Phony watchdogs

My column from Sunday:

I joke a lot about Canada, that manatee of nations.
Truth be told though there’s a lot about our neighbor I find appealing. Hockey for instance.
Labatt Blue and Ian Tyson’s cowboy songs.
But there are rumblings to the north that worry me. They should worry Canadians too, at least the ones who value freedom of thought and expression over political correctness.

In 2002 the Rev. Stephen Bossoin wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, the Red Deer Advocate. The conservative Bossoin lashed out at homosexuality, as conservative pastors have been known to do. There was nothing in his letter you haven’t heard before and nothing that hasn’t been preached from thousands of pulpits around the world for a long time.

Two years ago Western Standard magazine publisher Ezra Levant published an article about the controversial Danish cartoons that portrayed Mohammed in a less than flattering light. It was a gutsy move, one that most media outlets, this one included, lacked the nerve to emulate.

Last year Maclean’s, one of the most respected magazines in Canada, published excerpts from the book “America Alone,” by Mark Steyn. Attentive readers may remember a review of the book I wrote last year. Steyn’s best seller was also controversial, but had many defenders and stirred much legitimate debate about immigration, birth rates, etc.

All of the actions I mention above are legitimate exercises of free speech. That’s not to say I agree with them — for instance I could care less about most people’s sexual interests — but that’s the point of free speech. People are free to agree, stridently disagree, or find a comfortable patch of gray to settle into.
People are also free to cancel their subscriptions, write rebuttals, picket, organize boycotts, etc. ... you know, exercise their freedom.
But apparently that is no longer the case in Canada where regional and federal “human rights tribunals” swoop in like hawks to ravage purveyors of opinion who anger certain protected groups.
The result has been a shocking assault on free thought.

After a Kafka-like four years of legal proceedings, the Rev. Bossoin was found guilty of violating laws against what in this country we call hate speech. In a remarkably Orwellian manner, he was ordered to apologize for his letter in writing to the offended parties, fined $7,000 and told that he better quit believing what he believed.

Levant, a bulldog of a man, is in the third year of his battle with the Canadian thought police. He remains unapologetic for his alleged crimes and continues to take the offensive against the statist stooges and Islamist thugs who would like to see him silenced. The system continues to gnaw on him, but Levant fights back flamboyantly and effectively.

Steyn, an award-winning writer whose work appears in the U.S and Canada, is currently on trial (along with Maclean’s) for the sin of publishing thoughts, ideas which ignited some ready-to-combust Muslim “activists.” That these thoughts were widely available in a best-selling book did not matter. The thought police came after him.

There is a belief that the persecution of Levant and Steyn could blow up in the faces of the Castro wannabes on the various human rights tribunals. The theory is that Canadians, including the newly elected conservative government headed by Stephen Harper, will recognize the danger to liberty posed by these phony human rights watchdogs and move to rein them in.
We’ll see.
Manatees are slow to learn.



Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. For more on “the Canadian cases” and other subjects, check out his blog, espysoutpost.blogspot.com