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[SEE UPDATE BELOW]
Truly, what the Liberal Party of Canada has done to Michael Ignatieff is a wonder to behold. The Big Thinker gets smaller by the day. Here's his response on Section 13 and free speech to the Moose and Squirrel:
All legislation that seeks to protect human rights must seek balance between competing rights, like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
While we recognize that s. 13, as it is, may not strike the perfect balance, we do not believe that scrapping it entirely is the way to make a positive change. We do believe that we must continue to look into the right way to strike that balance and will continue to study this act.
Once again, thank you for your email and we look forward to hearing from you again in the future.
Sincerely,
The Office of Michael Ignatieff, MP
Leader of the Official Opposition
Sad, sad, sad. Here's what he had to say in happier times - 2003 - as quoted by me to the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice:
Collective rights without individual ones end up in tyranny. Moreover, rights inflation--the tendency to define anything desirable as a right--ends up eroding the legitimacy of a defensible core of rights...
The right to freedom of speech is not, as the Marxist tradition maintained, a lapidary bourgeois luxury, but the precondition for having any other rights at all.
Oh, well. Won't be long now. As I said in my column, the last time I saw him was a long time ago, when a mutual friend threw a small dinner party in Highgate. One day soon, he'll be back on the London-New York dinner-party circuit and able to laugh about all this.
Iggy's Red Meat Tea. Only not in Canada. Pity.
UPDATE: Shocker! Jesus, Shakespeare and Churchill go the Ignatieff route.
PS Here's the official Hansard transcript of my remarks to Parliament.
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