(Bumped for JGL listeners. You can “listen live” at the link.)
This* audio tape (MP3) was allegedly recorded at the March 25-27 Saskatchewan NDP convention in Regina, the speaker alleged to be a well-known Saskatchewan labour lawyer.
Transcript:
“Bill 160 is probably one of the most — and I’ll use this term intentionally — evil acts being attempted by a government in Canadian history. It is the opinion of many, including Amnesty International, that Bill 160 is an attempt to take away our access to human rights. If there’s one issue – one issue – that politicians in power shouldn’t be allowed to get away with, they shouldn’t be left breathing after an election, if they think our human rights are meaningless.”
Strong words, particularly in the context of a speech delivered before an audience, and doubly so in this current atmosphere of hypersensitivity towards any form of political speech or symbolism that might be construed as counseling violence. After all, you never know what nuts might be listening.
Background – Bill 160 – An Act to amend The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code and to make consequential amendments to The Labour Standards Act
*Full disclosure: This is the only portion of the tape I curerntly have access to. If the speaker disclaimed his use of violent imagery as wholly inappropriate, or extended a big union hug towards the politicians referenced in followup comments, I’ll note that in an update.
If the speaker disclaimed his use of violent imagery as wholly inappropriate, or extended a big union hug towards the politicians referenced in followup comments, I’ll note that in an update.
Wishing you luck
I am more convinced than ever that organized labour is THE major economic problem in Canada.
Socialists advocating murdering their political opponents, where have I heard of that before?
I read Amnesty International’s report (or rather one man’s report in AI) on Bill 160.
http://www.amnestysaskatchewan.ca/?go=news&loc=&id=87
It is underwhelming.
Underwhelming is right. The author repeatedly states that he has not personally investigated the accuracy of any claims and is relying on “expressions of concern” from unions and activists. Actually, that sounds a lot like the the way the Human Rights system works – no evidence but lots of conclusions.
The concerns in the AI report are:
They talk to me of two main concerns. First, I am told that the consultation was not an open-ended consultation seeking views about the state of human rights protection in the province and ideas for changes to the system; out of which a reform proposal could then have been developed. Rather, it was a consultation in which people were asked to react and respond to the proposal that had already been developed.
and
And now I come to my final area of concern – the one, I believe, that has attracted the majority media, political and public attention. That is the proposal to abolish the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal and assign the role of hearing all human rights complaints that reach the hearing stage to the Court of Queen’s Bench instead.
As a first note it is worth underscoring that this would be out of step with every other human rights system in Canada – all provinces, territories and the Canadian Human Rights Commission maintain a system which entrusts the hearing of human rights complaints to specialized, informal tribunals.
So, the lack of open-ended discussions and using real courts and judges is AI’s and the human rights activists main concern. Oh, the horror, governments making legislation without them and forcing the human rights industry to conform to the rule of law. I guess they could not come right out and say that what they really fear is an end to the gravy train and shakedown opportunities. I can certainly see how this outrage translates into NDP led support for a return to capital punishment.
The bill on a cursory reading seemed fair enough, and directed to increased fairness.
The reliance on a real court is obvious, but it is not clear that the Sask Human Rights Tribunal is being abolished.
And why would it be abolished? There is a need for some informal means of resolving
workplace discrimination issues etc., without the full force of the legal apparatus being brought into play.
It is conduct unbecoming of a Lawyer to publicly use violent imagery which could incite violence or hatred. The recourse is to let the Law Society deal with it. http://www.lawsociety.sk.ca/newlook/Contact/ContactUs.htm
Send a copy of the tape to the CBC, I’m sure they will be outraged at the violent imagery.
Not.
In my reading the commission maintains the role of attempting to mediate a solution between two parties. It only goes to the Court of Queen’s Bench if the two parties cannot come to an agreement.
If anything is anti-democratic it is unions.
Forcing people to join and pay dues is not democracy, it is major violation of human rights.
The unions are unconstitutional and should be treated accordingly. I absolutely disagree with introduction of any law restricting the privileges of unions and believe that anyone negatively affected by their activity must sue.
The very concept of trade union is a problem. Labor relations act as it applies to unions is unconstitutional, as it misreads freedom of association and directly infringes on freedom to make a living of the employers.
The contract between employer and the employee is established first, then the employees use the union laws to force the employer to alter the original contract under threat of work stoppage, damage to property or reputation or litigation.
The charter guarantees the employer the right to make a living – they must challenge labour laws in court, not just hide their heads in the sand. The employee who would rather not join the union nor pay union dues must challenge the labour laws as they infringe on their freedom of association by forcing them into association they don’t want.
This is a legal mess no one wants to touch with a 10′ pole, but it has to be challenged before all jobs went to China/India/Brazil and we are left broke and in debt to god knows who. Look at the devastation outsourcing wrecked on North America! The unions are partially to blame, shared with corrupt government bureaucracy who established anti-business regulations.
Go Brad Wall!!
BTW, isn’t there an election scheduled for later this year? Did Wall just lay a trap of NDP doo-doo for them to step in just in time for the election campaign?
Heh, heh, heh. I can see right off why a labour lawyer would be dead opposed to this. The section on mediation eliminates most of their appeal process. The plaintiff no longer has to agree to the settlement. The Chief Commissioner only has to agree that it’s reasonable. And it looks like there’s no appeal. And the section on costs greatly reduces their grounds for judicial awards.
Forget about the union stuff for the moment, folks. This one is hurting the labour lawyers where it really hurts: billable hours and discretionary damage awards. And it’s going to hurt them a LOT. No wonder this guy is screaming like a gelded calf. He’s losing a huge chunk of his business.
Awww. Poor baby.
I’m confused as to which part of that I’m supposed to be outraged about.
Then again, I’m not the target audience, since I support the wholesale removal of all “Human Rights Codes” wholesale.
I’m all for human rights (self-defense, free speech, free religion, the like).
Which is why I oppose Human Rights Codes and Tribunals and the like – they seem to typically be at best unconcerned with actual human rights, and too often actively hostile to them.
(And it’d sure be nice if Amnesty International was more interested in pointing fingers at real abuses and wrongs, rather than fund-raising by “looking under the streetlight” of human-rights-friendly Western nations.
They’ve lost almost all the vestigial respect I had for them, which is a shame, because they could be doing real good in the world if they put some effort into it.)
International Human Rights — hijacked by Marxists to stifle the legitimate free speech rights of everyone else and to allow violent speech exclusively for Lefties and Islamic jihadists. John Humphrey (the Canadian who originally drafted the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights) would turn over in his grave by this turn of events. I spoke with professor Humphrey at a reception in the early ’90’s before he passed away — he was definitely not a Lefty ideologue and would be disturbed by the Marxist hijacking of Human Rights.
And here we have Amnesty International weighing in again! A.I., for as long as I have known them, have always been a Statist organization although they pretend to be NGO. They have compromised with everyone from the CIA to the radical Left and Islamism throughout their history, for convenience sake.
This is a warning shot; warning those of us who would oppose the tribunal, should they be questioned, that our days would be numbered with a collaboration gov’t.. How very like the tools used by Lenin; terror and mass murder for anyone who said anything critical of the methods the Bolsheviks choose to use to gain absolute control over every aspect of the life of every person existing in the soviet sphere of influence.
Brad Wall and his MP’s are threatening the authority of these terrorists. Ask the Good Lord and Canadian citizens to watch over these men and women.
I’m convinced the *ssh*le said “… shouldn’t be left BREEDING …,” but, typically, the more control by leftards, the better, eh!
Just which particular method would the speaker like to employ to stop the said politicians from breathing?
Nothing like debating the actual legislation, rather than inciting the mob with the next best thing, like ‘off with their heads’.
Shades of Robespierre…
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Know thy enemy
If you are wondering where this kind vitriol origionates from you should read the Regina Manifesto of 1933.
This is the founding document of the CCF and the policy paper of the current NDP. This was created by a group of academic university professors.
This is a stomache turning read for anyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool communist.
If you want to read this document you can email me and I will send you a copy.
dskrupski@accesscomm.ca
Section 5 of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code is headed “Right to free expression”. But the action against Bill Whatcott over some anti-gay pamphlets, moronic though they might have been, was a clear violation of section 5. Section 14 of the Code is the one about publications, but its first section clearly contradicts its second, as well as section 5.
Section 6 of the Code is titled “Right to free association” and it lists the “right to peaceable assembly with others” and the right “to form associations with others under the law”. But these are only part of the right to free association. The right NOT to associate with others is an integral part of the right to freedom of association; otherwise the laws against atalking would be unconstitutional. You can blame ex-Supreme Court judge Bertha Wilson, for one, for befouling this issue by misunderstanding human rights.
Meanwhile, Alex Neve of Amnesty International chimed in (link earlier in this thread):
“And now I come to my final area of concern – the one, I believe, that has attracted the majority media, political and public attention. That is the proposal to abolish the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal and assign the role of hearing all human rights complaints that reach the hearing stage to the Court of Queen’s Bench instead.”
“As a first note it is worth underscoring that this would be out of step with every other human rights system in Canada – all provinces, territories and the Canadian Human Rights Commission maintain a system which entrusts the hearing of human rights complaints to specialized, informal tribunals. The role of the courts is left to dealing with legal and jurisdictional issues and reviewing tribunal decisions for errors. This has very much come to be seen as best practice.”
Similarly, a comment from John Lewis @ 12:47 p.m.: “There is a need for some informal means of resolving workplace discrimination issues etc., without the full force of the legal apparatus being brought into play.”
The “full force of the legal apparatus” is what provides due process. In this context “informal” is a fraud that specifically means “lacking due process” — and this lack is intentional, not an oversight. We should have ONE justice system for all persons who may face action taken against them by the state and who may suffer legal sanctions as a result, and it MUST include due process. Anything less is NOT justice. One would think Amnesty International, of all organizations, would understand this, but apparently not.
Neve again: “Tribunals are able to build expertise in human rights – and even specialized expertise with respect to specific human rights issues …”
The tribunals are staffed with left-wing activists and professional malcontents who would have difficulty finding a productive job in a free market — hacks who make up “human rights” law as they go along. That is your alleged “building expertise” and “specialization”. This is the worst possible situation for the victims of complaints who get dragged into these kangaroo courts for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association.
Amnesty International’s skewed criticisms of Canada prompted this fatuous editorial in the Star on Tuesday:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/967935–international-human-rights-canada-s-role-dwindling
“Misguided policies of the federal Conservative government … include Canada’s ‘unflinching refusal’ to criticize Israel’s flawed human rights record. There’s also the defunding of valuable non-government agencies, like KAIROS, for disagreeing with Ottawa …”
Israel’s human rights record is not perfect but it is far better than that of many nations, including all those in its vicinity. Most of its critics attack Israel to the exclusion of other nations with far worse human rights records.
The de-funding of KAIROS was not handled well by the government but it had every right to make the decision, and the reason related to lack of balance regarding Israel.
Amnesty International surely knows all this. I presume it still does worthwhile work in freeing political prisoners and other targets of abuses by government. Thus in Canada it should be speaking up for Bill Whatcott, not KAIROS.
The red guard who defend cultural fascism’s twin pillars of multicult and human rights won’t go down without some really dirty back stabbing tricks.
The most offensive thing about that statement is the hyperbole. Governments in Canada are responsible for castrating persons with disabilities, Japanese internment in WWII, persecuting Jehovahs Witnesses, and residential schools (among other things). A few changes the the Labour Standards Act–good or bad–do not come anywhere near these serious human rights violations.
This is all very well but we are not really seeing much reason to be optimistic that Stephen Harper will act to reduce the powers of the human rights commissions and tribunals. And some of his positions on internet freedom seem ambiguous at best. I would certainly welcome a clarification, because obviously without the CPC on our side in the battle for internet freedom, we don’t have a dog in the hunt.
Surely a stable economy is not the only issue in this election. We need to be holding the CPC to the highest possible standards and recent trends seem to indicate a drift towards an authoritarian rather than a libertarian stance. Those who applaud the heavy hand when it is shown to the left might want to bear in mind that it can just as easily be shown to the right at any time that proves convenient. Social conservatives already think they have been given the back of that hand — the usual response being, too bad, vote for us anyway. The counter-response just might prove to be this: why exactly should we bother? This government sometimes acts like the unfaithful husband who brings flowers after every affair — there’s a limit to how many of those bouquets a self-respecting person would want to accept.
Certainly this atrocity needs to bump the Holocaust from their own room at the Human Rights Museum.
Peter O’Donnell at April 6, 2011 1:47 PM:
“…we are not really seeing much reason to be optimistic that Stephen Harper will act to reduce the powers of the human rights commissions and tribunals.”
Maybe not, but there’s hope — if I recall correctly the entire Conservative caucus voted unanimously against the commissions and tribunals a few years ago. I think it was at a Party convention.
Peter, not quite true. This SK bill significantly improves the HRC’s in this province to protect the rights of the accused. That’s progress of a type that a lot of other jurisdictions will probably look to copy.
The thing is the HR commissions were unnecessary right from the beginning because we already have local Labour Boards, Landlord/Tenant Boards, etc. across the country which do a good job of representing complainants. No need to “politicize” them to exclusively serve interest groups with the HRC’s.
I’ve used the services of both the Labour and Landlord/Tenant boards over the years and was always satisfied. They are very low budget and unbureaucratic and they are usually staffed by volunteer lawyers or retired judges and they are evidence-based — not “politically-correct” based. If you have verifiable evidence and can show actual financial losses then you will be awarded your costs, not a penny more not a penny less — just like a real court. If you don’t have the evidence then forget it, and either way you won’t get a penny because you feel “offended”.
The HRC’s are useless, and if it’s criminal hate crime the real courts are quite capable of dealing with it.
A human-rights lawyer..!!?? Wow… how else would you describe a parasite on a parasite. It just shows the absolute lowest level of human debasement that someone would actually choose to be a human rights lawyer.
Interesting but not surprising considering the political party, the very suggestion that complaints of this nature go before a real court with the obligation of presenting actual proof of the allegations. It has always been so much simpler to be able to accuse anyone of anything without having to present proof and not having to spend a penny.