The CIC vs. Steyn

Mark Steyn responds to the human-rights complaints regarding his writing:

If the Canadian Islamic Congress wants to disagree with my book, fine. Join the club. But, if they want to criminalize it, nuts.

[...]

...These "human rights" censors started with small fry - obscure websites, "homophobes" who made the mistake of writing letters to local newspapers or quoting the more robust chunks of Leviticus - and, because they got away with it, it now seems entirely reasonable for a Canadian pseudo-court to sit in judgment on the content of a mainstream magazine and put a big old "libel chill" over critical areas of public debate. The "progressive" left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalists, right-wing columnists, and other despised groups. They don’t know they’re riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too.

Steyn's Maclean's colleague, Andrew Coyne, has more about human-rights commissions and regulation of speech:

That the CIC and other charter members of the Assocation of the Perpetually Offended should seek to express their revulsion by such means is unsurprising. There are a great many people in this country who seem to have no clue about what freedom of speech means, or why it was invented. What is astonishing is to find so many of them in the employ of the human rights commissions. No: rather, I wish I were astonished. What’s truly astonishing is that the commissions should have been granted such powers to begin with. As Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, argued recently, “during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech.” To be acting as censors, he wrote, was “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions.”

Amen. Yet the commissions have been allowed to stray, far from their original purpose of preventing discrimination in employment and housing, into the nebulous world of expression. They succeeded, largely because their early targets were so odious, marginal figures who scribbled letters to the editor or left hateful messages on their answering machines: who wants to defend racists and homophobes? Emboldened, they are now going after mainstream media or­gan­izations—Maclean’s, for heaven’s sakes.

And so, rather than give the back of their hand to the CIC’s complaint, we are treated to the spectacle of not one but two human rights commissions—On­­tario’s may yet join them—agreeing to launch inquiries. Had the CIC sought remedy under Canada’s hate speech law, as over-broad as it is, they would at least have had to persuade a prosecutor to take their case, and to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. But as it is they can tie up the magazine and its lawyers before one commission or another for months. The chill this should send through the nation’s newsrooms is obvious.

Love Steyn or hate him, every Canadian blogger should be deeply concerned about this.

Damian P.

Mark adds: I think Mr Steyn may be referring to a serious backlash, much worse than the "reasonable accommodation" debate (I find the GG's attitude interesting), should this particularism continue.

Dr Dawg may be on to something, though he does have his own perspective. Merry Christmas.

Posted by damian at December 7, 2007 07:25 AM