Canadian Human Right to Free Speech, Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Religion

Here is a Monday morning serving of a few efforts to uphold our Canadian Human Rights.

Ezra Levant's editorial in the Ottawa Metro, a commuter newspaper, "The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance", is well worth a read. We don't support burning books in Canada, do we? Do we? "Is banning words — even offensive words — a Canadian tradition?" asks Ezra. In his research, Levant has found that Human Rights Commissions have a 100% conviction rate for “hate speech” cases. The human rights "industry" should trouble us all. Buy the book, Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights, and read first hand about the abuses by the provincial and federal Human Rights Commissions - it is your democratic RIGHT, after all. For free, you can read all about it on Ezra's Blog.

My husband and I took our children to the Calgary March on Saturday, May 2nd - as I explained to them, "As Canadian citizens, you have the right to speak out for ideas and opinions you believe in and to publicly protest against bills and laws with which you disagree. You have the right to organize, assemble and participate in peaceful public protests against the Government. As Canadian citizens, you have the right to publicly disagree with the status quo, to hold and to share opinions that are your very own and to maintain and discuss beliefs that are different than and may even be offensive to the majority. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are your rights as Canadians". And, I told both of my children to smile as the nice police officer took pictures of the peaceful crowd and of the people on the stage making speeches.

Quote of the day: Ferreras, in Pique magazine writes, "Did you know it's a human right to work at McDonald's and not wash your hands? Or to be a rape counsellor even though you're a male-to-female transexual and victims are uncomfortable talking to you? Or that it's a hate crime to offend the religious sensibilities of Islamist zealots? All these and more are human rights, according to Canadian human rights commissions." Really. Well, these are NOT the types of rights and responsibilities that I talk to my children about, nor are they the rights that my grandfather and my great-uncle fought and died for in WW2. Eternal Vigilance, people.

A great quote from Par Sami El Soudi, who wrote a lengthy review of Levant's book, Shakedown, for Metula News (published in both French and English): "We all often forget that words are not the real thing. You can be called “progressive” and passionately strive to hold back civilization, or call a “people's democracy” the rule of a small elite that hates and suppresses the people. You can also call “Human Rights Commission” the main threat against human rights to have appeared in an advanced democracy." (emphasis mine).

Finally, this is a great political cartoon by Malcolm Mayes on the Human Rights Commissions: