Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Whose Where On Section 13?

From Xtra; while the positions of most of the players has been clear (in fact hasn't changed much in two years), it is nevertheless good news IMHO to hear a fairly clear statement out of the Libs:

“We certainly wouldn’t be in favour of abolishing it,” says Liberal justice critic Dominic LeBlanc. “We think that Section 13 and the Human Rights commissions have played a useful role. We’re always open to discussions of how Section 13 might be strengthened or clarified.”

LeBlanc adds that he has spoken with the chair of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and is in the process of reading their recent report on the issue.

“We think there should be a measure between the Criminal Code provisions with respect to hate propaganda, and a lower threshold which would properly be in the domain of a Human Rights Commission — particularly around new technologies and information technologies,” LeBlanc says.

Also nice to note that at least a few Conservatives are pro-retention, for reasons I had not thought of previously:

But not all Conservatives feel the need to abolish Section 13. Lesbian Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth feels that it should be retained.

“The Canadian Human Rights Act does include women, but the Criminal Code does not,” says Ruth. “So if we lose Section 13, there’s no protection for hatred against women anywhere.”

Meanwhile, events tick by. I have no idea under what schedule the appeal of the Warman V. Lemire judgement shall proceed, but I imagine the time-frame here will be measured in months or years. Interesting in that (but I can't find the link), now that Lemire is off the hook, he seems to have lost interest in the case. The Fairness Fairy, threatened with exposure, has disappeared his blog. And, finally, the Fournier's are begging for money to fund their appeal in the Warman defamation case. As per usual these days, the donations are coming in rather slow.

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