Posted on 09/05/2009 4:49:24 PM PDT by Clive
teynposts Saturday, 05 September 2009
In this post, Kathy Shaidle kinda sorta implies that Jay Currie and I have gone nancy on her. Just to clarify, I think Jay's analysis (see below) is a very plausible explanation for Judge Hadjis' reasoning - assuming that he had any higher ambition than to unhoist himself from the petard Richard Warman had put him on.
But for me personally it makes no difference what he thinks. In an exchange which didn't make his published report, Joseph Brean of The National Post asked me what I expected Parliament to do now, and I replied: Nothing. I expect nothing of the Government of Canada in particular, or of the political class in general, never mind the vast herd of statist suck-ups like "journalism doctor" (and renowned ovine fornication specialist) Professor John Miller who regard themselves as qualified to pronounce on this issue. I'm not waiting for the Supreme Court to strike down Section 13 or for the Government to repeal it. I've repealed it myself. I do not regard myself as within its jurisdiction. I've opted out. I say what I want, and, if Commissar Lynch and her dress-up Nazis want to go one more round, well, go ahead, "human rights" punks, make my day.
But I don't think they will. As I always said, under the British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, Maclean's and I are guilty. No question of it. Indeed, after the verdict, Ken Whyte and I had a long discussion on how to appeal our acquittal. That's how nutty Canada's "justice" system has become in order to provide a living for shakedown artists like Warman and social engineers like Barbara Hall.
In The Ottawa Citizen (which also has an editorial on the subject), David Warren has a characteristically robust column. However, I disagree with him on this point:
The charges brought against Mark Steyn through the B.C. “human rights” bureaucracy, and against Ezra Levant through Alberta’s, had already exposed “human rights” commissions to much light, of exactly the sort they least wanted. They have already achieved their chilling effect, by warning every journalist in Canada who fails to toe a politically-correct line that he, too, could be dragged through their machinery for years, at huge and unrecoverable cost to himself, even if the case is later casually dismissed. This having been achieved, they needed to cut their losses.
I can't speak for your average pantywaist columnist, who will be as craven as he would have been anyway. But I don't feel "chilled", I feel liberated. After all, under BC pseudo-law, Ken and I are guilty. Yet we got away with it. On to the next hate crime!
Because the Canadian establishment is divided between (a) Trudeaupian social engineers and (b) wimps, Section 13 and its provincial equivalents will stay on the books for the forseeable future. Therefore, all we can do, for the Reverend Boissoin and any other unfortunates who attract its attention, is render it unenforceable. In that respect, we've made a great start.
Jay Currie has a very close reading of Judge Hadjis' decision in the Marc Lemire case. I encourage you to read it all, but here's the part that struck me:
In the ordinary course of things, before Richard Warman arrived at the CHRC, the Commission would investigate complaints under s. 13 as they were made by ordinary citizens. It waited for a complaint and then it acted. As it happened, there were not a lot of complaints under this particular section...Now, Richard Warman, brought a different agenda to the Commission. “Maximum Disruption”. The CHRC’s hate crimes unit was no longer in the business of passively waiting for citizens to complain about hate speech. Now the idea was to root out hate speech and rigorously prosecute it. The Commission sought Memorandums of Understanding with various police forces. It investigated websites even before complaints were filed...
When Warman left the Commission he made a practice of filing complaints against the sorts of basement Nazis and white supremacists who made the best targets for his award winning tactic of “maximum disruption”.
Gradually the Commission was transformed from a remedial body to a prosecutorial entity which danced to the tune of its chief complainant...
Now, as Hadjis elegantly lays out, the ruling in Taylor never contemplated the CHRC as prosecutorial. Chief Justice Dickson never imagined that one man would turn the Tribunal into a Star Chamber in which the ideals of remediation, conciliation and good faith gave way to the most vicious sorts of adversarial behavior.
This is why, even if one accepts the Supreme Court's Taylor decision, Section 13 is no longer "constitutional". Because Warmanization has entirely perverted the very narrow approval the Dickson court gave to it. In a sense, the CHRC has destroyed itself, by permitting a one-man annexation of Section 13 and its transformation into Warman's Law.
Next time Commissar Lynch jets off to Dublin at taxpayer expense to whine that she don't get no respect or Pearl Eliadis writes one of her plonking defenses of state censorship, ask them about Warman. This is why real justice systems have protections and procedures - so that they can't be hijacked by one narcissistic dress-up Nazi's creepy self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment program.
Meanwhile, when all the huzzahs and hosannas and Toronto Star "Section 13 is unsalvageable" editorials have died down, Freedom Through Truth says it ain't over and J Ly and the gang will already be plotting their next move.
On Monday, by the way, Ezra Levant and I will be on Wendy Sullivan's Brass Balls Radio show to discuss the Lemire decision.
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I demand the UN abolish Canada!
You have already elected an executive and legislature that is far to the left of anything heretofore seen in Canada and said executive has commenced whipping the judicial branch into line.
You have "hate speech" laws to anticipate.
We down in America are heading that way too.
I hope SCOTUS doesn’t go Obies way in the CitizensUnited case
Mark Steyn...is concise with complete clarity.
One more item to add to the list of “Worse than Euro-trash,” are Canadian’s wanting to be butt boys for Euro-trash.
Oh, by the way, the correct term is “Politically Corrupt” when someone else can determine what you can believe, say and do; violating universal freedoms and common sense!
When I referred to "You" in my Reply I was referring to you Yanks.
Even Texas will be affected because you have, to use a British expression, "in successive fits of absent-mindedness", allowed the tenth amendment to become a de facto nullity.
Your residuary powers, which by the tenth amendment ought, de jure, to be intra vires the States and ultra vires the Federation are now de facto vested in the Federation by the construing Section 8 of Article 1 as prevailing over the tenth amendment.
Tortured statutory construction, but that is how a constituion by convention creeps into a nation that claims to be governed by a written constitution.
Well said, “...but that is how a constitution by convention creeps into a nation that claims to be governed by a written constitution.”
We might have been able to make that claim before FDR but today we’re ruled by whims
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