http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=NWU2MzgxZGY1MDA4MWFlODJkOWRlZWIxZGE3MzI5N2Y=&w=MQ==
Confronting the Speech Police
The spectacle of Canada’s Human Rights Commission.
By Rebecca Walberg
A peculiarly Canadian institution, the Human Rights Commission attracted
attention beyond Canada’s borders last week when the Canadian Islamic
Congress filed several complaints against author and commentator Mark
Steyn, and Maclean’s, the newsweekly that excerpted his bestselling
America Alone last year. There is no substance to these complaints, but
that is no impediment in the eyes of British Columbia’s commission, which
has agreed to investigate the case. The degeneration of Human Rights
Commissions into forums for nuisance suits, and their current abuse by
the CIC, among others, is indicative of the growing political and
cultural gulf between the U.S. and Canada, especially concerning freedom
of speech and of worship.
Human Rights Commissions were established throughout the 1960s and 1970s
as Canada’s answer to the American Civil Rights Movement. While the U.S.
government was involved in the latter, the primary driver of the movement
was the widespread conviction that segregation and discrimination were
harmful and un-American, and must be made obsolete. The great civil
rights activists insisted that people of all races be treated as
individuals, and not barred from any privilege because they belonged to a
given group. The approach of Canada’s HRCs was, and remains, precisely
the opposite, since the commissions exist explicitly to reframe conflict
between individuals into a matter of group politics. That one party to a
private conflict can — through these commissions — gain access to the
resources of the state, adds a huge power imbalance between the parties
that would not exist if the complaint were pursued through litigation.
In the words of the federal Human Rights Commission, the institution is
committed to “vindicating [the] human rights [of victims] and…trying to
prevent future acts of discrimination.” The presumption that a
complainant is a victim, made at the start of any complaint by the
commission, is problematic for those who expect a degree of impartiality
from the state when it involves itself in private disputes. Equally
troublesome are the expansion of a government agency into the business of
providing vindication, and the undertaking of social engineering without
the legitimacy of elected legislatures or the judiciary. The diffidence
displayed by the Canadian public when these commissions were first
established is being eroded in light of complaints that are at best
frivolous, and at worst dangerous to genuine freedom — but getting rid of
Human Rights Commissions, and reversing the damage they have done, will
not be easy.
Many of the intellectuals and activists who helped shape the commissions
are themselves aghast at the uses to which they are currently put. Alan
Borovoy, the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, helped to
draft HRC charters decades ago. He now objects to such uses of the
commissions on classical liberal grounds, believing that speech codes and
anti-hate laws, which concern themselves with statements rather than
conduct, invariably devolve into censorship. “A free culture cannot
protect people against material that hurts,” he wrote in response to
another attempt by a Muslim group to stifle discussion last year.
Whatever the architects of the commissions envisioned as the proper role
for these bodies, censorship by well-meaning bureaucrats was not it.
The Canadian Islamic Congress, in its complaint against Steyn and
Maclean’s, speaks the language of victim-hood well. According to their
lawyer, the complainants are acting “in order to protect Canadian
multiculturalism and tolerance.” Their passion for defending Canadian
values came about only after Maclean’s declined to give four Muslim law
students editorial control over a rebuttal, but this is omitted from the
CIC’s account. This elision is telling. Having failed to bully the
publication in question into ceding control of its own content, and
without recourse to any kind of civil or criminal action (since no laws
were broken) the plaintiffs are using the Human Rights Commission to do
what the courts, the legislature, and the marketplace of ideas will not:
coerce publishers into silence on the subject of Islam.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
If you go into Sudan today; Your heart will fill with dread
If you go into Sudan today; You might just lose your head
Because on the sands; With blood on their hands
Every nut that ever was; Will be there because
Today's the day the Teddy Bears; Have their Jihad!
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