Earlier today, we were contacted by "Maclean's" and asked about our take on the demise of Sec. 13. We responded as follows:
We think
that the government was incredibly short sighted in their decision to eliminate
Sec. 13. It was a useful and cost-effective tool in the effort to eliminate
some very vile, hateful, and potentially dangerous rhetoric online and in the
public sphere. Now we have only the criminal code which, in a few cases, is
like using a machete when a scalpel would have been more prudently utilized.
Those
individuals and groups who were called before the Human Rights Tribunal and who
were found to have violated Sec. 13 were not innocent lambs who were victimized
by Big Brother. They were people and groups who were causing real harm in their
communities. Their words did result in harm, and I don't mean hurt feelings.
People's homes were vandalized. People have been assaulted. And these criminal
acts had, in many cases, began with the dehumanization of fellow Canadians for
no other reason than their ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation.
The people
who are celebrating this are the extremists on Stormfront and VNN and a host of
other racist webforums, but as we wrote on our blog they should consider that
now there is only the criminal code and the penalties are more severe than
anything Sec. 13 dished out. It should also be noted that racists aren't
content with only Sec. 13. Paul Fromm, for instance, has said he and his
group will next focus their attention on the criminal code sections regarding
hate crimes.
We get the impression that the "Maclean's" in which Sec. 13 will be discussed is coming out this week. We don't expect that our entire response will be published, or if any of it will be for that matter, but if it is we thought we'd include the entirely of our response here.
And as for the responses from the boneheads, we present a small selection: