Here’s a teaser from my forthcoming interview with Mark Steyn, which will appear in the July issue of Fraser Forum. (For current issues of Fraser Forum, go here)
What are your thoughts regarding the upcoming BC Human Rights Commission hearing and its possible outcome(s)?
The law is so broadly drawn that it’s essentially created a human right not to be offended.
So if one person is offended by my book, he can go to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and complain about it. And of course if he’s offended, I can’t do anything about it. Offense is in the ear of the offended. And so if it is a human right not to be offended, and I have offended this guy, then I am guilty, Maclean’s magazine is guilty, and my book is guilty.
I think we’ll be convicted, then we’ll appeal it up to the real court, and it will work it’s way through the system. At some point, I would imagine, it will eventually come to the Supreme Court of Canada and it will be decided 4-3 one way or the other.
But I am not confident that Canadians will come to understand the assault on their liberties–on some of the oldest liberties of this society–that these tribunals are engaged in. They essentially created a parallel legal system that does away with real human rights, like the presumption of innocence, in favour of cockamamie human rights like the human right not to be offended.
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