photo credit: stan

So I’m playing late catch-up with the story of Canada’s Human Rights Councils. The French philosopher Voltaire once wrote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The Canadian version of this might read “I disapprove of what you say, so I will legislate away your right to say it.” This is founded in the assumption that the worst a person be allowed to experience is a sense of discomfort with someone else’s words – forget actual harm, or proving a connection between the two. Canada’s HRCs base much of their decisions on the dubious notion that such speech “is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt“. Sweet! Bypass due process and go right to jumping to conclusions.

It appears that not only do the HRCs want to regulate “allowable speech” in Canada (a scary notion in and of itself), but they want to regulate belief, as in the case of an Alberta pastor who wrote a fiery letter to the editor slamming the “militant homosexual agenda” (his words, not mine). The Alberta HRC received a complaint about the letter and “investigated”, eventually rubber-stamping his conviction (the conviction rate under the relevant section is 100%).  Not only was the pastor forced to pay the complainant $5,000 even though the commission acknowledged that there was no direct victim, the pastor was ordered to print a written apology in the newspaper that first carried his letter.  He had to apologize for a belief, however wrongly held.  Think about that for a moment and shudder.  Ezra Levant, respondent in an equally spurious “thought crime” complaint has full coverage of the judgment on his blog.

The people on the HRCs seem to be of the opinion that ideas are dangerous, a point of view debated earlier on this blog.  Even facts, if they make someone uncomfortable, are unacceptable.  Case in point: the ongoing complaint against Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine.  For a national magazine to have to waste its time defending its right to publish whatever it wants (short of libel) to a non-accountable tribunal is ridiculous to begin with.  It enters the realm of the absurd when the subject of the complaint is considered: a number of years ago, Macleans published an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, where Steyn quoted a European imam stating that Muslims in Europe have a higher birth rate than their secular neighbours.  This is an undisputable fact, but the mere veracity of the item doesn’t fly in the courtroom of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, where hurt feelings trump factuality.

photo credit: bloomsberries

The ease with which a troublemaker can file a complaint, and the disparity between the burden on the complainant and respondent (the complainant’s legal fees are paid for by the HRC (and by extension, the taxpayer), but the respondent is on the hook for their whole legal bill, and with a 100% conviction rate, can assume that they will also have to pay a fine or some type of restitution) do not begin to address the problems with a system that assumes that the best recourse for insult and hurt feelings is in a tribunal (I would say court, but the stories from Levant’s blog – tampering with evidence and transcripts, interference with investigations, and hacking a private citizen’s wireless network to name a few – show that the HRCs have no basis in the rule of law).  Unless I’m reading my Charter wrong (I’ve had one since I was about 10, so I’ve read it alot), there’s no right not to be insulted enshrined anywhere in it.  There is however, a curious right in the beginning part called “Fundamental Freedoms” which reads:

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

The second part there, the one where everyone in Canada has freedom to believe whatever they want, and to communicate it however they want… that’s the foundation of a free and democratic society.  The correct and proper way to counter ideas that are wrong is not to slap them with a gag – that will just make them fester undergound and will lead to a whole new set of problems – it’s to confront them with ideas that are right.  If you’re so convinced that I’m wrong and you’re right, why would you be afraid to take my idea on in a free and full discussion?  If you are really right, then your idea will win the day and you might change my mind (a tactic the Nizkor project has been using successfully with Holocaust deniers).  If, instead of attacking my idea, you attack me and force me to stop sharing it publicly, what are the chances that you’ve won me over to your way of thinking?

If the price of freedom of speech is that people will hear things that they don’t want to hear, isn’t that a fair price to pay for the liberty of being able to speak up when something needs addressing?  The profound problem behind the atrocity that is the Canadian Human Right Commissions is that deep down, many Canadians would rather just have some governmental department wave their hands to make everything bad, uncomfortable or unpleasant go away rather than do the hard work of thinking for themselves.  We have become the enemies of freedom, unwilling to defend anyone’s right to say anything for fear that someone, somewhere, some time, might find it insulting.  Don’t grieve for us, we brought it on ourselves.

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