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Perhaps the most improbable headline I've ever featured in was this one from last year:
Steyn Could Decide Election
Not the US presidential election, alas. Nor even the Canadian election. But, in British Columbia, John Martin seemed to think the Liberals' margin of victory in the last election was so narrow that, in the wake of the Maclean's show trial in Vancouver, a relatively small number of disaffected free-speechers could decide the party's fate. BC is a bit like Quebec in that it has a two-party system in which neither choice is conservative: in la belle province, it's a choice between the separatists and the Quebec Liberals; on the left coast, it's a choice between the socialists and the BC Liberals. So the right-of-centre vote in BC goes, faute de mieux, to Gordon Campbell's party.
Or at any rate that's the way it was until the upstart BC Tories decided to challenge Premier Campbell from the right in next month's provincial election. Robert Jago spoke to their leader, Wilf Hanni, about the "Human Rights" Tribunal and got the following response:
A BC Conservative Government will reform the BC Human Rights Tribunal:
* So that any complainant will be responsible for the legal fees associated with his or her human rights complaint.
* To make complainants responsible for paying the defendant’s legal fees should the complainant lose their Human Rights Tribunal case.
* To disallow individuals and organizations from making Human Rights Tribunal complaints when Human Rights Tribunals in other Canadian jurisdictions are already investigating the same issue.
* To disallow cases dealing with freedom of speech under Section 2 of the Charter.
* To allow appeals, to a court of law, for any decision made by the Tribunal.
* So that the Tribunal cannot render penalties outside the boundaries of Canadian Laws.
We realize that it is neither fair nor equitable that complainants currently receive free legal representation no matter how frivolous the complaint, while defendants must pay their own legal fees.
All sensible stuff that every party in BC ought to be on board with. Unfortunately, neither the Liberals nor the NDP are. So are the new Tories just spoilers who'll vindicate last year's headline by delivering the province back to the socialists? Or might they perhaps spur the Liberals to show some leadership on this issue?
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