The year-long controversy surrounding the complaint brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean’s magazine and author/essayist Mark Steyn under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, embarrassed and pushed the Canadian Human Rights Commission to seek an independent “comprehensive policy review of how best to address hate messages on the Internet.”
This independent review by Richard Moon, University of Windsor law professor, released this week should by all accounts bring an end to the misgivings over Section 13 that puts a chill on free speech by threatening prosecution on the “prohibited grounds of discrimination.”
Professor Moon has called for repeal of Section 13. He recommends that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) should “no longer deal with hate speech, and in particular hate speech on the Internet.
“Hate speech should continue to be prohibited under the Criminal Code but this prohibition should be confined to expression that advocates, justifies or threatens violence.”
This recommendation is clearly a relief for advocates and defenders of freedom of speech as set forth in Section 2 (b), and protected according to Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Canadian Islamic Congress complaint – as I wrote following its dismissal by the CHRC in June 2008 – made Canadians take note, unlike any previous complaint, how the censorious provision of Section 13 is a blot on Canadian democracy.
Canadians got instruction as never before, due to the Canadian Islamic Congress complaint, on the principle and value of free speech as the foundation of an open democracy.
They also learned how it can be undermined, given its fragile nature, by the zealotry of those who insist the causing of offence – real or perceived – should be criminalized to protect the sensibilities of designated minority groups in a multicultural society.
It is understood rights and freedoms, as the Charter declares, are subject to reasonable limits in keeping with the values of a “free and democratic society.”
Hence, most Canadians accept the spiteful abuse of free speech as hate speech is, and should remain, punishable under the Criminal Code within the proper setting of a lawful court.
The CHRC and the CHRT are not properly constituted law courts. Respondents accused under Section 13 are not adequately protected, and complainants are merely required to prove being harmed “on a balance of probabilities” and not certainty.
Moreover, while the CHRT proceedings, as Professor Moon finds, are reasonably formal, “the procedural rules, including rules of evidence, are less strictly applied than in criminal cases.”
Now that the professor’s independent study has publicly recommended the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the federal Parliament needs to respond.
Ottawa should either act on the advice of Professor Moon, or begin its own procedure to review Section 13 even as a sitting member – Keith Martin, Liberal member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca – has already moved a motion to have it revoked.
Canada is a mature democracy, and most Canadians are reasonable and law abiding.
For Parliament to constrain free speech beyond the existing reasonable limits through the provision in the human rights act of Section 13 is an insult to Canadians and Canadian democracy, and it should act wisely as Professor Moon recommends.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
- Israel: Decades-old conflict not about to cease - Saturday November 24, 2012 at 1:56 pm
- The better man lost the U.S. election - Saturday November 10, 2012 at 9:16 am
- The puzzle in U.S. presidential elections - Saturday November 3, 2012 at 8:43 am
