Freedom Loving Canadians Need To Be Heard
Ok you guys, our left listens to you, you're the closest they have to be European. Please, make it clear you care about freedom of speech and the press:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sub...-4746452c.html
Seems another Canadian Publication has a problem with the Commission:Rights commission wrong
Shots at media for encouraging Islamophobia baseless
Box Cox
Updated: April 12 at 12:30 AM CDT
What would happen if a person charged with murder ended up before a tax court judge?
No doubt it would have many repercussions -- a review of how prisoners are handled in the court house, most likely, and certainly the accused would be sent back to await trial before a criminal court.
It is unlikely that the judge would issue a ruling saying: "I have not heard any evidence, but the accused sure looks guilty -- and there are a lot of other killers out there just like him."
But that is just what happened this week in Ontario.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission issued a statement saying it did not have the jurisdiction to proceed with complaints alleging that Maclean's magazine had violated the rights of Muslims with an article entitled The future belongs to Islam. The Ontario Human Rights Code does not give the commission power to deal with complaints about the content of magazine articles.
That is where the commission should have stopped, having determined it did not have legislative authority to act.
Instead, the commission went on to criticize what Maclean's had published, including 22 articles that were complained about by the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of law students.
Once it had overstepped its jurisdiction, the commission took out an even broader brush and painted unidentified "other media outlets," saying it had serious concerns about the content of articles concerning Muslims and the media's contribution "to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions."
The statement said: "This type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian Canadians. The commission recognizes and understands the serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."
The statement said the Maclean's article, "and others like it," are examples of the increasing prevalence of Islamophobic attitudes in society that make Muslims increasingly the target of intolerance.
The commission offered no proof of this. How could it? It never heard any evidence of any kind about the Maclean's articles, let alone even looking at any articles from "other media outlets," or the impact they may have had....
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...9-ead51713b5bb
No stake for this witch hunt
Calgary Herald
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The Ontario Human Rights Commission seems to like it both ways.
It declines to prosecute columnist Mark Steyn for an allegedly Islamophobic piece published in Maclean's, as its legislative mandate doesn't cover publications.
Then, its chief commissioner Barbara Hall calls Steyn's article an example of how media portrayals of Muslims made "Islamophobic" attitudes more prevalent, "including an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of their religious beliefs and practices. . . . Explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice towards Muslims . . ."
It's as though the witchfinder-general has identified the witch, but with no pyre upon which to burn him, is thereby aggrieved.
Poor old Steyn. If his case had gone to a tribunal, he wouldn't have had much of a defence: Human rights tribunals don't regard truth, or fair comment. But, he could have raged against the proceedings with his customary wit.
In this drive-by mugging, his response isn't even a matter of official record.
To be sure, he may still have his chance: The complainants also took their case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Commission. Both have the wording the Ontario commission says it lacks, but should have -- a clause making it an offence to publish something likely to bring an identifiable minority into contempt.
A more serious case of double-mindedness is that the OHRC claims to respect the Canadian right to free speech, when self-evidently it has no affection for opinions it disagrees with. Like other commissions, its agenda has crept from its utilitarian origins -- discrimination in matters of jobs and accommodation -- to attempting to apply a politically correct template to public discourse.
Steyn's case is a perfect illustration. The article which is the subject of the complaint is a chapter from his book America Alone. In it, he examines the possible impact of Europe's growing Islamic population on the continent's law and culture, quoting verbatim triumphalist predictions from Muslim leaders anticipating Islam's ultimate inheritance of the continent.
Whether it will happen just so is not the point. The point is that the possibility exists, and that Europe's future adaptive experience of multiculturalism will be illustrative for a country such as Canada, whose chosen model for society is the cultural mosaic.
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