Summary by Laurie Geschke
Past National President
REAL Women of Canada |
A talk by Lorne Gunter
Newspaper columnist
Member of Editorial Board, National Post |
Lorne Gunther’s talk focused on Human Rights Law in Alberta, a province, which Lorne says, is “confused” on the issue. He believes that there should have been enough Albertans to rally and support the provincial MLA’s initiative to abolish the Alberta human rights legislation this spring. Instead Bill 44, which enshrines the right of parents to withdraw children from classrooms when controversial issues of religion, sexual orientation and sexuality are being taught, was added to the legislation. That is, instead of abolishing the Act, Bill 44, only provided a token for parents. He went on to say that human rights legislation was originally created to adjudicate disagreements over employment and accommodation only, but these commissions have strayed so far from their original mandate, that they are unrecognizable.
Lorne evaluated human rights legislation in several jurisdictions around the country on a scale of 1-10, where ten was really stifling personal freedoms and one was protecting them. He gave the Canadian Human Rights Act, with its 100% conviction rate for supposed “hate” comments a rating of 9. The Ontario Human Rights Commission was rated 12 on a scale of 1-10 because it has the power to go out and look for its own cases to investigate and prosecute. Further, the Ontario Commission has, for many years, been allowed to operate without any controls to balance its left-wing enthusiasm and pragmatism. For example, it was the Ontario Human Rights Commission which advised Scott Brockie, a Christian printer in Toronto who refused to print material for a homosexual organization, that the Commission would not proceed against him, if he would agree to pay $5,000 to the complainants. Normally, this type of action is called extortion.
Brockie did not pay, and the rest is history. He lost his case before both the Human Rights Tribunal and the Superior Court of Ontario.
Human rights commissions consider themselves arbiters of “hurt feelings”. However, Lorne pointed out, “we don’t get royalties from someone who reads our articles or stories and are inspired”, so why should we be penalized if someone is upset or hurt?
In Alberta, the Human Rights Commission has had the right to investigate complaints by court mandate on homosexuality since 1999. Lori Andreachuk, a member of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, stated, when she was investigating and ruling on the Stephen Boissoin case, that “the eradication of hate speech was more important than the preservation of free speech”. Paster Boissoin had written a letter opposing homosexuality, which was published in the Red Deer Advocate. He lost his case before the Commission. Isn’t freedom of thought, opinion, belief and religion set out in S. 2 of the Charter, Lorne asked?
Finally, Lorne warned that citizens need to watch the “independent investigative authority” now being sought by both the federal and provincial human rights commissions. If granted, this will make them even more powerful and dangerous. Instead, Lorne suggested:
Removal or limited funding being awarded to HRC’s;
Abolish the Commissions’ ability to carry out political investigations;
Redrafting rules of evidence admissible in HRC hearings to disallow hearsay; and
Making it mandatory that there be clear, unbroken and solid evidence presented at hearings before decisions are made.
In conclusion, Lorne stated that in any legislative tussle over curtailing unwanted, invasive powers of human rights commissions, the battle will be fought in the media.
Lorne’s talk was entertaining, informative, and he spoke entirely without notes. It was a good thing I took the ones that I did!
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