Complaint dismissed

A human rights complaint against Ezra Levant has been dismissed, but the Respondent is hardly jumping for joy:

Is this a victory? I suppose, in a narrow technical sense, it is. I’m off the hook now for both of the HRC complaints. That’s two legal battles done – though I’m still up to my eyeballs fighting defamation suits and other legal actions that the human rights industry piled on top of these complaints.

But I’ve read the dismissal letter three times now, and each time it makes me more angry. Because I haven’t been given my freedom of the press. I’ve simply had the government censor approve what I said. That’s a completely different thing.

Pardeep Gundara – a second-rate bureaucrat, a nobody – had to give me his approval for me to be allowed to go back to my business. For 900 days I was in the dock, waiting for this literary giant to pronounce his judgment on me. And I found favour in his eyes – but barely.

Sorry. I don’t give a damn what Gundara or the HRC says. Getting his approval is not a success. I won't legitimize his arrogant "authority" by saying "thank you, master". I'll say: "who the hell are you? Besides a busy-body bureaucrat?"

Look at his rationale for acquitting me: because the Western Standard met Gundara’s home-made tests of reasonableness. We published the cartoons in “context”; we published letters that “criticized” them; and my favourite, the cartoons weren’t “simply stuck in the middle” of the magazine. Gundara must have thought for ten whole minutes to come up with that list of journalistic do’s and don’t’s. And – phew! – he likes me. He really likes me!

Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.

So the system worked, and Levant's a sore winner with a martyr complex, right? Well, if I were caught up in quasi-legal proceedings for three years because of my decision to publish unflattering cartoons of a religious leader who's been dead for centures, I might feel the same way. (I suspect many of Levant's critics would, though I'm sure they'd have an excuse for why their situation is different.)

I do not support abolishing human-rights commissions per se, but I would at least like them to have the power to dismiss such frivolous complaints with minial inconvenience to the accused. If the Alberta Human Rights Commission doesn't have that power, it should. If it does have that power, it was grossly abused.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at August 6, 2008 06:00 PM