Are HRCs Useful?

An Answer for My Stepdaughter and Wife

Yesterday afternoon, my stepdaughter who has followed a bit of my blog asked me why it was so negative, and if in fact the HRCs did not do good as well as the bad that I was portraying. Her mother, my lovely wife asked me the same question later on in the evening.

I was unable to answer them at the time, not because I do not know the answer, but because of the brain fatigue and headaches that I feel when I have exerted my brain on any given day. And over the last several weeks, I have (for me at least) worked as hard as I can to understand what is going on with the HRCs. Granted I only spend a few hours a day on a few areas, but it wipes me out. With trying to figure this out, my headaches have increased disproportionately, and I have to figure a way to balance a meaningful objective with my own health. Well, enough of that.

Anyway, this morning I do know what I want to say to them both about a very good question that they asked.

The Nazis did not come to power in Germany because the people of Germany were bad. They came into power because the people were dissatisfied with the current political and international climate. With the Nazis, they got order from the chaos. The trains ran on time, and the streets were clean. Oh, by the way they persecuted anyone who disagreed with them, killing a few of them along the way, like 6 million Jews, plus lots of others. So, at what cost did the German people get trains on time and clean streets. At the cost of their dignity.

Our Human Rights Commissions do not run on time and have not cleaned up our streets. What good comes from a decision that on average takes over a year to reach, and often several to get to?

If you are a complainant and file a grievance that takes 14 months to resolve, over an apartment or a job that you were denied, is there really justice in that for you?

If you were the Defendant of the complaint, and have to pay legal fees for a complaint, often out of the blue, that drags on and on and on and on, where you are considered by the system to be guilty from the get go, and have no recourse to really prove yourself innocent, and it will cost you almost as much to win as to lose, is there really justice in it for you?

I reviewed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights this morning while preparing this, and think that we in Canada ought to look into trying to adopt it, instead of inventing most of the human rights we are doing on our own.

Article 18 says Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Tell that to Stephen Boissoin.

Article 19 say Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Tell that to Mark Steyn, Macleans and Ezra Levant.

The problem as I see it is not the objective, it is the system. I love this country, and want to see all people who are here treated with respect and dignity. I want to live in a country where when I disagree with you because of my religious or personal beliefs that that is not considered to be discrimination, but differences of opinion, and I do not have to go before a kangaroo court to try and defend myself.

I want to live in a country where the truth matters because it is objectively the truth, not just because it doesn't hurt somebody's feelings this time. Read my posting on Lemire/Levant yesterday for how the Canadian HRC has spoken about the truth.

I want to live in a country where when there is an instance where it appears that there has been an act of discrimination among people that there is an unbiased forum for resolution of that discrimination, not a star chamber.

So, simply, I think HRCs could be very useful, but not as they are currently configured.