Saturday, April 17, 2010

If Saskatchewan Does Away With Its Human Rights Tribunal

...it'll force victims of discrimination to pay far more than most potential claims would be worth in order to get their complaints heard by anybody who can make a binding order.

And that isn't an unintended consequence, its the intended one.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well yes.

But is it not fundamentally unjust that so-called "Human Rights" tribunals loan the power of the government to private citizens to financially abuse people they're angry with?

The kangaroo courts in question fully fund the prosecution of the objects of these complaints, but the accused are left to fend for themselves financially.

Unlike a real court, NONE of the checks and balances are present. The "court" is not bound by rules of evidence. This makes frivolous prosecution more likely.

An HRC complaint is a financial weapon to be used against people you don't like. One that happens to be fully government funded, but only for one side.

Is this just in your view?

Unknown said...

Don Morgan, Saskatchewan's Justice Minister, has stated that in the event that the tribunal is done away with all complainants would be able to request a lawyer on the government's dime. So no, that isn't the intention.

The intent is to speed it up and legitimize it.

Anonymous said...

Blair,

Did Mr. Morgan also state that all future complaints would be fully funded? I suspect not. So that doesn't disprove Bigcitylib's assertion at all. It only shows that they don't want to change the rules on existing complaints mid-stream.

Not that I want Mr. Morgan to announce that he's going to continue the practice of having the government fund the financial abuse of citizens indefinitely...

bigcitylib said...

Blair, sending it to court one stage earlier means costs go up by a magnitude. Hence the commission looks at refering cases to the courts on that basis alone. Hence the complainant may have to proceed alone if they disagree with the commisions decision, which was made based on costs. Hence the complainant has to foot the bill more often.

Plus, has the system really been delegitimized? Ezra Levant, his momma, and a few whackjobs like Issac think so. I'm not convinced anybody else does.

bigcitylib said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"Whackjob"?

Seriously? That's your rebuttal?

bigcitylib said...

Yes. I'm trying to be polite.

Anonymous said...

:)

Okay, you did make me chuckle there.

Ti-Guy said...

I stop reading whenever I see "kangaroo courts."

Anonymous said...

In that case, do not under any circumstances click here.

You won't like it.

Ti-Guy said...

I know what it means. But in relation to the HRT's, all it says is "Levantian loony with an arsenal of unexamined copy-pastes at three o'clock!"

Unknown said...

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the Human Rights Commission refers cases to a Human Rights Tribunal, correct? If I'm missing a big step here then I apologize, but it seems to me that what they are doing is substituting "tribunal" with "court".

I don't know the ins and outs of this issue but I'm not sure how it costs the complainant more.

It also seems that it is a pretty big assumption that the commission's top priority will be costs--not complainant rights.