I was lucky enough to attend the kickoff to Ontario's first Jewish Heritage Month at Beth Torah Synagogue on Monday evening. Highlights included a choir, the name of which I forget now but they were terrific, Susan Jackman's spirited and funny account of Jewish immigration into T.O., and of course Bernie's speech re the Jewish contribution to the establishment of Ontario's human rights apparatus.
On a related note, B'nai Brith Canada seems to have flipped sides at a recent meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and now apparently are in favor of a straight out repeal of Section 13 (the hate speech provision in the Canadian Human Rights Act). Unfortunately, I'm basing this merely on Kady O'Malley's coverage of the meeting. The transcripts don't appear to be available, and I see nothing on the BB website. I've emailed them for details, and we'll see if they respond. In any case, here's a bit I did on the list of issues re the CHRC and the CHRA that they brought to Richard Moon back in 2008. Some of these, for example the jurisdiction shopping by complainants among the various national and provincial commissions, I thought had already been fixed at the administrative level. So, as I say, I don't know what BB's current set BWCs are.
2 comments:
Thank you for posting this speech. I don't think there are many out there who actually knew of the connection between human rights and the Ontario Jewish community.
I suppose once the troglodytes hear this we can expect the usual slanders
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