Steyn Wars

Mark Steyn goes in front of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal today. This makes it Episode 2 of Steyn Wars. The first installment was a couple of months ago, when a complaint against Maclean's magazine wound up in front of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

That commission decided that it couldn't prosecute Maclean's or Steyn for a hate crime, but the commissioner did say that news magazines had to watch it when they published stories.

If you haven't heard by now, the question is about free speech. Maclean's ran an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, which two people found offensive. Their names are Naiyer Habib and Mohamed Elmasry. They're the two complainants in the earlier Episode One's OHRC case, Episode Two's BCHRT case (today), and Episode Three's Canadian Human Right Commission case (sometime in the near or distant future).

At least, as far as I know. This story is so convoluted, it's hard to keep track. Last year I was sitting in an Italian restaurant getting drunk, and the last thing on my mind was Canada, or Maclean's magazine. I wasn't thinking too much about human rights either, unless you count cheap beer as a right that should be available to all (it should).

Oooookay. So here goes:

Mark Steyn writes a book. In it, he quotes a European imam as saying that Muslims "breed like mosquitoes." Steyn shows that demographically, there will be more Muslims in Europe than any other faith, and that this will change the political and cultural landscape of Europe. Maclean's decides to run the "mosquito" section of the book. Naiyer Habib and Mohamed Elmasry find the excerpt offensive. Even though it was the European imam that said the mosquito stuff, they charge that Steyn is Islamophobic. They file complaints with the Ontario, British Columbia, and Federal branches of the Canadian human rights commissions. That's commission(s). News to me, too. Last year, I had no clue there was a human rights commission in every province.

Time moves on with the scripting for the Steyn Wars trilogy, and no one hears from Naiyer Habib or Mohamed Elmasry, because a bunch of law students get on board and "represent" them. What they want is this: a Maclean's cover story written by a writer of their choosing, which Maclean's must publish but can't edit. They want their own artwork to go with it, and it needs to be around 5000 words.

Crazy, huh? Why would a magazine agree to do that?

Maclean's didn't. And so the human rights trials began, where the students (and I guess the original two complainants, though you seldom see their names in the papers) are attempting to get the government to force Maclean's to run the piece, or otherwise punish ("remedy") Maclean's for running Steyn's work. According to The Province, the Canadian Islamic Congress wants monetary compensation from the affair.

Anyway, here we sit, months later. Steyn Wars I opened to lukewarm reviews. The Ontario branch decided they couldn't do anything, not because they didn't want to, but because the OHRC has no mandate covering magazines. So now it's Steyn Wars II. British Columbia's turn.

If you think the sequel is going to be boring and lame, don't sweat it, the producers have thrown in a twist. Unlike Ontario, the British Columbia human rights tribunal does have something to say about publications. On their website, they say it's a human rights violation to publish anything that could likely expose anyone to hatred or contempt. As an added bit of theatre, the producers even changed the name of the bad guy. In BC, they're not a "Commission," they're a "Tribunal." You can almost hear the wind whip up as the skies darken.

The Canadian human rights commission(s) started so you couldn't refuse someone a job or housing because of their race. A few decades later, and they've bloated to the point where they can tell magazines what to publish.

In British Columbia, the human rights tribunal is especially overblown. Check this one out: in April, they declared that it's discriminatory for McDonald's to tell their employees to wash their hands. I know, I know, you want the whole story. But it's so damn...oh, all right. A woman said she couldn't wash her hands because she has a skin condition. When McDonald's said she had to, she said she couldn't, and so McDonald's let her go. Bam. Human rights complaint. In the end, she was awarded over $23 000 in back pay, $25 000 for hurt feelings and dignity, plus $400 for dental and medical. Oh, plus interest on the back pay and medical. McDonald's was also ordered to cease its discriminatory behavior.

Gross. A government agency just told a restaurant that their employees don't have to wash their hands if they don't want to. So much for those "All Employees" signs in the outhouse.

Anyway, now it's Steyn's turn. He's guessing that the BCHRT will find him guilty of offending someone, and force Maclean's to run some sort of rebuttal-essay.

If that happens, it's really the end of Canada as we know it. What would be the point of writing anything? Even if you can get over your fear of writing something un-PC in the first place, there's a good chance you'll be ordered to give someone else a spot in your paper, magazine, or blog, so they can tell your audience that you're a bonehead.

That used to be called a Letters section. Now it's called a human right.

Weird. And scary. We'll see how Steyn Wars II goes today, and what the critics think. But there won't be time to dwell on it. If the Maclean's and Canadian Human Rights Commission deal is still alive, then we'll have Steyn Wars III out in time for the Oscars.