Ezra Levant and I and a few others went nuclear on the Dominion's thought police and gave them the worst year of publicity in their three-decade existence. The result is that, earlier this month, over 99 per cent of delegates to the Conservative Party convention voted to abolish Section 13 (the "hate speech" provision) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and a brave principled Liberal, Keith Martin, renewed his private member's motion in the House of Commons to do the same.This morning, the CHRC issued the so-called Moon Report on free-speech issues. Most of us expected it to be a whitewash. Instead, Professor Moon says:
1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.
This is a great tribute to what Ezra calls his campaign of "denormalization" of Canada's Orwellian "human rights" racket. They're not yet ready to throw in the towel completely, but it's fluttering limply on the edge of the ring. Canada may be preparing to rejoin the ranks of free nations.
That's hopeful --and indicative of what is necessary to resist these measures. In one sense it wasn't that hard --although McLean's certainly had deeper pockets than the typical Christian pastor or other defender of marriage. This American Digest post on political cowardice and the return of the Know-Nothings is not unrelated.
A friend of ours, a Canuck from Calgary, was in town for this conference. Over dinner he in part envied the U.S. its pro-life movement. He says the Canadian pro-lifers get smaller and more depressed every moment because they've never had a victory. Ever.
The reason? (I'm just reporting what I was told, not claiming expertise in the matter). The movement is headed by folks who take the all or nothing line and will only support measures that ban all abortion --no smaller steps on the way to that goal allowed.
The result, according to our friend, is that talking to one major Canadian pro-life leader (whom he named, but I won't since I'm just passing along chat), the big feather in his cap is that once, back in 1979, he helped elect a pro-life MP.
He that has ears let him hear.... Meanwhile, 6 in 10 Canadians suppport restrictions on abortion. They could have 'em if they'd think about winning and saving lives instead of about being right.
Random Canada fact: its population is less than that of California.
