‘Major overhaul of human rights commissions urgently needed,’ says B’nai Brith Canada
Many of you have been inquiring about B’nai Brith’s position on human rights commissions. Below (after the break) is the release issued today calling for major reforms to the system. As always, I’m interested in hearing from you. What are your comments? Your feedback?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
‘Major overhaul of human rights commissions urgently needed,’ says B’nai Brith Canada
TORONTO, July 31, 2008 – B’nai Brith Canada, an organization long concerned with the defence and improvement of Canada’s human rights system, is calling for “urgent reform” of human rights commissions. The Jewish human rights group has successfully brought cases before human rights commissions and tribunals, which it says “have historically played an important role in combating Nazism and neo-Nazi ideologies”. B’nai Brith Canada has called on the Canadian Human Rights Commission to seize the opportunity provided by the current review it has undertaken to “make real changes that will ensure its relevancy into the future”.
“We are calling for a much-needed overhaul of the protections offered by the human rights commission system,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “We have to ensure that commissions do not become abusers of the very human rights they are charged with protecting.
“New challenges demand new solutions. Only through a process of modernization and reform can Canada’s human rights system continue to play its vital role in protecting Canadians from hatred.”
David Matas, B’nai Brith Canada’s Senior Legal Counsel and world-renowned human rights activist, has called on the commission system to “implement urgent reforms as a matter of top priority.”
Among the changes that B’nai Brith Canada is advocating, Matas highlighted the following:
“Commissions cannot become avenues of harassment in which complaints are simultaneously made in several jurisdictions. The remedy is to introduce rules that will allow for one jurisdiction only.
“Commissions do not operate in a vacuum and must have an understanding of the geo-political context within which they operate. The remedy for ignorance is education and training. Investigators must be required to undertake compulsory in-house courses that meet these needs. They must always be able to distinguish between hate and protected political speech.
“Costs must be levied against those whose clear aim is to abuse the system by launching attacks designed to harass bona fide respondents. This would be a deterrent against those who deliberately seek to hijack and corrupt the human rights system in pursuit of their own ideological bent.”
B’nai Brith Canada will shortly be submitting a full brief on this issue to University of Windsor Law Professor, Richard J. Moon, who was hired by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to conduct a review of the Commission’s mandate to combat hatred.
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July 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
It’s a good start Frank but Section 13 (1) has to go. The CHRC is a rogue agency. The staff of the CHRC has been subject to undue influence and in fact there is a mounting body evidence that staff may have in fact colluded outright with certain individual(s).
July 31st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
This is wonderful news! I am so glad that B’nai Brith is moving away from the spreading cancer of the HRCs. I know this is never the world Canada’s Jewish community envisioned when the HRCs first came into being. Congratulations for taking the first tentative step to restoring real freedom and real laws in Canada.
RG
July 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
This all seems mostly common-sense stuff. You might inform Mr. Levant that you’re not proposing any radical break with current practice, as he seems to suggest.
Also, your comment about “costs” and “hijacking” the system. Can you slip me a practical example of the kind of thing you mean?
For example, I see something like M. Lemire’s complaints as being clearly frivolous. I see the Levant/Maclean’s complaints as being weak, but probably pursued out of a real sense of grievance.
Cheers,
BCL
M.J.Murphy
July 31st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
About bloody time.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I think these recommendations would go a long way towards correcting the present abuses of these commissions. However, the language of Section 13(1) and provincial equivalents is way too open-ended and vague.
How can anyone determine what is likely to hold some group in contempt or hatred if no proof is required and truth is no defence?
Also, if HRCs are going to remain administrative or mediation-oriented then the penalties (remedy is a euphemism) must be drastically reduced.
Or if penalties remain high, then the protections of a real court must apply, such as truth as a defence, innocent until proven guilty, rules of evidence etc.
Thank you, B’nai Brith for at least raising the issue of needed reform to these commissions. As a member of the Christian community, I have seen these commissions used for decades against Christian believers. Though some draconian decisions have later been overturned in higher courts, the costs are punitive.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
This was absolutely the right thing for B’nai Brith to have done.
The CHRC’s hate crimes investigation group was and is a disgrace. The lack of competent management, the total absence of rules and procedures, the behavior of very junior people (with the apparent approval of management) means that we now know many of the hate messages posted on the internet were posted by our own government.
Free Speech is the bedrock of democracy - not limited speech, not inoffensive speech - Free Speech. The greatest threat to Canada, and the greatest and most express threat to Jewish Canadians, are not the little neo-Nazi creeps in their basements. Rather it is extremist Islam with its imams openly inciting hatred of a Friday in Canadian mosques.
We have to be able to write about those extremist imams and their followers without worrying about the long arm of the censors at the CHRC.
S. 13 must, in its entirety, be repealed.
I was relieved to see B’nai Brith finally recognizing that the wannabe secret police at the CHRC are doing far more harm than good. Ezra Levant is rather more direct than Mr. Matas, “Fire. Them. All”
That would be a start, the full judicial investigation of the excesses of the Commission would go some distance to correcting the gross abuses the Commission has fostered over the years.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
The positions expressed here are sound and reasonable.
Whenever a well-intended support system (as the HRCs were) becomes so bureaucratized that regulations/policy prevent investigators to distinguish between nuisance or malicious complaints and genuine grievances, there is a problem which needs to be addressed.
Genuine grievances need to be remedied. However, we need to be very clear as to what constitutes a ‘genuine grievance’.
I commend B’nai Brith Canada on their courage to so clearly express and acknowledge that encroachments on individuals’ ‘freedom of speech’ also constitue a genuine grievance and need to be addressed appropriately.
Thank you!
Xanthippa
July 31st, 2008 at 8:44 pm
As a common Canadian citizen, I am deeply concerned by the the conduct our various Human Rights Commissions. I appreciate that the intent was good, but it has evolved in a tool of intolerance that is being used to punish those who dare to have an opinion different from those who make up these ‘tribunals’. They have become a parody of their intended purpose; like the UN’s so-called Human Rights Commissions. What is sad is that it was so predictable from the start. Quasi-judicial ‘tribunals’ overseen by unelected bureaucrats armed with sweeping powers unchecked by due process or rules of evidence must inevitably lead to disaster for all. I would have thought that if anyone in the world would know this, it would be an organization like B’nai Brith.
The suggestions given in the press release are a step in the right direction, but they themselves are still very vague and completely open to interpretation. Again, good intent, but it is easy to predict that they will be subverted yet again and change nothing in reality. This is because they still don’t address the central issue. Absolute power operating in secret without public oversight, without rights of appeal or any defined due process, will corrupt absolutely. We are all only human. The mandate of these ‘tribunals’ should be strictly limited to examining evidence and then recommending charges (or not) to the existing judicial system where they can be heard in a public, transparent, and accountable venue which does include due process and rules of evidence. These Human Rights Commissions must be stripped of their independent judicial power completely; lest we forget and re-enact the same scenes and show trials that made stunning atrocities possible in the past. Again, of all people in the world, I would expect B’nai Brith to understand and support this concept.
I am old enough to remember some wise and chilling words; I don’t recall exactly who uttered them: “First they came for Jews, and I said nothing because I wasn’t Jewish ….” You know the rest of it. Today it may be that first they came for independent newspaper columnists, but the lesson loses none of it’s strength or wisdom. Please reconsider; I urge you to seek the repeal of Section 13 and it’s replacement with a mechanism where by the Commissions are responsible only to review evidence and recommend charges under the existing Criminal Code in a proper judicial venue. This is the only way to actually achieve your, no, our, true goal of fighting hatred in all it’s forms; as opposed to simply creating another, more insidious incarnation of it.
Thank you for your consideration.
William (Bill) Hayes
July 31st, 2008 at 9:46 pm
David Matas may wish to forget his involvement in harrassing Fairview Tech and Telus over alledged Internet “hate speech” material back in 1988.
See: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/8237/gmvs0328.htm
It looks to me, that the B’nai Brith is trying to generate more work for their staff that get paid to train police ‘hate-crime’ teams to recognize so-called ‘hate-speech’.
As long as s13.1 remains available, ‘hate speech’ will be anything the B’naith Brith hates to see.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I am a B’nai Brith member (just got back from my softball game, in fact!) I would like to recommend one simple reform of these “Human Rights” tribunals: scrap them all. These things are made for abuse. The Nazi wannabes you are so proud of prosecuting are so harmless and stupid, as to be completely irrelevant. Let them spout off in their pathetic little web sites. If any threats or incitements to violence come up, them prosecute them under real laws. It’s much more important to have free speech for all; to stop the Islamists from silencing critics; and to stop radical secularists from silencing religion.
At this point, it seems to me that you guys are more interested in preserving these commissions as make-work projects for your staff lawyers and associated legal industry cronies. That would be the most pathetic thing of them all. Have some principles!
Sincerely,
Neil Flagg
Toronto
July 31st, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Too little, too late.
My impression is that BB is just doing this to salvage what it can of their precious HR racket, after seeing that the dominoes are lining up against the HRCs.
The HRCs do not deserve to be saved. Section 13.1 has no redeeming features. No government or non-government agency can be trust to make subjective judgements on “hatefulness”. This type of situation is a magnet for activists and agenda-driven inviduals. It must be removed.
Finally, what about enshrining “truth IS a defense” in the HRC laws. One of the most galling aspects of these laws is that one can still be successfully acused of hatespeech even though one is simply stating accurately what is known and accepted.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
It is nice to read a press release that attempts to come to grips with the abuses of the various Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Usually the apologists for these kangaroo courts do nothing but engage in denial.
Well B’Nai Brith Canada has made an honest attempt to meet the concerns of Canadians who fear these rogue commissions will take away our ability to comment on issues of public interest. The more one reads about the CHRC investigative procedures, political agenda, and the lack of any defences available to Canadians who suffer a complaint, the more fearful we become.
Abolishing Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act would be the correct approach to dealing with CHRC abuses. Relying on the Criminal Code sections dealing with hate speech, as well as the protections to individuals under defamation law provide ample protection against hate speech in a modern democracy.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
It’s good news that B’nai Brith, unlike the CJC, recognizes that “Human Rights” Commissions and their Tribunals have become disgraceful abusers of Charter rights. But, rather than mere overhaul, the CHRC and its provincial counterparts need to be put entirely out of the business of policing, judging and punishing Canadians for expressing politically incorrect thoughts. B’nai Brith is therefore urged to get behind the elimination of Section 13 of the HRA.
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
[...] GIVE THEM COMMENTS.. “B’nai Brith begins to do the right thing….asks for comments”; read the ones so far …. (jaycurrie, [...]
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Shalom! As a supporter, I feel relieved that B’nai Brith Canada is getting back its common sense. You have to do better than that though, Section 13 MUST be repealed.
Any kind of hate is despicable, but this rogue organizations a.k.a. HRCs, must be put on a leash.
Personally, I prefer to know what a person says about me, than driving hate underground. Freedom of speech and of being an idiot, must prevail.
Keep-up the good work!
August 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Ok so I read the Bnai Brith release and also read the CJC op-eds. Seems to me that CJC basically was way out front on issuing their concerns about certain concerns it had with the CHRC back in October. Where was Bnai Brith then? At least CJC is up front about their position and was willing to take the heat. Bani Brith is drawing up the rear when it feels the heat is no longer there.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hi Mr. Dimant,
I read with great interest this article and its publication in the National Post on August 1, 2008. I was hoping to be able to read the full brief that you mention in the article.
Thank you,
Melanie
August 31st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Anything less than “fire them all” is not acceptable.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:29 pm
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September 16th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Well why all so?