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On Monday (as noted below), Maclean's filed a motion requesting that Charlie Gillis, yours truly and other representatives of the magazine be permitted to attend the secret hearing of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal at which employees of the CHRC will be questioned about their addiction to posting on "hate websites" under false names. Our man Julian Porter, being a real lawyer and QC and whatnot, made a legal argument. That's to say, Julian cited legal precedents - CBC vs New Brunswick, Ambard vs Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago, etc - and eminent jurists from Viscount Haldane to Judge Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada. That is what lawyers do. Catholic Insight, which also seeks to attend the hearing, referenced R. vs Amato (1982), R. vs Mack (1988), etc.

We now have the counter-argument* from the Canadian Human Rights Commission. There is no appeal to precedent or legal principle. There is no legal argument at all. Instead, there is an emotional whine that "a great deal of anger has been expressed on various websites" against the CHRC's employees. A "great deal of anger"? This is the usual "human rights" arithmetic, as Orwellian in its way as Orwell's 1984 line about 2+2=5. At the CHRC, 1+0="a great deal". The only evidence of "a great deal of anger" is one poster at one website. So the CHRC's proposition that there is "a great deal of anger" out there is true in the same sense that there are a great deal of neo-Nazis out there, and a great deal of human rights victims bringing legitimate Section 13 complaints, as opposed to just one - Richard Warman - using this provision of the law as his personal payback machine.

So, on the one hand, we have legal arguments consistent with Canadian law. On the other, we have an emotive whine unsupported by any evidence. In a sense, this is the logical reductio of Section 13: now it's not just the "human rights victims" but the Commission itself complaining that all that matters is that their feelings have been hurt. Reading this "legal response", you'd think the CHRC had seceded entirely from the Canadian justice system. Which they have, more or less. That's why they're so determined to resist attempts to get them to conform to the norms of Canadian law. If the CHRC gets away with this, they will have established an important benchmark in confirming that the Star Chamber is now a law unto itself, in which the principles and precedents of Canada's legal inheritance are entirely irrelevant.

On the other hand, notice the offers to compromise in the final paragraphs. Those would not have been made had Maclean's not filed its motion, and other parties, from Catholic Insight to The National Post, from Free Dominion and other bloggers to (as I still quaintly think of us) free-born Canadian citizens, not weighed in on the issue. That's why it's important to keep the pressure up.

From the mailbag, a reader objects to opening up the secret hearings:

Human Rights Commissions and your neo-fascism

I've written the Human Rights Commission detailing you and your associates desire to see those involved in the process publicly humiliated and physically threatened.  I've accused you of inciting these reactions and remaining silent with regard to threats issued, particularly at Freedom Dominion, and among bloggers associated with Small Dead Animals, Let Freedom Reign and a number of Conservative bloggers associated with the Blogging Tories.

I have informed them that I believe you and your associates constitute a real and imminent threat.

Sheldon Macavy
Toronto

Gee, if I'm inciting physical violence, why didn't you just file a whole new hate-crimes complaint?

Thanks to everyone who's written letters to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal requesting that the March 25th hearing into the activities of the CHRC's "human rights investigators" not be held in camera - ie, in secret. Maclean's has decided to take things a step further. On Monday, counsel will file a motion requiring that Charlie Gillis, yours truly and other Maclean's staff be admitted to cover the proceedings on the grounds that the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal are subject to the same rules of openness as any other Canadian court.

This gets to the heart of the issue: Is the secretive, self-protective "human rights" apparatus part of the Canadian legal system and its Common Law inheritance? Or is it, in fact, above the law, and a law unto itself?

Meanwhile, I note that Keith Martin, MP, seems to be moving from proposing a fairly narrow repeal of Section 13 (i) to something closer to a full-scale review of the "human rights" system. Many of us have made the same journey in recent months: the more you look into this racket, the more you repelled you are by its modus operandi.

As followers of the Canadian thought police will know, the March 25th hearings at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will feature employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission being cross-examined on their dubious tactics of posting anonymously at "hate" websites. In other words, it is standard working practice to allow CHRC "investigators" potentially to create the crimes they prosecute. It would be as if Governor Spitzer had a ball with his call girl and then charged her and her agency with prostitution.

Needless to say, the "human rights" enforcers, who claim to be empowered to police not only your public expression but also your private thoughts, don't want to expose their own words, thoughts and beliefs to the same scrutiny. So they've decided to hold this important hearing in secret. Free societies do not hold secret trials except for the most serious reasons of national security: mid-level servants of the Crown who get their jollies by posing as racists on unread websites do not fall into that category. Maclean's and I believe this hearing should be open. My editors have written to the Tribunal requesting permission for me and a staff reporter to attend.

The Tribunal is now taking submissions from other parties as to why these proceedings should be open. The lady to contact - by March 17th at the latest - is Ghislaine Cyr, and you can find all the details here - including the important advice that any emails and letters to Mme Cyr should be impeccably civil. If the proceedings are opened up, it would be nice to see someone other than the Maclean's delegation on the press benches.