Moon report

The bottom line is that the Canadian Human Rights Commission's hand-picked investigator, law professor Richard Moon, is recommending repeal of s.13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. His argument is mostly pragmatic, mostly in dialogue with the wording of past legal decisions and existing legislation and international "human rights" codes. While seeing various practical limits to existing law, the Moon report, not surprisingly, does not provide any kind of serious challenge to the reigning orthodoxies of postmodern thought, what some of us call the "human rights" world view.

While recommending repeal, Moon also recognizes that Jenniffer Lynch and the rest of the gang at the CHRC need not promote his recommendations to government, and so he has provided them with a variety of alternative arguments, such as changing s. 13 so that "hate speech" cases under the Human Rights Act will be dealt with more like criminal prosecutions, and encouraging Internet Service Providers and Press Councils to do more on their own to police and silence what they deem to be hate speech. The impracticalities of such suggestions are already being noted.

I want to finish reading the report before commenting further. Many other bloggers are already providing good first reactions to the report. If I can add anything it will be after a leisurely read and an analysis of Moon's way of thinking through the human problem of "hate" and the reasons why humans need freedom of expression.

You can find the report here (pdf), summarized by the CHRC here.

Deborah Gyapong has many useful posts up, including response from Ottawa politicians, as does Jay Currie. Looking at the impractical side of Moon's recommendations is Mark Steyn.  Meanwhile, Ezra Levant is analyzing Jennifer Lynch's response as an attempt to throw Moon's report under the bus.

Sadly for this blog, Blazing Cat Fur sees this to be a moment of apparent victory and thus time for a blogging hiatus. She has worked with amazing energy to provide us daily coverage of the "human rights" and free speech debate, often attracting the unwanted attention of disparate traders in hate and victimhood, and my best wishes go out to her.
-------------
On the other side of this debate, Bnai Brith has issued a press release (via email):

TORONTO, November 24, 2008 – B’nai Brith Canada has reacted with mixed reviews to the release today of the Report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission Concerning Section 13 of the Canadian Human Right Act and the Regulation of Hate Speech on the Internet prepared by University of Windsor law Prof. Richard Moon.

“Doing away with section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act governing hate speech, a key suggestion put forth by Prof. Moon in his Report, would be a step in the wrong direction,” said Marvin Kurz, National Legal Counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. “However, we do favour in principle the type of middle approach also outlined by Moon, which opens the door to necessary reform of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

“The Moon Report proposes amendments to both section 13 and the Criminal Code that have the potential to dramatically alter existing standards for combating hatred. A careful review of the recommendations of the Report and their potential public policy implications is essential before any action is taken.

Our dirty linen

I welcome the news that the RCMP may be investigating the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as Marc Lemire has every reason to suggest that it seems he has been pursued by that organization by methods illegal. Ezra suggests (see also: Catfur and Steyn) that the investigation is already under way, though I'm not sure exactly what evidence he has for that, other than a note from the Ottawa Police that they have sent the question on to the RCMP. In any case, it's clear that so many questions about corruption at the CHRC have been raised (here's only the latest), that the scandal that has developed cannot be resolved by some discrete police investigation.

It's time for the government to act and to appoint a full and complete investigation into the operations of Canada's "human rights" police. As Jay Currie suggests, Messrs. Harper, Nicholson, and the rest of the federal cabinet could start by taking a tip from the BC Civil Liberties Association.

Of course, i would go on to argue that corruption in any form of thought policing is never to be simply dismissed as a case of bad apples going too far; it is in fact the inevitable outcome of putting anyone in charge of deciding what is and what is not too offensive to be heard in public. To empower self-righteousness in any form is to beg for scandal, though that of course is the oldest story in the book.

As George Jonas noted over the weekend:

A similar story comes from my native town. Many years before TV ads offered remedies for erectile dysfunction, a no-longer-young physician was hauled before the local hospital board for seducing an elderly cleaning lady, regarded as a breach of work discipline in those days. He admitted to his indiscretion and was fined a hefty sum.

"Why did you, for heaven's sake?' someone asked him. "The lady in question is hardly irresistible."

The doctor shrugged. "Anybody can go to bed with Gina Lollobrigida," he replied. "I wanted to test my virility."

All right. Going to bat for Mark Steyn's freedom of expression is like going to bed with Gina Lollobrigida. Anybody can do it. The challenge to liberty's libido is going to bat for a James Keegstra's freedom of expression, or an Ernst Zundel's. Defending the Charter rights of crude racists and Holocaust deniers is a test of liberal virility. It's a test we failed. We failed the political equivalent of the Montreal chanteuse's sexual challenge: Going to bed with nausea.

Jay Currie does it again

This stuff writes itself. If Jay Currie keeps launching these complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, they may come to the conclusion that he is making fun of them. And in the process, they may also come to the correct conclusion that they too are an identifiable religious group, practicing the human rights world view, and thus to be protected from the potentially communicated contempt of the Curries of this world, under the Canadian Human Rights Act. At that point, Jay could be in the box... But Jay, with his motto "one damn thing leads to another", is surely himself some kind of identifiably religious person, whom we must protect from contempt, even state contempt, as such...

Jay even admits that he is operating from faith:

Some people have suggested, not unreasonably, that my complaints to the CHRC might not meet the “good faith” test. Should the Commission try this on they will be hit with a libel suit which will make the Warman/Kinsella actions look like chump change.

My complaints are made in entirely good faith and within the letter of the absurd law which is s.13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Any suggestion to the contrary will be greeted with a writ.

Also: don't miss Edward Michael George's reasonable if mirthful proposal that Mark Steyn lay a complaint against Mark Steyn.

Jay Currie: trapped in Section 13: not kosher

Jay Currie decides to fire off a human rights claim against a Judeophobic cartoon that appeared in Le Devoir, the Quebecois establishment newspaper, last summer. Jay thinks we can bring the Canadian Human Rights Act into disrepute by showing how this legislation (specificially Section 13) is a very broadly worded attack on free expression that can only be effectively applied arbitrarily, from within a set of politicized assumptions about who are deserving victims (and cannot be treated with contempt in the media) and who are fair game. In this case, it is more a question of whether the offended can have a go at claiming some "human rights" money for the kind of thinly-veiled antisemitism that is now mainstream among the Canadian left-liberal opinion, and even coming to the surface in major political parties.

Then, a commenter points out to Jay that in re-publishing the offending cartoon, Jay is himself contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act. Be aware: nothing is kosher in Canada, unless the very religious law givers at 344 Slater St., Ottawa, say so.

UPDATE and related: a story on the antisemitic Quebec cartoons from the Brussels Journal.

Also: Tahir Aslam Gora, The Hamilton Spectator (Apr 17, 2008):

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has accused Canadian media in general of contributing to racism and Islamophobia, in the context of complaints filed to the commission about The Future Belongs To Islam, a controversial book excerpt published by Maclean's magazine in 2006.

The commission ruled it didn't have jurisdiction to proceed with the complaints, but lectured the media.

"The commission has serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's magazine and other media outlets.

"This type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia. The commission recognizes and understands the serious harm that such writings cause."

It's interesting that the commission views such writings as doing serious harm. The question arises why the commission considers opinion pieces such as The Future Belongs To Islam so offensive but is not familiar with the violent terrorism-inciting messages by some of the radical Islamic groups in Ontario.

For instance, a well-known Toronto-area Islamic fundamentalist wrote on Facebook last week: "Jews who support Zionism and Israel ... since they are killing Palestinians ... killing them is not bad ... they all are mass murderers ... and they deserve to die."

The commission appears to be trying to be "fair" in its recent statement slandering the media for contributing to Islamophobia.

But to be fair, does the commission know about the many ethnic media outlets that spread direct hatred and arrogant stereotypes against fellow Canadians -- Christians, Jews, whites?

If not, the commission would be better off expanding its studies to all the actually influential media outlets in Canada. That might make its statements more fair and balanced rather that portraying a one-sided story.

Unfortunately, this fine point about "human rights" commission hypocrisy ends by propagating the widely-believed myth in the possibility of "fair and balanced" media. This is an inherently liberal elitist idea, for there can be no determination of "fair and balanced" without such an elite determining who is too "extreme", and who not. The Canadian "human rights" commissions are the institutionalization of this inherently political or ideological denial of politics and ideology.

Important Day for Canadian Freedom

Today, we will hopefully learn a little more about when or how employees of the Canadian state have gone incognito on white nationalist web sites, and left hateful comments, all the better to build cases for hate crimes against these same sites. In a hearing room in Ottawa, it will be Marc Lemire's chance finally to put questions to agents of the "human rights" nomenklatura who have previously tried to hide from Lemire's (or his lawyer's) questions behind sections of the Canada Evidence Act that are designed to protect high state secrets from public view, not rogue thought police.

For those needing background on the story, the National Post has been one of the few Canadian media outlets doing serious reporting. Here's the recent article by Joseph Brean, and here's some thoughtful commentary by Jonathan Kay.

Blogger Jay Currie warns that the focus of today's hearing is narrow and the "human rights" apparatchiks will surely try their best to be evasive when it comes to remembering any of their more nefarious deeds.

But Ezra Levant thinks that whatever unfolds in the hearing room, this is already a turning point; for the first time there will be at least some serious coverage of the "human rights" scandal by the MSM:

Tomorrow may mark the hundredth day that bloggers like me -- or the indispensable HRC-watch site, Free Mark Steyn -- has weighed in. Mark Steyn, who has been fighting these commissions like hell, will be there, as you would expect. But for many mainstream reporters, like Maclean's Charlie Gillis, it's the beginning of their HRC beat. The National Post's Joseph Brean is clearly just getting warmed up, too. I wonder who else will be there; I suspect CanWest will have a reporter there, if they don't pick up Brean's work. I wouldn't be surprised if the Globe's Peggy Wente attends, or someone from that paper's Ottawa bureau, simply to stay competitive with the Post on the subject. I think Debbie Gyapong is attending -- as usual, she's bound to pick up one some details that others overlook.

And we find at Deb Gyapong's blog some thoughts on where we presently are, trapped between our national past and future, looking for the way to close a chapter and move on:

The fact that Jewish groups have used human rights law, and gay and non-gay gay supporters have followed suit, has rightly given Muslims groups the argument that suddenly clamping down on them when they try to use it is unfair and discriminatory. What's a multicultural society supposed to do?

We stand at a crossroads. Either everyone is going to get shut down and the nanny state will enforce political correctness on everyone and Canada will invite Google and its Silicon Valley North to create a great Internet firewall like China has. Unfortunately, this seems to be the approach that the Canadian Jewish Congress is taking. Or we could see a move to protect even the more odious speech that has hitherto been illegal in society.

Whatever way you look at this, the system is broken. We need a Royal Commission to investigate this from top to bottom. The law needs a thorough examination, so do the practices of human rights commissions.

So does Canada's approach to multiculturalism. Canada needs a revival of her Judeo-Christian roots, because without that, there is no support in a shared belief system for the civil rights we hold dear such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Without that anchoring in a shared narrative, we cannot welcome with generosity the minority religions in our midst.