VPL meets its match

Editorial

The Vancouver Public Library has finally found a topic too controversial for its facilities to host.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor who advocates for patients' "right to die," was denied space by the VPL for his two-part presentation. The first part was to be a general discussion of the pro-euthanasia movement, according to the National Post, with a second, private session for those 55-years-old and above describing specific methods of ending one's life.

The head librarian, Paul Whitney, cited the potential for civil and criminal liability in denying the request for space. The cause has been taken up by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Unitarian Church, where the event is now scheduled to take place Nov. 4.

The potential criminal sanctions emanating from counseling, aiding or abetting someone in committing suicide include 14 years in jail. A legal opinion also suggested that the family of a suicide or euthanasia victim could sue the library if a connection was found between the death and the event. These potential criminal and civil penalties are not nothing, of course, and the library has a responsibility to shield itself (and city taxpayers) from legal troubles. But it is intriguing to observe the sensitivity to legal threats over this issue, given the library's consistent refusal to consider the concerns of minority communities, including the Jewish community, in renting space to some of the most outspoken extremists on a number of topics.

Among the more memorable decisions by the library was the decision to welcome Greg Felton, local provocateur, gadfly and conspiracy theorist and author of the book The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America. If ever there were a slam-dunk decision to be made on disallowing "controversial" speakers to hold forth in public library space, Felton's documented allegations against "Zionists" would have seemed to have been it. Not so. The head librarian himself presided over the fiasco, which predictably devolved into a small gathering of very angry people bellowing at each other.

At the time, head librarian Whitney wrote that the library's role "is to provide a forum for an open and public exchange of contradictory views and to make materials available that represent a wide range of views, including those that may be considered unconventional, unpopular, or unacceptable."

This issue comes up at a moment of some significance.

Richard Moon, a University of Windsor law professor and constitutional law scholar, this week addressed a House of Commons committee looking into our country's hate speech laws. Moon was the author of a government-commissioned report that called for the repeal of the Canadian Human Rights Act's Section 13, which prohibits repeated communication by telephone or the Internet of comments that are likely to expose identifiable groups to hatred or contempt. Moon's case for getting the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) out of the censorship business was premised at least partly on the fact that, in the Internet age, it is simply not technically feasible for governments to monitor, control and sanction communications that are no longer limited to hard-copy publications or the frequencies overseen by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

Some critics of the human rights code oppose Section 13 (and other aspects of the human rights apparatus) more on principle: if the government has the right to censor materials it deems offensive, who determines the definition of offensive? For example, we have seen government censorship run roughshod with the Vancouver bookstore Little Sister's, which carries books of interest to gays and lesbians, ceaselessly harassed by Canada's border inspection agency and forced to endure costly legal defences. This harassment, ironically, was of materials intended for people loving one another, not promoting hatred.

We have argued in these pages over the years for caution in repressing unpopular and potentially hateful speech, in part for practical reasons: ideas forced from public view can go unchecked and become more dangerous.

The "right to die" issue is a fraught one that does not fit quite so neatly into the dichotomy of hate speech versus acceptable discourse. The persons most likely to come to harm from such a presentation are precisely those seeking to attend Nitschke's presentation. Is counseling someone in the finer points of how to die worse than promoting race-hatred? This is not quite the polar decision the VPL was forced to make, but it is worth considering these cases in each other's context.

Meanwhile, Canada is undergoing a reconsideration of what constitutes acceptable discourse and what role the government should have in determining that definition. The VPL should consider its policies around controversial topics as well, perhaps in the context of this national debate.

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