Listen to ugly ideas

Editorial

A court decision last week limited the right of expression for neo-Nazis, with broad implications for quasi-judicial bodies and free expression in this country, just as a new report seems likely to address a worrying trend limiting free expression on Canadian university campuses.

A Saskatchewan neo-Nazi leader, who heads the National-Socialist party of Canada, was subject to a Federal Court of Appeal decision last week that strengthens the hand of quasi-judicial bodies such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission (HRC). The fascist, who had ignored orders by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (in which HRC matters are heard) to delete racist and antisemitic web posts, and who later ignored a $4,000 fine from the body, will now face sentencing in Federal Court for contempt, with a potential jail sentence of five years and fines at the court’s discretion.

The decision has wider implications. It means that such tribunals have the force of law and cannot be ignored, which seems fair. What does not seem fair are some of the outlandish matters provincial human rights bodies have entertained in recent years, which take the meaning of human rights to new, very broadly interpreted definitions. Many such commissions and tribunals, including ours in British Columbia, have considered and issued decisions on matters of hurt feelings and slights that minimize and diminish the very meaning of human rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada is expected to soon make a ruling that could redefine the limits, if any, of free expression in this country, which may also have implications for just this sort of matter. (See “The limits of freedom,” jewishindependent.ca, Oct. 28, 2011.)

These court rulings miss the bigger issue.

Sometime this month, civil rights lawyer John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, is expected to unveil his Campus Freedom Index, which ranks Canadian universities based on the ability of unpopular ideas to find expression without interference.

This is likely to be a disturbing report. While quasi-judicial bodies are clamping down on the expression rights of neo-Nazis, those who are challenging free expression on campus are student governments, administrations and self-appointed (rather than government-appointed) arbiters. A University of Ottawa administrator took it upon himself to write to the American pundit Ann Coulter before she came to town, warning her to watch her words because Canada has laws unlike those in her country. At Memorial University of Newfoundland, an anti-abortion group was denied club status and, at the University of Calgary, two students were found guilty of non-academic misconduct for putting up anti-abortion posters that offended those who disagreed with their content. And, of course, in the past decade, countless incidents have occurred, including here in British Columbia, of Israeli and pro-Israel speakers being silenced by screaming protesters.

It is ironic that government, in the form of the courts mostly, is taking up cases of people who are offended by language that is offensive but which does not reach the level of “hate speech” under statute, which requires an incitement to violence or harm. At the same time, governments have been almost silent when bodies that are quasi-nothing – self-appointed, in the case of the protesters, or elected by a few hundred people, in the case of student governments – threaten the rights of expression in the one place where such freedom really should be most sacred: universities.

Further, there have been too many cases of university administrations obfuscating on the issue, citing turf limitations or simply not wanting to get involved in a matter that ultimately goes to the very heart of their raison d’être. A worrying example was Concordia University’s refusal to allow former Israel prime minister Ehud Barak to speak because a visit by another (then) former Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, had led to a riot by anti-Israel thugs.

Carpay’s report, which some journalists got a hint at last week in a Calgary presentation, should be welcomed and widely disseminated. Those who would take solace at the court decision limiting the rights of free expression for neo-Nazis should contrast that with the challenges faced by Zionists on Canadian campuses. The limitations on free expression are coming from different sources, but there is a single principle at issue here. Free expression is easy to defend when you agree with the ideas being expressed. Genuinely free expression involves confronting some very unsavory ideas. For us, those ugly ideas include the hate spewed by neo-Nazis. For others, ugly ideas include some we cherish deeply, including Israel’s right to exist.

Limitations on free expression for others set a precedent for limitations of freedom of expression for ourselves. A fact worth remembering as this country undertakes a significant, and perhaps overdue, discussion of these rights.

^TOP