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For some reason, the Canadian Bar Association is meeting in Dublin. That's Dublin, Ireland. So naturally Jennifer Lynch, QC, Chief Commissar of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, felt she needed to fly out there at taxpayers' expense, and give another one of her speeches complaining that supporters of censorship feel they're being censored. They no longer feel free enough to speak out in support of not letting people speak out:
Jennifer Lynch, head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission since 2007, told the Canadian Bar Association's annual meeting that opponents of rights bodies have successfully created a "chill" that makes it difficult for anyone to defend those bodies without also becoming a target...
She urged them to write "letters to correct misinformation," encourage other experts to participate in the debate and promote public education of the role of rights commissions and tribunals in the justice system.
Actually, I think Ezra's being doing a pretty good job on the "public education" front, don't you?
She said rights bodies have been under attack since 2007 after the Canadian Islamic Congress filed complaints against Rogers Communications over an essay published in Maclean's magazine, a Rogers publication, by conservative commentator Mark Steyn.
That gets to the heart of it. You picked this fight, lady. Not me. And you expected Ken Whyte and Ezra and me just to lie there and take it.
If I were Commissar Lynch's bosses at the Justice Ministry, I think I would recommend a period of public silence. As I wrote in Maclean's the other week:
Oh, dear, what’s the country coming to? Defenders of state censorship are too cowed to speak out in favour of not letting people speak out? You could hardly ask for a better snapshot of the degradation of “human rights” in contemporary Canada than the chief censor whining to a banqueting suite full of government apparatchiks that the ingrate citizenry are insufficiently respectful of them. The bureaucrats at the top table control hundreds of millions of public dollars. Jennifer Lynch represents state power; Ezra and I represent a bunch of impecunious bloggers. Yet the Dominion of Canada has been reduced to complaining that Blazing Cat Fur is out to get it.
Denyse O'Leary understands the difference:
Jennifer Lynch has the power to destroy peoples’ lives and reputations, with the current collusion of government. I do not.
This whining from Queen Jennifer is unbecoming for the government of a G7 country. Look, her dress-up Nazis Dean Steacy and Richard Warman think that being a Canadian "Human Rights" agent is some super-duper 007-type role involving top-secret undercover work on the Internet. That would put Commissar Lynch in the role of M - or C, as Britain's spymaster is known in real life. And M doesn't go around giving speeches every week complaining that spywatch.blogspot.com is chilling 007's martini. If Jenny Lynch sees herself as Judi Dench to Dean Steacy's Daniel Craig, then her name should not even be made available to the public. The Dominion's rightsmistress should simply be known as X or * or some such. It's a small price to pay for protecting Canada's "most vulnerable".
(More from Deborah Gyapong, the Moose & Squirrel and Jesse Ferreras.)
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