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[See updates below]
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.]
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