June 21, 2008 | In Politics | 1 Comment
Blogger and activist, Ezra Levant, does a great job of summarizing the Liberal Party of Canada’s proposed carbon emissions tax: “Vote Liberal: Painful new taxes, to change your behaviour.”
The Liberals understand that “environmentalism” is all the rage in Canada these days, and are trying to maximize their electoral fortunes. That’s why they’re proposing a painful new tax on carbon emissions that will cause us to “change our behaviour” when it comes to oil and gas products.
We get to freeze in winter, swelter in summer, and ride around on bicycles all year round. But don’t worry, it’s all for the environment. If we don’t feel the pain now, we’ll feel even more later. And the (nanny) state knows best… Right?
I wonder how well this reconciles with the Liberals’ new proposal to ban spanking as a means of parental discipline…
The Liberal-dominated Senate has voted to introduce legislation that would eliminate Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which states that parents and caretakers are “justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child (aged 2 to 12) … if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.”
In other words, they want to define the reasonable discipline of children as criminal assault.
This legislation, together with a recent court decision overturning the grounding of a 12-year-old girl in Quebec, demonstrates that government is eager to get in on the discipline business… against parents that is. In short, responsible adults are being prohibited from making reasonable decisions regarding the discipline of their own children. The natural family is being eroded in favour of nanny state standardization.
So the government gets to impose whatever painful punishments it feels like, so as to change our behaviour. But when responsible parents want to change their children’s behavior, they go to jail.
Nice logic, Stéphane Dion.
June 12, 2008 | In Politics | 3 Comments
Anger is mounting against Human Rights Commissions in Canada, and the case of Reverend Stephen Boissoin is a great example as to why.
I know very little about Rev. Boissoin – only what I’ve read in the media and on the internet. As a Christian pastor, Boissoin apparently feels a strong personal commitment to traditional family values. He believes in an exclusively heterosexual conception of marriage and family, and feels that the homosexual rights lobby is attempting to erode and marginalize his ideals.
In June 2002, Rev. Boissoin decided to vent his frustration in a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, the Red Deer Advocate. This simple act of writing a letter, in hopes of having one’s ideas published, is a very normal thing to do. In a free society, it should be considered an inalienable right.
Some might argue that Rev. Boissoin’s letter to the editor wasn’t the most eloquent example of civil discourse. In it, he rants about “the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s.” He criticizes the inclusion of pro-gay tolerance classes in the public school curriculum, claiming that “our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.”
After his letter was published, Boissoin was investigated by Alberta’s Human Rights Commission, and charged under s. 3 of the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Act (equivalent to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act). This legislation makes it an illegal act to publish anything that is “likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt.”
Like most respondents to “human rights” cases in Canada (100% under s. 13 of the federal Act), Rev. Boissoin was convicted. On May 30, he was ordered to pay fines and damages of $7,000, subjected to a forced speech ban (preventing him from saying anything “disparaging” about gays for the rest of his life), and ordered to publicly renounce and apologize for his beliefs.
This pastor, who dared to complain that schools were pushing a certain moral agenda onto children, is now being forced to pledge loyalty to that same moral agenda himself. If he fails to comply, he could go to jail. This is the current legal situation in Canada.
Homosexual-themed education in schools is an example of social engineering – a gentle yet insidious method of gradually altering a society’s moral fabric. Individuals are free to go along with it, or resist, as Rev. Boissoin has chosen to do. But as soon as the state starts actively prosecuting people for their honestly-held moral beliefs, we’ve moved beyond the realm of social engineering and into the domain of soft fascism, which can easily lead to hard fascism if people are too complacent to fight back.
20 years ago, most of Rev. Boissoin’s ideas would have been perfectly acceptable, even applauded, by the majority of Canadians.
Whether or not you agree with Boissoin’s views today, the moral of this story is worth considering. Legislation against speech and thought can be applied to anyone. Nobody is safe.
June 3, 2008 | In Law | No Comments
A tiny courtroom in the bowls of Vancouver’s Robson Square Courthouse played host to day-two of an ominous “human rights” case today, as three Muslim law students (“the sock puppets”) continued their effort to strong arm Macleans Magazine into changing its editorial perspectives.
Having followed the Macleans case for the past several months, I thought it was time to witness the proceedings of these frightening Gestapo-like pseudo-courts first hand. The case is being heard by a panel of three judges (but not real judges; just politically correct busybodies who happen to be judgmental), appointed by the BC Human Rights Tribunal.
The case (nominally Mohamed Elmasry v. Rogers Publishing Ltd.) has already been dismissed (sort of) by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, due to lack of jurisdiction, and is awaiting a hearing date at the federal Human Rights Tribunal. As you can probably guess, rules against double (or in this case triple) jeopardy do not apply to our friendly “human rights” enforcers.
The day began with about an hour of arguing over admissibility of evidence, as the Muslim students’ lawyer, Faisal Joseph, attempted to introduce one irrelevant report after another on the dangers of “Islamophobia.” Apparently, even the Tribunal “judges” were unwilling (or too lazy?) to read most of this redundant garbage, and ruled all but one of the reports inadmissible.
After the morning break the Canadian Islamic Congress’ first “sock puppet,” Khurrum Awan, began to testify, going over several Macleans articles by acclaimed author and columnist, Mark Steyn. Mr. Awan explained how these pieces of writing had “offended” him, and were “likely to expose” Muslims to “hatred or contempt,” which is the only standard of proof for a conviction under Section 7 of the BC Human Rights Code, the provincial equivalent to Section 13 of the federal legislation.
On cross examination, Macleans lawyer, Julian Porter Q.C., grilled Awan about his Spring 2007 meeting with the magazine’s editors, and efforts to settle the case before trial. Porter forced Awan to admit that he and the other complainants did not initially offer to negotiate a “mutually acceptable” compromise, as they had claimed after the meeting. Awan’s only defense was that Macleans’ editors had been curt with him and the other complainants (maybe they had a business to run…), and had not voluntarily offered to compromise (which, in a free society, they had no moral obligation to do).
Once Awan finished testifying, there was more arguing about the admissibility of evidence. Faisal Joseph announced that he would introduce content from three additional websites (not owned by Macleans), where writers and visitors had responded approvingly to Steyn’s November 2006 cover article, “The Future Belongs to Islam.” One of these websites was that of The Western Standard, whose founder, Ezra Levant, was “live blogging” at the tribunal today.
Ultimately, the panel accepted all of the additional exhibits unconditionally, despite arguments by Macleans’ lawyers that the BC Human Rights Tribunal had no jurisdiction over internet content originating in other provinces or countries. The Tribunal chair said that these arguments “were not convincing,” and that the division of powers between federal and provincial governments (constitutionally enshrined in Canada since 1867) had no bearing on their ability to consider evidence from outside the province.
Although this means plenty of publicity for Ezra (I certainly can’t blame him for welcoming the ruling), it sets an extremely disturbing precedent for future “Human Rights” cases.
The Tribunal has ruled that it can consider aggravating evidence from anywhere in the world, in order to better demonstrate that a respondent’s words or ideas have contributed to “contempt.” On that basis, even mild written criticism of an identifiable group (based on true facts) can easily lead to a s.7/s.13 conviction, provided that it can be loosely linked to a “contemptuous” comment by someone else, anywhere in the world. In other words, Human Rights Tribunals have the authority to punish you not only for your own ideas, but also for the ideas of others, in response to your ideas.
The last hour or so of the day was taken up by the testimony of Dr. Andrew Rippin, an “expert” witness called by Mr. Joseph. As a professor of Islamic Studies, Rippin was limited to “correcting misconceptions” about Islam, rather than specifically analyzing the meaning of Steyn’s articles. During his examination in chief, Rippin made the obligatory distinction between “moderate” and “extremist” Muslims, then claimed that nobody could truly understand the nuances of the Islamic religion without fluency in Arabic. The subtext, as far as I could see, was that those of us who don’t speak and read the Arabic language should accept whatever we’re told about Islam by Koranic scholars, the vast majority of whom happen to be Muslim.
On cross examination, Julian Porter pressed Rippin about extremest varieties of Islam, particularly Wahhabism, the sect which dominates in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, Porter noted that Wahhabi Muslims are required to believe in strict application of Sharia law, which punishes many petty crimes with torture and physical disfigurement. He then produced a book that Rippin himself had written several years ago, which acknowledged that the spread of Wahhabi Islam was a threat to world peace and could, regrettably, lead to violence.
Although not as strongly worded as Steyn’s infamous Macleans article, Rippin’s own book is intellectually honest enough to raise many of the same concerns. Some people who have read it may well have (justifiably) felt flashes of anger, or even “hatred or contempt” towards Wahhabi Muslims. And yet Rippin’s writings have never been subject to a “human rights” complaint. Why? Because he toes the line of political correctness, and is happily accepted by Canada’s academic and political establishments.
I walked away from today’s hearing with a more profound realization than ever before of how biased and arbitrary Human Rights Tribunals really are. Sections dealing with “hate messages” exist solely to bend all thought towards a politically correct mainstream. Today, that mainstream is personified by relatively bland and inoffensive academics like Rippin, and seems more or less harmless to most Canadians. In 20 or 30 years, it’s anyone’s guess what the mainstream might be, and if even a fraction of Mark Steyn’s perfectly plausible predictions come true, it won’t be pretty.
Ultimately, it is an individual’s absolute right to exist outside the mainstream, peacefully holding and expressing whatever opinions they see fit. Perhaps just as crucially, mainstream society should be created and molded by individuals, not the other way round. These are the values that all of our laws should reflect.
Click here for Andrew Coyne’s live blog, which will provide constant updates on the Macleans trial in the days to come.
