To be told what it is we do not have.
But it’s the thought that counts. (Press Release)
Today, Senator Doug Finley (Ontario South Coast) will introduce the Senate inquiry on the Erosion of Freedom of Speech in our Country on the floor of the Senate at approximately 4:00pm. Afterwards, Senator Pamela Wallin (Saskatchewan), Senator Mike Duffy (Cavendish – Prince Edward Island), and Senator David Tkachuk (Saskatchewan) are scheduled to share their thoughts on Freedom of Speech.
If you are unable to attend, you can access audio here.
But I thought freedom of speech was an “American” concept. Isn’t that what Lynch said?
Petition to Repeal Section 13 – we need on that sayd to get rid of the HRC all accross Canada – close the doors and fire them all. This is a start
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/RepealSection131/
I think the inquiry is a good idea. It brings the issue to the forefront, it let’s us know who stands where, and it might be used as a springboard for actual — wait for it — legislative action.
Although many would allege that the issue is cut and dry, I don’t think it is.
For example, I would like to see public university students be guaranteed the same rights of expression as normal citizens. In other words, universities should be prevented from implementing “speech codes” that impose political correctness on their victims, ur, students.
Excuse the typo’s.
There are no formal property rights in Canada either, so why would you worry about the freedom of speech that you thought you had? Isn’t the nanny state wonderful?
No wonder why I left but it is following me.
That’s a good point rabbit. Universities receive public funding exactly to encourage open and free inquiry into various issues. Openness and freedom from intimidation should be a condition for that public money and a university unable or unwilling to take the steps to guarantee it should be cut off from the public teat.
Agreed, Kate. Why do we need some unelected agents of the States spending our own $ to tell us what we already know? Nice try but he could have called for something way more powerful, like everybody storming the HRC offices or something.
As I said in my post about this a few days ago, this is like that old joke about “Heaven” and an “Inquiry about Heaven,” and how Canadians would pick the latter.
How do you solve a problem like neo-Marxism?
The censors and groupthink advocates are not going to go willingly, nor are they going to change willingly. They would have to be forcibly removed from positions of power and influence.
Imagine the huge outcry from the wounded progressives when anything like that was to be proposed, let alone carried out.
But if this Senate committee just identifies the problem (basically, too many neo-Marxists in academia, the judicial branch, and the media) then what can they propose as solutions? A group hug? Equal numbers of conservatives in these places? Nothing but full counter-revolutionary, forceful action, will work at this point.
And because the revolution has locked itself in with women’s rights, one could estimate that in the broader society, the resistance to the revolution stands at about 20% among women and perhaps 30-40 per cent among men. Good luck getting an electoral consensus for sweeping change with those foundations.
In fact, if you take my numbers and add in the few people of both genders who tolerate Harper on the grounds of temporary advantage over the perceived disarray of the Liberals, you have a working model of Canadian voting habits. In the USA, it’s more like 30% of women and 55% of men who are open to counter-revolutionary change (in other words, who have not surrendered to the revolution). That does give a faint hope of a dynamic counter-revolutionary leader winning a presidential election, but it had better be in 2012 or the demographic erosion will continue to swing the support to revolution there as well.
Anyway, I think the removal of the Marxists is too difficult an operation for polite, non-confrontational Canadian society to contemplate, and the thorny problem is that we would have to deny freedom of speech to others in order to preserve it for ourselves (essentially this is the problem faced in Europe from the Islamist challenge). I could not even name half a dozen people outside of the neo-Nazi fringe element in Canada who would even contemplate such dramatic and draconian action. And the neo-Nazis have no following and no traction. So I would speculate that it is better to hope that the second coming happens soon, because that’s probably about the same thing, with angels added.
OTOH, Kate and Kathy, much of the ROC doesn’t know what we know. In fact, they don’t have a clue.
It could be that if the issue of free speech is brought up in the Senate, — and how it’s totally threatened by political correctness in the press and our public institutions — the message will get out to a wider public.
I’m of the school of thought that sees PMSH as damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t on this issue: If he closes down all of the CHRCs (which I’d dearly love to see), the Opposition parties and their MSM toadies will pile on and accuse the CPC of “attacking human rights” — and most Canadians will figure that’s what’s happening. If he does nothing, he’s accused of not being conservative enough.
Until the CPC forms a majority government, any progress in this area will be incremental, which is a bummer but is the reality.
If the CPC ever forms a majority and doesn’t shut down the CHRCs, I’ll give them Hell. (I’m sure they wouldn’t want that … 😉
Anyway, I think the removal of the Marxists is too difficult an operation for polite, non-confrontational Canadian society to contemplate, and the thorny problem is that we would have to deny freedom of speech to others in order to preserve it for ourselves (essentially this is the problem faced in Europe from the Islamist challenge).
~Peter O’Donnell
It’s not as hard as you think.
All that needs to be done is to cut them off of tax funding and they’ll die a natural death.
Make it illegal for educators and bureaucrats to push politics on the taxpayers dime, privatize the CBC, and the rest is easy.
It’s only the grip they have on the public purse and the ability for collective coercion that the Public Sector Unions have that keeps them going.
You don’t have to take away free speech, just free money.
Don’t discount ridicule with lampoons hurled at them can do a lot of damage. As we have seen these Inquisitions self destruct many times. The lawyer had the right idea. Leave them in their personnel mud bath of totalitarianism.
While we all stop listening to them or even giving one gram of acknowledgement, or any relevance to this diseased panel of censorship.
Its pretty plain by now that the CPC went against its own Party vote of 99% to get rid of this rape of Democracy.
So its us who in the end will rid this Country of this bureaucratic black mail machine. As they ridicule themselves, help them out. Never stop talking about this group of cons.
Hold em up for what they are. The con artists of fake race abuse.
JMO
I’m with batb on this. The majority of Canadians haven’t a clue about the HRAct, the tribunals, the commisions, the cases, the abuses of human rights carried out by these same ‘Human Rights’.
They don’t know about the fact that these commissions are not part of the judiciary. They don’t know such vital facts as that the accuser is funded by the govt while the accused is without such assistance – a violation of Section 15/1 of the Charter.
They don’t know that the Human Rights Act Section 13 is a violation of the fundamental right (so stated in the Charter) of free speech.
All they hear are the words ‘human rights’ and they act as if it were a call-to-prayer.
Harper is a master of ‘bricolage’, the step by step, slow-drip method of incremental progress. So, the CPC annual meeting voted against the HRC and Section 13. Then, the courts got involved and declared that the HRCs were in violation of the laws of Canada and due process of the judiciary process. Then, more and more of the press and blogs have been involved – but these don’t affect the majority of Canadians.
Now, here’s an inquiry. This inquiry is not for US, the enlightened and wise. It’s for THEM, the unenlightened ‘stuck on stupid’ Liberals, NDP, Bloc and their ilk, who hear the words ‘human rights’…and….
Very timely… just got off the phone with a nice lady from the CPC who expressed her disappointment that I was not going to give them any money until PM Harper seriously amended section 13(1) of the HRA.
I think it’s beginning to register: she had heard from others about the same demand, but was not herself able to do much except to pass it on.
I agree with Batb and et. And disagree with or host.
I bet fewer than ten percent of cdns know what’s going on*. We need to shine a light – a light that the MSM will have a difficult time not covering – on it and an inquiry is a pretty-good option.
*(other examples would be abortion law (read: we don’t have any) and property rights (ditto))
In a Democracy, the one right that Citizens do NOT have is the right to not be offended. The answer to speech with which any Citizen or Citizens disagree is more free speech, not less. Democracy means, among other things, contending in “the free marketplace of ideas”.
In a landmark case related to censorship, instead of censorship and reduced Freedom of Speech, “sunlight is the best disinfectant” said the great American Supreme Court jurist Louis Brandeis.
After they address the loss of freedom of speech they can address the loss of Property rights, privacy, mobility, self defense and to unencumbered right trade on the open market.
Pretty much all the liberal democratic civil rights we had before the LPC decided we would kakistocratic statism and klepto economics.
What Miss Shaidle said.
There is no need to spend money on something the average person on the street could tell you: that we’ve bent over for politically correct special interest groups.
I’m with batb and ET on this one.
I attempt to introduce this issue in conversations with friends and family.They have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t seem to care. Until, that is, I mention how it can effect the lives of their children and grandchildren.
These folks are grandchild crazy, so their interest is suddenly piqued.
Whatever works, I guess.
I should be delighted at the prospect of our Conservative Senators attempting to bring attention to the Erosion of Freedom of Speech in our Country and hopefully attention to the corrupt HRC’s while doing so.
The sad part of the Freedom of Speech and HRC story is the equally corrupt Canadian MSM itself.
There is not one corporately owned News disseminating medium in this country willing to take a militant stand in the defense of the right freely express ones opinion, a la Ann Coulter.
Corporate chicken shits all!
And just ask Ezra Levant, Connie Fournier, Kathy Shaidle or Mark Steyn how far down the state gag road the HRc’s have already taken us.
A PR ploy by Harper to appease us Cons, not working with this Con. Frankly I give up on the various governments, I’ll embrace my freedoms and offend the sniveling leftwingers as often as I can. I’m not afraid of the various HRCs anymore, when my time comes I’ll use ridicule and sneers and publicity stunts to shame them. I do not respect them and I won’t reconize their authority over me.
Agreed that we don’t need an enquiry to determine whether the HRC’s are an affront to democracy. We do need as much light as possible shone on the problem so that the majority will come to see that the HRC’s are incompatible with a representative democracy.
According to an acquaintance, in Canada it is illegal to talk about a legal activity. It would seem it is illegal to communicate for the purpose of prostitution but legal to engage in prostitution.
I agree with ET, in that this is a back door approach that will draw attention in a manner that is less usable as a political tool by the leftards
and as far as people “KNOWING”, any thing, today I was talking to a 50 year old who just got back from Cuba, she asked a few questions, and then asked if cuba was communist!!!!!
people are by and large uninformed in damn near every thing except TV shows such as survivour
This is timely. We have a lady who writes to our local paper and tears the lefties to shreds with witty letters. Today, there is a letter from one of the aforesaid lefties demanding that the paper not print her letters any more. Is censorship the only weapons these arrogant twits understand? Go senators! Strike a blow for freedom!
i can’t get it it links me to sen.ca anyway ….can someone help me with the audio link i can’t get it .
Paul in calgary
Alienated @ 5:07, They phoned me yesterday and for the second time in as many months I told them I was still ticked that they are paying too much lip service to the AGW fraud and had done nothing to to clean up the HRC.
What batb and ET said.
Aviator asked “Is censorship the only weapons these arrogant twits understand?” No, if censorship does not accomplish their ends, they close down the offender. It is just the way the left of both the fascist and communist factions work.
If the ROC doesn’t know about it by now, they never will. The average Canadian doesn’t care what the Senate says. I doubt they know we even have one.
The average Canadian cares that it’s Roll Up The Rim To Win time, and spring is here etc.
The local papers will, at times publish letters that go against the lefties, but when the mayor and all the councilors are socialists and have had at some time a connection to radical unions, and they have money to advertise big time when the papers are doing poorly, the editorial stance does change, usually on the demand of the publisher. Also, appeals to unrigorous minds generally die on the page. How many actually look at the editorial page?
Canadian Law follows UN Rights! Get over it, or dump the UN…anything less is dishonest
I’m all for an inquiry.
Right now the right-leaning press hates the HRC’s and the left-leaning press has a healthy fear of them. The moment they are gone the right will foget the issue. The left will go into full investigative journalism mode to expose all the hate speech that HRC’s could have corrected. Every honour killing will be reported as a tragedy that could have been prevented if only we had HRC’s.
If the anti-rights commissions are scrapped while a good fraction of the populace is ignorant of them, they can always be brought back. Don’t bury them until they are dead.