Barrel Strength

At the request of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice has created a departmental committee to examine section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. This is the section which bans hate messages distributed by the Internet. Members include lawyers from various branches of the department of Justice, including constitutional, human rights, criminal and Industry Canada branches.

Whether anyone at this table of worthies will dissent or have evolved from the leftist views with which they entered government in the 1970s is an important question.

Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act has been at the centre of several prosecutions of people for the expression of political opinion.

When will Ezra Levant read Barrelstrength?

The Act states, at section 13:
Hate messages

13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Ezra take note. Kathy Shaidle take note. Mark Steyn likewise. You too Kate MacMillan! You saw it here first. We do not normally have news to convey but when we do, we do what we can.

UPDATE: Ezra indeed reads Barrel Strength!

In Canada those who dissent from the official line on Gaza from the unbearably pedestrian “Arab Street” are subjected to virulent hisses and dissuasion by the police. In Iran, however, all subtlety is tossed out of the window:

Security agents in plainclothes attacked a group of activists called “Mothers for Peace” who gathered in front of Tehran’s Palestinian Embassy to call for an end to the conflict in Gaza. A journalist told Radio Farda that “security forces who were chanting ‘Death to Peace Seekers’ beat me up, broke my colleague’s camera and used pepper spray on another protester.”

Savour the difference… while you can.