Another HRC travesty

[Urbane]

The problem is that anytime someone feels "offended" by something they can go to their local HRC and have a good chance of getting a full-blown "trial." The "accused" (alleged "offender") has to pay all of his or her legal costs while the person making the charge gets his or her bill paid for by the taxpayers. We're not talking here about genuine human rights violations and it's sickening to see this process abused so often.

[grammafreddy]

How often does it happen that it's a Caucasian complaining about an East Indian or Asian person or business? Does it ever happen? Or are these tribunals just for people to lodge cases against Caucasians?

[Captain Awesome]

How often does it happen that it's a Caucasian complaining about an East Indian or Asian person or business? Does it ever happen?

No, there's Castanet for that.

[Drongoman]

How often does it happen that it's a Caucasian complaining about an East Indian or Asian person or business? Does it ever happen? Or are these tribunals just for people to lodge cases against Caucasians?

Unless the complaint is lodged by a minority against a Caucasian oppressor, or a woman against a male pig, or a gay person, they won't even look at it. Carole James wanted to set up a 24 hour "hate hotline" if elected, as apparently there is so much hate being committed by Caucasians that a full blown hotline is needed.

[grammafreddy]

How often does it happen that it's a Caucasian complaining about an East Indian or Asian person or business? Does it ever happen? Or are these tribunals just for people to lodge cases against Caucasians?

Unless the complaint is lodged by a minority against a Caucasian oppressor, or a woman against a male pig, or a gay person, they won't even look at it. Carole James wanted to set up a 24 hour "hate hotline" if elected, as apparently there is so much hate being committed by Caucasians that a full blown hotline is needed.

Soooo .. big hmmmmmmmmmm here ........

Caucasians are not welcome to lodge a grievance against any other race/people/class/colour/I-hate-political-correctness-crap?

Does anyone here think it is possible for other races to be racist against Caucasians in Canada? Or are only Caucasians capable of racism?

[Drongoman]

GF: These "Human rights" commissions need to be completely reformed, the biggest reform being that regulating "hate" should be taken out of their mandate, also known Federally as "Section 13". Have a read of the book "Shakedown" by Ezra Levant, though you may shake with rage when you read some of the idiotic cases the "human rights" commissions have handled, and of course, how they came down the side of stupidity almost every time.

[Glacier]

Human Rights Tribunals - putting the "Cauc" in Caucasian since 1977.

[grammafreddy]

GF: These "Human rights" commissions need to be completely reformed, the biggest reform being that regulating "hate" should be taken out of their mandate, also known Federally as "Section 13". Have a read of the book "Shakedown" by Ezra Levant, though you may shake with rage when you read some of the idiotic cases the "human rights" commissions have handled, and of course, how they came down the side of stupidity almost every time.

Yeah, I know ... but I was wondering about anti-Caucasian racism ... and where it fit in the HRT.

[Drongoman]

Yeah, I know ... but I was wondering about anti-Caucasian racism ... and where it fit in the HRT.

There is no fit. Caucasians don't fit into an "identifiable" group normally targeted for "hate" per their standards. A few years ago a Caucasian guy in Quebec tried to report an Imam, who was spouting actual hatred, not the fake kind that the HRC loves, and they wouldn't accept the case. The federal HRC has been busted several times on "white power" websites impersonating white racists in an effort to build the myth that hatred among Caucasians is "rampant", then when they are caught, they deny deny deny. You can bet there were a ton of bureaucrats just sitting around and hoping that Carole James would get elected in 2009 so her "hate" hotline would be put in place. Now they are no doubt salivating at how crazy the "anti-hate" spending is going to get in BC with Mr. Social Justice about to take over next year. It's a giant racket, but most state-funded bureaucracies are.

http://pointdebasculecanada.ca/index.ph ... Itemid=102

CONCLUSION
•If you belong to a minority, you can with impunity propagate hatred and contempt against the majority. You are not held to the same standards of tolerance, respect and civility as the majority. Equality under the law, according to the Commission, does not exist anymore.
•If you belong to a religious minority, you can with impunity propagate a supremacist ideology that also condones the extermination of other minorities, and of the majority, if this is the doctrine of your religion.
•If you belong to the majority and you expose the supremacist, totalitarian and anti-democratic ideology propagated by a minority, you risk being sued.

[Urbane]

One of Rex Murphy's best commentaries:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Bcx-gqe_g

[The Green Barbarian]

Urbane:

This sounds like an event you and I would enjoy attending. Good to see that there are still people fighting the good fight against the scourge of political correctness, and the insane fake "human rights" industry we have in the Western World, peopled by radical liberals and social engineering fools, who every day take away more and more of our rights and freedoms, all in the name of protecting "hurt feelings". Read on:

Mark Steyn inspires at Toronto’s Steynamite

A twelve hundred strong audience of conservatives and libertarians of all stripes packed the John Bassett Theatre of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Tuesday night for “Steynamite,” an event headlined by internationally-renowned conservative commentator Mark Steyn. Steyn was introduced by National Post editor Jonathan Kay, who promised the expectant crowd that the evening would not be a “political gabfest” but a “free-form fusion conservative jamboree.” Steyn did not fail to deliver.

The evening kicked off with several prominent conservative media figures riling the crowd. Krista Erikson of Sun News Network, one of the evening’s sponsors, drew cheers for her lengthy list of CHRC violations while promoting what she described as the “fearless” political coverage of the Sun News Network. Michael Coren of Sun News’ The Arena and author of the newly released Heresey: Ten Lies They Spread About Christians was up next, warming up the crowd with witty one-liners poking fun at Margaret Trudeau “warming up” the Rolling Stones and a spirited defense of Christian beliefs in the public square.

The evening seemed to take an surprising turn when Erikson unexpectedly announced that former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had originally been slated to headline the event before cancelling due to a fear of protestors, had actually decided to appear. A Dick Cheney impersonator appeared on stage moments later dressed in full hunting gear and waving a rifle to peals of laughter from the audience. The hunter swung the rifle over his shoulder and it “discharged,” felling Michael Coren. The hunter then pulled off his mask to reveal a grinning Mark Steyn.

Steyn’s performance was equal parts outrage and humor, taking the audience on a roller coaster of “apocalyptic side splitters.” The “human rights violations” began immediately, with Steyn noting that it had recently been “take your child bride to work day” in Kandahar and mocking incessant shoving of “awareness days” down the collective throats of Western society. He then proposed to deafening applause that April 24 become “Individual Liberty For Free-Born Citizens Day.”
A string of outrageous anecdotes followed, detailing the liberty-crushing and censorious bureaucracy of Western civilization at twilight, interspersed by the occasional song and comedic sketch. The crowd fluctuated from audible gasps of anger at revelations of increasingly common practices such as female genital mutilation to howls of laughter as Steyn “went Magna Carta” on the Human Rights Commissions by defiantly belting out his own rendition of “Kung Fu Fighting.”

Memorable lines such as “tyranny is always whimsical” and “this situation isn’t nuts, it’s just evil” satisfied ticket purchasers’ anticipation for classic Mark Steyn and drew consistent rounds of applause. At one point, Steyn sang his very own hit song “My Sharia Amour” to his “third wife,” an actress clad in a burqa. The sketch was punctuated byLandmark Report editor Andrew Lawton dressed as “Imam Mohammed al Muhammed bin Mohamed” giving Steyn advice on how to beat his wife, a tongue-in-cheek reference to a recent multicultural selection in a Trudeaupian Toronto bookstore. The sketch brought down the house.

The evening closed with Mark Steyn giving a Canadianized version of “New York, New York” (“York, York” a reference to the original name of Toronto) and bowing out to thunderous applause. Hundreds lined up to have their volumes signed by Coren and Steyn after the event.

The attendees left entertained and inspired to fight for liberty in an increasingly hostile environment. The event organizers did not say whether or not they expected human rights complaints to be filed as a result.

http://landmarkreport.com/jvanmaren/201 ... steynamite

I loved the "take your child bride to work day" gag. Hilarious!

[Urbane]

I don't know GB. I hope no one was offended. If they were Steyn might end up before the HRC again.

[The Green Barbarian]

I don't know GB. I hope no one was offended. If they were Steyn might end up before the HRC again.

They are way way too scared of Steyn to try to prosecute him in one of their kangaroo courts again. They had so much egg on their face from the last time that they will give Steyn a wide berth. Like cockroaches who scurry away into dark corners when the light is turned on, the last thing the HRC's want is any publicity of their crazy edicts, and Steyn gives them publicity in spades. Go Mark go!!

[Glacier]

Someone should show this meme to the HRC.

[Urbane]

Goodbye Section 13!

Jonathan Kay: Good riddance to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act
Jonathan Kay Jun 7, 2012

Five years ago, during testimony in the case of Warman v. Lemire, Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) investigator Dean Steacy was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” His response: “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

Those words produced outrage. But there was a grain of truth to what Mr. Steacy said: For decades, Canadians had meekly submitted to a system of administrative law that potentially made de facto criminals out of anyone with politically incorrect views about women, gays, or racial and religious minority groups. All that was required was a complainant (often someone with professional ties to the CHRC itself) willing to sign his name to a piece of paper, claim he was offended, and then collect his cash winnings at the end of the process. The system was bogus and corrupt. But very few Canadians wanted to be seen as posturing against policies that were branded under the aegis of “human rights.”

That was then. Now, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the enabling legislation that permits federal human-rights complaints regarding “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet,” is doomed. On Wednesday, the federal Conservatives voted to repeal it on a largely party-line vote — by a margin of 153 to 136 — through a private member’s bill introduced by Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth. Following royal assent, and a one-year phase-in period, Section 13 will be history.

Liberal MP Scott Simms voted for the bill
While Mr. Storseth and the MPs who voted for the bill (including Liberal MP Scott Simms) are to be applauded, the fact is that government action on this file is a trailing indicator of popular opinion, which has shifted against human-rights-justified censorship over the last five years for two main reasons.

The first reason: the legacy of 9/11, and the associated realization that speech codes have been actively hampering our ability to respond to the threat from militant Islam.

In 2006, most notably, many Canadians were shocked when Maclean‘s magazine was dragged before Canada’s human-rights apparatus, and forced to justify its decision to publish an allegedly Islamophobic excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn. Till that point in time, it was casually assumed that anyone caught up in human-rights quasi-litigation was a fringe commentator scribbling out unfashionable, retrograde views on race-mixing, or the Jewish “bacillus,” or some such. But Mr. Steyn was an internationally acclaimed commentator writing on a real, modern threat that, in its most virulent form, had destroyed a large chunk of Manhattan, and which our troops were fighting against in Afghanistan.

The second factor that turned the tide against the human-rights industry was the blogosphere.

Till the middle part of the last decade, the Canadian punditariat was dominated by professional columnists who were socially, ideologically, and sometimes professionally, beholden to the academics, politicians, and old-school activists (from Jewish groups, in particular) who’d championed the human-rights industry since its inception in the 1960s. But in the latter years of Liberal governance, a vigorous network of right-wing bloggers, led by Ezra Levant, began publicizing the worst abuses of human-rights mandarins, including the aforementioned Dean Steacy. In absolute numbers, the readership of their blogs was small at first. But their existence had the critical function of building up a sense of civil society among anti-speech-code activists, who gradually pulled the mainstream media along with them. In this sense, Mr. Levant deserves to be recognized as one of the most influential activists in modern Canadian history.

The battle against human-rights speech codes is far from won: The worst cases of censorship, such as the muzzling of Christians who proselytize texts that contain anti-gay themes, occur at the provincial level. Yet the tide clearly has turned: The Canadian Human Rights Commission received only three hate speech complaints since 2009, two of which were dismissed. And at the provincial level, bureaucrats know that any censorious verdict they deliver instantly will be pounced upon by Mr. Levant and his blogging allies (including some at this newspaper), and thereby become a lightning rod for legislative reform.

The pattern extends to other areas of human-rights law, too: Just this year, an Ottawa woman became a (well-deserved) object of mockery when she went to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to speed up her demand for a parking pad in front of her house, on the basis that navigating the driveway to the back of her house was too tricky.

Canada’s human-rights law is a product of the 1960s, when much of our society truly was shot through with bigotry and prejudice. Those days are gone, thankfully, and laws such as the Canadian Human Rights Act now comprise a greater threat to our liberty than the harms they were meant to address. The repeal of Section 13 of the CHRA represents a good, albeit belated, first step at reform. Let us hope it provides suitable inspiration for Mr. Storseth’s principled counterparts in provincial legislatures across the country.

National Post
jkay@nationalpost.com