Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn, below, is testifying before the Canadian Standing Committee on Government Agencies specifically concerning a review of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. In this case, the title “Human Rights Tribunal” is simply “government-speak” for a “kangaroo court” that arbitrarily decides when “free speech” should be deemed “hate speech.”
This testimony took place on February 9, 2009. Americans should beware those politicians who are currently endeavoring to pass legislation which would set up their own style of “Human Rights Tribunals” in the US. Steyn’s defense of free speech will become a classic:
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): I’d first like to ask Mr. Mark Steyn to come forward and join us. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Good afternoon, Mr. Steyn. I would just explain to you that we have 30 minutes set aside that you may use as you wish in making comments. Time that is left over then will be divided amongst the caucuses. So please begin if you’re ready.
Mr. Mark Steyn: I’d just like to make a brief statement, and then I’m happy to answer any questions.
The present Ontario human rights regime is incompatible with a free society. It is useless on real human rights issues that we face today, and in the course of such pseudo human rights as the human right to smoke marijuana on someone else’s property or the human right to a transsexual labioplasty, it tramples on real human rights, including property rights, free speech, the right to due process and the presumption of innocence.
Far from reducing racism or sexism, the Ontario human rights regime explicitly institutionalizes racism and sexism through its inability to view any dispute except through the narrow prism of identity politics. It’s at odds not just with eight centuries of this province’s legal inheritance, but with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Canada likes that one so much, it sticks it on the back of the $50 bill, even though Ontario’s human rights regime is in sustained systemic breach of article 6, article 7, articles 8 to 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 21 and 27 of the UN declaration. The good news is that Ontario is not in violation of as many articles as Sudan or North Korea.
All are equal before the law and are entitled, without any discrimination, to equal protection of the law. That’s article 7. It’s not true in Ontario. Last year, the Ontario Human Rights Commission effectively gave Maclean’s and myself a drive-by verdict. They couldn’t be bothered taking us to trial, but they decided to pronounce us guilty anyway. That neglects the most basic principle of justice: Audi alteram partem; hear the other side. Chief commissar Barbara Hall didn’t bother hearing the other side; she simply declared us guilty. That is the very defining act of a police state: an apparatchik announcing that a citizen is guilty of dissent from state orthodoxy.
But here’s the point: Maclean’s and I have no fear of Barbara Hall, the commission or the tribunal. You’re welcome to try and do your worst to us. We have deep pockets. We pushed back and we filled the newspapers with stories about all these wacky cases that Barbara Hall and others are so obsessed about. Like all tinpot bullies, the commission couldn’t take the heat and backed down. But if you’re just a fellow who happens to own a restaurant in Burlington, the Ontario human rights regime will destroy your savings, your business and your life for no good reason. The verdict is irrelevant; the process is the punishment.
I would like to say one further thing: When Mohamed Elmasry announced his suits against Maclean’s, he was supported by Terry Downey of the Ontario Federation of Labour, and Ms. Downey, explaining her support for Dr. Elmasry, said, “There is proper conduct that everyone has to follow.” Sorry; I pass on that one. For one thing, there is no “proper conduct” in the wacky world of pseudo human rights in this province. The rules are made up as they go along, so even if you wanted to follow them, you can’t. In John Locke’s words, they “dispose of the Estates of the Subject arbitrarily.”
Secondly, it’s all too easy to imagine the Terry Downeys of the day primly telling a homosexual 50 years ago that there’s proper conduct that everyone has to follow, or a Jew 70 years ago that there’s proper conduct that everyone has to follow. That’s why free societies do not license ideologues to regulate proper conduct. When you subordinate legal principles to ideological fashion, you place genuine liberties in peril, and that’ s the state in Ontario today.
Thank you.
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