Canada’s Human Rights Kangaroo Court
Why is the Canadian Human Rights Commission permitted to employ high-tech Stalinist tactics?
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Next time someone threatens to “move to Canada” over real or imagined Patriot Act overreach, present him with this scenario:
Having settled into his new Ottawa digs, your expatriate pal is reading his morning paper when a familiar name leaps off the newsprint: his own.
Turns out Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) investigators were trolling your friend’s neighborhood for unprotected wireless internet connections, and leeched onto his.
Why? So they could post racist comments under assumed names on “neo-Nazi hate sites,” then charge the site’s owners with … publishing hate speech.
That’s how your innocent friend’s name and address got read aloud — then hastily broadcast by Blackberrying bloggers and journalists — in open court, as evidence in one of the CHRC’s most widely publicized cases.
So now your left-wing expatriate friend is widely suspected of being either a neo-Nazi racist or part of a secret government entrapment scheme.
His phone starts ringing. It won’t stop for quite some time.
Kind of a buzzkill after all those (highly exaggerated) reports about “gay marriage” and “legalized pot” up here in the Great White North, eh?
On March 25 there were gasps in an Ottawa hearing room when testimony during Warman vs. Lemire revealed that just such Soviet-flavored tactics were being used during CHRC “hate speech” investigations.
Gasps are rarely heard during CHRC hearings — they’re normally not open to the public or the press. Macleans magazine sued to get columnist Mark Steyn access to Tuesday’s event, which had originally been declared in camera for somewhat shaky “security” reasons. (Steyn and the magazine face an unrelated CHRC kangaroo court case later this year, charged with “flagrant Islamophobia” for publishing an excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone; the commission became Steyn’s de facto “beat” after he and the magazine were served in December 2007.)
“Free societies do not hold secret trials except for the most serious reasons of national security: mid-level servants of the Crown who get their jollies by posing as racists on unread websites do not fall into that category,” wrote Steyn before heading to Ottawa, adding, “I’ve been received in Buckingham Palace and the White House; I’ve passed the security checks at the Pentagon and the European Commission. … And yet I’m too big a security risk to be allowed anywhere near minor civil servants of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Why don’t they just cut to the chase and rename it the Human Rights Politburo?”
Set up in the 1970s to tackle housing and employment discrimination, the only “speech” crimes the HRCs originally investigated were those proverbial “No Irish Need Apply” signs.
Inevitably, the tribunals began exercising their quasi-judicial powers to enforce then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s new vision of Canada: multicultural, blindly tolerant, and trendily “progressive.”
In one notorious case, “a Christian printer [was] ordered to produce business cards and letterhead for an organization that promotes pro-pedophilia essays, [was] fined $5,000 for having refused to do so, and [was] left with $40,000 in legal bills for daring to defend himself.”
That printer and others like him — almost always conservatives and usually Christians — including one Catholic bishop charged with “homophobia,” Steyn and Macleans, and the defendant in Warman vs. Lemire, have all attracted the CHRC’s ire because they’ve said or done something “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”
That’s from Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Note that magic word: “likely.” No need to prove certain words or images inspired tangible hate crimes, like arson or assault. Rather, CHRC bureaucrats need merely deem it “likely” that persons unknown might commit such crimes between now and the end of the world. That’s “thought crime” meets “future crime.” And it is enshrined in Canadian law.
Oh, and the Human Rights Commission’s conviction rate for Section 13.1 cases? A Stalinist 100%.
Nobody’s ideal free speech poster boy, Marc Lemire of Warman vs. Lemire used to head the allegedly neo-Nazi Heritage Front. That there are more Nazis in the average Hogan’s Heroes rerun than in all of Canada didn’t deter the HRC from investigating Lemire, without warrants, and employing those other dubious “drive-by Wi-Fi” techniques described above — techniques that not a few observers of Tuesday’s kangaroo court have dubbed, well, “fascist.”
As Jonathan Kay observed in the National Post, “for an organization that is supposed to promote ‘human rights,’ the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of Canadian constitutional law. In one famous on-the-record exchange during the Lemire case, [CHRC lead investigator Dean] Steacy was asked ‘What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints? — to which he replied ‘Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.’”
“There must be a few genuine white supremacists whooping it up over at [the hate site] Stormfront,” Steyn wrote in his post-hearing dispatch, “but they seem to be thin on the ground. Mr. Steacy, the CHRC’s lead investigator, is a member of Stormfront; Richard Warman, celebrated Canadian ‘human rights’ crusader and plaintiff on every CHRC case since 2002, is a member of Stormfront; and Sgt. Stephen Camp is a member of Stormfront.
“What proportion of Canada’s ‘white supremacists’ are, in fact, government employees? On a quiet day, chances must be pretty good that you’ll log on and find the joint deserted except for ‘jadewarr’ (Mr. Steacy) trying to entrap ‘estate’ (Sgt. Camp) while ‘estate’ (Sgt. Camp) is simultaneously trying to entrap ‘axetogrind’ (Mr. Warman).”
If only they’d all arrest each other and leave the rest of Canada, and the internet, alone.
Alas, it is not to be. Even if Section 13.1 is scrubbed from the law — as some lawmakers are demanding — or a Royal Commission is established to investigate the investigators, neither will happen for years.
Meanwhile, the Warman vs. Lemire decision is scheduled for June and Mark Steyn faces his first tribunal that same month.
Pat Buchanan’s comical nickname for my country, “Soviet Canuckistan,” is proving more accurate than he ever imagined.
Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury. Mark Steyn has called her new e-book Acoustic Ladyland a “must read.”
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42 Comments
Tony Ryan:Good article - not much else needs to be said about the CHRC.
Its an embarrasment to Canada. Just like the UN itself, a really good idea with good intentions has been destroyed by a collection of bozos who, if left to their own devices, would happily bring civilization to its knees whilst being utterly convinced that THEY are the good guys.
Time to take the matches off these children - they aren’t grown up enough to be allowed to play with them.
Apr 4, 2008 - 4:00 am Kathy Shaidle:Thanks, Tony.
PS: It goes without saying that Mark Steyn’s brand new piece about this ‘drive by Wi-Fi’ business is vastly superior to mine:
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080402_88987_88987
Apr 4, 2008 - 4:32 am noel:Yes, indeed, it’s a good article, Tony. And no more ought to be sufficient. But that’s not the Way the Universe appears to work.
Kathys or Marks or Ezras need, MUST, keep saying, writing, pleading. You and I must keep saying, writing, pleading. Truth is not dead; it needs its food and it needs its air to keep its Life alive.
Truth is absolute; it can be viewed from various perspectives. It can deliver us from the bondages forced upon us. Even though CHRC-gorilla-tape can keep us in bondage for a time, the Truth will set us free — one day, says my dream and my hope. CHRC-gorilla-tape does not a prison make.
It may not be such a bad thing for civilization to be on its knees, if that meant that individuals were seeking the Truth, clearly seen by all who have the will to see it.
Legend or not, there is truth in the long-winded comment…
“Never, never, never, never, never give up.”
That sentiment will help keep Truth alive, and permit us to voice the unique people we are while not stealing that voice from our neighbours.
Apr 4, 2008 - 8:03 am Mike Baughman:Hey Kathy, MS’s latest in Maclean’s is indeed superb, as always, but your “drive-by Wi-Fi” line is no slouch, and I snorted coffee through my nose at “there are more Nazis in the average Hogan’s Heroes rerun than in all of Canada”. Good work!
Apr 4, 2008 - 10:02 am Kathy Shaidle:Thanks Mike you are too kind!
Apr 4, 2008 - 10:19 am Richard Ball:It’s OK to pursue Nazis because they are safely white.
It’s not OK to pursue Muslim extremists because they are (mostly) not.
In 21st cc. Canada, sure we’re all equal; it’s just that some of us are more equal than others.
Apr 4, 2008 - 2:07 pm Haliburton:Just for the record, their are no sane, academically qualified physiologists or anthropologists on the face of the earth who would not classify the Semitic people as Caucasian (“white” if you prefer), whether they are Jews or Arabs. To suggest otherwise, is simply preposterous and a little game that no one should attempt to play! It is ludicrous to suggest that some Caucasians are ganging up against other Caucasians over “race issues”. Religion, of course! Culture, of course! But, sorry my crazy leftist friends, not race!
Apr 4, 2008 - 4:38 pm John Blake:On the ineluctable principle that centralized bureaucratic Statism grinds and grinds until such agencies as the CHRC itself fall into dust, these absolute gauleiters will only grow more ruinously power-crazed with time.
How long will Canadians sit quiet, chuckling at each Playskool Commission contretemps? Bound to that stake, who will douse such atavistic, profoundly reactionary and retrogressive flames? Must Parliament and the Queen’s First Minister truly lie supine to suffer such assaults?
Apr 4, 2008 - 5:34 pm JAMES PATE:no, no, it was a very bad idea with the worst of intentions. it did not become something b ad, it was created that way. the people who created it had no regard for “human rights.” it was created as a tool to by pass the rule of law and “human rights.” you still don’t get it. the Canadian government at that time created the system to get at individuals they did not like. the current Canadian government and the Canadian people of today, don’t care enough to do anything about it because to many of them want it the way it is.
Apr 4, 2008 - 6:21 pm Jim R:“It goes without saying that Mark Steyn’s brand new piece about this ‘drive by Wi-Fi’ business is vastly superior to mine”
You ‘vastly’ underestimate youself Kathy. Amusing and entertaining writing, as usual. Just like Steyn.
Apr 4, 2008 - 8:13 pm Brian G.:This is the kind of crap you would eventually get under Hillary or Obama. Maybe not as bad, but certainly things int hat direction. After all, there are many identity groups to pander to.
Apr 4, 2008 - 8:20 pm Lily S.:Great Post!
Apr 4, 2008 - 10:40 pm Wes H:Lily S.
http://www.myspace.com/zriiforlife
Pierre was a marxist and Hillary is a marxist. Obama is the same.
Apr 4, 2008 - 10:42 pm Jim R:The world view that hates freedom of the individual because it undermines statist power must be “laid on the ash heap of history” once and for all. (thank you Ronaldus Magnus)
And canadians need to get over the love affair with being “not the americans”.
Or as my momma used to say “stupid is as stupid does”.
Sorry Wes. If you think HRCs are a Canadian phenomena, check out Vermont’s and the bios of the ‘activists’ who work it.
Apr 4, 2008 - 11:33 pm Increase Mather:We will see this in the States shortly. The ACLU and their running dogs have real problems with the first and second amendments.
By 2020 this will be standard. “Courts” will be used to close down “hate” speech. What’s “hate” speech, anything the liberals say it is.
Apr 5, 2008 - 7:41 am JasRandal:The opposites of tyranny and socialism come around and meet at the ends. Without a truth principle to judge by, man is his own measure, and no one is more dangerous than a little man of high self-importance with a little power. Meanwhile, the good citizens slumber on dreaming of tomorrow’s bread and circus.
Apr 5, 2008 - 7:56 am tanstaafl:It’s a natural progression, isn’t it ?
First you start to think of your society as “enlightened”, all inclusive, “multicultural” (fill in the blank) and then, invariably and inevitably, along come the commissions and the bureaucrats to make sure these kinds of notions are enforced.
Trouble is, the individuals who gravitate to the sport of bureaucratic enforcement (members of the CHRC ?) are most frequently small-minded micro-managers themselves who have, suddenly, found themselves in a quasi official capacity to actually exercise their frustrated instincts.
With their small, subjective minds, these self-proclaimed enforcers of good start seeing violations in more and more places, more and more people and more and more venues. They come to believe it is their responsibility to set the standards for which speech or writing is “free” and which is prosecutable. Sounds just like Iran these days.
The so called enforcers adopt more and more the thinking and behaviors of the Stalinists and Nazis.
Anyway, if more and more Americans are escaping the US for the “freedoms” of Canada, I’d suggest that (beyond the availability of “healthcare” and pot) they might want to watch their backs.
Apr 5, 2008 - 8:01 am Jon A:Most countries of the world have “hate speech” laws which trump any guarantees of freedom of speech or expression. There is little protest. Few people see protecting “hate” as a cause worth fighting for.
Of course, once the camel has gotten his nose inside the tent, the whole animal will soon follow, and this is no exception. In both Europe and Canada, the definition of “hate speech” has systematically been expanded from advocating violence against a “protected” group to criticizing that group to in any way challenging the wisdom of multiculturalism and open borders. Hardly anyone protests against this either, since the media in these countries invariably portray those prosecuted under these laws as the epitome of evil.
For now, we in the U.S. do have constitutionally protected free speech, but as another commenter pointed out, the ACLU, and especially the SPLC, are hard at work trying to hollow out this protection. I suspect that “activist” judges who consider the Constitution a “living document” (i.e. one whose original meaning can be perverted at will to serve the whims of those currently in power) will use the same legal theory as used in Canada, which goes like this: Yes, free speech is a constitutional right, but constitutional rights sometimes collide with one another, and therefore can never be absolute. Minorities have the right to live peacefully, and free of fear of persecution. They cannot enjoy this freedom when “haters” are free to spew invective against them, and foster an atmosphere of bigotry that inevitably leads to discrimination and violence. These two rights must be weighed against one another, and a reasonable balance struck. You can guess what that balance looks like. Watch for this development in the U.S.
Apr 5, 2008 - 9:11 am Paul Gross:What I find surprising about situations like this is that they so are so obviously similar to the truth commissions etc in Orwell’s “1984″. Yet if you were to confront the CHRC with such an obvious comparison they would no doubt protest that the analogy did not apply and probably claim that their job was to protect us from “1984″. One of the hallmarks is the twisting of meanings; what does “human rights” mean? Obviously not the right to speak freely. I guess that was one of the real lessons of the story, that change to our culture happens so invidiously that we are immune to it. That is why efforts such as yours and Mark’s are so important, we need warning sirens to make us aware so that hopefully the public outcry does not come to late. Good article.
Apr 5, 2008 - 9:22 am Gus:This begs the question; If section 13 is designed to protect people from messages that might be likely to create hatred or contempt towards them, and that in order to do that it would be logical that such messages be easily accessed by the public, why do the investigators have to go to such lengths (even illegal)in order to find such messages?
Apr 5, 2008 - 2:03 pm Anonymous:For Richard Ball / Apr 4, 2008 - 2:07 pm :
Indeed! Want a bit more irony/WTF humor for the weekend? In the USA, Middle Eastern (let’s just say, for the heck of it…MUSLIMS) are categorized “WHITE,” yet Indonesian (let’s just say, for the heck of it…MUSLIMS) are “asian.”
OH YOU KID. WACKA DO WACKA DO.
Apr 5, 2008 - 4:45 pm TRM:I’ve always wondered, is it hate speech if those being spoke of are being accurately portrayed? Answer: Yes… just ask a liberal…
Apr 5, 2008 - 6:10 pm Solange Miller:The CHRC is biased with a feminist agenda…
The demographic winter is coming to Canada.
Aging workforce.
Apr 5, 2008 - 6:29 pm Jim R:geocities(dot)com/demographic_crash
Good comment Paul Gross.
Apr 5, 2008 - 8:11 pm ic:Dear Tony Ryan,
Calling someone “bozos” is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”
I hope you are not in Canada right now. If you are, you should double and triple lock your doors from now on and look over your shoulders when you venture out. May be not today, may be not tomorrow, some day, some time, Warman would track you down and drag you in front of the Kanadian Kangaroo Kourt. How much money can you afford to defend yourself? Have a care.
Sincerely,
Apr 5, 2008 - 10:13 pm Tony:(name withheld)
Maybe the actions of the CHRC could be likely to expose some Canadians to hatred and contempt for their tolerance of these “human rights” Kangaroo Kourts?
That being the case, perhaps someone in Canada could report the CHRC to the CHRC and, taking into account their 100% success rate in finding in favour of the plaintiff, they will clearly find against themselves and will have no option but to close themselves down.
Apr 6, 2008 - 8:39 am David. Ch.:first, I’d like to clarify that Marxism itself is not a bad thing, and therefore, marxist is not really a deragoratory term (Except that being a marxist means that you’re being delusional in your belief in the goodness of human nature). It’s the other forms of communism, namely Stalinism and Maoism, that can be called “bad”, or “evil”.
That being said, I fear that the “1984″ comment is right - if governments act like this, and dare to call it “Human Rights”, they pervert the meaning of those words, designed to protect our freedom of lifestyle, freedom of political affiliation, freedom of thought, and freedom of speech. I am glad that I was born in a country (Germany) where the concept of human rights are being held in such a high regard, that they refuse to sentence even the worst of criminals to death, and learned from it’s past.
Apr 6, 2008 - 9:54 pm ic:I sincerely hope that the governments of North America doesn’t need to start WWIII before they wake up and realize that their road, which they perhaps may have paved with good intentions, is going to lead them to a form of society resembling hell itself.
a country (Germany) where the concept of human rights are being held in such a high regard, that they refuse to sentence even the worst of criminals to death… thereby denying their victims’ and the victims’ love ones’ human right.
Apr 7, 2008 - 7:40 am Mark:Don’t worry, Canada. In the US we never get news about what goes on up in the Utopian Socialist haven up north. In the US, no news is good news. So your reputation as a perfect little lilly white utopia is preserved. Most Americans think you’ve even found a way to end intestinal gas. You still hear people talk about Big Brother in the US and wanting to escape to Canada. Freedom is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
May 14, 2008 - 3:10 pm Jake:I’m from Canada and I can attest to the fact that if you’re a member of a white supremist group you’d be better off to stay in America… or wherever else they tolerate people who run hate phone lines and hate websites. At least in America you can be “free” to hate them minorities and commies and to encourage your neighbors to do likewise. Who needs medicare when you’ve got a good dose of hate in you, eh?
May 25, 2008 - 3:52 pm JJN:Jake: The objection to this stuff has nothing to do with supporting racism. Whether it’s for child pornography, murder, serial rape, or war crimes when you have a system that conducts secret trials and has a 100% conviction rate, it is an affront to justice and equality. That’s not to mention the fact that this law is likely counterproductive, because you can’t fight ideas with bullets or handcuffs, or any of that. The law that allows this ends up spotlighting the idea, while simultaneously driving its spread underground, where the thought police can’t track it (which can then become the justification for setting up 24 hour surveillance of every private home…)
Jun 4, 2008 - 1:00 am Austin Buck:Wow, and I thought the UN was bad. Having visited all 10 of the Canadian provinces and a couple of the territories I have always been impressed with the beauty of your county and all the fine people I’ve met on my travels. I am sorry that you folks have to put up with the CHRC. Like those of that would like to get rid of the UN I would imagine that there are many of you that would like to get rid of the CHRC. How do you do that? Don’t Canadians have a Federal “freedom of speech” provision like our 1st Amendment? Or can orginizations like the CHRC run roughshod over the Canadian people without any oversight or legal limitations?
While the U.S. is no utopia I’d have to think long and hard before ever visiting Canada again.
Best
ADB
Jun 21, 2008 - 7:50 am