Steyn Wars - A Peace Treaty Drafted (And Rejected)

Earlier this year, the CHRC asked Professor Richard Moon to take a look at Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It's the section that says you can't write or say anything over the internet that might expose identifiable groups (whoever they are) to hatred or contempt (whatever that is).

If you need some backstory on Steyn Wars, you can read a re-cap here. Long story short, Steyn quoted a Muslim that said something bad about Muslims, so a couple of other Muslims wanted him to shut up or, barring that, they wanted Maclean's magazine to let them write a cover story refuting Steyn (and the Muslim guy, I guess), which Maclean's would have to print artwork and all. For a while, it looked like the governments of Ontario, British Columbia, and Canada might back them up on this, but the CHRC decided to hedge and asked some dude named Professor Moon to tell them whether they could prosecute hate crimes or not. So Steyn was accused of being a bigot, but it was never clear if he was even allowed to be accused of being a bigot.

Get it? Me either. Welcome to Canada. It's been 7 years since the internet hate crime rule went into the books, and only now does the Canadian Human Rights Commission even ask if they're allowed to prosecute internet hate crimes.

Anyway, Professor Moon has decided that hate speech is bad, but censorship is bad too. Quite a pickle. Says Moon:

We must develop ways other than censorship to respond to expression that stereotypes the members of an identifiable group and to hold institutions such as the media accountable when they engage in these forms of discriminatory expression.

Well, allow me to throw a can of Chock Full O' Hate Crime right through that window. Again, we come back to the old argument: define discriminatory expression.

He can't do it. No one can do it. The best Moon can do (and it's a pretty good argument) is say that hate speech advocating physical violence should be punished, as this is a much more narrow test than punishing hate speech that hurts someone's "dignity."

I can get into that, and frankly I have to because the Canadian Criminal Code already covers it. But still, he's keen to see the good side of Section 13, and gives a nice atta-boy to the CHRC: The few section 13 cases sent to Tribunal and in which the Tribunal has found a breach of the section have almost all involved expression that is so extreme and hateful that it may be seen as advocating or justifying violence against the members of an identifiable group.

Doc, you should have quit while you were ahead. Notice the key words: "almost" and "most" and "may."

That doesn't wash with me. Either something urges violence or it doesn't. "I wish art didn't exist," is one thing, "Kill all artists," is quite another. Would "I wish art didn't exist" imply killing artists? Depends who you ask.

In the end, Moon does grow a pair, if only for a moment. After despairing about how and why to shut people up, he comes out with a doozy: 1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.

That must have really curled their hair up in Ottawa. Surely they must have thought that a guy with a PhD would fall on the left side of the aisle. Doc, don't you know how many bureaucrats you'll put out of work with talk like this?

Still, he goes on. He can't help it. There's just something about regulations that appeals to people who are used to thinking that regular folks need to be kept in line. Here's the bit that should scare any so-called journalist in the nation:

Newspapers and news magazines should seek to revitalize the provincial/regional press councils and ensure that identifiable groups are able to pursue complaints if they feel they have been unfairly represented in mainstream media.

If this does not happen, consideration should be given to the statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership. This national press council would have the authority to determine whether a newspaper or magazine has breached professional standards and order the publication of the press council’s decision.

A newspaper is not simply a private participant in public discourse; it is an important part of the public sphere where discussions about the affairs of the community takes place. As such it carries a responsibility to portray the different groups that make up the Canadian community fairly and without discrimination.

Whoa. That's quite a broadside against a free press. Let's take it one by one:

1) [E]nsure that identifiable groups are able to pursue complaints. Define "identifiable groups," and tell me where they would file their complaints. Also tell me what remedies we're talking about. I have a funny feeling it would involve cash.

2) [W]hether a newspaper or magazine has breached professional standards and order the publication of the press council’s decision. Who decides the "professional standard," and since when should a council order a private paper to print anything? This sounds like a wonderful way for the big boys to knock a small magazine out of business.

3) A newspaper is not simply a private participant in public discourse. Depends where they get their money, pal.

4) As such it carries a responsibility to portray the different groups that make up the Canadian community fairly and without discrimination. Get bent. They have a responsibility to make money and sell papers. Period. And one more time, tell me who the "different groups" are and how me and my beer buddies can get a membership card. We'll need one for when we're treated unfairly.

Moon's peace treaty isn't bad. If he had stopped typing after saying that Section 13 should be scrapped, I would have been on board. But the second he remembered who he is (and who he's working for) I got off the train. Telling papers what to print, and who to write stories about, is how we got into this mess in the first place.

Get back to me after the re-write.

Keep Your Mouth Shut And Chill

The Canadian Human Rights Commission is back in the news. They're trying to pin another hate crime on Marc Lemire, a man described as a white supremacist and bigot.

If Lemire is those things, then he is to be scorned and laughed at. But I still think it's abysmal that Canada has a commission which attempts to shut people up if they "are likely to expose a person or group to hatred or contempt" by speaking their minds.

Okay, so describe "contempt." Or "likely." Or "hatred." And which "someone" are you allowed to ridicule, versus the "someone" you can't.

Today, I saw a story in the National Post. It's a disgrace. For the first time, we actually have a human rights bureaucrat (Hadjis) questioning the legitimacy of muzzling Canadian citizens. This is big news. It means the very people that have been punishing citizens for their words and thoughts are wondering if things have gone too far. And what is the government's response? The Attorney General's lawyer, Fothergill, says that "chilling" Canadian discourse is okay because it might stop a few haters.

Here is an email I sent to a Conservative candidate for parliament:

I am curious what your stance is on the Canadian Human Rights Commission. I was stunned to see this statement in the National Post today:

Mr. Hadjis expressed skepticism of Mr. Fothergill’s claim that the core of the legal analysis remains unchanged in the digital age, even though the scope of the law is drastically widened from the original "telephonic communications."

"It’s a different context," Mr. Hadjis said, noting that every newspaper now has a Web site.

"Suddenly all these declarations that may have legitimately been made on paper, in the age of Taylor, will be caught by Section 13."

Mr. Fothergill [lawyer for Attorney General] answered that if Section 13 puts a chill on public discourse, it is only to be around the fringes of hate speech, and that this is not "a terribly bad outcome."

"A little bit of chilling ... is tolerable," he said.

It’s "tolerable" to frighten Canadian citizens into thinking they should keep their mouths shut? This is a disgraceful thing to say in a democratic society. Please tell me your views. I feel human rights commissions should be severely curtailed, if not outright disbanded. I also know for a fact that this is a big issue for many people in this country right now.

Thank you.

I am not one to send emails to politicians over anything, but this is the last straw. The Attorney General is supposed to stand up for Canada's laws and traditions. He has sold that duty down the river, and his privilege of serving this country should be revoked immediately.

I am going to send this email to as many politicians as I can, because I want them on the record before election day. I don't care which party they belong to. If they're for getting rid of this ridiculous assault on Canada's freedom of expression, then they deserve support and respect. Otherwise, forget it.

You Know What?

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars." YAHHH!!!

All right, so I made up the scream.

The rest of it is Khurrum Awan at a weekend conference, as quoted in the National Post. He's one of the guys that wants the government to tell Maclean's to run an article by an author of their choosing. When I read his speech above, I thought for sure he was doing a Howard "The Scream" Dean send-up. "You know what?...You know something?...We're not just going to New Hampshire...We're going to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan, and then we're going to Washington DC to take back the White House. YAHHH!!!"

If we have to get serious for minute, then it's worth remembering that Khurrum Awan is not one of the complainants against Maclean's. He's on TV and in the papers so much that it's easy to forget that fact (as the Post has). Mohamed Elmasry and Naiyer Habib are the official complainants, not Awan. The Post: "Awan is a recent graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, and one of the main complainants against columnist Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine...[Awan] and his co-plaintiffs are demanding the magazine give Islamist messages space equal to the amount it devoted to Mr. Steyn's work."

No he isn't, and no they aren't. Awan isn't a co-plaintiff of anything. He's just in the papers a lot. The Post has done a hell of job at keeping this issue in the news, but like everyone else they have to be careful and avoid the Kool-Aid. In their June 9th editorial, they referenced Awan as a complainant more than a few times, and didn't mention Elmasry or Habib even once. That's a Kool-Aid alert if ever I saw one.

Awan obviously had an agenda by inserting himself into this complaint, and I don't think it had much to do with "free speech." For him, the issue seems to be more about about punishment for Steyn and Maclean's, and a healthy dose of publicity for himself. Last year, he was just some guy. 6 months later and he's in the papers every other day, and making the rounds on the TV circuit. It'll be interesting to see if he can handle it, but to judge by the speech above, he hasn't yet hired a publicist.

As for the punishment deal, I can't see it as being much else. If, as he says, the human rights code gets ammended, that doesn't mean there's any hope of a civil court telling Maclean's to run an article written by anybody, and a group defamation suit (does that exist?) wouldn't get the presses rolling either. So what's the answer? "A few million dollars."

Funny. This all started with the complainants and their allies claiming they just wanted an open debate. They've received all kinds of press, including a TV showdown with Mark Steyn, but it hasn't been enough. So the quest for an "open debate" continues. If they fail at that altruistic goal, it will now be about boring old cash?

Whatever the case, this is the first time that I have heard someone from the complainants' camp mention the possibility of the human rights commissions being brought to heel.

You know what? That's interesting.

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.

The Pot Calls the Kettle Red

The Canadian Human Rights Commission might be interested in defamation suits involving religion and hatred...but Canada isn't?

In a strange twist of fate, Canada joined England, France, and other European countries in voting against a UN resolution brought by the UN Human Rights Council. EU officials were wary of allowing more wide ranging religious anti-defamation laws in case they curbed free speech. Sound familiar?

In any event, the resolution passed 21-10, without Canada's blessing. As the Washington Post reports:

The document, which was put forward by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."

Although the text refers frequently to protecting all religions, the only religion specified as being attacked is Islam, to which eight paragraphs refer.

Speaking for the EU, Slovenian Ambassador Andrej Logar said the 27-nation body was committed to tolerance, nondiscrimination and freedom of religion. But instead of a one-sided approach, it would be better to engage in dialogue with mutual respect.

The resolution "urges states to take actions to prohibit the dissemination ... of racist and xenophobic ideas" and material that would incite to religious hatred. It also urges states to adopt laws that would protect against hatred and discrimination stemming from religious defamation.

This comes on the heels of the latest round in the Canadian Human Rights hearing, where Marc Lemire is accused of having racist and xenophobic ideas on his website. Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine will be facing their own human rights complaint later in the year, for allegedly insulting Islamic people.

So which is it, Canada?

A Modest Response

I received an interesting letter vis-a-vis my take on the CHRC. It reads thus:

The Levant case has nothing to do with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Is it asking too much that you guys do your basic homework?

Never mind. Even Steyn thinks that Section 13 of the CHRA applied to the Levant case. -- Dr. Dawg

My response is as follows:

Dear Dr. Dawg,

re: "Canadian Human Rights Commission"

You're absolutely right. I have fallen into the trap of lumping them together over the past couple of months. To be honest, I can't keep track of who is complaining to whom, and who is hearing which case against which person. It changes from week to week and province to province.

Let's be more specific: the group hearing the Steyn deal is the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The British Columbia Human Rights Commission dropped the proceeding (at least, last I heard). The group that questioned Ezra Levant on You Tube is the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

This is painful stuff for the writer and the reader. Example: "The CHRC could have gone on sailing into the next century, punishing Canadians for speaking their minds, except for three things:

"Steyn [Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ontario Human Rights Commission, not the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and no longer the BC Human Rights Commission], Levant [only the Alberta Human Rights Commission, but not the other ones], Maclean's [lumped in with Steyn and, I think, no longer under the BC Human Rights Commission (if they ever were) but I could be wrong]."

All that for the names of two people and one magazine?

To satisfy everyone, I think we should use Canadian human rights commission(s), (note the parentheses and small caps). "Canadian" in this case doesn't imply the actual Canadian Human Rights Commission, only that the commission(s) are geographically located in Canada. This will make it much simpler for everyone, rather than having to scroll the Rolodex to see which principal's office a person has been called to.