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In contrast to much of the other coverage, Don Butler's report in The Ottawa Citizen turns up a few interesting nuggets - and manages, unlike the CP story, to figure out in its first sentence what's really going on:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission wants to stay in the business of policing online hate speech.

In a report tabled in Parliament Thursday, the commission rejected a proposal to leave the task of reining in Internet hatemongers to the Criminal Code.

Blazing Cat Fur spots the opposing positions taken by Canada's two most prominent "official Jews" (in Ezra Levant's phrase) - Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress and Frank Dimant of B'nai Brith. Bernie thinks everything's ticketty boo and the CHRC window dressing is all that's needed, whereas Frank wants a "major overhaul". This emerging difference may be because B'nai Brith recently found itself plunged into "human rights" hell and the attendant expense at the hands of an anonymous complainant - very Eastern European. On the day the Supreme Islamic Council of Swift Current hauls Bernie's ass into court, maybe the CJC's position will start to evolve.

Mr Butler also managed to get a reaction from Professor Moon. I don't agree with the Prof on much - in his testimony at Queen's Park, he revealed himself to be just another shill for the state enforcers - but this is a striking passage:

The human rights tribunal hears very few Section 13 cases either, Moon pointed out. “In the absence of Richard Warman, there really is very little happening under Section 13. You take him away, you’ve got nothing.” 

Very true. So take him away, and then we can take Section 13 away. As I've been saying for a year and a half now, out of 30 million Canadians, why should Richard Warman be the only one to have his very own law? One can debate whether his obsessive pattern of personal score-settling on the taxpayer's dime is evidence of a sociopathic disorder or merely a lucrative shakedown racket, but either way it doesn't pass the smell test. By the way, Mr Butler mis-labels Mr Warman as an "Ottawa lawyer and anti-hate activist". He is, in fact, an "Ottawa lawyer and prominent author of multiple white-supremacist hate-speech Internet postings". Perhaps the Citizen could run a correction.

Oh, and you gotta love Jennifer Lynch, QC. Deborah Gyapong all but chokes on the hectoring post-modern utopian mumbo-jumbo as Queen Jennifer "reconceptualizes" human rights as a "matrix". Yeah, I saw that movie, and we're already way too far down the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, Her Majesty calls for "balance":

While the furore over Maclean's generated fierce debate, Lynch said the debate “has not yet been balanced.”

Well, why's that? It's because you and your gang got used to operating in the dark, living out your silly little secret-agent fantasies as Internet sock puppets, attempting to keep the press and public out of your kangaroo courtrooms, refusing even to show your faces when defendants paid routine calls to your offices. But, if at this late hour you really want to have a debate, why not propose a date? I'll be there, Maclean's can sponsor it, Steve Paikin or some such to moderate...

But, if by a "balanced" debate, you mean that Canada's "human rights" apparatchiks should be allowed to scurry back under the rock we lifted up 18 months ago, that's not gonna happen.  

[UPPER DATE: A typically lame story from the Canadian Press that manages to miss the point even in its headline: "Rights Commission Wants To Give Up Its Power To Fine Wrongdoers." As Jay Currie points out, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the distinction between the CHRC's "fines" and "penalties". More from Ghost of a Flea, Kenneth Hynek and Kathy Shaidle.]

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[UPDATE: The Canadian "Human Rights" Commission has now published its report, Freedom Of Expression And Freedom From Hate In The Internet Age.

That title is itself quite revealing. "Freedom of" denotes a genuine human right: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement. "Freedom from" (with the exception of "freedom from government control") denotes not a human right but a massive government enforcement regime: "Freedom from hate" is an especially repugnant concept to a free society, since "hate" is a human emotion and the degree of state policing required to "free" a society therefrom is by definition totalitarian. No one has the right to be "free from hate", even if the arbiters of such a concept were less biased, corrupt and deformed than the CHRC and Richard Warman.]

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Summer is icumen in, and that means the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission response to the report it commissioned from Professor Moon should also be icumen in. It has apparently been leaked to The Globe & Mail, and the big news is - stand well back - the Jennifer Lynch mob have decided they'd like to keep their powers to police the opinions of the citizenry.

Well, there's a surprise. 

Jay Currie comments :

Dear Lord, if this is what the actual report says the Commision must think Canadians are idiots.

I think that's a given for 90 per cent of the state apparatchiks. What's more relevant is that the Commission has concluded that Parliament is too craven to act. When I spoke in Ottawa a couple of weeks back, I said that it was time for the political class to take a lead on this issue, and the room (including a big bunch of cabinet honchos) burst into sustained applause. At any rate, that's my recollection - it was a long drive and I might have been fantasizing. But I meant what I said. A bureaucracy of unelected social engineers is waging war on the people's liberties; it would be an act of political hygiene for the people's representatives to remove their power to do so.

Blazing Cat Fur recommends applying further political pressure, but he is, I think, more optimistic than I. Jennifer Lynch, QC seems to think that, with the end of the Maclean's/Western Standard cases, the urge to reform will fade, and the racket can discreetly resume. We shall see. The fact is Section 13 is irrelevant to the Queen's peace except as a personal shakedown racket for a freaky CHRC alumnus whose behaviour is at least as sick and creepy as anyone he and the Commission has ever targeted. The racket cannot withstand scrutiny.

Oh, and by the way, I know Ezra Levant liked the Prime Minister's speech to the Canadian Jewish Congress. But I would have preferred it had he declined to accept an honour previously awarded to Richard Warman.   

Ezra Levant has picked up on the Sock Puppet Five Four Three Two's latest missive, and Khurrum Awan's bizarre claim to have been the plaintiff in the Danish cartoons case. Ezra attributes Mr Awan's erratic relationship to the truth to taqiyya. Blazing Cat Fur suggests he has been possessed by a djinn. Scaramouche puts it down to delusions of grandeur.

I incline to the last explanation. My advice to Naseem would be to ditch him before he conscripts her to any more of his wacky self-aggrandizing.

In other freespeechy news, if Canadians don't like the idea of having the Internet regulated on "your" behalf by the CRTC, Commissioner Timothy Denton's observations (scroll way down) on free expression and the Dominion's legal inheritance may be of interest:

The history of the regulation of speech in this country does not engender confidence that such powers will be used wisely. Canada has experienced several instances in recent times where regulatory commissions of another type and armed with a different mission have challenged the right to say controversial things. The struggles of Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and others have served as important warnings that regulatory authorities charged with combating racism, hatred, and other evils have consistently expanded their mandates, have abused their powers and eroded fundamental liberties. Wherever there is official orthodoxy, disagreement is heresy, and where there is heresy, there is usually an inquisition to root it out. After centuries ridding ourselves of thought control agencies, 20th century Canada re-invented them...

Nor is it difficult to imagine a state of affairs where "broadcasters" across the Internet could be subject to some of the existing regulations, for instance, those concerned with linguistic, religious or political balance that apply to those who use "scarce" public airwaves. Imagine Pat Condell, the acerbic British atheist, having to "balance" his views about religion and religions if he were subject to Canadian broadcasting regulation, for example...

If the Canadian portion of the Internet could be placed under the Act, and speech involving video, or sound, became a licensed activity, we would have reversed several centuries of constitutional evolution and gone back to the days prior to 1688 of licensed printing presses or, in our case, licensed video telephone transmissions as well as licensed computer users. Several important political revolutions have been fought to ensure freedom of the press and speech; it would be repugnant to nibble away at it in defence of anything as comparatively unimportant as Canadian broadcasting policy. Yet such a possibility does not lack for advocates.

I like the cut of this guy's jib. If the Government of Canada doesn't have the courage to scrap Section 13, why not at least get rid of Jennifer Lynch, QC and make Mr Denton Chief Commissioner of the "Human Rights" Commission?

Mohamed Elmasry, host of Canada's all-time record-breaking fundraiser, looks like he's even more Socks short of a drawer. If you're keeping score:

For his original case study on Maclean's and my "flagrant Islamophobia", there were five Sock Puppets.

By the time the suit was filed in Ontario, the Sock Puppet Five were a quartet: Ali Ahmed had gone missing.

Then Daniel Simard bailed and the Sock Puppet Four were reduced to the Sock Puppet Three - just Khurrum Awan and his fetching Sockettes.

Now, judging from this letter to The Toronto Star, Khurrum is down to his last Sockette. Muneeza Sheikh is strangely absent from the act, and it's now down to Khurrum Awan plus full supporting chorus of one: Socky and Cher.

The Muslim Sockernacle Choir is a very strange act: The same old song, but sung by fewer and fewer voices. Indeed, given that Mr Awan has spent the last year and a half saying the same thing over and over and over on stage, radio, TV and in print, you'd think he'd be a bit better at his shtick by now (see Blazing Cat Fur's review of his live performance).

As Scaramouche notes, today's plaintive whine is a reprise of their usual clubfooted sleight of hand. Mr Awan and Naseem Mithoowani complain:

Among other things, the articles imply that Islam condones sex with minors and animals, refer to Muslims as "sheep-shaggers" and allege that Muslims believe in drinking the blood of their enemies.

Well, if they've got a problem with the "implication" that Islam condones sex with minors they should work to get the Iranian, Saudi, Pakistani and many other Islamic marriage laws amended. "Sheep-shaggers"? Complain to the Ayatollah Khomeini's publishers. Blood drinking? Go argue the finer points with the prominent British Muslim Omar Brooks, who made the claim at Trinity College, Dublin. If Khurrum and Naseem seriously objected to any of the above, they'd take it up with their coreligionists. But what they really object to is non-Muslims even raising the subject.

We've been around this a zillion times, and my last word on ovine fornication and other critical issues can be found in Lights Out. But this little bit does seem to be new:

Ezra Levant accuses Canada's human rights commissions of censorship for investigating our hate-speech complaints about his publishing of cartoons depicting Muslims...

"Our" hate-speech complaints? Is that true? Did Khurrum Awan and Naseem Mithoowani file "human rights" complaints about The Western Standard? I wasn't aware of that. As readers may recall, I'm a little bit sweet on Naseem, and I'm sorry to see her stuck in her role as Tony Sockando's last remaining back-up singer. The key to the sock market is knowing when to get out.