Editorials & Opinion | "Hate": Will B.C. tribunal know it when it sees it? | Seattle Times Newspaper
"Hate": Will B.C. tribunal know it when it sees it?
Canada, which has made "hate speech" against the law, now struggles to balance political correctness with freedom.
We do not envy the Canadians. They have entrusted to their government a power Americans never would, and they follow it into foolishness.In the week of June 2, a body of bureaucrats called the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will call on the carpet author Mark Steyn. A bellicose champion of the West, Steyn predicts in his new book, "America Alone," that Muslims will swarm over Europe, ban alcohol and put women in veils. Maclean's magazine printed an excerpt that outraged Islamic Canadians, who complained to human-rights tribunals in Ottawa and the provinces.
Steyn's book may well be hateful in some way. The Seattle Times thought the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were hateful, and did not reprint them. That was one newspaper's decision. In Canada, the law makes such questions the government's decision.
British Columbia now bans all words and images "likely to expose a person ... to hatred or contempt" because of race, religion, age, disability, sex, marital status or sexual orientation." This sounds like a libel law for groups, except that libel is a misstatement of fact that damages an individual reputation. In the United States, for a public figure to be libeled, the false statement has to be made maliciously or recklessly.
The Canadian idea of hate speech is less specific and more dangerous. Hate is like obscenity, about which Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, "I know it when I see it." The difference is that a ban on obscenity does not touch political discourse, and a ban on hate does.
It also sets up government for open ridicule. Steyn is gleefully marketing his book as a "Canadian hate crime" and daring the tribunal to pronounce him bad.
Racial harmony in Canada would have been safer had the question never become official.
Writer finds himself in eye of media storm
Writer finds himself in eye of media storm
Human Rights Issue; Mark Steyn in thick of heated debate
Joseph Brean, National Post Published: Saturday, May 10, 2008
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As the debate over human rights commissions and free speech became a media gong show this week, it was easy to forget that just two months ago, it was on the fringes of Canadian political discourse, focused on the travails of a little-known white supremacist.
Back then, as right-wing bloggers blasted the country's human rights bureaucracy in harsh, simplistic and often inaccurate terms, the issue was easily ignored by the media because it seemed to recall Oscar Wilde's lament that scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
But gradually, the issue mushroomed.
Evidence emerged of shady online investigatory practices at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including the alleged hacking of a civilian's computer, which led to ongoing investigations by police and the Privacy Commissioner.
In Ottawa, a Liberal MP proposed scrapping the commissions' mandate to deal with hate speech, and two Conservative Cabinet ministers expressed their own worries about free speech, despite a rumoured order that the government caucus keep quiet.
And as the focus shifted to the hate speech prosecution of Canada's century-old newsmagazine, Maclean's, and its star columnist, Mark Steyn, special interest groups from across the spectrum started to weigh in with their concerns, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, PEN Canada, B'nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
"This thing has turned into a circus," said Warren Kinsella, a former Liberal spin doctor and Mr. Steyn's self-appointed nemesis in the battle over section 13-1 of Canada's Human Rights Code, which makes it an offence to spread messages that are "likely to expose" people to "hatred or contempt."
The ever-expanding publicity of that circus -- due largely to the efforts of Ezra Levant, himself the subject of a hate speech complaint in Alberta for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons, whose blog has become a clearing house for human rights skepticism -- has also inspired a flurry of libel lawsuits between representatives of the two sides.
This week marked a climax of sorts, as Mr. Steyn's promotional tour for his book America Alone -- an excerpt of which led to the complaint against Maclean's -- rolled through Toronto, and the issue was addressed on the country's top current affairs programs, from CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos to CTS's Michael Coren Show, CTV's Mike Duffy and TVO's Steve Paikin.
Mr. Paikin's show was a particular highlight, because he also hosted three law students who, as members of the Canadian Islamic Congress, are the public face of the complaint against Maclean's.
Having initially refused to debate Mr. Steyn directly, they were forced into it when Mr. Steyn challenged Mr. Paikin, on live television, to moderate an actual debate.
"Oh my, what a show," Mr. Paikin wrote on his blog afterward, calling it "one of the most heated we've ever done," and saying that the students made the right decision to debate, because they "would have looked like hypocrites had they not, given that they've been calling for an open debate on the subject matter for weeks."
But if the feisty rhetoric on television and talk radio brought glee to fans of Mr. Steyn and critics of the commissions', it also served to invigorate their champions.
"It did seem passingly strange to a lot of people that he was prepared to have a debate with a bunch of kids, effectively, but he isn't prepared to debate somebody who is more or less his own size," said Mr. Kinsella, who has challenged Mr. Steyn to a debate next month at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa and called him a "chickensh**" for not accepting.
Mr. Kinsella, who said he believes the complaint against Maclean's is without merit and has warned the students as much, said critics of human rights law are not thinking of the implications of "castrating or denuding the country of any kind of human rights code, and what the consequences will be for Islamic extremists or neo-Nazis.
"That's what those guys most desire."
At the same time, he says there is "no way that there's going to be wholesale change to the federal human rights code while there's a minority government. It's become too hot an issue."
"I don't know why Warren Kinsella is inserting himself into my hate crime. Why doesn't he get a hate crime of his own?" Mr. Steyn quipped in response.
The answer, of course, is that the human rights prosecution of Maclean's is becoming the scandal du jour, and it is now a recurring theme in the national media, even though the news pages of the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail have so far ignored the issue.
Just this week came a new development, when an editorial cartoonist for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald became the target of a complaint at the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, for his cartoon about the staying of charges in a recent terrorism case.
A Halifax Islamic group filed a complaint with the police and the commission, saying the April 18 cartoon creates "an environment of hate for its depiction a woman in a burka, holding a sign that reads "I want millions" and saying "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."
If the Maclean's complaint is any guide, Nova Scotian journalists will not take kindly to this challenge to their traditional freedoms, no matter what they think of Mr. Steyn's famously contrarian views, or Mr. Levant's campaign to "denormalize" the commissions.
"Nobody's going to be building statues to me," Mr. Steyn said. "But I think in a few years time, if we retrieve Canadian liberty, then people will forget me and Ezra Levant. We'll be obscure footnotes. But if this thing grows and expands the way [Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission] wants it to expand, then I think people will look back and say, 'God, why didn't we pay attention to Steyn and Levant?'
"I mean, if you were casting this drama in its most appealing light, you would want someone like David Suzuki to have fallen afoul of the human rights commissions, and then everybody would be on board with it. Or Margaret Atwood. But the reality is that there's no reason why that can't happen," Mr. Steyn said.
THE LAWSUITS
RICHARD WARMAN
Richard Warman, former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and a frequent third-party complainant.
versus Ezra Levant, conservative blogger; Kathy Shaidle, blogger at fivefeetoffury.com; Kate McMillan, blogger at smalldeadanimals. com; Mark and Connie Fournier, bloggers at freedominion.ca; Jonathan Kay, managing editor, Comment, National Post.
WHY? Libelcomplaintforpublishingclaimsinanaffidavitthat Mr. Warman posted racist comments about Senator Anne Cools on a Web forum
RICHARD WARMAN AND WARREN KINSELLA
Richard Warman, former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and a frequent third-party complainant, and Warren Kinsella, author of Web of Hate, former Liberal spin doctor and activist blogger.
versus Mark and Connie Fournier, bloggers at freedominion.ca.
WHY? Libelcomplaintfora WebpostingthataccusedMr. Warman and Mr. Kinsella of "Nazi-like behaviour."
GIACOMO VIGNA
Giacomo Vigna, Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer. versus Ezra Levant, conservative blogger
WHY? Libel complaint for blog postings that mocked Mr. Vigna's refusal to testify at a hate speech hearing because he was "not in a serene state of mind."
jbrean@nationalpost.com 
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