Stephen Harper's Greatest Hits

Does he hate Canada?

My favorite bit is a nice little quote towards the end about Human Rights being totalitarian, which puts me in mind of Brian Lilley's post today in which he argues that the Lemire Vs. Warman decision from yesterday will become "election fodder". Gawd I hope so. During the Ontario PC leadership race, polls told us what an anti-human rights stance would likely bring.

Short answer: Doom baby, Doom!

Flanagan On Human Rights

I didn't intend to write on Tom Flanagan's G&M piece this morning, but Impolitical called me on it. This bit is both the silliest and most cold-hearted part:

In a competitive market, discrimination is costly to the discriminator. An employer who refuses to hire workers because of race, religion or ethnicity restricts his own choices and imposes a disadvantage on his firm. Meanwhile, his competitors gain by being able to hire from a larger pool. The same logic applies to restaurateurs turning away potential customers, or landlords refusing to lease to people of particular categories. (I'll never forget the experience of owning rental property in the recession of the 1980s; I would have rented to Martians if they had showed up with a damage deposit.)

The argument applies no matter how rampant prejudice and discrimination may be. Those who discriminate impose burdens on themselves and confer advantages on their competitors. Competitive markets don't immediately abolish discriminatory practices, but they tend to erode them, not by trying to enlighten bigoted people, but by making discrimination unprofitable.

I should say to start I have lived in a very non-competitive housing market--Toronto in the late 80s, where a land-lord cord charge you $400 a month for a cot next to the furnace--and at the time ran into a mixed race couple, one very pregnant, who could not find a place that would rent to them. I gave them a few phone numbers to try, and wished them luck.

(If I remember correctly, a "balanced" rental market is about 5% vacant. Toronto's current rate is 2.1%, hasn't been competitive in at least 25 years.)

Now, that's just an anecdote, but Flanagan himself is offering nothing but deductions from sterile economic theory. To assume that 1) people make these kinds of decision rationally, or 2) will not routinely make rational or at least calculated decisions on the basis of values other than economic values (religious values, for example,which might entail a disapproval of Martian sexual practices), or 3) can never become wealthy enough to indulge their prejudices... is naive in the extreme.

More generally, this "if we didn't have human rights laws the market would make human rights problems go away" is the same line of nonsense Ezra peddles. I'm surprised Flanagan didn't try to blame it all on the Canadian Jewish Congress.

More On Those Mississauga Exotic Dancers

American P.I. and blogger Bill Warner has begun following this story. While Warner's references to Muslim terrorists in Mississauga is a bit puzzling, there is much good material in his post.

Here, for example, is the website for the club where Kimberlee and the other dancers involved in the Human Rights complaint used to work, including a map and some clips of the current employees plying their trade. (Tell yourself: "I am here because I am interested in Human Rights law...I am here because I am interested in Human Rights law...")

And here are some old T.O. Star stories about the legal trouble this club has suffered in the past, although it should be noted that club-owner John Sit was never in the clubs when they were raided and never charged.

h/t Kimberlee, and happy birthday!

Update: in a last bit of Human Rights news, a "real court" backs an HRC.

What Is At Stake?

Behind all the recent battling over free speech vs. human rights lies Kieth Martin's private member's motion M-446:

M-446 — January 30, 2008 — Mr. Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca) — That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act.

Should this ever come to a vote then section 13(1) is deleted from the act, and the Nazis run free, right?

Incorrect! M-446 is not a private member's bill; it's a private member's motion. The HOC explains how these work as follows:

Private Members’ motions are used to introduce a wide range of issues and are framed either as orders or resolutions, depending on their intent. [58] Motions attempting to make a declaration of opinion or purpose, without ordering or requiring a particular course of action, are considered resolutions. [59] Hence, such motions which simply suggest that the government initiate a certain measure are generally phrased as follows: “That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider …”. The government is not bound to adopt a specific policy or course of action as a result of the adoption of such a resolution since the House is only stating an opinion or making a declaration of purpose. [60]

Or, as Ezra himself puts it:

...as a motion (as opposed to a bill), it is what lawyers might call obiter dicta -- a non-binding statement of opinion, not a change in the law. Martin's motion is a call for a Parliamentary rebuke of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

What M-446 will amount to should it pass, and this is all it will amount to should it pass, is a verbal spanking for the CHRC at the hands of Parliament.

Which puts the motion's abysmal level of support in a whole new light: a mere four MPs have indicated they will vote in favor of M-446 and, arguably, one of these is on the list because he was conned by a Nazi. Not only will Parliament not repeal Section 13(1), they are afraid to even say anything nasty about it.

Who's winning the debate, again?

Your Daily Nazi:Conservative MP James Rajotte First Conservative To Offer Support For Canadian Nazis

James Rajotte is the Conservative MP for Edmonton-Leduc; Glenn Bahr is one of the founders of Western Canada For Us (WCFU), a now defunct racist group based in Edmonton, Alberta. [1]. Glenn wrote James a letter bitching about Canadian Human Rights legislation, which he has run afoul of on at least one occasion, and found a sympathetic audience in Mr. Rajotte:

While I am only aware of the generalities of your specific case with the Tribunal and it would be inappropriate for me to comment without full knowledge of the situation, rest assured that I am in agreement with you that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (as well as similar bodies at the provincial level) has recently overstepped its original mandate and is in need of reform. Its mandate is to protect the human rights of Canadian citizens, not to curtail free speech and impose censorship on an open, democratic society.

I give you my assurance that when motion M-446 comes before the House of Commons it will have my support. Furthermore, the passage of M-446 in no way prevents the enactment of further legislation to reform human rights bodies in Canada, should the need arise in the future

For the most part, Stephen Harper has used the whip of leadership to stop wing-nuts in the CPoC caucus from going over the edge and off into 1990s Reform Party La La land. Reading Mr. Rajotte's response to one of Canada's premier white supremacists, it is easy to see the wisdom of this strategy. If Mr. Rajotte is unaware of the specifics of Mr. Bahr's case it is because he has not spent the 0.3 seconds necessary to google them. And while I suppose it is okay for the undisciplined monkeys of the opposition to contemplate tinkering with legislation that would objectively give Neo-Nazis a stronger foothold within Canada, you would think that a member of the governing party would have a little more maturity.

Margaret Wente Vs. The Truth

Ms. Wente foams up over a recent Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decision:

But rights slice both ways. Mr. Lane applied for a job for which he clearly wasn't suited, and misstated facts to get it. Now he stands to collect nearly $80,000, and he was only on the job for eight days.

From Donna M. Seale's "Human Rights in the Workplace" Blog:

The tribunal concluded that Mr. Lane had been fired as a result of his disability and the perceptions as to the impact of his disability on the workplace. The adjudicator rejected ADGA's argument that it terminated Mr. Lane simply for failing to live up to the essential requirements of his job during his 90 day probationary period. A further argument by ADGA that it had the right to fire Mr. Lane once it found out he had failed to reveal his disability during the hiring process was also rejected. On this point, the adjudicator pointed to expert evidence adduced at the hearing which detailed that persons with bipolar disorder are very reluctant to reveal their conditions to prospective employers due to the stigmatization of mental illness in the workplace and society in general.

And further:

None of the managers who made the actual decision to terminate Mr. Lane took any steps to assess whether ADGA could accommodate Mr. Lane's disability. In fact, the adjudicator pointed out that the key managers who decided to terminate Mr. Lane were completely ignorant of their legal obligations when dealing with a disabled employee. Given that Mr. Lane had specifically revealed his disability to Ms. Corbett and suggested ways he could be accommodated, the adjudicator was astonished that management had seemingly not contacted its human resource department or legal counsel to determine what it should do to carefully manage the situation. Instead, the ADGA manager principally responsible for the termination believed that the information Ms. Corbett had relayed to him about Mr. Lane's bipolar disorder was irrelevant. He based his determination to dismiss Mr. Lane solely on his personal assessment of whether Mr. Lane was capable of performing the job for which he was hired.

Ezra riffs on Ms. Wente in his post "The "human right" to have manic episodes while testing artillery". Its software, Ezra, artillery software. The guy wasn't tapping live shells with a little red hammer.

As an aside, Ezra severely bungs up the facts of this case as well:

Light up a cigarette in an Ontario restaurant, and you're breaking the law. Light up a marijuana joint, and the restaurateur is breaking the law if he tries to stop you.

But, as The Sun story Ezra links to clearly states in the 2nd line, the customer in question stepped outside to spark up his J of medical mary-jane.

There are none so blind as those who cannot read, I guess.

Incidentally, I have to disagree with the Prince of Pot here:

"I don't see people with insulin bringing their syringes out in the middle of restaurants and giving themselves injections," [Marc] Emery, who is facing a 10-year jail sentence at the U.S.'s behest for selling marijuana seeds, said from his home in B.C., noting that since Gibson was drinking alcohol at the time of the Burlington incident in 2005, he could have ingested the cannabis via an alcoholic tincture that would have been just as effective and more discreet.

More discreet, but not nearly as fast acting. That is why these people are provided with the weed itself rather than some orally administered THC compound. (That and, in the case of cancer patients, the issue of trying to relieve nausea with a medicine that must be swallowed).

Richard Warman Does Not Sleep, Richard Warman Waits

...and then Richard Warman strikes.

And so the other shoe finally drops on Ezra Levant, with Warman threatening a lawsuit against him. Meanwhile, Ezra's still standing behind his Nazi re those racists posts on Senator Cools, betting that the attribution of the posts to Warman by Ezra will not make it into the final lawsuit, although they figure prominently in this letter to Ezra written by Warman's lawyer..

Not that I would want to help Ezra out, but this point deserves comment:

I started poking around a little bit about those disparaging comments about Sen. Anne Cools, because they’re obviously a source of embarrassment to Warman – he seems to have complained to the National Post when they attributed those words to him. The Post decided to cut bait and move on – they’ve been Canada’s best champions of free speech, so they deserve a little slack for not digging in. But, unless I’ve missed it, in at least two other legal actions – his defamation suit against Free Dominion, and his human rights complaint against Marc Lemire – Warman has conspicuously omitted any reference to their claims that he made the Anne Cools remarks.

In the case of Free Dominion, Warman's first complaint was filed on September 20th of 2007, well before the Anne Coosl material surfaced on that forum. I am not a legal expert, but have been informed that it would simply be a matter of broadening the suit to add this particular allegation to the original list of defamatory material. We may see this happen within the next few days or weeks.

In any case, an important development. It will now come to be revealed how much of the Speechynista case against Human Rights Tribunals has been founded upon the word of Nazis.

More McKeever On Human Rights Legislation

Yesterday, Freedom Party of Canada/Ontario leader Paul McKeever wrote this Op Ed for the Western Standard (registration may be required) in which he attacked Ezra Levant's case against HRCs from what I would describe (though Mr McKeever might not) as a Libertarian perspective. I wrote about his piece here, and noted:

[this] raises an interesting point. If I was, for example, renting a room and did not want to rent to a Black, the safest course would be to simply not rent them the room and keep my mouth shut over the reasons

Mr. McKeever has been kind enough to respond in my comments section, and his remarks were extensive enough and coherent enough (unusual for this blog) to merit a post of their own. Opinions expressed etc. are not those of the blog owner. Take it away Mr. McKeever

BCL: I saw your post and noted your last paragraph. Your insight is sound on this. Racists, sexists, and others who are landlords or employers can and do deny accommodation/jobs to people all of the time, with impunity, by keeping their views to themselves (or, at least, by trying not to let the would-be tenant/employee know the reason for the refusal of accommodation/employment).

This is why, in effect, human rights legislation is not really legislation that effectively forces racists/sexists (etc) to rent/hire those they dislike/hate. The actual effect of the legislation is that it censors the expression of racist/sexist or other irrational views.

I would not go so far as to suggest that those who drafted the legislation intended it to censor speech. Rather, I would argue that the effect (not the intention, but the effect) has been censorship.

Having worked as a human rights lawyer for almost 11 years now, I can tell you this: the act is largely ineffective for most instances of racism/sexism. However, its ineffectiveness is not due to the subject matter (i.e., irrational discrimination). Rather its ineffectiveness is due to the fact that force cannot effectively change a person's beliefs/thoughts. Physical force/coercion can govern action, but it cannot govern thought (i.e., it is physically, hence philosophically, impossible).

At the end of the day, human rights legislation has functioned - more than anything else - as an official state rejection of the ideologies that prevail in racist, sexist, anti-homosexual (etc.) jurisdictions.

The money would be better spent, in my view, on doing a much better job teaching children that a person's genetic make-up has nothing to do with the value of the person; that the irrational person - including racists, sexists, and other such tribalist - are morally inferior to those who judge each individual's value rationally (hence, without regard to race, sex, etc.).

Cheers, PM

BCL again. If the spelling in any of this is a bit shaky, its because I am still having Blogger problems and can't get spell-check to work.

Ezra's Crappy Argument

According to The Freedom Party's Paul McKeever:

"Ezra says censorship is wrong for this reason: we have (he submits) a long history of laws that disallow it. In other words: our laws (allegedly) against censorship are just because they are old. Yet the argument that 'old law is just law' implies that we should still have laws that facilitate slavery in Canada, that give only propertied men the vote, and that make it illegal to open your store on Sunday."

This thought occured to me as well; to argue that something, a set of laws or otherwise, is "800 years old" is not necessarily to recommend it. (Nor is to refer to it as "English", which Ezra also does. Remember, these people gave us The Spice Girls and mushy peas)

As to the rest of the McKeever piece, its early and I haven't absorbed alot of caffeine yet but it sounds to me he's arguing that HRCs shouldn't be allowed to regulate anything:

Ezra condemns the addition of speech to the original list of things regulated by human rights commissions. He thereby implies that he has no objection to human rights laws concerning employment and housing. Our human rights laws typically cannot prevent someone from denying a person a job or an apartment so long as the reason for the denial is not known to be one prohibited by human rights legislation. Thus, in effect, Ezra's position is this: nobody should prevent Ezra from saying that another man's religious beliefs are dangerous but, if Ezra utters such an opinion, he should lose the freedom to deny that man a job or an apartment. In short: shut up, or put up. That is clearly a self-defeating defence of "free speech."

An argument that I don't agree with, but which raises an interesting point. If I was, for example, renting a room and did not want to rent to a Black, the safest course would be to simply not rent them the room and keep my mouth shut over the reasons.