(Yes, I look like Hilary Clinton. Thank you…)
I think I’m the only HRC critic who sees this as not just a free speech issue, but a property rights issue. Thanks to Ed Broadbent, who refused to sign the Charter otherwise, property rights are not acknowledged and protected in our Constitution. Canada has a far more collectivist mentality than our American cousins.
Why else would the Canadian Islamic Congress think nothing of trying to hijack a private institution like Maclean’s magazine, and blithely insist on getting 5,000 words of “rebuttal” space?
Why else would gay activists try to matter-of-factly hijack Scott Brockie’s printing press or two lesbians try to commandeer the Knights of Columbus Hall as their “right”?
The left’s collectivist mentality is on display there and it is so ingrained they, and we, don’t even recognize it as one key to the problem … It is just part of “Canadian culture.” We don’t know how to contemplate and articulate an alternative. Had the CIC gone after the CBC for some real or imagined offence, at least they’d have had a case, sort of, as their taxes were being used to offend them.
TI: There have been many critics of human rights commissions, including The Interim, who have been attempting to expose the trampling of freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of the press for years. The issue of human rights commissions seemed to really take off in 2008. What happened?
KS: Timing and personality.
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