Oh, Canada?

In my last blog, I excerpted Mark Steyn's most recent column. As I noted, Mark is an immigrant to the United States from Canada. Tragically, Mark is currently on trial in Canada for an article he had published in Maclean's, a Canadian weekly news magazine, titled "The future belongs to Islam." The article, like his book America Alone, discusses the large influx of Islamic immigrants into Canada and, like Europe, their need to accommodate growing Islamic pressures.

How was it received by our seemingly similar neighbor to the north? He's on trial for hate speech.

Rich Lowry, Steyn's editor at National Review, sums up what's happening north of the 49th parallel in his recent NRO article. We often think of Canada as our chillier sibling, similar in government but with differing affinities toward hockey. Not so. The Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia and the national Canadian Human Rights Commission convened in response to the Canadian Islamic Congress' displeasure with Steyn's piece.

Gulag's on the Canadian frontier? They're back in fashion in neo-Soviet Russia. Here are a few excerpts from Lowry's commentary in hope that you will be enticed you to spend five minutes and read the whole thing and then ten minutes to read Steyn's original article for Maclean's:

• The Canadian Islamic Congress took offense. In the normal course of things, that would mean speaking or writing to counter Steyn. Not in 21st-century Canada, where the old liberal rallying cry "I hate what you say, but will fight for your right to say it" no longer applies.
  
  The country is dotted with human-rights commissions. At first, they typically heard discrimination suits against businesses. But since that didn't create much work, the commissions branched out into policing "hate" speech. Initially, they targeted neo-Nazis; then religious figures for their condemnations of homosexuality; and now Maclean's and Steyn.

• The national commission has never found anyone innocent in 31 years. It is set up for classic Alice-in-Wonderland "verdict first, trial later" justice. Canada's Human Rights Act defines hate speech as speech "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." The language is so capacious and vague that to be accused is tantamount to being found guilty.
  
  Unlike in defamation law, truth is no defense, and there's no obligation to prove harm. One of the principal investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission was asked in a hearing what value he puts on freedom of speech in his work, and replied, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." Clearly.

• Free speech is a very clean, neutral concept — "Congress shall make no law ..." Once a government begins policing offensiveness, things get much murkier. It has to decide which groups are protected and which aren't — the "who/whom" of Lenin's power relations. So, even though there are plenty of fire-breathing imams in Canada, no one ever pesters them about their hatefulness.

It's not that far from Ottawa to Washington.