Your Ward News: A Letter The G&M Didn't Print

They got an even shorter version, but so stubbornly persist in their wrongness and hatred of elegant prose that they wouldn't even print that one.  Anyway, I didn't want all my work to go for nothing, so here it is:

Marcus Gee's Free Speech Views Are Painfully Naive

Gee suggests that Toronto citizens respond to Yourward News by  debunking its chief author, James Sears.  But Sears brags about the many women he has "pinned down against their will", and talks up Hitler and Jesus in the same breath.  That rape is bad, and Hitler not like Jesus; these seem self-evident truths and I would personally shun anyone who felt they were at issue.  An attempt to convince them towards sanity would likely prove futile.  It might also result in online death-threats from Neo-Nazis and members of the "seduction community", as some have already discovered.

And I'm not sure  Mr. Gee has read what he is defending.  He supports prohibiting material which incites violence, but  apparently missed  Sears' pro-rape musings and his talk of "eradicating FemiMarxists".  I don't begrudge Mr. Gee his ignorance, but he might show some empathy for the posties who must deliver this vile product, or the locals who receive it on their doorstep.  They can't avoid it so easily.

Marcus Gee's painfully naive piece can be found here.

A Modest Proposal: A Trudeau Government Should Restore Section 13 Of The Canadian Human Rights Act

That's the hate speech provision, which I've written about it at numerous occasions in the past.  The CPC ditched it after a years long smear campaign engineered by white supremacists, Ezra Levant, various scribblers in the press, and a few easily gulled artsy farts.  But the point is--and this should be obvious when you considered the ill-favoured crowd that pushed it--the repeal was never popular. The deed was accomplished via a private member's bill in the dead of night and pundits who had howled for repeal for years suddenly found something else to ruminate over.  And while we may argue over the philosophical underpinnings of any hate-speech law, its worth noting that the concrete misdeeds ascribed to various government agencies in enforcing S13 were fabrications. Furthermore, some of the real weaknesses in the Human Rights Commision/Tribunal system pointed out during the ongoing debate (the possibility of forum shopping among federal and provincial bodies) were fixed at the adiministrative level by the bodies themselves.  So these issues will not likely come up again.

The CPC just ran one of the ugliest campaigns in living memory, and the repeal of S13 gave them a little more rhetorical space to propogate their various hate messages during this campaign.  I would love to watch them try to frame their opposition to a reinstatement; however, I suspect those of those left will cave out of pure embarrassment.  And I would love to watch the punditorcracy shit themselves in blind fury.  Remember, all they've got now are philosophical arguments against, and a few obviously self-serving economic ones like "If we have to live up to standards, we won't be able to publish as much."

Fun times ahead, hopefully.

Is CBC Hate Speech Story Bullshit?

WK thinks its bullshit, and he's mostly right.  It would be really, really difficult to use CDN hate-speech laws to go after the BDS movement, for reasons he cites.  And there is a long chain of inferences leading from the actual facts as stated in the CBC story to the writer's conclusions.  But on the other hand, why would the ministry explain what "zero tolerance" of the BDS movement meant by referencing "a detailed list of Canada's updated hate laws"?  That is rather odd.

PS.  I had similar concerns as those expressed in the story a few years ago.  I am enlightened in the comments section.

PPS. Reading the thing more closely, I note:

But in response to specific questions about what "zero tolerance" of BDS means, and how it will be enforced, Blaney aide Josee Sirois gave CBC News a much clearer picture of the government's intent.

"I can tell you that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of laws against hate crime anywhere in the world," wrote Sirois.

She highlighted what she termed "hate propaganda" provisions in the Criminal Code criminalizing the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, and further noted that "identifiable group" now includes any section of the public distinguished by "among other characteristics, religion or national or ethnic origin."

She also referred to Criminal Code provisions requiring that a judge consider hate, bias or prejudice when sentencing an offender.

"We will not allow hate crimes to undermine our way of life, which is based on diversity and inclusion," she concluded.

OK now that does sound as though the governments does intend to use our nation's hate speech laws as per the CBC story's assertion.  If so, that's insane. It also won't work; the barriers to moving a case forward are incredibly high and the BDS movement simply does not employ the kind of extreme language that would make the cut.