This week's Calgary Herald column from yours truly looks at a court ruling in Saskatchewan which overturned a human rights tribunal ruling against Bill Whatcott - similar in many ways to a court ruling last year which overturned the conviction of Stephen Boissoin:
...Like Whatcott, Boissoin was speaking to some of these very same issues when he penned his now famous letter to the Red Deer Advocate in 2002. Like Whatcott, Boissoin used some clumsy rhetoric. And like Whatcott, Boissoin was convicted and censored by a human rights tribunal.
Fortunately, however, this parallel extends one further: like Boissoin's case, an actual court has admonished the human right commissions and struck a blow for freedom of speech.
Last year an Alberta judge overturned Boissoin's conviction and had some harsh words for the way the case was handled, especially how the human rights panel incorrectly interpreted Alberta's human rights legislation.
Last week, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal did much the same thing in overturning Whatcott's conviction. The ruling states the tribunal "failed to apply" some key principles of the law, and warned of the "danger that censorship can occur."
The ruling even found there was no "attempt to balance the protection for freedom of expression".
Just as in Boissoin's conviction, the Saskatchewan tribunal made sweeping generalizations about the impact of the flyers, without offering any specific evidence of their discriminatory effects.
In neither case was there any call for violence. To use the argument that a violent person might be motivated by another's sharp but legitimate political criticism, is an invitation to censor almost anyone. Perhaps by criticizing Whatcott, I'm encouraging someone to commit violence against Christians. Perhaps by criticizing the tribunal, I'm encouraging some nut to set fire to their offices.
Wherever one may stand on the question of gay marriage or homosexuality, these are public issues and as such ought to be debated.
As the Whatcott ruling notes, "anything that limits debate on the morality of behaviour is an intrusion on the right to freedom of expression." Such censorship is not only wrong, but counterproductive. Far more people have been exposed to the beliefs of Whatcott and Boissoin than otherwise would have been the case. Many who would otherwise be unsympathetic to their point of view have found sympathy for them. The hounding and gagging of these two men was an affront to our values as a free country.
On top of that, it was a colossal waste of resources paid for by the taxpayer.
Must our judges be our last bastion of sanity? Our politicians have the power to prevent all of this in the first place. What will it take for them to act?
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