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Here's
Mark Steyn's latest column from Maclean's,
in which he outlines the difference between true censorship
(like a human rights commissions ordering a lifetime
publication ban against someone's ideas) and pretend
censorship (which is what Canadian filmmakers are crying,
since Ottawa has announced it will stop financially
subsidizing Canadian-made pornography). I'm
frustrated by Canada's "arts" community
generally ignoring the first, but complaining about
the second. I think that's what happens when your artistic
community becomes just another agency of the state;
they lose their idealistic spirit. Too many Canadian
filmmakers are apathetic about free expression, and
only really get incensed when their grants are in question.
They dress that up as idealism, but I'm not sure how
many people it fools.
Besides
poking fun at the film industry's CanCon grantrepreneurs,
Steyn mentioned the March 25th secret trial coming up
in Ottawa. Here's an excerpt:
On
March 25, a remarkable hearing will take place at the
human rights tribunal in Ottawa. After a protracted
legal battle to avoid giving testimony, employees of
the Canadian Human Rights Commission will be cross-examined
on their various techniques regarding "hate messages."
To date, at least one employee, Dean Steacy, and one
former employee, Richard Warman, have admitted under
oath (Warman after initially denying it, also under
oath) that they post under aliases at so-called "hate"
websites. This is potentially a little more than mere
entrapment. In traditional entrapment, you wire up the
hooker and get her to come on to the governor of New
York, but Eliot Spitzer is still obliged to pay the
money and have the sex lui-meme. By contrast, the Canadian
Human Rights Commission regards website comments as
actionable "hate messages" in and of themselves,
yet its employees, past and present, admit that their
techniques include posting their own comments at such
sites: in other words, there's nothing to prevent them
from creating the crimes they subsequently prosecute
and then sticking some other schlub with the rap. This
ought to be a public scandal, yet the March 25 hearing
will attract less fuss than the question of tax credits
for Sperm.
Better
yet, as things stand, the CHRC — an organization
which believes it has the right not only to police my
public words but also to demand to know the private
thoughts of Maclean's editors behind the decision to
publish them — has succeeded in persuading the
tribunal that, when it comes to the public acts and
private thoughts of their own employees, the hearing
should be held in camera — i.e., in private. Excepting
very rare circumstances, free societies do not hold
secret trials. But Canada's "human rights"
nomenklatura do. Humdrum servants of the Crown can get
away with portraying their furtive website postings
as some sort of covert national-security operation requiring
CIA-level secrecy. If the price of building a hate-free
Canada is that the commissars have to vandalize every
presumption of common law, so be it.
According
to
Connie at Free Dominion, the CHRC is "considering"
requests to open up their secret trial to the public.
How liberal of them. It will be interesting to see if
Steyn's scrutiny in Maclean's magazine -- read by 2.8
million Canadians, according to the
Print Measurement Bureau -- will force them to open
their doors, or scare them into clamming up.
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