Are You Part Of The Spike?

Boy, did I blow it.

I figured the OHRC would lay off the newspapers and let their press statement fade into memory. But no. Instead, they ramped up the rhetoric.

Quick re-cap: Maclean's ran a Mark Steyn book excerpt that somebody took as bigotry; they complained to various human right commissions, including the Ontario branch (you get to file a complaint in every provincial human rights commission, as well as the Federal one, a pretty good deal); the OHRC didn't hear the complaint, but called Maclean's Islamophobic anyway; in the same statement, they said the media had to be careful about what they printed; the media freaked; I said the OHRC would back off before they took too much heat from the press; instead, the OHRC's Barbara Hall decided to expand on her statement, a very strange move unless she wants a confrontation with the press; got it now?

The National Post interviewed Hall, and her statements are frightening indeed. The one that should scare you the most is this:

"I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that's a very low level," the activist lawyer [Hall] and former mayor of Toronto said. In the long term she would like to see human rights complaints decrease, but in the interim they "may have to spike."

Hmmm.

They may have to spike.

Right now you're saying, "Ah, cool it, Berry. The OHRC can't force the complaints to spike."

Oh? Perhaps you haven't heard of June 30, 2008. On that date, the OHRC will not have to wait for someone to complain to them about a human rights violation. Rather, they will be able to charge people with human rights violations themselves. Any writer, filmmaker, or artist will have to keep the OHRC in the back of their mind when they ply their craft, aware that the OHRC will have investigators prowling the magazines, art galleries, newspapers, and cyberspace.

And why wouldn't they be prowling? Their boss, after all, says that the numbers are too low and have to spike. It's simple, really: in order for everyone at the OHRC to keep their jobs, they have to find violations to process, day after day, year after year.

These are incredibly sad times in my homeland. Even an indignant smartass like me is going to feel the chill. "Should I write this? Can I say that? Why so many visits from someone in Toronto? Am I being...investigated?"

The morons that have defended these commissions simply don't get it: you've helped raise a monster. On June 30, it won't matter which side of the political spectrum you're on. Your piety be damned. All it takes is one unelected official to find your stuff troublesome, and they can turn your life upside down. They have quotas to fill. When they're done with your enemies, who do you think they'll turn to next? Way to go, buttheads.

Hey Jamil, do you hear me down there? My ex-pat Canadian friend, living in Australia? Did you think you'd see a day where a Canadian civil servant would be paid to bring people before a tribunal for something they'd written, even though they had committed no crime and offended no one except the civil servant?

The true north, strong and free.

Says who?