More from last night’s debate on free speech and human rights, sponsored by Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs (CCEPA). After opening statements (posted here), moderator Kevin Kindred asked questions of panelists. Questions were posed to particular panelists who responded first, and then other panelists could also respond.

In the event, Mr Kindred asked only three questions. After the third, panelists took turns addressing each other’s points, and so there was no time for further formal questions.

After moderator’s questions, the audience had the opportunity to pose questions. Unfortunately, however, I won’t get to that today or anytime soon. I need to spend the evening with family, and I’m heading back to Halifax bright and early tomorrow morning for the Joseph Howe Symposium, the second public discussion on this issue. There’s a rumour that the mighty Binky will be able to join us in the audience.

Speakers are identified by their initials: MM, Mark Mercer; PE: Pearl Eliades; DL: Dan Leger; KD: Krista Daley. (MSM stands for mainstream media, HRC for human rights commission.)  Again, I consider this an honest representation of the discussion, but it is not a verbatim transcript. Note, however, that quotation marks appear in two places below: Those are direct quotations.

Question to Mark Mercer: How broad is your view of permissible free speech? Should we draw a line and, if so, where should we draw the line around freedom of speech?

MM: We’re talking about Canada, not Sri Lanka or Rwanda. I don’t want to minimise incitement to genocide, but that’s not happening here. Restricting feelings is not going to be effective. It will chill candid discussion.

PE: Generally, speech should be unrestrained. That has to be the default position.  [Asks audience] How many people here think libel is OK, favour repealing libel laws? [Two or three hands are raised.] Most people don’t know that human rights complaints are brought by individuals, not by government. Same as libel suits.

Section 13 has been upheld by the Supreme Court, not because it allows you complain when you’re offended, but because it allows you to complain when your rights have been infringed in extreme cases. That’s what we’re talking about tonight.

DL: I don’t function in the abstract world of absolute rights.

People have no idea what libel and defamation really mean. Just because someone says something that hurts you, that makes you mad—tough. Write a letter to the editor. In the mainstream media, we do provide certain remedies. I think that’s where Macleans, for instance, went wrong. They were right to refuse the students’ demands for an unfettered right of response, but they should have found somebody to rebut Steyn.

The HRC process troubles me. I found out about the complaint against the MacKinnon cartoon of Cheryfa Jamal by listening to the radio. Respondents don’t have to be told anything. It’s Star Chamber-ish. HRCs are quasi-judicial bodies without the same protections as in civil or criminal court.

Question to Krista Daley: What about the process? Is free speech too important to be left to HRCs?

KD: No. There are different levels of free speech. Hate speech can fall under the Criminal Code, e.g., incitement to genocide. That brings to bear the weight of the state, the weight of the criminal justice system. That’s the heavy hand of the state on that type of speech.

But there are other forms of speech that the Nova Scotia HRC deals with: Speech that infringes on rights of others.

Two different venues can deal with speech issue: Criminal Code and administrative law. The latter is a grass roots type of justice system, informal.

Question: There are disadvantages to that informality. What about the secrecy, lack of openness?

DL: You certainly do not want to go to one of these commissions without a lawyer. HRCs impose financial and other burdens similar to defending oneself against criminal or civil charge.

PE: A couple of points about cost. HRCs were not set up to hear complaints but to screen complaints. MSM have made serious, fundamental mistakes in explaining the difference between tribunals and commissions. HRCs screen complaints and then refer some complaints to human rights tribunals. Media have fudged the two phases together: commission screening and tribunal hearings.

MSM have complained about three commissions making three different decisions re Macleans complaint. Excuse me, but BC doesn’t even have a commission, it’s a tribunal. They are governed by laws and act in accordance with their legislation. Each provincial human rights body is governed by very different legislation.

Macleans could have sought costs from BC human rights tribunal, but did not.

Media reports have been inaccurate or misleading about the way in which these commissions function. Should not have systematic portrayal of commissions in a way that is dishonest, misleading, or ill-informed.

MM: Krista, what social benefits are derived from HRC cases? E.g., Who benefited in the Stephen Boissoin case? Are Alberta gays better off? Want about the social costs? Aren’t the social costs of these decisions real and great? I don’t see that the world is any better having found Stephen Boissoin guilty?

KD: Some of the language used to describe HRC processes, e.g., prosecution, conviction, is misleading.

MM: Translate it into your favourite words.

KD: This is important because those are criminal law words. We know them from watching television, Law and Order. That’s criminal law terminology. It’s very important we don’t talk about that. HRCs handle complaints, frequently it’s a case of discrimination. Those who use such language show they don’t understand role of HRCs in society.

I don’t think you should underestimate the power of tribunal rulings within a culture and society. They have an impact in a family, in a community, etc., and, in my utopian world, at some point, we actually have a society in which each person—regardless of race, colour, or creed—is actually a full-blown member of society and, I would argue, can fully participate in our society which will enhance the freedom of expression in our marketplace of ideas. The marketplace today, some would say, has only one stall in it. Maybe there’s no marketplace because not everybody has a stall because they are marginalised within our society and are not part of our full Canadian society in what we think it should be.

PE: I’d like to respond directly to Mark’s question. Since 1977, there have been 112 hate speech cases filed with HRCs. 57 of those have gone to tribunals. Let me read some of what was included in those cases. “What do you call six niggers hanging from a tree? An Alabama wind chime. How do you fit 100 Jews into a Volkswagen? Two in the front seat and 98 in the ashtray.” [and more quotations, including nutbar conspiracy theories that Jews control our society, profanity, and vile death threats against Jews]

MM: We all agree we’d be better without that.

PE: Then we can all go home.

MM: No, the question is how to achieve this end.

PE: It’s very simple. You shut down the venues through which this kind of threat, personal attack, is done, and we’re only talking about the fringes. I personally think that Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, etc., should have the right to say what they want. I’ve read the stuff that’s fallen under complaint, I think they should have been published. I personally think the students ended up bringing these complaints to make a social statement, but I think the commissions were right to dismiss the complaints because, however extreme they were, they fell within the legitimate realm of public discourse, however badly expressed.

The kinds of stuff that I’m talking and you’re asking about, I think the social benefit is clear. I can’t imagine that anybody in this room think that what I read is all right or appropriate or acceptable in any civilised society.

DL: These things you’re reading from, I would never read that. I’ve never seen those. There was a great documentary on Frontline, I think, on PBS, where they went to find the dreaded racist swastika boys down in Tennessee some place. It took a team of investigators just to find these guys. That’s how important they are. That’s how much impact they’re having: You can’t even find them.

They’re not part of the mainstream media discourse now. I don’t think it’s fair to associate what goes on in Macleans magazine or National Post or anybody else who’s out trying to sell newspapers with these extreme examples.

PE: In the case that Richard Warman just won, a very interesting quote came up that was made by Warman regarding the death threats. He said, “I don’t think necessarily that this person is going to kill me, but I do think he’s pouring the gasoline around me and inciting others to come along and light the match.”

And it isn’t just the extreme websites that I’m talking about. Let’s face it: A lot of young people get their news from the web. People go up onto different kinds of blogs. If you want conservative news, you might go up to the Western Standard.

One of the strange things that’s happened in this debate is that the extremists that you’re talking about have somehow been allowed to come into a much more mainstream conversation in this country. Faisal Joseph, the lawyer representing the young Muslims, said it’s becoming acceptable to cloak freedom to hate in the mantle of freedom of speech.

The kinds of people that you don’t necessarily want to have lunch with have all of a sudden come into the room and the freedom that some of them have felt to engage in this kind of discourse seems to have expanded. People who used to be out there on the extreme have become much more mainstream.

Possibly related posts

• 31 October 2008 -- CCEPA debate photos
• 31 October 2008 -- Opening statements in CCEPA debate
• 4 November 2008 -- Mark Mercer’s speaking notes
• 9 April 2009 -- SMU students attack Mark Mercer

Tags: CCEPA Debate, Civil liberties, Dan Leger, Kevin Kindred, Krista Daley, Mark Mercer, Pearl Eliades
Filed under: Canada, Canadian Politics and Government, Worldview Issues
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