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It's Thanksgiving south of the border, but up north there are reasons to be thankful, too. When Ezra Levant and I had this struggle thrust upon us a year ago by the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and their assorted stooges in the federal, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia "human rights" regimes, it seemed unlikely that we could reverse public perceptions of Canada's smiley-face Orwellian "human rights" commissions. Twelve months on, I'm having difficulty keeping track of all the fellows on our side, while down the other end of the field Sarah Palin could hunt elk on the vast empty tundra on which the last remaining defenders of Canadian state censorship are gathered.
The campaign to repeal Section 13 is now all but unanimous. Ezra has a round-up of recent editorials: It's not just the "right-wing" National Post that wants Section 13 scrapped, so does the house organ of Trudeaupian multiculti progressivism, The Toronto Star. It's not just The Globe And Mail, the Montreal Gazette and The Ottawa Citizen, but also The Portage Daily Graphic. Peter Worthington in The Toronto Sun sums it up: "Get rid of damned Section 13." And the headline on Mindelle Jacobs' column has the correct emphasis: "No need to hate free speech." The "haters" here are not Ezra or myself but the hacks, apparatchiks and activists who insist ever more frantically that without this "damned Section 13" the citizens of one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on the planet would succumb to their genetic predisposition toward Fascism, start agitating for genocide and start a run on machetes on Canadian Tire. "Human rights" genius Pearl Eliadis warns Canada not to give in to the "blog bullies". Who's bullying whom? You guys started it. The only bullies here are the state censors destroying the lives of minor Albertan pastors and other peripheral figures. You and Barbara Hall and Jennifer Lynch and Heather MacNaughton picked on me, and now, like all bullies who belatedly meet resistance, you're whining because I declined to fall to the ground and let you kick my head in. On this waterfront, Pearl, the Lee J Cobb figure is Jennifer Lynch.
When Ezra and I decided to resist the Lynch mob, Jean Chretien's most fearless attack chihuahua damned us by association: To abolish Section 13 would be to "gut the Canadian Human Rights Act." To even raise the question was akin to slipping on the jackboots and warbling the Horst Wessel song:
Do you agree with this stunt? Not surprisngly, the Nazis do.
So Ezra and I must be Nazis, and so must Dr Keith Martin, the Liberal MP and self-described "brown guy", and so must Professor Richard Moon, and the leftie novelists at PEN Canada and the editorial board of The Toronto Star, and Salman Rushdie and Noam Chomsky... Nazis all of them! Nazis everywhere you look! The Nazification of Trudeaupia is so total poor horrified Warren must be starting to wonder whether it's time to go hide in the attic.
Other than Warren, Lucy Warman, Bernie Farber and Haroon Siddiqui*, Section 13 has so few friends that even Feisel Joseph, the Canadian Islamic Congress bling king and El Mo's vicar on earth, feels it no longer useful to mention it by name.
It's now time for Parliament to act. A day or two ago, Deborah Gyapong expressed sympathy for the Justice Minister's predicament. But what's the political downside in promising to enact a proposal by the CHRC's own investigator and support a motion by a Liberal MP? What are the political risks? That Warren Kinsella will call you a Nazi of horrifyingly Toronto Star-like proportions? I have had just one encounter with Michael Ignatieff in my life - a long-ago dinner party for expats in London - but, granted the political realities that have required him to back pedal away from his muscular liberalism of five or six years ago, nothing I know of him suggests he would be comfortable supporting the totalitarian impulse of Section 13. As Ezra suggests, if you drop a line to the Prime Minister, drop one to the Igster, too. Let's keep it bipartisan.
Deborah Gyapong thinks nothing will happen until Iggy, Rob Nicholson and Jennifer Lynch start getting scrummed. Well, maybe. That may be one of those insider/outsider things. I got "scrummed" outside the courthouse in Vancouver and Iit struck me as just a bit of media theatre, a way of signaling to viewers that something's a real story. But, scrummed or unscrummed, this story is real. You can help keep it so by signing this online petition.
There are no substantive defenders of Section 13. It's time to move from talk to action. And the day that this ugly law and censor's charter is consigned to the garbage will be a true day of thanksgiving in Canada.
(*By the way, re Mr Siddiqui, the day after a Muslim terrorist assault on key landmarks of a major Indian city that left dozens dead, saw British and American tourists taken hostage, and the city's anti-terrorism chief and other municipal law enforcement figures gunned down on the street doesn't seem the most appropriate moment for him and Alan Borovoy to protest at Maclean's even raising the subject of how many Muslims support terrorism and its goals. That's an entirely responsible subject for the media to raise. And, given what's going on in the streets of Bombay, it's irresponsible for the media not to raise it - unless, that is, like Mr Siddiqui, you see yourself not as a journalist but as an enforcer for PC orthodoxy.)
[UPDATE: Deborah Gyapong wonders about Mr Siddiqui's quotation of Alan Borovoy, whom she has interviewed herself. "I think Haroon misheard," she says. Perhaps. Here's the quotation that appears in the piece:
Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, a lifelong proponent of free speech, told me:
"Let's just take one statement that Steyn made: `Not all Muslims are terrorists, though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network.' I interpret that as saying that a significant number of Muslims support terrorism ... How much worse can you get? Doesn't that expose them to hatred? This looks to me like an awful exercise in rationalization by those who say this isn't hatred."
I'd be interested to know what's in that ellipsis.]
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