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Blazing Cat Fur draws my attention to the extraordinary speech given today by Canada's Chief Commissar of "Human Rights", Jennifer Lynch, QC (Queen of Censorship), to something called CASHRA, the "Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies". Alas, at this taxpayer-funded knees-up for the PC enforcers of the Canadian state, the conga lines were somewhat muted by Junket Jen's report that all is not well in the wacky world of Canadian "human rights":
Certain detractors seek to caricature the human rights system, and undermine its legacy and ability to ensure equality for all Canadians.
This began with a complaint brought against Rogers Communications by the Canadian Islamic Congress, in three jurisdictions: Federal, Ontario, and British Columbia. All three dismissed the complaint.
Even before the three complaints were dismissed, many commissions and tribunals experienced a cacophony of protest – by those who felt that exposing mainstream media organizations to formal complaints is inconsistent with Canada’s commitment to freedom of expression.
The debate moved to one of discrediting Commissions’ processes, professionalism and staff. Much of what was written was inaccurate, unfair, and at times scary:
Articles described human rights commissions and their employees in this way:
* “Gestapo”
* “human rights racket”
* “welcome to the whacky world of Canadian human rights.”
* “...(i)t sounds like a fetish club for servants of the Crown”
* “a secretive and decadent institution”
In addition to this mounting discredit for our institution:
* blogs worked to destroy our investigators and litigators’ reputations and credibility with untrue accusations;
* groundless complaints were lodged with the law societies; and
* a Commission employee’s life was threatened.
Some human rights experts tried to respond and correct this misinformation. One human rights expert who wrote a letter to a major daily paper faced an accusation in a response letter by a journalist the next day asking, “is (name of person) a drunken pedophile?”
Just for the record, that last bit is mine, from a letter I wrote to the Montreal Gazette in response to "human rights" activist Pearl Eliadis. Here's the expanded version:
Let me take just one sentence: “Are Levant and Steyn hatemongerers? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.”
Overlooking her curious belief that “hatemongerers” is a word, whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Eliadis stands on its head the bedrock principle of English justice and airily declares that my status as a “hatemongerer” is unknown until “decided” by the apparatchiks of the HRC.
Can anyone play this game? “Is Pearl Eliadis a drunken pedophile? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.” In her justification of the HRC process, Eliadis only confirms what’s wrong with it.
I'm making a serious point there about the "human rights" enforcers' perversion of Canada's basic legal principles, and I stand by it. So just to up the ante: "Is Jennifer Lynch, QC a drunken pedophile serial killer? Maybe not. But no one has decided that."
About the rest of her plaint, one thing I've learned since 9/11 is that those who receive credible death threats do not brag about them in public. As for the unflattering descriptions of her commission, I was responsible for three of them: "human rights racket"; "a fetish club for servants of the Crown"; and "welcome to the wacky world of Canadian 'human rights'". I deeply resent Commissar Lynch lifting all my best lines without credit to perk up her turgid speech. I stand by all of them, and I see I've reprised the last up at the top. Must try to work the "fetish club" line in again.
So four of the six quotations Commissar Lynch is upset about are from what Pearl Eliadis would call the "hatemongerer" - or what proper legal systems would call "the accused". In other words, the Chief Commissar of Canada's "human rights" regime is complaining that the person she is investigating has had the impertinence to respond. Which gives you an interesting glimpse into Queen Jennifer's concept of justice.
Deborah Gyapong observes:
I am gasping at the irony in this. If I'm reading this correctly, then Jennifer Lynch is claiming that people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are chilling her freedom of speech!!!!!!!
The problem is, Jennifer, they do not have a government body with all the levers of power and a $25 million dollar budget to persecute people like you do!
Exactly. Jennifer Lynch, QC is so tone-deaf, ham-fisted and club-footed that she does not understand how absurd her bleat would sound to real "human rights activists" like John Milton. In Canada, "protecting human rights" now means insulating the "human rights" bureaucracy from criticism. So we have the preposterous spectacle of a government commissar whining to a roomful of government apparatchiks that the citizenry are insufficiently deferential to them. Does Kathy Shaidle have a $25 million budget? Can Jay Currie impose a lifetime speech ban on the targets of his wrath, as the Government of Alberta did to Rev Boissoin? Yet here we have, in effect, the Government of the Dominion of Canada complaining that Blazing Cat Fur is being mean to it.
In the next issue of Maclean's, I mention en passant Magna Carta: In 1215, to the barons at Runymede, human rights meant the King was restrained by his subjects. Eight hundred years later, Canadian "human rights" means the subjects are restrained by Queen Jennifer. But I never thought that even she would be so obtuse as to stand up in public and complain about the peasants' lese-majeste.
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