Letter: Trampling on rights

http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1038441.html

Trampling on rights

Recently, there have been a number of comments (mostly on the Internet) about the abuses of so-called “human rights” commissions and tribunals. Their “thought police” have levelled charges against journalists Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine following complaints by Muslims who claim to be “offended” by words or cartoons. Mainstream media have largely ignored this story.

That changed when the CBC got on the case. But it wasn’t to come to the defence of Ezra Levant or Mark Steyn, or even free speech. No, the CBC ran a story insinuating that Liberal MP Keith Martin’s private member’s bill, which seeks to rein in the Human Rights Act to some reasonable degree, has the support of an obscure, white supremacist website. The story, written by an unnamed “reporter from the Canadian Press, tried to draw a link between “white supremacists,” Nazis or “neo-Nazis,” “right-wing bloggers” and “Christian conservatives” in the minds of newspaper readers and CBC listeners.

Some journalists have been so intimidated by Canada’s human rights thought police that they no longer dare to publish anything that might offend the sensibilities of Muslim zealots, homosexual activists or any other group that qualifies for special treatment in the freedom-stifling, federal and provincial, human rights codes that have sprung up over the past 50 years.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission is trampling upon the very human rights and freedoms it is supposed to uphold.

Robert Candy, Halifax