Colson: What's the Matter With Canada?

Monday, July 21, 2008
by Chuck Colson

How is this for irony? Recent actions by Canadian human rights groups have observers alarmed for the state of human rights in Canada. That is because the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal do not give a fig about protecting human rights. Their mission is suppressing free speech.

Maclean’s magazine was hauled before these two “quasi-judicial” bodies when it published excerpts from Mark Steyn’s popular book America Alone. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress charged that the content of these excerpts about the expansion of radical Islam “subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt.”

The Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the complaint, but the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal got in on the act. It investigated the charges in what bloggers on the scene called a “kangaroo court,” and has yet to issue a ruling. But there is a greater cause for concern here: As the Calgary Herald pointed out, Maclean’s has the money to fight the charges—but not everyone does. The Herald gloomily predicted, “Let a citizen of modest means utter a politically incorrect thought: He will be crushed.” the rest