One of my young American friends has asked me an honest question: “What is wrong with the Ontario Human Rights Commission?”
Where do I begin?!?!?
But, it is my bane that I always seem to think that if I know something, then it must be clear and obvious to everyone else! Of course, this is not so – and I KNOW that… I just forget it sometimes and do not explain things as thoroughly or clearly as I ought to. My apologies!
The topic of our Human Rights Commissions is less clear to people who do not live in Canada and have not been following what has been happening to our rights and freedoms…. but it is NO LESS important to them, because these things are spreading in Medusa-like fashion and subverting the very foundations on which our ‘Western’ civilization is built.
So, here is a little explanation (sorry if it is a bit of a rant – I get very emotional about this!)
OHRC is called ‘Ontario Human Rights Commission‘. It is a fancy name which suggests that its aims are to protect human rights: and, it – along with it mother-organization, the Canadian Human Rights Agency and sister ones, one for each Province and Territory in Canada – was created with that in mind. It was meant to be a non-threatening place that people who were denied housing or jobs because of the colour of their skin could go and record their grievance.
This was especially aimed at the less-privileged members of society who would not be able to afford an attorney and try to get justice in court.
So, the theory goes, the agency accepts the grievance/complaint, investigates it on its own and, if it finds it meritorious, it is then supposed to (somehow – without ever going to court) figure out a way to fix the problem. The solution it decides on then becomes legally binding, as if it were a declaration of a real court.
In effect, the ‘Human Rights Commissions’ – and/or their tribunals – become the complainant, the investigator, prosecutor and judge… It answers to nobody!
Can you spot the problem?
What has happened with Canadian HRCs – federal and provincial/territorial – is that they have been staffed with people who ‘have causes’. And these people are promoting their ’causes’ at the expense of REAL human rights.
Their main line is that ‘human rights’ have to be ‘balanced’ against the need of the society to ‘promote tolerance’. In other words, anything which these people find ‘rude’ or ‘intolerant’, they have the power to censor, ban and so on.
Here is a recent example from the Ontario HRC. A guy was smoking pot in the doorway of a restaurant. Pot is, of course, illegal – but this guy had a ‘medical exemption’. Smoking, however – inside and within 2 m (I think – this does vary from place to place) of a restaurant (or any other place where people work) is forbidden. The law does NOT specify cigarette smoke or pot or whatever else.
The ‘no smoking’ laws came about because people insisted that EVERYONE has the RIGHT to work in a smoke-free environment. And, nobody has the right to CHOOSE to work where people smoke, because ‘poor people’ might be coerced…. OK, so we all banned smoking in or near workplaces.
Now, this restaurant owner finds himself in front of the OHRC, because he asked a guy NOT to smoke within the legal ‘no-smoking’ boundary. He ended up – when it was all over – with tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs….
And, he lost: the OHRC said that because the guy has a ‘medical exemption’, he can smoke his pot anywhere he wants to – including INSIDE this guy’s restaurant.’
A couple of weeks later, the ‘no-smoking enforcement’ people show up at the restaurant for inspection, and see this guy smoking pot. They cite the restaurant owner for violation of the rights of his workers to work in a smoke-free environment – and the restaurant owner looses his liquor license….
The OHRC people are enforcing THEIR ruling and care nothing about the smoking bannies laws. The smoking bannies are enforcing THEIR laws, and don’t care about the OHRCs ruling – not their jurisdiction!
The poor sap gets caught in the middle – and pays, pays pays legal fees, fines and eventually looses his right to run his business (his type of restaurant cannot survive without a liquor license!).
But THAT is just ONE of MANY such cases.
And these HRCs have the right to issue a lifetime gag-order on people: forbidding them from speaking, writing, or communicating in any way, shape or form, publicly or privately, on specific topics. These lifetime gag-orders, once issued, are legally binding!
If you thought things could not get worse….
The ‘double jeopardy’ – where you can only be tried for a crime in one jurisdiction – does NOT APPLY with HRCs in Canada. For example, MacLeans magazine was charged – for the same complaint – in three different jurisdictions: Ontario, BC AND federally! And, they HAD TO prepare a defense – and pay lawyers – for each one of the three trials!
Recently, the OHRC’s head, Barbara Hall, has been making noises about expanding the scope of the ‘transgressions’ they will assume jurisdiction over.
Oh – by the way – TRUTH is NO DEFENSE against the HRCs!
The complainant does NOT have to prove anything. And, even if the defendant proves that what they said/did was TRUE, it does not matter – IF it has a POTENTIAL to harm someone by making them FEEL discriminated against!
So, no CRIME, no HARM is needed: only the POTENTIAL for ANYONE to PERCEIVE something MIGHT be hurtful or seen as discriminatory is sufficient to find one guilty…
Another thing I revile these organizations for is that they are often used at the tool to enforce linguistic apartheid which is like a cancer on our Canadian society.
The people running this – the investigators AND the ‘judges’ – do NOT have to have ANY training in law whatsoever. Many don’t! Evidence has shown that a cop dismissed for some serious corruption is now a mover and a shaker at the Ontario HRC… As well, some evidence seems to be coming that several of these HRCs have been infiltrated by radical Islamists who find anything short of instituting Sharia to be ‘offensive’!
Just think about it: extrajudicial process – with none of the restraints cops and real trials have (the HRCs can enter your premises and seize things without a warrant or notification to you – and you are NOT presumed innocent until proven guilty – and truth is no defense…), in the hands of people who think that individual rights are things that must systematically bow and be supplanted by ‘community needs’.
THAT – ALL of the things I listed above…and much more – is why so many of us want to get rid of these corrupt, un-accountable, oppressive organizations who now have the power to limit our human rights at their whim to serve their own special interests!
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