Somehow I missed this one (from early in the month), but Ontario AG Chris Bentley has reconsidered and confirmed that he will not press charges against Salman Hossain, a Bangladeshi-Canadian who claimed to enjoy watching "blood flow from the western troops" and suggested that Jews be deported.
On the other hand, he has proposed several changes in protocol that would hasten the processing of hate crime complaints within Ontario. For one thing, any requests for charges under the hate propaganda sections of the Criminal Code will quickly be brought to the attention of the Attorney General [rather than being pre-screened by the local crown attorney], and that decisions on formal requests for charges will be made within 60 days. Indeed, Mr. Hossain's case languished for months before it reached the AG's desk, and this might have had something to do with its eventual dismissal.
For another thing, the Minister has appointed:
Leibovitch, Deputy Director of the Crown Law Office – Criminal, as a liaison for police, the public or other interested parties in hate crimes cases.
Interesting developments. Human Rights activists like Warman and (I believe) Abrams have long complained about the difficulty in getting charges laid under the criminal code, and argued that the HRC/HRT apparatus plays an important role of catching stuff that probably meets the cc requirement but which, for whatever reason, the police/AG combination have chosen not to pursue. These procedural changes may make the criminal code a more useful instrument under such circumstances.
Also, The Standing Committee On Justice and Human Rights will be meeting this afternoon, with University of Law Professor Richard Moon (author of the semi-famous Moon Report) being among the witnesses. Moon, though an opponent of Section 13, gave a stem winder of a lecture recently, reproduced here in the NP, in which he accused CHRC opponents (Ezra Levant primarily) of dishonesty. Hopefully he will tell the subcommittee the same thing.
2 comments:
...gave a stem winder of a lecture recently, reproduced here in the NP, in which he accused CHRC opponents (Ezra Levant primarily) of dishonesty.
And Levant responds thusly in the comments:
I'm deeply embarrassed for Prof. Moon. In what pretends to be a "fact check" of me, he has made at least four fundamental factual errors -- all of which are easily checked. Obviously, he didn't bother.
I'll rebut Moon tonight on my blog, http://www.ezralevant.com.
I know that Moon reads my blog obsessively, and he'll see my corrections. It will be interesting to see whether he nonetheless provides false testimony to Parliament's Justice Committee.
And on and on it goes.
Iwaqtched the Hearings today. Mark Freiman and Bernie Farber of CJC were outstanding. Oddly Moon was tepid at best. Kept tripping over his own words.
BTW hurray for Moon on calling levant and his bunnies out...they are sooo losing
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