What the Hell's Going On In There?

One thing that caught my eye while reading up on the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) and Maclean's fiasco was Andrew Coyne's remark about a US reporter.

Some guy from the New York Times was in attendance. He's doing a story on the different ways that the two countries deal with speech laws. Coyne said the guy couldn't believe what he was seeing.

I'll say. I can just imagine a Yankee reporter wandering into the Vancouver hearing room and listening to bits like, "Strict rules of evidence don't apply," from the mouth of the Tribunal chair.

Andrew Coyne, a writer for Maclean's, was doing a live blog during yesterday's hearing. His report is pretty amazing stuff. I dare anyone to read it and not come away with a feeling that this whole human rights deal is absurd.

Actually, I shouldn't have said that. I went tiptoeing through the internet last night and saw a lot of commentary that sided with the human rights complaint against Maclean's, as well as the procedures being used by the BCHRT. Frankly, I figure that people are siding with the procedures because of who is on trial. Mark Steyn (Islamophobe) and Maclean's (Islamaphobe's publisher).

After reading Coyne's live blog, I guess the human rights procedures boil down to something like this:

1) there are no trial procedures as in any real court. The tribunal decides who speaks, and in which order, from day to day.

2) the complainant (in this case, Mohamed Elmasry) doesn't have to be in attendance. The hearing can go on without him. Facing your accuser? Forget it.

3) Hearsay evidence is admissible, and is still admissible even if one of the people who originally said something is in the room while you're giving the hearsay testimony.

4) Jurisdiction does not apply. In this hearing, a witness from Ontario testified that he read something in Ontario and was offended by it in Ontario...which is why he's testifying in a BC hearing room. From Coyne: "Julian Porter on his feet, objecting on territorial grounds, as Awan details how the article made him feel as he read it in downtown Toronto. Overruled."

5) Jurisdiction shopping is allowed. The complainant was not in attendance, so one of his representatives outlined how they looked at the human rights codes of various places, and made their picks. Ontario, BC, and the Federal human rights commissions. You've gotta get lucky sooner or later.

6) The original charge doesn't matter much, it's more about the alleged violation's impact on the world at large. This one is especially weird. Get this: the Steyn article in Maclean's is what the complaint is all about. Yet the witness (Khurrum Awan) went on at length about stuff he read after the Steyn article was released, and how it made him feel. The witness and his counsel are claiming that the Steyn article inspired these works. Blog posts, YouTube comments, and other internet material. This is especially creepy, because the state is being asked not to look at a specific incident, but to read the minds of anonymous nice-Canadians-turned-bigots and use it in their ruling. What does any of this have to do with Elmasry? Nothing.

7) Rules of evidence don't exist. For instance, yesterday the lead counsel for the complainant, Faisal Joseph, read from 20 Maclean's articles. Later in the day, blog post were read aloud, and comments from YouTube were referenced. How do we know who wrote this stuff? We don't. Could have been anybody. None of this stuff is vetted for veracity. Even the 20 Maclean's articles could be bogus, and the Tribunal would never know it. With no rules of evidence, do you think they investigated the articles for original accuracy before the hearing?

8) It's this next from the Tribunal that should scare you the most. Andrew Coyne: "Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism. Or in other words, there is no defence." That's Maclean's lawyer, giving a rundown of section 7.1, the section that says you can't expose people to hatred or contempt. Look at that list and tell me if he's wrong: there is no defence. If someone's offended by what you write, no matter how true, no matter how factual, then you're done like dinner for a hate offense.

I'm with the New York Times guy: what the hell's going on in there?

What disturbs me the most are the people that agree wholeheartedly with the procedure. Their hatred of Steyn and what he's written has fogged up their glasses. The common defence of the BCHRT that I'm reading is, "Maclean's and Steyn haven't been found guilty of anything yet, so it doesn't matter. It'll all go away, you haters, and you can get back to work."

Are people really that thick? The process in itself is a crime against a democratic society. Hearsay evidence. Shopping for a jurisdiction until you find one with favourable statutes. Filing simultaneous complaints and hoping to get lucky. Using the after-the-fact blog rants of strangers to condemn someone for what they've written. Not being able to face your accuser. Zero rules of evidence.

But really, the biggest crime is the complaint itself. "I didn't like what you wrote, so now I will bring you down." How many people will censor themselves now, just to avoid something like that? How many people will it silence?

The accusation is the conviction, the process is the punishment. Don't they get it? Actually, I think they get it only too well.

Keep Talking

I had an interesting chat with a buddy of mine tonight. We batted around the hockey playoffs for a while, I asked him how business was going, he asked me the same. Then he told me that he'd checked out my blog and he was curious about this "human rights stuff."

My friend stays up to date on things, so I asked him if he'd heard anything about the Mark Steyn/Maclean's deal. He told me he hadn't, but that he'd seen something in the Globe about the human rights issue sometime after reading my blog.

He said, "So give this stuff to me in a nutshell. Sounds like Communist Russia or something."

I found that interesting. My friend and I are fairly opposite on the political side of things. I lean more right, he leans more left. I was wondering how he was going to view the Canadian human rights issue. Then it occurred to me that this stuff isn't about right or left. For people that are immersed in the internet, the world is all right and left. For people like my friend, life is just life, and it becomes left or right on election day.

See, my buddy's just some guy. He doesn't scour the news for political conspiracies. Like most Canadians, before tonight he had no idea that there's a human rights commission in every province, or even what they're for. So when I told him about the stuff going on now, he was a bit incredulous.

I explained things further, and the further I went, the more he said, "Jesus. What?"

We talked about the bar owner in Burlington that got screwed for not letting a guy smoke dope on his porch, and we talked about the free speech stuff, and we talked about the dude in Vancouver that wants BDSM to be called a "sexual orientation," so much so that he's using it in a discrimination complaint against the cops.

The more we talked, the more my buddy didn't quite believe me. He said, "So...it's like civil suits or something? Like, they can award punitive damages."

And I said, "No, as far as I can tell, they award all kinds of damages, but they're careful not to call them 'punitive.' They're called 'remedies.'"

To which my friend replied, "Huh." Then he asked who Mark Steyn is and what all that was about. Again, he laughed and said he wanted it in a nutshell.

"Well," I said, "it's like this. Mark Steyn wrote a book and said the Muslim population is growing faster than the rest of the population, and by such-and-such a time, they'll be a big political force in whatever European country. Maybe Sharia law and whatever. He also quoted some imam guy that says Muslims will "breed like mosquitoes." Maclean's ran an excerpt of the book. So this guy filed a human rights complaint against him and Maclean's in Ontario, BC, and with the Feds. He wants the commissions to force Maclean's to print an essay written by a writer of their choosing, and they want it to be a cover story."

My buddy said, "What?"

But the 'what' wasn't for anything Steyn had written, but for the fact that someone was trying to tell Maclean's what to print.

And again, it hit me: my buddy's just some guy. He might be left, he might be right, but he's still Canadian, and these complaints struck him as incredibly un-Canadian. Before calling me, he probably thought he had nothing to fear by writing or saying any damn thing he wanted. Now I was telling him the opposite. That's a tough thing to hear when you're not ready for it. In a way, it's life changing.

I told him that I knew these commissions were a bad thing because last week I sat down to write something...and I paused.

That is the first time in my life as a Canadian citizen that I have ever thought twice about saying what's on my mind for fear of getting in trouble for it. First time ever. The words of the commissions were going through my head: "likely to expose someone to hatred or contempt."

Okay. So tell me what "likely" means. Or "contempt."

I think the blog was about gay marriage. I'm not against it, but I'm not for it. I think it needs time to sink in, and that it shouldn't be rushed. The reason I paused is I suddenly thought, "Could someone spin this as me "likely to expose someone to contempt?'"

Couldn't they do that to anything you or I write?

That's what I don't get about the weirdos that say, "But no one's been convicted of a speech complaint yet, not unless they're a neo-Nazi." That isn't the point. Fact is, the more you learn about these commissions, the more you learn how easy it is to drag someone through the mud for saying something, even if the complainant doesn't see it through to the end. The fear of accusation is enough to frighten and silence people. But then, I guess that's their whole point, too.

I told my buddy about this. I told him that I didn't want to write political blogs all the time, because I don't want to be seen as some political crank. That's why I mix it up, so my friends don't get bored. But once in a while, politics is fun to write about. Yet now I was nervous. Could I write about these commissions, or should I just ease off in case someone decided to screw me over?

My buddy's just some guy. He had one thing to say:

"Keep talking about it."