Warning: I am about to link to a “hate site”!! Break out the cootie spray!
After a year and a half, the Federal Court of Canada has finally set a date to hear the Canadian Human Rights Commission frantic appeal to save their censorship enforcer status via Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act [December 13 and 14, 2011, Federal Court of Canada, 180 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario]
Section 13 is the notorious internet censorship provision, which allowed the state to issue a lifetime speech ban and heavy fines against writers, bloggers and commentators on the internet who express opinions which fanatics define as “hatred and/or contempt”.
The Lemire case is the definitive challenge to Section 13. Literally all other Section 13 cases in Canada have been stopped pending a final decision, this includes all current cases before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, cases recently decided by the Tribunal (orders deferred until Lemire decision) and other cases at the Federal Court of Canada.
This challenge of Internet censorship is making world-wide news. The website WikiLeaks recently released secret diplomatic cables sent from the Canadian Embassy in Ottawa to all Canadian Embassies and to the American Secretary of State. The cable was sent on October 13, 2009 is entitled “CANADA: FREE SPEECH V. HATE SPEECH HEADED TO FEDERAL COURTS” and is shocking at how biased and bad the research is.
A majority of the information in the diplomatic cable is incorrect, misleading or outright false. A copy of the Wikileaks diplomatic cable can be seen [here.]
It is really shocking to see how bad the research in this diplomatic cable was. For instance in the first paragraph, the cable claims that “In 2003, Ontario attorney Richard Warman had filed separate human rights complaints against white supremacist Marc Lemire, journalist Mark Steyn, and Maclean’s magazine with CHRC…”.
Of course the smear of “white supremacist” against Lemire is crazy, but the claim that Richard Warman filed a complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine is wrong. What idiots are doing research over at the Canadian Embassy?
The diplomatic cable later claims that “There is little public debate over or political interest now in overhauling Canada’s federal and provincial human rights legislation — including Parliamentary abrogation of Section 13 language on penalties — despite the earlier spike of interest in the Maclean’s case.”
Contrary to the absurd claims in the diplomatic cable, there is a TON of public debate and interest to overhaul Canada’s Kangaroo courts.
Just a few days after this cable was sent, Parliaments Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights called a major review of Section 13, and hauled the CHRC’s Chief Commissioner to testify.
Since this diplomatic cable was sent out … hundreds of articles have appeared in the mainstream media and blogs, denouncing the Canadian “human rights” commission and their censorship regime…
Assuming that anyone in the State Department is remotely interested in the topic, almost everything they took away from this embassy cable would be wrong. What’s the point of paying some lavishly tenured over-pensioned striped-pants deadbeat to sit around the chancery all day cutting bits out of newspapers if you’ve got more chance of getting an accurate picture of what’s going on from plucking a random unpaid blogger out of a 12-second Google search?
Or are you entirely confident that when it comes to, say, the Iranian nuclear program or jihadist sympathies in the Pakistani military that the level of expertise will be any greater than in Canadian “human rights” analysis?
As a U.S. taxpayer, I’m naturally revolted at having to pay for the above “briefing.” The tragedy of America’s impending collapse is that, by any rational measure, at least three-quarters of its spendaholic binge has been entirely wasted. That embassy cable is a small but telling example.
