Posted on 03/28/2008 5:47:28 PM PDT by canuck_conservative
Earlier this week, I argued that Canada's human-rights censors have managed a seemingly impossible task: They've found a way to rehabilitate the image of neo-Nazis, transforming them from odious dirtbags into principled free-speech martyrs. Case in point: At this week's much-anticipated human-rights hearing in Ottawa, a team of journalists and bloggers were campaigning openly in support of hatemonger Marc Lemire. The villains were Canadian Human Rights Commission (HRC) investigator Dean Steacy and the other apparatchik who've made a career out of parsing Lemire's phobic Web postings.
Tuesday's hearing probably won't change the outcome of the case against Lemire: Like a five-star hotel that guarantees its guests full satisfaction, the HRC provides handpicked complainants with a 100% success rate on hate-speech cases. Better than that: The commission actually lets certain complainants waltz into its Ottawa facilities to fiddle with the online evidence-gathering. As Ezra Levant writes on his blog: "If this were a real investigation of a real crime with real police, and the alleged 'victim' were to walk right into the crime lab, hop on the officers' computers, and poke around the evidence, a judge wouldn't have to throw the case out --prosecutors would be too embarrassed to even bring the case to trial. Not so at the commission."
But even if the HRC nails Lemire, Tuesday's eight-hour hearing will still be remembered as a landmark disaster for the commission. Despite efforts by Steacy and others to stonewall on specific questions of HRC procedure, observers were nonetheless able to extract a fairly detailed picture of commission work practices. The impression that emerges is an overstaffed shop in which unionized desk jockeys sit around "investigating" obscure web sites in search of some scrap of actionable hatred. When they don't find anything, they log on and try stirring things up themselves -- a practice Lemire describes as entrapment. This amateurhour version of The Wire would be funny -- if the HRC weren't spending millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, and turning the lives of the accused upside down.
I don't have any problem with the government running electronic surveillance on, say, drug gangs or terror suspects -- or even hatemongers, if there's proof that they're engaged in actual violence. But of course, that involves showing probable cause, and getting a judge to issue a warrant. HRC types have no time for that sort of due process. Nor, in fact, do they have any real legal training.
In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote "human rights," the HRC's agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?" -- to which he replied "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)
Privacy is another concept that the HRC seems to find confusing. The most scandalous disclosure to emerge on Tuesday involved the manner by which investigators logged on to Lemire's Web site. In what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to avoid revealing the commission's IP address, they tapped into the unsecured wi-firouter of a 26-year-old Ottawa woman who lived near the commission's 344 Slater St. headquarters. At Tuesday's hearing, a Bell Canada employee read out the woman's name, address and phone number to shocked audience members. A National Post reporter contacted the woman and found that she'd never heard of Lemire, Steacy, or his investigations. Unless she is secretly working undercover for Steacy, it appears that the commission cynically invaded the privacy of an innocent citizen in order to pursue an obscure Web-trawling vendetta; and then caused her name to be read out to the Canadian public, thereby identifying her as an unwitting conduit to neo-Nazi Web sites. One likes to imagine that the privacy commissioner will be having a chat with Dean et al. in coming days.
This is the beginning of the end for Section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act, the legislation that (nominally) mandates this kind of hate-speech fishing expedition. For years, Canadians have averted their eyes to the shenanigans going on at our nation's human-rights commissions under the theory that any means used toward such a noble end as "human rights" must somehow be justified. What we saw this week turns that conceit into a pathetic joke.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Light at the end of the tunnel?
These commissions are (not without irony) an abomination of human rights.
It is as if they have absolutely no conception of authentic civil rights.
Canada needs to re-establish some basic democracy and rule of law. Eliminate these monsters. Fire them all. Close these bogus commissions down 100%.
Seems like the public is slowly starting to wake up, despite the best efforts of the CBC and the Federal Liberals to cover for them.
bttt
These commissions are amazing really.
The socialist/Orwellian totalitarians must get some kind of orgasmic high out of their gross misuse of raw power.
What kind of low lifes staff these commissions, former East German Stasi members? Don’t they know “1984” was a novel, not a organizational plan?
To ponder their sins.
That slur on Americans is unforgiveable ~ as a final act the HRC apparatus should certainly take that puke out and flog him within an inch of his life, then do with him as they will.
Oh, yes, I'd pay good money to see that.
The further you get away from elected responsibility, the more totalitarian you become. Leftists have learned this, and they like it. The pay’s great and within their own little circle they have prestige that was denied them in their youth, when they were incompetetent as athletes, and couldn’t prosper in spelling bees either. They majored in sociology enroute to law school, and thus learned nothing of value either. What else is such a mother to do?
Parachute drop them into AQ territory for a lesson in how human rights can be abused.
“In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote “human rights,” the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” — to which he replied “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)”
I took a look. the Charter does not use the word “speech” but “expression.”
Mr. Steacy must have a very strange “out” for that one, maybe one grounded in Marxist doubletalk.
I pray that he is right.
“Expression” is actually a more expansive word than “speech”. It includes any means used to express an idea — including, but not limited to “speech”.
Well, at least they didn’t offend Muslims, deny Global Warming, or hold homophobic opinions. Those things seem to be the only real sins left.
bump
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it
subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
i.e. There is complete freedom of speech in Canada insofar as the laws permit it.
(Compare this to the clear and unambiguous statement in the First Amendment.)
Former union leader Steacy is absolutely right.
Freedom of Speech is not a Canadian concept
never was
never will be.
My observations about any organization or legislation (or anything, for that matter) with the words “Human Rights” in the name is that they universally prevent rights rather than support them. As an example, any “Human Rights” organization is almost guaranteed to be opposed to civilian firearms ownership.
You nailed it. These commissions are the final resting place for every vicious weasel loser you knew in high school. You remember, the trecherous, grandiose, resentful little snakes who failed at everything and were universally disliked and untrusted.
A disaster for Canada’s Human Rights Commission? That’s like, a disaster for a disaster.
btt
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