Daily Blogger - Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Posted on 08 May 2008 by Jack
Barrel Strength | Young Muslim lawyers versus Steyn
I took a course in communications law at the University of Ottawa last year. As is usual in such courses, we had to deliver a class on a topic of our choice. One young man in the class gave his lecture on “freedom of speech”, contrasting Canada and the United States. He dismissed it as “an American concept”, alien to the concept of controlled speech which we have in Canada. He cited leftist, feminist professors of law; he repeated their views in the communications law class. I questioned him. When it got down to it, he frankly admitted that he did not trust the people of Canada to defend the right values, he had more trust in the Supreme Court and the specialized institutions of human rights commissions and state-subsidized Court Challenges program than in the electoral process and in Parliament. I told him a brilliant future awaited him in the Liberal Party. I thought him a scoundrel, another fatuous leftist whose only virtue was fthe frankness with which he disdained elected governments. He considered himself a “progressive”.
So when Mark Steyn went on Steve Paikin’s show last night, I considered the nature of the three young Canadians who are arguing with him about their rights. They are all lawyers. They are all Muslims. They seemed, from how they argued and what they said, to have learned their law from the same sources as my classmate.
Steve Paikin had to maintain peace between Steyn and his young Muslim contenders, and at times the show descended into everyone shouting at once. What was clear to me, was that the kids - I am at the age I will call them that - were unpreprared to discuss the fundamentals. One of their arguments was that, since the Human Rights Commissions are not criminal in nature, Steyn mischaracterized them when he said he had been subject to “criminal” prosecution. As if going to jail, being forced to pay a fine, and enduring years of state subsidized prosecution is somehow made better because it is not “criminal”? Well, can we agree it is prosecution for heresy?
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Popularity: 23% [?]
May 8th, 2008 at 11:05 am
We have a serious problem in this country then, if these are the “new” lawyers and future judges. Under them, the un-elected civil service has more “power” over us to make laws and enforce them than our elected representatives whose responsibility is making the laws that govern us.
This is an insidious theft of democracy by the legal branch of our society and an usurpation of the rightful makers of the law, Parliament and our Legislators. No free thinking man or woman would submit to this, a state run judicial system, or even a parallel one as our HRC’s have become, that strips one of their democratic rights. We are fast reaching the point where we live in a dictatorship, rather than a democratically vibrant society. It is past time that our legislators got involved on the HRC file and by taking on our judiciary by pointing out to them, who makes laws in this country. To fail to do so is to abdicate their responsibilities to the electorate.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I remember newly appointed Judge Rothstein, SCC, pointing out that the Supreme Court can only arrive at decisions BASED ON THE QUALITY OR LACK THEREOF of the legislation that issues from the unelected Senate. Their opinions have to follow the Senate’s legislative guidelines. Since it’s a liberal dominated senate, we have clear ideological conflicting interests. Liberals with the history of soft on crime/wrist slapping sentences/revolving door penal system with blatant lack of regard for the victims and law enforcement on double time efforts that have fruitless results. But we can see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ with some recent decisions that have been resersed because their sheer lunacy in optics was taken into account.
This business of free speech intimidation has to have some brakes applied to it. The HRCs are determined their platform is going to expand (lots of job creation there, only the jobs are faux assignments). We HAVE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS. Just because these orgs are doing job expansion, doesn’t mean our democracy’s in jeopardy. Isn’t it obvious they’re posing as making the laws up as they go along?
That Section 13.1 clause (very brief clause) could be deleted much the same way Vanna White operates the Jeopardy board. No further delays on the private member’s bill should exist. Remove the ‘loophole’ and get down to business. Canada, leader of the G-8 and the HRCs are posing as a ludicrous threat to individuals’ rights to free speech? That clause could be removed in next month. Vanna can remove the letters in half an hour, eh?
May 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Human rights … we love them yet we hate regulating them.
Direct rule by elite ideologues with a bad recent record of suppressing free speech = not attractive.
Indirect rule by the mob with a long history of suppressing human rights = not attractive.
The “issue” here seems to be one of checks and balances rather than which bodies should be primarily responsible to balancing rights and free speech.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I concur,Cynapse, on this at least. I’ve been doing a little research on this problem. A previous poster at SDA here:
Same problem in the States. The old saying is that “state judges think they’re God; federal judges KNOW they’re God.” The problem is that judges, being human and of whatever political persuasion, need the restraints of checks and balances, just like the legislative and executive branches of government.
That judges say, “It’s slap in the face!…WE don’t need or want ANY guidance from Parliament!” merely reinforces the obvious, that they need it badly. Or more precisely, a free democratic society needs it, to ensure that the judges do their job strictly in accordance with the laws enacted by the legislative branch, and not consider themselves a “Super-Legislature”.
Posted by: Dave in Pa. at November 28, 2007 9:27 AM
states it well.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Further to the above, these postings need to be read, as they pertain to the topic at hand: the responsibilities of our legal system and their proper duties.
http://www.mauricevellacott.ca/2003%20MV%20Speaks/Judicial%20restraint%2002%20-%20Black%20Rod%20blog.pdf
and
http://www.eugenemeehan.com/english/speeches/UnwrittenConstitutionalPrinciples.pdf
The last contains a controversial statement that, for me, cries out for establishing the responsibilities of our “elected” representatives entrusted to creating our laws, and not leaving it to the judiciary to do so for us:
“I will suggest that actually quite a lot is going on, and that it is important. What is going on is the idea that there exist fundamental norms of justice so basic that they form part of the legal structure of governance and must be upheld by the courts, whether or not they find expression in constitutional texts. And the idea is important, going to the core of just governance and how we define the respective roles of Parliament, the executive and the Judiciary.”