Free speech issues in Canada

While the left salivates here at home over the possibility of a return of the anti-Constitutional Fairness Doctrine under a Democrat administration, various Canadian “rights” commissions/groups are doing their part to stifle speech up north, as Mark Steyn explains:

As revealed here a few weeks ago, the investigative unit of the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission recommended to the Commissioners that they not proceed against Maclean’s for having the temerity to publish an excerpt from my book. The Commissioners have now released their final ruling and have decided not to hear the case. Of course, being apparatchiks of the pseudo-”human rights” establishment, they couldn’t leave it at that. So they added the following:

“While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media, such as the Maclean’s article and others like them, as being inconsistent with the values enshrined in our human rights codes. Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism.”

So in effect the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission, the world leaders in labiaplasty jurisprudence, have decided that, even though they don’t have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious! After all, if the federal Human Rights Commission hadn’t been so foolish enough to drag Marc Lemire to trial, their bizarre habits of posting their own hate messages using telecommunications fraud and identity theft would never have come to light. If they’d simply skipped the trial and declared Mr Lemire guilty anyway, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in.

So, having concluded they couldn’t withstand the heat of a trial, the OHRC cut to the chase and gave us a drive-thru conviction. Who says Canada’s “human rights” racket is incapable of reform? As kangaroo courts go, the Ontario branch is showing a bit more bounce than the Ottawa lads.

And as Canadian publisher Ezra Levant (who has already survived a prior lawsuit threat over his publishing of the Mohammed cartoons) wrote earlier in the week, he and other conservative bloggers in Canada are being sued by former Canadian Human Rights Commission member Richard Warman who, in essence, wants to shut down Canadian conservative voices on the Internet.

Make sure to read Ezra’s post in full for the details of what’s happening, and then go here to find out how you can help the coming legal costs of the conservative voices who Warman is attempting to silence via government force. By standing in solidarity with our conservative brothers and sisters in Canada, we can help make a difference.