Section 13 Repeal On Back Burner

The NDP's justice critic Joe Comartin says:

"Given the backlog of bills, and other work, studies that we're doing on organized crime, I have a hard time quite frankly seeing us doing anything more on that at least in this year, and I expect an election sometime this year, so I think it probably is not going to go anyplace."

Liberal justice critic Dominic LeBlanc concurs:

"We're going to wait to see what the government wants to do," LeBlanc says. "My view was that there was a very legitimate basis for some human rights commission review with respect to Section 13. We've heard evidence about how we can perhaps increase some of the procedural protections, but you're certainly not going to see the Liberals leading a charge to re-open that at this point, and if the government decides to let it go, that certainly would be fine with us."

Worse news for the speechies, an OHRC/OHRT repeal seems to have dropped off the bottom of PCPO opposition leader Tim Hudak's list of priorities. One thing politicians are good at is counting votes: I imagine Hudak has realized that any movement led by a combination of Ezra Levant, Neo-Nazis, and journalists is a net vote loser.

Although Andrew Steele seems to think that the rise of the OLA as torchbearers of rural conservatism in Ontario will make it impossible for Hudak to ignore the issue for any length of time. Steele may be right, and I sure hope so.