Human Rights in Canada

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book America Alone .

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

Watch Ezra Levant , editor of the Canadian Western Standard, put up a robust defence of his right to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

He was scandalously called to account for himself by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. See him tell them off:

Here’s a transcript from his opening statement:

For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values. It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment.

Another rights tribunal has dismissed a case against Canada's Maclean's magazine, which was accused of spreading hatred against Muslims in an article by conservative writer Mark Steyn.

The 2006 article The New Word Order may have caused some to fear Muslims as a threat to western society, but that did not mean that it promoted religious hatred, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled.

The article, with all of its inaccuracies and hyperbole, has resulted in political debate which in our view (the human rights code) was never intended to suppress, the three-member panel ruled.

Media and civil rights groups had opposed the complaint against Maclean's by the Canadian Islamic Congress, fearing that a ruling against the national newsweekly would lead to restrictions on freedom of the press.

The Canadian Islamic Congress lost similar complaints against the Maclean's article in Ontario and before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

A private members bill introduced into the Canadian House of Commons is seeking to delete the controversial hate speech provision in the Human Rights Act that has been used to silence Christians and conservatives who express politically incorrect opinions.

I've been working with colleagues to try to make sure that we make some changes to a piece of legislation that is flawed and --- quite frankly --- has been abused over the last several of years, said Conservative MP Brian Storseth who introduced the bill.

Bill C-304 proposes to delete Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) to ensure that there is no infringement on freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It received its first reading on September 30th, 2011.

Critics of section 13 have long argued that the clause creates the precise equivalent to a thought crime. The provision defines a discriminatory practice as any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt if the person or persons affected are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Storseth said:

This is really about freedom of speech in our country and pushing back on the tyrannical bureaucracy need to censor speech in our country.

If we don't have freedom of speech, what good are the other freedoms that go along with it? What good is the freedom to assemble or religious freedoms if you don't have the freedom of speech in the first place?

Storseth hopes that the bill will be debated at the beginning of November and that the first vote will take place at the end of that month.

A contentious section of Canadian human rights law, long criticized by free-speech advocates as overly restrictive and tantamount to censorship, is gone for good.

A private member's bill repealing Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the so-called hate speech provision, passed in the Senate this week. Its passage means the part of Canadian human rights law that permitted rights complaints to the federal Human Rights Commission for the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet will soon be history. The bill has received royal assent and will take effect after a one-year phase-in period.

An ecstatic Brian Storseth said his bill, which he says had wide support across ideological lines and diverse religious groups, repeals a flawed piece of legislation and he called Canada's human rights tribunal a quasi-judicial, secretive body that takes away your natural rights as a Canadian.

Producing and disseminating hate speech remains a crime in Canada, but regulating it will fall to the courts, not to human rights tribunals. Under the Criminal Code, spreading hate against identifiable groups can carry up to a two-year prison sentence.