More news of repression from Canada

On its way to the USA

[Reprinted from Issues & Views July 30, 2001]

Hugh Owens would have been safe had he not made references to the Bible. In human-rights circles [in Canada], the Bible is increasingly regarded as an insidious form of hate literature.

In June of 1997, Mr. Owens submitted, and the Star-Phoenix newspaper published, an advertisement with a drawing of two stick figures holding hands surrounded by a circle with a slash through it--the universal "no" symbol, as in No Smoking, No Trucks, etc. Three men filed complaints with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. The commission appointed a one-woman board of inquiry, Saskatoon lawyer Valerie Watson, and she recently convicted Mr. Owens and the newspaper.

Ms. Watson held that, while the symbol alone "may not itself communicate hate, when combined with the passages from the Bible, the board finds the advertisement would expose or tend to expose homosexuals to hatred or ridicule."

Ms. Watson is categorical in saying that a sincere belief in the truth of one's view is no defence. "There is no question that Mr. Owens believed that he was publicly expressing his honestly held religious beliefs," she wrote. But that doesn't matter. He has given offence and that is enough. Freedom of speech, press and religion all yield to a complainant's hurt feelings.

I do not suggest that Ms. Watson was wrong on the law. Just the opposite. She got the law right, and the law no longer protects what Section 2 of the Charter calls "fundamental freedoms" in the face of hurt feelings.

In the bad old days, we believed that freedom of speech existed not to protect that speech with which we all agreed (such speech requires no protection), but for the speech we find hateful and abhorrent. But in newspeak-Canada, we empower human-rights tribunals to cancel free speech whenever some victims group finds it "offensive." We wave the Charter's protection of free speech in the world's eyes, and we allow tribunals to negate its effects, a perfect liberal ploy for having your cake while devouring it.

-- Ian Hunter, professor emeritus, University of Western Ontario Law School, The Freedom Site, July 5, 2001.

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