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Speaking to the House of Commons committee hearings on Canada's "human rights" commissions, Professor Martin of the University of Western Ontario gave a remarkable presentation on what he calls their "horrifying record". You can listen to the audio here - it's apparently too strong meat to let the citizenry see the video. You won't want to miss it.

Among its other notable features, it marks the latest stage in the denormalization of Richard Warman, former Canadian "Human Rights" Commission employee, victorious plaintiff on every Section 13 prosecution since 2002 and the country's most prominent Internet Nazi. Professor Martin calls him "the utterly odious Richard Warman" - and even brings up the Anne Cools post, as Senator Cools happens to be a friend of the professor.

Section 13, the CHRC and its Chief Commissar shame Canada, and they will not endure. In his previous incarnation as BBC late-night host twittering with leftie novelists into the small hours about freedom of expression, Michael Ignatieff would have been the first to say so. I'm confident his old pals Rushdie, Hitchens and Amis will eventually remind him of what he knows to be true.

[UPDATE: I like this line in response to a Liberal questioner: "Life in a democracy requires robust citizens." The Grit questions are as one might expect: tendentious, emotive, and boasting of their PC bona fides.]

[UPDATE 2: Gotta love this question from Mr Hiebert: "In the example of Senator Cools, I have to ask: Do you believe that she should have access to some form of legislation or prosecutorial avenue to prevent people like Mr Warman from making the comments that he did about her on the Internet?"

And there it is, folks: In Hansard, in the official Parliamentary record, for all eternity.

Professor Martin's response: "She does not want to soil herself by getting into a tussle with vermin like this [Mr Warman]." On the other hand, he is in favour of "a public hanging of Richard Warman".]

[UPDATE 3: The committee chairman: "I assume it's a reference to her race that begins with the letter 'n'." Mr Warman came this close to getting it read into the record.]

[IN SUMMARY: I yield to no one in my contempt for Richard Warman, and I'm all for getting his activities into Hansard, but I think the Professor's friendship with Senator Cools led him slightly off-track at times. It was a good presentation on overall philosophy and the law and in response to Liberal questions, but he got muddled up on some of the specifics of the HRC cases. Very good on the "odious" Taylor - the first Canadian to be imprisoned for his opinions since the 1930s.]

[UPDATE TO THE "IN SUMMARY" UPDATE: Mark Bourrie, whom I met at the Prime Minister's garden party last year, writes:

You might want to change that last line in your Thursday piece, the one that says Taylor was the last person imprisoned in Canada for their beliefs since the 1930s. I'd move the date to the summer of 1940, when the odiuos mayor of Montreal, Camillien Houde, was carted off to Petawawa under the War Measures Act for telling a press conference that he would not allow the feds to use Montreal City Hall or any other city property for manpower/draft registration. Cops came for Houde the next day and he spent four years locked up.

There were a few other small Commie and Nazi-wannabe fish picked up during the war, but you're most likely to hear about Houde. While corpulent, corrupt, disloyal and stupid, Houde was almost certainly not an agent of an enemy power. (The War Measures Act contained provisions for punishing people who discouraged recruitment, which was Houde's offence.)

BTW, Montreal voters put him back in office as quickly as they could. He was re-elected in 1944.

Actually, the line about "the first Canadian to be imprisoned for his opinions since the 1930s" came from Professor Martin's testimony, but Mr Bourrie has done extensive research into this subject, so I'm inclined to let him have the last word. I would add, however, that there is clearly a difference between the senior executive of a major city refusing the national government in wartime and an obscure private citizen running a recorded telephone message service out of his basement to a miniscule number of nobodies. In fact, if you look at who the CHRC chooses to torment and those from whom it backs away, it becomes clearer that it's a exercise in pure state power rather than anything to do with human rights - which should, of course, be a protection against arbitrary and whimsical state power.]  

It looks like the quickest way to destroy Canada's "human rights" regime would be to have Jennifer Lynch, QC (Queen of Comedy) give a speech defending it once a week. Adding to the Mount Logan of ridicule is Tyranny Of Nice author Pete Vere:

Jennifer, if Canadians have a poor perception of Canada's human rights racket, it's because the commissions' white overlords like you are disconnected from the context of the discussion, as well as from average Canadians and what they value.

His co-writer Kathy Shaidle on Commissar Lynch's complaint that we're chilling her free speech:

Lynch reveals that the bullies on her staff are, like all bullies, really just cowards -- and completely unable to detect irony...

Dr Roy:

She can't even accept the recommendations of the hrc friendly Moon report. She reverts to calling her critics "far right"... The people who run these organizations are way too dangerous to give them power over the lives of ordinary Canadians.

The incendiary feline:

Newspapers across the country, both major and minor have written numerous editorials explaining the need to abolish Section 13 (1)... Two successful books have been penned calling for an end to the rule of the HRC's soft-fascists...

Civil rights icons such as Alan Borovoy have come out against the odious Section 13(1). Senator Jerry Grafstein again an early proponent of the HRC concept is on record as stating that these public institutions have been hijacked by extremists.

The CHRC's own hand picked man, Richard Moon has told Jennifer Lynch to get out of the censorship business. Yet Queen Jennifer dismisses her critics with a wave of her Imperial Hand.

From our leftie chums at (gulp) the Daily Kos:

The thinking of Lynch is almost beyond my ability to mock.

Indeed. There are no defenders of this racket except those who, directly or indirectly, are living high off the "human rights" hog. Finally, birthday gal Deborah Gyapong:

The "scare quotes" around "shared values" is what this crew thinks of our Western heritage folks, the same heritage that brought us freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience. It is a heritage that is mindful of the dangers of tyranny and sought to limit the powers of the state. The relativistic, multicult mindset, reeking of identity politics, is a cancer eating away at real civil rights. AND WE'RE PAYING FOR THIS WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS.

Jennifer Lynch is an impeccably respectable person garlanded with the Queen's Jubilee Medal and every other bauble the Canadian state can confer. Why? In her public utterances and in the work of her commission, she embodies a direct assault on Canada's liberty and inheritance. There are all kinds of totalitarian impulses abroad today - in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere - but, even by these grim standards, can't Canada come up with something better than a totalitarianism of halfwits?

A year and a half ago, at the start of Mohamed Elmasry's campaign to criminalize my writing in Canada, Binky the Web Elf started a supportive website, Free Mark Steyn!, which evolved into Free Canuckistan, an indispensable aggregator for stories on not just my case and Ezra Levant's but the broader issues of free speech, individual liberty, Islamic muscle-flexing and western ennui. And, best of all, every so often the Binksmeister adds to the linkage with a wonderfully robust essay-length post on what's ast stake.

Binks isn't in the best of health at the moment, so, if you want to head over there and express your best wishes, I know he'd appreciate it. Needless to say, his latest round-up is also well worth your time.

Since the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission released its revolting report, the media have briefly rediscovered their interest in the subject of state censorship. The Ottawa Citizen has an editorial today, and Mindelle Jacobs' column in the Sun papers is also worth reading. But, despite the near universal objection to the Commission's proposals and the "human rights" regime's complete lack of defenders other than those living high off the "human rights" hog, the political class seems as disinclined as ever to take any action.

I didn't know Jennifer Lynch, QC until she decided to insert herself into my life. And, for most of last year, I tried to keep an open mind about her personal motivations, etc. But I regard the speech she gave to her fellow pseudo-rights enforcers at the "CASHRA" knees-up in Montreal as deeply dishonest. One assumes that she was aware that two-thirds of the statements she quoted were made not by "the media" in general, but rather by the target of her investigation: me. That makes her attribution of them profoundly misleading. Likewise, her mischaracterization of the "drunken pedophile" line. To be kind, it may be that the speech was written for her by some minion while she was off lunching a visiting delegation from the Iranian Human Rights Commission. But neither alternative - disingenousness or laziness - is acceptable. Even if you thought it a good idea to give the state extensive powers to regulate speech, Jennifer Lynch's speech makes plain that she's either too dishonest or stupid to be entrusted with the task.

Compare Commissar Lynch's remarks with those of Commissioner Denton at the CRTC, and decide for yourself who has the greater historical perspective and philosophical understanding. "Human rights" are about rights for humans, citizens, individuals - and about restraints on government. When a "human rights" commissar complains about citizens insulting the government, it would seem to be a near parodic example of how an obtuse and ugly nomenklatura has precisely inverted the principles of human rights and turned it into a vehicle for government power and bureaucratic self-preservation. When Queen Jennifer talks about the "human rights system", she gives the game away: It's about the "system", not human rights.