It seems that someone left the children over at 'Canada Family Action Coalition' with the passwords to the computers, and they've been having quite the little hissy fit this month.
It seems that Mr. Rushfeldt and his companions over at CFAC don't much like a recent series of human rights rulings and complaints that have emerged in the last months of 2007.
Unsurprisingly, much of their tirade is a call for human rights commissions to be abolished in Canada. This is neither surprising nor atypical for extreme right-wingnut "Christianity" who seem to believe that their "god-given right" to spew supercedes all other rights.
Consider the following from one of their screeds:
Human Rights Commissions are akin the Court Challenges Program that was thankfully "killed" federally. Human Rights cases are cases where taxpayer dollars are being used to undermine the very tenant of our Charter. The Charter's Clause 2 - every Canadian has the right to freedom of speech -has become absolutely meaningless.
Really? It has? Or has Mr. Rushfeldt & Co. simply lost sight of the reality that rights exist in contention with each other.
The cheering over the dissolution of the "Charter Challenges" program speaks to the real agenda at play here. Under that program, it was possible for very small minorities to get the funding necessary to actually drive a case to the Supreme Court in this country. Without it, it is a prohibitively expensive process to challenge the government at all when it puts laws on the books that one believes are in violation of Canada's Constitution.
What CFAC is really angling for is the right to spew whatever dubious "truths" about people (especially GLBT people it would seem, although more recently they are picking up the fear of Islam from loons like Mark Steyn as well) without any fear of being held to account for the veracity of those "truths".
Here is a line out of the Alberta Act that should frighten all citizens: Procedural rules: (2) Evidence may be given before a human rights panel in any manner that the panel considers appropriate, and the panel is not bound by the rules of law respecting evidence in judicial proceedings.
If that is not enough to make you shudder hear this one: Protection from giving evidence:40(1) No member of the Commission, nor the director of the Commission or any other employee mentioned in section 18, shall be required by any court to give evidence relative to information obtained for the purposes of this Act. (2) No proceeding under this Act shall be deemed invalid by reason of any defect in form or any technical irregularity.
So errors, omissions, even false statements can not be grounds for a " mistrial". Do those clauses mean that the Commission is above the law then? Or is there any law that applies to the function of human rights appointees?
This is patently false at both the provincial and federal levels in Canada. A Rights Tribunal ruling can be appealed to the courts, a which time a more rigorous approach to evidence becomes significant. At the level of the tribunal, certain amounts of hearsay and inference are going to be necessary, as rights cases often are the result of actions far less blatant than Boissoin's letter.
For those who believe that discrimination and bigotry are truly the ugly underside of civil society, a body of law around human rights is vitally important, and the means for it to be arbitrated without drowning our courts in otherwise minor matters. The religious right wing, having lost their battle over SGM have now turned their eyes on Canada's human rights laws.
My Canada is multicultural, tolerant and willing to listen to reason. I'm not so sure that same vision is reflected in the ranting tirades of CFAC or for that matter Gwen Landolt of "Real Women", who has a lengthy diatribe on her organization's website bemoaning how human rights law steps all over religion.
6 comments:
Does the fact that no Canadian HRC complaint has EVER been denied give you pause for concern about the legitimacy of this institution?
I find that a little hard to believe. From the CHRC FAQ Page:
If the complaint is filed more than one year after the incident or if the complaint appears to be beyond the Commission’s jurisdiction, it may be referred to the Commission with a recommendation not to deal with the complaint. Similarly, if a complaint appears to be trivial or made in bad faith, it may also be recommended that it not be dealt with.
...
Is every complaint retained and investigated?
No. In some cases, complaints are filed too late, or the Commission finds that they are trivial, vexatious or made in bad faith.
Many complaints are now settled through mediation or other procedures that do not require investigation.
So ... anonymous ... unless you have actual evidence to back up your claim, I'd suggest that you may be doing little more than repeating a talking point that has no grounding in reality.
Anonymous@1:44:
One further point. From the CHRC's 2006 annual report (submitted to Parliament this year) Please examine figure 15, which clearly shows that 384 of 1074 complaints were refused, and a further 297 were dismissed.
So much for your claim that "no HRC complaint has EVER been denied".
you use the word "spew" a couple of times in your post. What you call spewing, others would call freedom to express an opinion. I don't agree with religious zealots who think that homosexuals will face hellfire, but I think they have the right to say so in speech and print.
I don't agree with religious zealots who think that homosexuals will face hellfire,
Those claims/statements seldom cause any problems. (They have an arguable basis in scripture - whether or not you agree with them)
Problems start emerging when utterly bogus claims are being made. Again, I will point to the Boissoin letter as a classic example, wherein the author repeats an assortment of claims that I suspect were lifted from the discredited "research" work of Paul Cameron.
That is what I consider "spewage".
One further clarification on spewage......it rhymes with sewage.....and has similar characteristics.
SB
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