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I spent much of Monday on a plane to Phoenix, to see my friends at the Goldwater Institute, a great beacon of liberty and thus the antithesis of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission. So I'm only belatedly catching up to the all-star censorfest at the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice and Human Rights. It was live blogged by Miss Marprelate, Jay Currie, and the ol' hatemonger himself Ezra Levant - and Deborah Gyapong has pictures.
A couple of quick observations from the wee small hours in the western desert:
First, this letter to the Justice Committee from Ezra Levant is a little disturbing. I met the clerk of the committee on my trip to Ottawa and found her very charming, but she explained to me that nothing could be distributed to members unless it was in both English and French. Fair enough. Them's the rules and that's that. So I went back to New Hampshire to translate certain unilingual exhibits such as Julian Porter, QC's objection to the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal's decision to hold the Lemire trial in secret. Ezra, on the other hand, submitted his evidence to be translated by the government and it does seem somewhat unsatisfactory that they were unable to do it in time for Commissar Lynch's appearance.
Second, if Richard Warman was present at today's events, why was he not called as a witness? Mr Warman is Section 13's serial plaintiff and both Ezra and I charged him with a grotesque abuse of the process and cited him as a leading example of how "corrupted and diseased" Section 13 has become. If he has time to show up in the audience, why doesn't he have time to testify?
Third, M Menard and Mr Comartin, who were impressive questioners last time round, were sharper still on this occasion. Serge Menard is a Bloc MP and Joe Comartin an NDP member. Realistically, even assuming every Tory votes to do something about Section 13, nothing can happen without at least one other member of the committee, and it would seem the Bloquistes and the token Dipper are more engaged by the subject than the Liberals.
Fourth, Commissar Lynch was a bland obfuscatory dud who all but openly insulted the members' intelligence, retreating to the same generalized bromides. Her assertion that the dismissal of the case against Maclean's demonstrated that the process worked was laughable. Everyone knows Maclean's and I got off only because we went nuclear and made the price of conviction too high for the Commission to risk. But beyond that, even overlooking that curiously random grin of hers, there's something very creepy in hearing a government's chief censor emphasizing her commitment to a "harmonious society". It's not only a dubious legal concept in terms of Canada's 800-year inheritance since Magna Carta, but it has the explicit whiff of totalitarian fakery. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmonee, but I wouldn't hire Commissar Lynch, Dean Steacy or Richard Warman as the vocal coaches.
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