-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:41:54 -0400 From: Michael Gurstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [UA-C] FC: Canada loves its "hate crime" legislation (fwd) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 18:21:38 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FC: Canada loves its "hate crime" legislation ******** From: "Lisa S. Dean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Canada loves their hate crime legislation! Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:04:19 -0500 Speech Cops of the Great White North Dateline: 12/6/98 Every political system has its eccentricities - oddities that become so much a part of the landscape that people living within the system lose track of the weirdness. In the case of Canada, it sometimes seems that the country's political elite is made up of the stiff-necked faculty of a second-tier liberal arts college, and every session of the legislature is a meeting of some uptight academic discipline board out to teach those naughty frat boys a lesson. The latest emanation from Canada's disciplinarians is a "hate speech <http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16525.html>" bill that might well have been pulled from the University of Wisconsin's politically correct student handbook. The proposal would amend the Criminal Code of Canada to make it illegal to possess material "for the purpose of distribution to promote hate." It would also broaden existing "hate crimes" law so that it would be unlawful to say unkind things about people based on age, gender, or mental disability, in addition to the traditional categories of race, religion, and the like. Defendants under the charges couldn't even plead that they believed the material to be true. The suggested law comes from the Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Working Group on Diversity, Equality, and Justice, an agency that was destined to do mischief from the moment it was named. You know the group's meetings must have been a barrel of laughs. "Madame Chairperson, I move that-" "I object! 'Madame' is a sexist term that denigrates persons of the female gender." "Move to strike 'Madame' and substitute 'warm-blooded co-citizen.'" That the working group is deadly serious is demonstrated by the participation of Ujjal Dosanjh, the Attorney General of British Columbia, where a government formed by the New Democratic Party is laboring to demonstrate that trendy urban leftists can run things at least as intolerantly as anybody else. The working group (hereafter known as the FPTWGDEJ ... aww, hell, just call it "the working group") proposal seems to be little more than a federal extension of an existing law <http://www.nsnews.com/proj/freespeech/fs3.html> in British Columbia that caused something of a scandal when it was used to club a journalist into submission. British Columbia's law - actually, the latest version of the province's human rights code - says that: No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that (a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a group or class of persons, or (b) is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt because of race, color, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or that group or class of persons. Basically, British Columbia protects everybody from anything that might hurt their feelings. Dosanjh and Company are serious about the law, too. Doug Collins, a controversial newspaper columnist, was dragged before the Human Rights Tribunal (there goes that college disciplinary board again) for saying unsavory things about immigrants, Jews, and (to round things out) the members of the Human Rights Tribunal. Now, there's no doubt that Collins voiced some rather unpleasant opinions in his columns. His politics seem to fall somewhere in between David Duke and that cranky uncle who has sharp things to say about the new arrivals in the neighborhood. But at no time did he urge violence against anybody, let alone against an identifiable individual or group. In fact, under U.S. law, Collins' columns would be afforded the highest level of free speech protection and any official who moved against the ill-tempered scribbler could be dragged into court by his, her, or its presumptuous ear for civil rights violations. Not so in British Columbia, though. Despite drawing heavy-hitter support from the press <http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/canadian/bc/Human-Rights-Commission/> and civil liberties groups, Doug Collins went down to defeat after two years of investigation. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association strongly condemned <http://www.bccla.org/press_releases/collins_decision.html> the Tribunal's decision, saying that it "fears for the future of freedom of expression as a result of [the Collins] decision of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal." The group's president warned that "such restrictions of free speech drive hatred underground where it festers unchallenged by evidence or rational argument." You better believe it. Doug Collins quickly became a poster boy <http://cafe.canadafirst.net/press_releases/pr5.html> for the sort of groups to which that cranky uncle of yours donates money. Collins has since won a round in his appeal against the Tribunal's decision, but the thought police seemed energized by the battle. In fact, B.C. authorities have apparently taken to ~padding their count <http://www.alberni.net/> of hate crimes in order to keep the ball rolling. The Internet is the next stop. As early as 1996, Ujjal Dosanjh told his Task Force on Hate Crimes to see what it could do about muzzling naughty speech online. He was apparently motivated by the tagging of the small town of Oliver, B.C. as the "hate capital of Canada" because an ISP <http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/11195.html> based there hosts a large number of unpleasant Web sites. Dosanjh's announced plans to make the little corner of the Internet in his jurisdiction as inoffensive as possible drew a sharp response from Electronic Frontiers Canada, which announced in no uncertain terms that the "Gov't has no authority to regulate the 'Net<http://www.efc.ca/pages/pr/efc-pr.25jul96.html>." Dosanjh apparently doesn't agree. The working group's proposed federal law, he told Wired, is "designed particularly to combat hate propaganda on the Internet." Canada already has a history of targeting online speech with the unsuccessful prosecution of Ernst Zündel<http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/z/zundel-ernst/> for neo-Nazi efforts on the Internet and in print. Such attacks had the ironic effect of turning Zundel into a free-speech hero, with cloned "Zündelsites" sprouting up around the world. The new law would, no doubt, complete Zündel's martyrdom. Even more ironically, one of the big losers under the proposed law may be one of the more successful private efforts to combat bigots and neo-Nazis. The Nizkor Project <http://www.nizkor.org/> maintains an online archive of anti-semitic material in order to publicize the thin clattering of lonely brain cells that lies behind it and counteract the hate with familiarity - sort of an intellectual inoculation. That effort may become explicitly illegal if the hate-speech law passes. Canadian authorities have an answer for that concern - but it's not likely to soothe free-speech concerns. They promise that they'll prosecute only those who have an "intent to promote hate." That would exclude good guys like the folks at Nizkor who really mean well when they post the material. Oh good. The Canadian authorities will be prosecuting people not so much for what they say as for what they mean. Tell me that's not a recipe for the roughest, toughest, undergraduate disciplinary committee in town. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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