|
...but not at Dean Steacy.
Deborah Gypapong writes today that the "outrageous response" of the Human Rights Commission to the Maclean's motion to open up the secret trial may finally wake up her sleepy press colleagues. One would like to think so. As Ezra puts it:
I confess, I would be almost as happy if the tribunal accepted the CHRC's whiny demand, and kept the reporters cooped up in some holding room, barred from even looking at Steacy and Hannya Rizk and the other CHRC witnesses. I can only imagine the simmering anger that would boil in that room. Some of the country's best reporters, who are used to access to the highest Prime Ministers, Presidents, Supreme Courts, titans of business -- and uninhibited access to the lowest of society, from accused murderers to disgraced politicians and industrialists -- being told by some petty, counterfeit court that they are not allowed to watch "justice" be done.
I hadn't really thought about it like that, but he has a point. I'm far from an illustrious member of my profession, yet in the course of my career, I've been received in Buckingham Palace and the White House; I've passed the security checks at the Pentagon and the European Commission, and lunched with the Secretary-General of Nato; I've spent a very pleasant day sitting next to the Queen of Spain at an international conference (the seating was alphabetical - hence, "Spain, HM The Queen of; Steyn, Mr M"), exchanged pleasantries with the Queen of the Netherlands, and had a bibulous evening with the heir to the Belgian throne; I've met Prime Ministers of (off the top of my head) Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Mauritius, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Finland and a bunch of other places, and had no trouble getting through the security procedures.
And yet I'm too big a security risk to be allowed anywhere near minor civil servants of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Why don't they just cut to the chase and rename it the Human Rights Politburo? If the CHRC is allowed to establish the precedent of secret trials in Canada, more fool the press corps who let 'em get away with it.
|
