Canadian Association of Journalists back Steyn and Levant

Yesterday, I told you that PEN, a Canadian literary group, issued a statement calling for the federal government to remove the hate speech clause from the Canadian Human Right Act.

Today, the Canadian Association of Journalists finally weighed in on the issue.

OTTAWA, Feb. 22 /CNW/ - The Canadian Association of Journalists is calling on federal and provincial governments to amend human rights legislation to stop a pattern of disturbing attacks on freedom of speech.
Two recent cases spotlight the dangers of allowing state-backed agencies to censor speech based on subjective perceptions of offensiveness - MacLean's magazine, which is facing complaints in two provinces and nationally for an article by syndicated columnist Mark Steyn, and Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the Western Standard who is now before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for his decision to publish the Danish cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

"Human rights commissions were never intended to act as a form of thought police," said CAJ President Mary Agnes Welch. "But now they're being used to chill freedom of expression on matters that are well beyond accepted Criminal Code restrictions on free speech."

The CAJ supports Liberal MP Keith Martin's private members motion to have section 13(1) of federal human rights legislation, the clause dealing with published material, repealed. Similar provincial legislation should also be amended as required.

The tide is really turning in Canada now. Thanks to all the Americans who have helped keep this a major issue in the blogosphere and on talk radio in the U.S.

The CAJ also had this to say about the Conservative government and other federal parties that have failed to step up and take a position on Martin's motion.

"The lack of political leadership on this issue, apart from Mr. Martin and a few others, is appalling," said Welch.

To quote Mark Steyn from The Corner today:

C'mon, Prime Minister, why be the last guy to jump on the bandwagon?

Another group backs Steyn and Levant. Where is the Conservative government?

PEN Canada, which is by no means a conservative organization, has joined the chorus of voices who are calling for eliminating parts of the Canadian Human Rights Act dealing with hate speech, the same law that has Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant before Human Rights Commissions.

The statement is in PDF format, but I'm reprinting the whole thing. If you don't want to read it in it's entirety, I've highlighted the best parts and I have more about what this means at the bottom of this post.

PEN Canada calls for changes to human rights commission legislation

February 4, 2008 -- PEN Canada calls on the federal and provincial governments
to change human rights commission legislation to ensure commissions can no
longer be used to attempt to restrict freedom of expression in Canada.

Recent complaints in Alberta against journalist Ezra Levant and in Ontario
against Maclean’s magazine and its writer Mark Steyn raise disturbing questions
about the degree to which human rights commissions have taken it upon
themselves to become arbiters of what constitutes free speech.

PEN Canada believes this is not the role of human rights commissions and that
governments across the country need to make that clear both to their
commissions and to Canadians.

Neither Mr. Levant nor Maclean’s magazine and Mr Steyn published anything
that incited violence against the Muslim community although both have been
subject of complaints to commissions. Nor did their comments violate anyone’s
human rights.

As the Canadian Civil LIberties Association has suggested, human rights
legislation was designed to prevent discrimination in workplaces, in accommodation and in providing goods and services to individuals. Commissions were created to adjudicate complaints about such issues when they arose. They were never designed to restrict the free expression of opinions.

“Whether you agree with Mr. Levant’s decision that the Western Standard should
publish the Danish cartoons about the prophet Mohammed or not, no one in a free and democratic country such as Canada can seriously argue the magazine should not have the right to publish them,” said PEN Canada’s national affairs chair Christopher Waddell.

“That is equally true for Maclean’s magazine and the excerpt it published from
Mark Steyn’s book that led to the complaint against that publication.”
Neither complaints should ever have been accepted by a human rights
commission and both should be immediately dismissed.

To ensure there is no repetition of such attempts to constrain freedom of expression through the guise of human rights legislation, PEN supports calls for removal of subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act which states that it is discriminatory when individual or groups say or write anything that is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

Similar wording in provincial human rights statutes should likewise be removed.

PEN becomes the latest member of the Canadian establishment to say that these human rights commissions have gone too far.

How can critics in Canada continue to suggest this is the work of knuckledragging conservatives?

You now have

1.) PEN
2.) The Liberal Toronto Star
3.) The left leaning Globe and Mail
4.) A Liberal MP

All these groups realize the dangers these thought crime laws have on Canada's freedoms.

When will the federal Conservative government step up to the plate and eliminate the Section 13 (1)?

Ezra Levant's interrogator quits

First Syed Soharwardy dropped his complaint and now this.

Shirlene McGovern, the Alberta Human Rights Commission officer, who has become an international blogosphere villain after being seen in the videotaped interrogation of Ezra Levant, has resigned from the case.

Ezra Levant has more.

Shirlene McGovern, the "human rights officer" who interrogated me, has resigned from my case. The human rights commission advised my lawyer that McGovern quit because of the public backlash against the commission -- and against her in particular. In other words, she didn't like being called a censor in the blogosphere.

I'm not sympathetic. I believe that any government bureaucrat who makes a living interrogating citizens about their political beliefs ought to be held in public contempt. McGovern truly doesn't get it -- she thinks what she does for a living is perfectly bland, just like her.

I blame Iowahawk for causing McGovern to fold.

In other Levant-related news, he was a guest today on the vastly underrated Shire Network News radio program.

In that interview, Levant says Conservative MPs in Ottawa are not taking on this issue because they still live in fear of the 2004 election campaign when the party lost because the Liberals and the media successfully painted them as anti Charter of Rights primarily because a backbench MP was caught on tape saying "The heck with the courts, eh?"

The Conservatives it seems just can't get over that 2004 election. It's hard to blame them as the media bias was on full display trying to save Paul Martin.

Of course Levant revealing this (which is what I always suspected in a general sense) raises some doubts about the reports that MPs weren't speaking out because they feared for their safety from Islamic radicals.

Fear Factor: Are Canadian MPs afraid to speak out against radical Islam?

This week, a Canadian blogger obtained talking points that were supposedly sent to some Conservative MPs from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's office basically not taking a position on a private member's motion to remove the hate speech clause of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

The issue has raised attention after Islamic groups have filed human rights complaints against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

Keith Martin, the MP who introduced the motion is a Liberal. So the complete silence from Conservative MPs on his motion the and alleged evasive government talking points has angered grassroots conservative supporters who feel Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his insiders are more concerned about avoiding a fight with Canada's left wing establishment than standing up for fundamental conservative principles, such as freedom of expression.

However, another theory has emerged from Parliament Hill reporter Deborah Gyapong. Call it the Geert Wilders Effect.

Here's Gyapong's latest post.

Last week when I was on the Hill mingling with some MPs from both the Liberal and the Tory parties, I asked an MP for an opinion on the freedom of speech/ Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn human rights complaints. This particular MP was appalled by it. I asked this individual for a public comment. After a few moments thought, the MP decided not to. Then this person mused--alas, I did not have a notebook or my recorder out so I can't recall the exact words--that some MPs might be afraid to speak out on this issue, afraid their families might be targeted.

This was said in a casual manner, as social chit chat, so it didn't register with me perhaps as much as it should have at the time. But the conversation keeps coming back to me. I haven't been able to get away from a gnawing sense of unease. Is this possibly the case? Are some MPs not speaking out on Parliament Hill out of a sense of intimidation when it comes to any form of criticism of radical Islam?

Photos of woman attacked after filing human rights complaint against Calgary imam

On Friday, I told you that one of the three women who filed a human rights complaint against a Calgary imam was attacked in her home by a male and a burka-clad woman.

The attackers claimed they came from the imam's mosque and this was the "first installment."

Syed Soharwardy, who is the imam at the Al-Madinah mosque, said it was not possible anyone from his mosque would commit such an act. Soharwardy is known nationally in Canada because of his human rights complaint against Ezra Levant.

The Calgary Herald reported the attack victim, Robina Butt, suffered a number of cuts to her hand as well as bumps and bruises. However, Levant has posted photos from a foreign-language newspaper, which he claims are of Butt and they suggest her injuries appear more serious than was reported.

(click on photo to enlarge)

Even though the imam dropped his human rights complaint against Levant this week, Ezra is not letting go and like a pitbull he is countersuing for abuse of process and plans to keep embarrassing Soharwardy on his blog.

He even plans to put up video soon of the mosque meeting which resulted in Butt filing her human rights complaint.

Ezra Levant's accuser's taqiyya exposed

Licia Corbella has a great column this morning in the Calgary Herald (Didn't she used to work for the Calgary Sun?) in which she exposes how the man who took Ezra Levant before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, Imam Syed Soharwardy, engaged in taquiyya during an appearance before The Herald's editorial board this week.

On bringing sharia law to Canada.

While preparing for the meeting, a quick search on Canwest's library system showed a Jan. 17, 2004, column written by the cleric.

In it, he wrote: "Sharia cannot be customized for specific countries. These universal, divine laws are for all people of all countries for all times."

In the same column he also boasts: "I am one of the founding members of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice. The mandate of the institute is to resolve disputes within existing Canadian laws by using the principles of conflict resolution from Islamic Law, or sharia."

His column is clear. He wanted to bring sharia to Canada and even helped found the organization that spearheaded the drive to do so.

But in our meeting, Soharwardy denied his own column. "I never asked to bring sharia in Canada," he now insists.

On using tsunami relief efforts to attack Christians.

Some of Soharwardy's most vile words came after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed more than 280,000 people.

While Christians from around the world were emptying their wallets to help the victims of this natural disaster, Muslim leaders were blaming the disaster on immoral Christian tourists in their countries.

Soharwardy seemingly got swept up in the wave of anti-Christian rhetoric and sent out a news release accusing Christians of kidnapping Muslim orphans in Indonesia. Again, he denied his own written words.

"I don't believe that, I just quoted what was in the newspaper and asked where are the wealthy Muslim governments, why are they not helping."

But here's what his Jan. 23, 2005, news release actually said: "ISCC . . . strongly condemns the exploitation of tsunami victims by the Christian missionaries. There have been several reports that the Christian missionaries are kidnapping Muslim children in Indonesia. . . . It is now proven that the Christian missionaries do not help people on humanitarian grounds. They help people in order to exploit their needs and convert them to Christianity."

On the imam's credibility, she writes.

Soharwardy is a charmer. He convinced me that I must have misread his columns. But relistening to the tape of our meeting and rereading his original texts, one thing is clear: he cannot be believed.

Woman who filed complaint against Levant's Muslim imam accuser has been attacked

A woman who has filed a human rights complaint against the Muslim Imam who recently dropped his complaint against Ezra Levant was attacked in her home this week by a man and a woman wearing a burka.

Shocking!

Calgary police are investigating an assault on one of three women who recently launched a human rights complaint against a local Muslim leader.

Police are looking for two people who pushed their way into the Coral Spring Mews N.E. home of Robina Butt about 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Const. Paban Dhaliwal said a man and a woman knocked on the door of Butt's home, and when questioned, identified themselves as members of the press.

When Butt opened the door, the couple forced their way into the home, pushing Butt against the wall a number of times and producing a weapon.

Dhaliwal said the victim did not recognize the intruders.

He said the woman was fully covered in a dark burka and was wearing black gloves. The male suspect is described as of East Indian descent, about 45 years old with a short moustache, five feet nine with a slim build and wearing blue jeans, a light shirt and black jacket.

Butt's husband, Najeeb, said his wife was badly shaken by the attack, suffering a number of cuts to her hand as well as bumps and bruises.

"There were some neighbourhood kids coming home from school who were talking outside. We think the attackers might have thought they were coming to our house, so they ran off," said Najeeb Butt.

Robina Butt and two other Calgary women filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in late December against Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.

The complaint alleges they were subjected to abusive language and threats during a Nov. 11 meeting at the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre, where Soharwardy also serves as imam.

Soharwardy has denied all allegations in the human rights complaint.

Butt said he's convinced Wednesday's attack was not random.

Butt said the male attacker told his wife, "We come from Al-Madinah; if you ever talk anything about Al-Madinah . . . this is the first instalment."

When contacted by the Herald on Thursday evening, Soharwardy said no one from the Al-Madinah Centre would be involved in such a violent incident.

"We are law-abiding people. We had nothing to do with this. I condemn this attack absolutely, and I urge the police to do everything to find the people who were involved in this and bring them to justice."

Mark Steyn blasts Human Rights Commission supporter

Warren Kinsella is a well known Liberal strategist in Canada (think James Carville but not as clever and less likeable), who is also among the strongest supporters of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's hate speech laws.

When he's not threatening to sue conservative Canadian bloggers or making trumped up allegations of racism, Kinsella writes a column for the conservative editorial pages of the National Post as the token liberal. That was until Saturday when Kinsella announced on his blog that he quit because he did not agree with the paper's editorial position on aboriginal rights.


But before Kinsella realized he was working for months at a paper that he considers borderline racist, he was engaged in a back and forth on the human rights commission issue with Ezra Levant, who also had a column in The Post. It some times got heated according to Levant.

Wasn't I surprised to see now that Kinsella today has attracted the sharp pen of Mark Steyn -- the person Dennis Miller says he would hire to play the part of Hannity if he got to cast Hannity and Colmes The Movie.

I don't know Warren Kinsella. I've met him once, briefly, but enjoyed the encounter. . . Nonetheless, the difference between "Canada's James Carville" and the real thing is that Mr Carville isn't wasting his time hunting down minor clerks in the Department of Parking Lots who've made the mistake of sending him a dissenting e-mail, or raging about the sex life of the "Wicked Witch of the West" (which, as a put-down, is barely any better than "douchebag" or "fuck you, loser"), or issuing hollow legal threats to every blogger who can't keep a straight face when his name comes up, or hectoring G7 governments for not leaping into action on the basis of his men's room coffee-table pictorials.

. . .

If I were Warren, I'd take down the shingle for a couple of months, go chill in the woods or, if he prefers, sing punk songs in a bar. But, if he wants to get back in the good graces of the Liberal Party, this seems an odd way to go about it.

Steyn v. Kinsella. Not a fair fight.

Liberal MP says support to end thought crimes "huge"

The latest on the Canadian thought police law.

A couple of weeks ago, Liberal MP Keith Martin (a former member of a conservative party, who made an opportunistic move four years ago to hop aboard the Paul Martin -- aka Canada's Gordon Brown -- Liberal juggernaut that never was ... but that's another story) announced he planned to introduce a private member's motion to restrict the powers of Canada's Human Right Act's Section 13, which deals with hate speech and has been used against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

The announcement created some enthusiasm, but that quickly evaporated after a Canadian Press story reported that Martin's boss (Liberal Leader Stephane Dion -- think Al Gore without a personality) would ask him to withdraw the motion.

Well tonight, Ezra Levant is linking to a blog by Deborah Gyapong, who is also a Press Gallery reporter -- one of the few of a conservative persuasion.

Gyapong spoke to Keith Martin this week and she reports the following:

I interviewed Keith Martin again today. He said support within the Liberal caucus for his motion is "huge."

Stephane Dion has not talked to him about it, or asked him to withdraw it. Only a couple of Liberal members raised concerns, but no one has asked him to remove the motion.

"There is enormous support within caucus and across party lines," he said.

Ezra says Gyapong's scoop is important because it contradicts the spin coming from the motion's opponents and the CP story.

Levant focuses on the line in the CP story that said Dion's office suggested it would withdraw support from the motion and found it strange and even questioned its accuracy because it wasn't in quotes.

Well, Ezra, not everything has to be in quotes. If everything had to be in quotes news stories would just be transcripts and that would bite.

And, given everything else from Dion's spokesman that was in quotes, what was not in quotes doesn't really contradict the general impression she sent out -- Dion doesn't want to amend the Human Rights Act.

Now let's look at what Martin told Gyapong.

1.) "He said support within his caucus for the motion was huge."
Well that doesn't matter if Dion and the leadership don't sign on.

2.) "Stephane Dion has not talked to him about it, or asked him to withdraw it."
Yet! My understanding is Martin's motion doesn't come to the floor until some time after the Mayan calendar expires. So why would Dion rock the boat with an MP who is likely to lose his largely military riding in the next election with Capt. anti-war in charge of the the Good Ship Liberal?

3.) "There is enormous support within caucus and across party lines," he said..
I think this may be stretching the truth. Who in the socialist Bloc Quebecois is going to back this motion? Why has the NDP allowed MP Wayne Marston to not only go on record against Martin's motion but to ask questions of Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney in question period?

So here's what we have.

There are four parties in Parliament.

I'm writing the Bloc off as a lost cause.

The NDP is trying to paint the government in the corner on an opposition private member's bill. That's somethng I've never seen before and it doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of Martin's motion which he says is supported across party lines.

The Liberal leader's spokesperson has said they do not want to touch the law. Even though the suggestion that Martin withdraw the motion is not in quotes, it doesn't change the fact they don't want to do what Martin's motion asks them to do to the law.

And finally, the government has ordered its MPs not to take a position on Martin's motion and when Kenney was asked about it in question period he never said he supported the motion and just spoke some Obamamese vagueness about free speech.

Again, Ezra, it does not look good, no matter what Keith Martin says he's been told privately.

Also, I, and a lot of your supporters, would prefer if you would not spin on television, like you did today, for a government that won't stand up for free speech. Just sayin'.

The CBC shows its solidarity with Danish cartoonists

Maybe they didn't get Michelle Malkin's memo.

From Ezra Levant.

CBC's The National finally did a news item on the human rights complaint. It was a good enough news report, though I couldn't help but wonder if the CBC would have waited so long to do a story, and given it such perfunctory coverage, if it had been one of their own producers who had been summoned before a government investigator. But it was fair enough, and the quote from Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association was excellent.

What stuck in my mind, though, and still makes me shake my head, is that the CBC "pixellated" an image of one of the cartoons when they flashed a shot of a Danish newspaper. In a story about freedom of speech -- pegged not just to my own human rights interrogation, but to death threats against a Danish cartoonist -- the CBC opted for self-censorship.

Canada's Conservative government tries to avoid free speech debate

It seems Canada's Conservative government doesn't have the stomach to deal with Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act that deals with hate speech and has led to Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant being the subject of complaints before human rights commissions.

Two weeks ago, a Liberal MP, Keith Martin, announced he would table a motion to have section 13 removed. His motion was met with derision from a Canadian Press story that focused on white supremacist support for the motion.

Martin's motion has raised questions with grassroots conservatives about whether the minority Conservative government in Ottawa would back Martin's motion when it comes up for debate. Now a Canadian blogger has obtained the government's talking points and it appears the Tories are whimping out.

It appears the Harper government doesn't have the political stomach right now to engage in any kind of major defense of free speech rights in Canada. NoApologies.ca has obtained a copy of a document circulated to all Conservative MP's from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's office late last week.

The document is entitled "Talking points re: CHRA & CHRC", and it basically instructs MP's to keep a very low profile on any discussion surrounding Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

. . .

As for the specifics of Martin's motion, the MP's are instructed to say that the motion was "just recently tabled and will not be up for debate in the near future," and that they should assure their constituents that if and when the issue "comes before the house for debate, (they) will follow it closely and.. arrive at a position at that time."

The document also instructs MP's to essentially shift the focus away from the Section 13 discussion by talking about the government's ongoing efforts to repeal Section 67 of the Act. That section essentially exempts First Nations from any and all provisions or enforcement of the Act in cases where discrimination happens on native land. Nicholson's document says that Section of the Act essentially prevents First Nations people "from receiving the same legal protection against discrimination that is afforded to all other Canadians," and that MP's should use the line "My Canada includes First Nations" when discussing the Section 67 issue.

Ezra Levant, who worked for one of Conservative legacy parties in Ottawa once, is not happy with his party's talking points.

I say again I don't know who wrote these empty talking points, or when. But when every medium in the country, from the Globe and Mail to the Toronto Star to the National Post, are united in calling for an amendment of section 13, surely a little bit of political courage can be expected from a government calling itself Conservative.

I've had enough contact with various MPs and staff in Ottawa to know that these talking points do not reflect the whole picture of the government's thinking. At least I hope they don't. I have one talking point of my own that I'd send over:


"Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack o­n our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society…It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff." -- Stephen Harper, B.C. Report Newsmagazine, January 11, 1999

Don't want to say I told you so, Ezra, but I told you so.

Liberal MP stands up for free speech in Canada

Liberal MP Keith Martin becomes the first federal politician to attempt to do something about the ability of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to investigate so-called hate speech.

The issue has received international attention due to two recent cases involving Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, who have been investigated by human rights commissions following complaints from Muslims.

The action is surprisingly coming from a Liberal MP, not a Conservative. But Keith Martin, if you recall, had been a long time member of the Conservative party's legacy Reform-Alliance party but defected to the Liberals when it appeared that Paul Martin would win a massive majority in 2003.

Liberal MP Launches Motion to Stop Human Rights Commission Squelching of Free Speech

By Hilary White

OTTAWA, January 31, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A British Columbia Parliamentarian, Keith Martin, has called for the abolition of the clause in the Canadian Human Rights Act that makes it possible for special interest groups to file petty grievance complaints through the Human Rights Commissions.

Martin today presented the motion to Parliament in the face of the ongoing scandals of Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals being used to silence journalists, Christian pastors and political writers on a variety of controversial topics.

The motion states, "That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act." Subsection 13(1) makes it a "discriminatory practice" for individuals or groups to communicate messages that are "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt". Critics of this section of the Act have long said that the clause creates the precise equivalent of a "thought crime".

Martin, a medical doctor and pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia Liberal MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on Vancouver Island, was the former Reform Party's Opposition Health Critic. He left the Canadian Alliance party in 2004 after complaining that the party was allowing "social conservatives" and pro-life members to have a voice in the party.

Confirmation was not available from Martin's office as to whether or not the motion is in response to the current wave of complaints against Canadian journalists, politicians and religious leaders based on subsection 13(1). But a spokesman from Martin's office told LifeSiteNews.com that the publicity surrounding the complaints against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant by Islamic extremist imams has raised the profile of the issue throughout the country and around the world.

Martin's motion comes as three complaints are ongoing against Ron Gray, head of Canada's Christian Heritage party. These complaints by homosexual activists allege "hatred" and "contempt" against homosexuals because of the party's support for traditional Christian moral teaching on sexuality and marriage. In December, a Christian pastor and youth counsellor, Stephen Boissoin was found guilty by an Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for publicly expressing the Christian teaching on homosexuality.

Ezra Levant himself has thanked Martin for the initiative saying, "If a progressive, young, hip Liberal MP from an urban seat feels comfortable proposing this bill, it is a sign that reforming these commissions is politically safe, even for a Conservative government still worried about being tagged as 'anti-human rights'."

"The man picks political winners. That alone is a signal to other MPs that it's safe to stand and be counted on this fight."

To date, no comment on the issue has come from Conservative members of government, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.