C. S. Lewis

Moral Busybodies - Courtesy of Just Right blog

I have always respected C. S. Lewis as a Christian with an interesting perspective. He was born in 1898, and died in 1963. Along the way, he was a fallen away Christian, who returned to the faith about age 30, somewhat under the influence of his friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Although he wore many hats, he is best known as an author, a Christian lay theologian and apologist. I came across the following quote of his courtesy of the Just Right blog here, which I found particularly descriptive of the workings of our human rights commissions/tribunals at this time, and so I am sharing it with you.

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis, from God in the Dock, Page 292

The HRCs and their leaders in our midst are Omnipotent Moral Busybodies. They are frightening in their exercise of a power that they should not have, and yet, they are so sure of the rightness of their cause, whatever the heck that might be, that they carry on regardless, and view those who stand in their way, as nothing more than chaff to be discarded.

What will it take for Canadians of good will to awaken to the evil that is being perpetrated in our midst in the name of Human Rights protection, by people appointed and authorized by our governments Federal and Provincial? If I ever figure that our I will do it, and let you know. Until then, I will not remain silent, while people like the following are sacrificed to whatever god is the god of made up human rights:

Stephen Boissoin
Constable Michael Shaw
Bishop De Angelis
My friend the forced to retire grade school principal
Gator Ted Kindos
John Fulton
Violet Landry
and the countless thousands of others who have had to keep secret their humiliation at the hands of the HRCs and HRTs of this country.

The Costs of the HRCs - Direct & Indirect

A Brief Look at The Costs of our HRCs

There are costs to the work (work - that's a misplaced word) that our HRCs undertake allegedly on our behalf. There is the direct cost of the HRC itself, and there is the indirect costs born by the Defendant, and to a some extent by the rest of us.

Direct Costs

I was curious to see if I could figure out what the HRC industry spends of our tax dollars in a year. So, I went to each HRC web site. Nunavut does not have their own HRC yet. They work their problems through the NWT HRC. Many of the HRCs have their financial statements in their annual report. Some are part of another ministry, and had to be located there. Reporting standards varied, from one number for the whole, to greater detail.

Bottom line here. The HRCs, including provinces, territories, and Canada total about $77 million annually. There is some guesswork here, since the last financial statement I could find for the Canada HRC was 2002. That is only about $2.32 for each one of us on our annual tax bills. Personally, I'll take the cash if it is offered.

Indirect Costs

All indirect costs of our HRCs are not able to be measured. When I call them indirect, I mean it only from the perspective of the HRC itself. ie. They never see it, or probably care about it.

Legal Fees

The most common of these costs is Legal Fees. Ted Kindos has spent north of $40,000 to defend a nonsense case about a licensed pot smoker at his place of business. Ezra Levant has spent significantly more than $100,000 to defend himself against the nuisance claims made against him over the last few years.


Awards and Interest

Cases when completed often result in an award to the Complainant, with interest calculated from some earlier date. A minister in PEI in a case I will review sometime soon was awarded $600,000 plus interest for lost wages and pain and suffering. In ADGA which I reviewed in an earlier post, the Complainant got about $80,000.

However, most cases settle for smaller amounts before they get to the actual hearing stage. As Ezra Levant titled his book, these are shakedowns. For a nuisance payment of $5,000 to $20,000, plus some other pound of emotional flesh, the complainant walks away with a tax free bonus, and the Defendant gets to crawl away.

Non Financial Award Costs

HRCs tend to be attempting to remediate egregious behaviour on the part of the Defendants, and so they tend to order them to undertake sensitivity training, or something similar. As well, particularly for businesses, they like to get them to put their staff through this training, make them develop training materials in case they should ever again hire someone like the person who complained about them in the first place. Of course, these ativities must be undertaken with consultants approved by the HRC. I smell a sub industry here.

In the case of Viola Landry and the Popeye Restaurant in Geraldton Ontario, she had to put cards with the Human Rights Code on the tables to help her customers not discriminate against each other and her staff. I wonder what happened to the cards after she lost her business.

Emotional and Other costs

This is the cost that cannot be quantified. I watched my friend, the grade school principal, having to retire early because of the deands on her health, of seeing her life's work and labour of love torn apart because she stood up to a loud mouthed parent of the wrong colour.

I listened to John Fulton who owns 2 health clubs in St. Caherines, and hopes he still will after the transsexual who he couldn't accommodate on the spot in his Women's Only Club decided to make a case of it. Mr. Fulton has built his business from scratch over 25 years, and is active in the community supporting worthy causes. Will be able to when this is done, not just financially, but with the emotional cost of it all on him.

Viola Landry's business was not particularly strong when her case started, but she was doing her best to make it work. She closed it down last year, and had to seek work elsewhere.

This Emotional and Physical cost on the bodies and minds of the Defendants of these actions are a burden that our society will bear into the future. As humans, we do not wake up each day with renewed energy, unhindered by the challenges that we faced yesterday or yesterday's yesterday. No, we carry the burden of traumas in our life with us, often forever. The burden may be reduced by therapy with the right counsellor, another indirect cost. But, once that emotional and physical energy has been spent, it often cannot be recovered. We are seeing more cases of chronic fatigue, and autoimmune problems, particularly among those who have carried emotional burdens beyond their own ability.

Will Ted Kindos, John Fulton, Viola Landry end up retiring earlier than they otherwise might have? I would not be surprised that the traumatic burden of their HRC cases will impact their long term physical and mental health. I saw it with my friend the principal.

Can our Country, Provinces and Territories afford the cost of second hand smoke that is coming down the pipe from these cases?

People in our country should be free from discrimination, including the Defendants and this wierd process that makes them into victims.

This system is seriously broken.

Viola Landry - Ontario HRC

Viola Landry and the Popeye Restaurant

Viola Landry operated the Popeye Restaurant on Main Street in Geraldton Ontario, a small town in northern Ontario, about 1,200 kilometres from Toronto, about 300 kilometres from Thunder Bay, and 30 kilometres off the Trans Canada Highway, with a population of about 6,500 people. If you are there it is because you want to be there.

One of Geraldton's mottos is "The Friendly Town with a Heart of Gold". Friendly, yes. But stupid, not so much. At least until the storm troopers from the Ontario HRC came marching into town to set things right.

You see, Ms. Landry hired a Ms. Giguere to come and work for her in her restaurant. But, it so happened that Ms. Giguere was in a common-law relationship with a man who was HIV-positive and also had Hepatitis C. Apparently, she had disclosed this to Ms. Landry, who at the time did not see it as a concern.

But then about 2 weeks later, Ms. Landry terminated Ms. Giguere apparently because of customer complaints related to her common-law spouse, and the concern of customers that Ms. Giguere had or might contract the AIDS virus.

Interestingly enough, under Ontario Labour Law, an employee with less than 3 months service can be terminated without cause and without notice, which Ms. Landry did to Ms. Giguere.

But Ms. Giguere appeared to be smarter than the average bear, of which there are a few in the area, and her Heart was interested in the Gold. So, she filed a complaint with the Ontario HRC for discrimination due to Association.

This was found to have been such a significant case and so egregious in its implications that the Ontario HRC reported it in its 2008 annual report. You know you have arrived when you make the annual report.

Anyway, at the Human Rights Tribunal it was found that Ms. Giguere was fired because of her association with a person with a disability. Further, the Tribunal ruled that "a business owner is not entitled to terminate an employee because they feel their business will suffer because of the views of customers, where those views are related to proscribed grounds of discrimination."

The ninnies at the Ontario Tribunal overruled Ontario Labour Law, and of course common sense, and good business practice. You see, Ms. Landry knew something that the people of the Ontario HRC did not. The people of Geraldton had 6 other restaurants in town to choose from, and if they were concerned for their health by eating in hers, they could choose to go elsewhere. The people of Geraldton made it clear to Ms. Landry that they considered it a risk to eat at the Popeye of Ms. Giguere was working there.

In the end it no longer matters, since Ms. Landry doesn't have the restaurant any more. She now works as the caterer at the local golf course. I hope to contact her and find out what impact the stress and strain of the HRC pounding on her door trying to convince her that common sense was no longer common any more, or even desirable.

Oh, and by the way, Ms. Giguere turned out to not be so lily white in her dealings with the tribunal. She seems to have offered money to someone to give testimony to the Tribunal. With the tricks that the Tribunal is alleged to not be above using to get testimony themselves, it surprises me that they noticed that she had abused their process.

So, the Tribunal in a magnanimous gesture refused to award the Claimant any damages. However, they made Ms. Landry commit to making a charitable donation of $2,500 to an HIV/AIDS related organization in the area. To add insult to injury, they rubbed her nose in it further, and ordered Ms. Landry to post Human Rights Code cards at the restaurant. This was probably to show all those people in "The Friendly Town with a Heart of Gold" who had dared to complain about Ms. Giguere that that was a No No.

What they should have done was have added all the residents of Geraldton to the complaint and then have sent them all for sensitivity training. Then they could have rewritten their motto to "The Really Pissed Off Town that hates those Assholes from Toronto", but only after they got their completion certificates.