PA Mediapoint reports, “Labour MP Austin Mitchell is planning to take a delegation of photographers to the Home Office to protest about the growing number of cases in which police officers and others try to stop professional and amateur photographers taking pictures in public places. […] Press photographers are growing increasingly frustrated because they are regularly obstructed from doing their jobs by police officers who do not understand the law.”  link

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Next time someone tells you that “Canadians enjoy the highest level of free speech in the world” present him or her with this scenario :

On March 26th 2008, Maclean’s magazine reported that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) investigators were trolling Canadian neighborhoods for unprotected wireless internet connections, to leech onto. Why do you think Canadian public servants would do such things? So they could post racist comments under assumed names on web sites and then charge the site’s owners with publishing hate speech.

That’s right, you’re not dreaming: the CHRC HACKS INTO CONTROVERSIAL BLOGS using what could be YOUR home wireless connection and YOUR home IP address to post racist comments on websites as if it was YOU posting them and then summons YOU to come in their kangaroo court to testify (to justify yourself) about these racist comment they assume YOU’VE made because your Internet Protocol Address corresponding to your home address was used. What do you think of that?

That’s how an innocent Canadian’s name and address got read aloud— in open court, as evidence in one of the CHRC’s most widely publicized cases. That is how CHRC actions could be a breach to your Privacy rights under the Federal Privacy Act. Ironically, this could be a matter of complaint to the Privacy Commissioner. I would like to see the Privacy Commisioner of Canada investigate the Canadian Human Rights Commision for alleged privacy breaches.

Can you imagine the face of your Kitsilano green activist and left-wing friend accused or suspected of being either a right wing extremist, a racist . All of that because a Human Rights Official stole his or her internet connection and IP address to post hate comments on some website with the goal to create evidences to prosecute that particular web site’s owner … and to make himself some work paid by our taxes.

On March 29th, 2008 Nigel Hannaford of the Calgary Herald wrote an article on the subject. Here is a snippet:

“[…]here the federal snivel servants were, logging onto Internet hate sites under assumed names, trying to conceal what they were up to by using the wireless Internet account belonging to a young woman who seems to be completely uninvolved in any of it and, according to Lemire, trying to entrap people who visited his site.

Only the unusual circumstance of these people being publicly cross-examined brought any of this to light.

Boy, did we ever not quite get it. We thought this was a high-minded disagreement over fundamental principles. Instead, we find the CHRC tolerates sleazy behaviours among its investigating officers that have no place in a free society.” [Calgary Herald]

Johnatan Kay of the National Post said in his column titled The CHRC’s entrapment chickens are coming home to roost (or has someone else already used that metaphor?), “Still, the fact that anyone takes that kind of idea seriously shows how thoroughly the CHRC has poisoned its own well with its over-the-top tactics in going after marginal Canadian hatemongers. This is one of the reasons why the recent Lemire hearings were such a disaster for the CHRC: From now on, every time anyone sees hate speech on the Internet — or some hysterical anti-racist claims to have found a Swastika scribbled on a bathroom wall — people are going to wonder who put it there: Was it a hatemonger, or was it someone whose livelihood is based on convincing others that hatemongers are rampant?” [National Post]

Read also Maclean’s Mark Steyn’s article titled Kangaroo Court in Session

… and more on the crushing of dissent in Canada, from Eric Scheie.

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Here is an interesting post about the commission investigator that is in charge of the Steyn/Maclean’s case. It turns out she’s a disgraced cop. While being a cop, she was having sex with a serial criminal that was under investigation by the Police force she was working for. Now she’s investigating a major publication on a so called “human rights” issue.

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People who know me and my views keep asking me why I did not more upset about the Muslims students who filed rights complaints 3 months ago, over a Maclean’s article published on October last year. I have to keep reminding them: It’s just an article. Getting mad about people getting mad about a magazine article is just as asinine as getting mad in the first place. You don’t need a PHD in political science or to be a historian to know that things have been bad between the Muslim world and the Western world for a long time. This was just a symptom.

I did enjoy the tasteful way on how Rex Murphy depicted the story on January 3, 2008 - like the Human Rights Commission officials were out of their minds.

Here is a snippet:

What I do not associate with this deep and noble concept is getting ticked off by something you read in a magazine - or for that matter hear on television - and then scampering off to a handful - well, three - of Canada’s proliferate human rights commissions - seeking to score off the magazine: this is what four Osgoode Hall law students and graduates — a very definition of the ‘marginalized’ — under the banner of the Canadian Islamic Congress have done after reading an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone in Maclean’s. The complainants read the article as “flagrantly islamophobic”. [CBC]

I guess I feel bad for the complainants, just because after a while they are going to feel so stupid. “Yes, I was one those who filed a (silly) complaint against MacLean’s Magazine in 2007″

The Arab “street” is like that. They’re always damn mad about something. Maybe they don’t need democracy. Maybe they need their own 20 minutes editorial on Sex TV (prime time). That way they could still moan and bitch about crap that doesn’t matter, but at least it would be broken up by previews of interviews with strung out porn stars and ads for phone sex giving me at least one reason to look at it. It would also be an excellent way to save taxpayers money that is currently used to investigate, frivolous complaints.

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A few weeks ago, loonie evangelical, Charles McVety, successfuly pressured the federal cabinet ministers and PMO officials to deny tax credits to productions deemed too controversial or offensive now it’s The City of Vancouver’s turn to cave to bible thumpers’ demands.

A piece of public art that is judged controversial because it’s depicting an inverted church will soon be removed from Harbour Green Park in downtown Vancouver. Since centuries artists had to put up with religious censorship and they still do in countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Although an offer was made to donate the piece to the city on a long-term loan, Weaving said Wednesday: “We’re recommending it come out in part because of the mixed public responses.” In other words some Christians call it sacrilegious. Hey Ms. Weaving, what about the separation of church and government. When was it decided that municipal bodies are supposed to cave to religious demands. What about the artist rights? What about his rights to communicate whatever he feels? Freedom of expression and speech…wasn’t that what Canada was founded on?

What if a Muslim tells you that because you are woman you are unfit for the position you hold as the Vancouver park board arts coordinator, will you quit?

I’m extremely disappointed in the Vancouver art community for not standing up for artists rights. Since when public art is inclined to bend to the will of religious censorship? Is it since backward “idiots” are working for the park board?

Never mind, when provocative art comes around, there will always be some one to get their panties in a bunch and bitch to no end about how offensive it is to them.

Although an offer was made to donate the piece to the city on a long-term loan, Weaving said Wednesday: “We’re recommending it come out in part because of the mixed public responses.”
That includes, she said, concern from area residents that the seven-metre-high piece blocks view corridors and takes too much of a small patch of green space.
“Some people have also contacted us to say that they feel the subject matter isn’t appropriate,” said Weaving. [The Vancouver Sun]

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Freedom of the press is the guarantee by a government of free public press for its citizens and their associations, extended to members of newspaper companies, internet sites such as blogs, radio and television stations, and their published or broadcasted reporting.

It appears that, here in Canada, freedom of the press is constantly challenged because it is not an “absolute right”. The Province published an article on the subject here is a snippet:

“Press freedom, however, is not an absolute right. And it is constantly under attack from government agencies, including human-rights commissions and the courts themselves.
Indeed, The Province spends thousands of dollars a year fighting court-imposed publication bans and other gag orders in cases involving everyone from killer Willie Pickton to the Hells Angels.
Our newspaper has also battled for public access to documents about everything from B.C.
legal-aid billings to TransLink rail-track purchases.” [The Province]

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