Thursday, April 28, 2011

HRCs/HRTs: Through American Eyes

There was a huge dump of Canada-related wikileaks today, which can be found here.  As it turns out, our American cousins have monitored the controversy over our federal and provincial Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals over the past couple of years.  There are several diplomatic cables given over to the topic, my favorite being this one re the Macleans Magazine/Steyn complaint:

The Maclean's case is only the second complaint to be brought under the discriminatory publications provisions of the British Columbia Human Rights Code. Officials informally commented to Poloff that the case proceeded to the hearing stage largely because neither party would agree to mediation, and because Maclean's refused to file an application for dismissal of the case, implying that both sides were looking to gain publicity for their causes.

Another interesting one from late 2009, stating that the issue was dead politically:

(SBU) Comment: There is little public debate over or political interest now in overhauling Canada's federal and provincial human rights legislation -- including Parliamentary abrogation of Section 13 language on penalties-- despite the earlier spike of interest in the Maclean's case.

And yet Ezra drones on and on.

5 comments:

MikeAdamson said...

and on.

Holly Stick said...

Are the documents easily searchable? Surely they pay a lot of attention to Ezra!

At least his "ethical" oil schtick should have earned him some notice.


wv = comeds; close, Ezra, but not quite funny enough

bigcitylib said...

Holly,

Actually, no they aren't searchable at all. I've scrolled through the summaries. A treasure trove. If someone wanted to make the case, for example, that Chretien pumped Kyoto but did nothing practical to meet its goals, you can find one or two cables on that topic. Not that that's surprising, but its more convincing when people from another gov. are saying it.

Anonymous said...

They're searchable here: http://www.cablegatesearch.net/search.php

Holly Stick said...

Very handy; thanks!