictators do. Hold that thought. Now imagine you were that person and you read about the infantile theatrics of the Canadian HRCs. How you'd laugh. Human rights don't have anything to do with humans or rights, you'd think, they're just a brilliant excuse for censorship. And you know what? You'd be right.
