by In the words of Canada’s Human Rights Commission’s senior counsel Ian Fine, the commission is necessary because "there can’t be enough laws against hate." This during a panel on human right’s commissions in which Fine was caught twice in lies – or glaring ignorance – about the commission’s activities. Actually, a single law against hate is too many. But what can Canadians expect from a government agency that believes that "Freedom of speech is an American concept" and has no value as a principle in Canada? Read it all.
Ezra Levant, writing about Fine’s statements:
… one of his most execrable arguments was that "the world" had limits on free speech, and the United Nations had limits on free speech, and that Canada should be in synch with the world — and not the anomaly of the United States.
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At another point in the debate, I tried to show the absurdity of banning any hateful words through a law that doesn’t permit legal defences like truth, fair comment or even common sense. I pointed out that Fine himself had given an interview with the National Post in which he read out a bigoted remark, namely: "a n*gger will try to kill you just for a slice of pizza or a piece of chicken … By Aryan standards, negroes are dangerous animals".
Fine read that to show the kind of hate the CHRC wants to fight. But that explanation, which is reasonable, is not a legal defence. I jokingly said to Fine that, since he uttered a comment that is "likely" to expose someone to "hatred or contempt", I should file a section 13 complaint against him. I said it unseriously — I was pointing out the ridiculously arbitrary and overreaching nature of the law. But — and I’ll want to check this again on CPAC — he actually looked ashen when I said it, as if he agreed with me that he had broken the law, and was ashamed of it.
I think in that moment, I glimpsed what made Ian Fine tick: he has drunk the anti-hate industry’s Kool Aid without a drop of skepticism. I think he genuinely thought, just for a moment, that I was serious when I said he was a bad man for having said the word n*gger, even in the context of anti-racism. I think he’s been immersed in a groupthink environment, with zealots, where diversity of opinion, let alone criticism, is non-existent. I think he genuinely believes that his little anti-hate squad is saving Canada from turning into an Arctic version of Rwanda.
I think that’s why he froze up when I pressed him on Richard Warman’s online bigotry — it just didn’t compute for him; it doesn’t make sense in his unified theory of the world.
The CHRC thought police and hate-crime advocates fail to observe the most basic of facts, namely that hate is an emotion, an ephemeral thought or mind set that is contained within an individual’s brain and has no impact whatever on the physical world.
Actions, to the contrary, are taken by people upon the world and are rightfully regulated by the law. Thoughts are not so regulated, should not be, and must not be, whatever Mr. Fine and the commission believe.
