Globe and Mail:
The Supreme Court is about to wrestle with two key anti-speech cases, including one on child pornography. A democracy must not padlock its citizens' lips, even if the causes are unpopular, say civil-liberties advocates J.S. RUSSELL and A.D. IRVINE.
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Are Canada's anti-speech laws unconstitutional? Are they irrelevant? Are they fiscally irresponsible? This fall the Supreme Court of Canada will revisit these questions when it rules on two controversial cases heard earlier this year. Both concern fundamental free-speech issues.
Zundelsite:
The writers are careful not to spell out in too much detail what "speech" and what "ideas" are targeted by these insidious, anti-democratic laws.
Globe and Mail:
The first is the so-called "Little Sisters versus Big Brother case," which challenges Canada Customs' power to intercept and turn back books and other media at the border. Together, Little Sisters Book & Art Emporium, a Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore, and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association are hoping to have the court overturn Canada's outdated obscenity law. The judgment will bring to a close a 14-year legal saga.
Zundelsite:
So it took 14 years and undoubtedly hundreds of thousands if not millions in legal fees, court costs etc. to undo the agenda-driven, Lobby-dictated legislation permitting customs bureaucrats to seize books certain people did not like. As my readers know, not only was my trilogy "Lebensraum!" seized four days after publication, so also was my autobiography - the story of my savagely handicapped child - written and published in the early eighties and sold without complaint to tens of thousands of people - by now for almost two decades!
Globe and Mail:
Lower courts have said that Customs has frequently abused its authority by applying near-Victorian standards of prudery on the subject of gay sex. In doing so, Customs has discriminated against homosexuals under Section 15 of the Charter. But lower courts have stopped short of saying that Customs officers lack the authority to intercept material they deem to be obscene or in some other way in violation of Canada's anti-speech laws, and it is this point that is now before the Supreme Court.
Zundelsite:
The gays and lesbians have a powerful lobby with lots of "advocates" of their lifestyle in the media and government bureaucracy, even Parliament itself. Their chances are therefore good to get a favorable decision in today's Lobby-driven Canada.
Globe and Mail:
The court is being asked to decide whether Customs officers, rather than Canadian courts, should have the power to ban materials they judge to be dangerous to tender and impressionable Canadian minds. In the eyes of many, such provisions are clearly counter to Section 2(b) of the Charter, which guarantees freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.
Zundelsite:
Ernst Zundel won a stunning upset victory in the Supreme Court of Canada invoking Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That did not prevent the self-appointed censors, namely the Jewish groups, to go institution-shopping. As a result, as all my readers worldwide know, he has been before a CHRT for the last four years - for the SAME booklet the Supreme Court ruled on giving him Section 2(b) protection! No wonder Canada is ever more often called Absurdistan!
Globe and Mail:
Traditionally, the prior restraint of ideas has been a hallmark of tyrannies, not of genuine democracies. In deciding whether ideas of any kind are to be banned, the burden of proof should never be placed on anyone except the government. In a democratic society, citizens should never have to prove that they are entitled to free-speech rights.
Zundelsite:
Prior restraint is today ***forced upon the government*** by noisy and obnoxious lobbyists like B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Center etc. The government meekly does the bidding of these groups. The roosters crow that from the roof!
Globe and Mail:
Rather, prior to banning ideas of any kind, the burden of proof should always be on those who believe that such bans serve a compelling public interest.
Zundelsite:
No public interest is being protected by persecuting, prosecuting, or seizing a critic's books. Instead, con-men and crooks, shake-down artists are being protected by Customs who run government interference on one side of a controversy. Democratic debate is thus silenced by Customs officers with a grade eight education who are barely able to read and write! That goes, as we all know, for so-called "Holocaust Denial" - which is the real bugaboo!
Globe and Mail:
Despite this, the court's record of upholding Canada's anti-speech laws has been a disturbing one. As evidenced by previous landmark cases, such as Butler and Keegstra, the court has yet to take notice of the fact that attempts to regulate the transmission of ideas will soon become almost completely irrelevant. With the rise of the Internet, Canada's system of prior restraint has become less and less effective. Today, materials that are stopped at the border are almost always available over the Internet. Given the vast amount of Internet traffic, compared with the traditional book trade, a system of prior restraint will inevitably do little more than waste taxpayer dollars. Governments need to recognize the futility of funneling fiscal resources into anti-speech laws.
Zundelsite:
It has nothing to do with fiscal consideration! Canadian politicians, influenced or advised or in the pockets of well-heeled lobbyists want to do those to whom they are beholden, political favours. That's how the cookie crumbles!
Globe and Mail:
The second important case that the court will be deciding this fall is Regina v. Sharpe. This is the controversial case in which Vancouver resident Robin Sharpe is challenging the constitutionality of a section of Canada's wide-ranging child-pornography law. Although two lower B.C. courts have agreed that the law as it stands is unconstitutional, the B.C. government has asked the Supreme Court to conclude otherwise. Once again, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is involved, arguing that a vaguely drafted law that leaves enforcement up to the whims of individual police officers should be struck down in favour of legislation that specifically targets material involving the sexual use of real (not imagined) children.
Zundelsite:
It serves the politicians, the cops and the Customs folks right to face such a dilemma - it is they who have abused the process for decades by lumping unpopular political ideas together with sexual deviate material. With malice aforethought they call this the "Hate Literature and Pornography" section. Now history is catching up with them. Technology has thwarted them.
Globe and Mail:
In the past, the most frequent defence offered by the Supreme Court in support of Canada's capacious anti-free speech laws has been that obscenity and hate speech are low-grade examples of speech. As such, they are supposedly far removed from the social values that free speech is intended to promote. According to the court, these include "the search for truth, participation in the political process, and individual self-fulfillment."
Zundelsite:
This is a direct quote from the August 27, 1992 Supreme Court decision in the Zundel "Did Six Million Really Die?" case. Zundel spent a decade of his life before the courts for that verdict. It would behoove the Globe and Mail to remember where that short-lived freedom came from!
Globe and Mail:
But this fails to recognize that it is not the government's job to decide what types of speech are of greatest importance to its citizens. It also fails to recognize the many benefits that accompany speech of even the most unwelcome kind.
Zundelsite:
Every once in a blue moon the Globe and Mail weighs in with such "insights" - and then goes right on bad-mouthing and character-assassinating unwelcome people like David Irving, Ernst Zundel or Doug Collins. Hypocrites!
Globe and Mail:
Why does speech -- even in its odious forms -- contribute to promoting important social goals? The answer is that such speech motivates us to confront, debate, and act on the values that we cherish most. If governments could wave a magic wand and erase from all libraries and computer banks all manner of hateful and degrading public speech, the occasions for recognizing and confronting those real-life factors that give rise to racism and sexism would be vastly diminished.
Zundelsite:
Liberal mouthings! Grade Seven public school level schlock, unworthy of a newspaper of the Globe and Mail's once reputable tradition! If the Globe and Mail means what it claims, we can expect a Globe and Mail reporter on October 4 when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Hearings resume. Right? Fair coverage? Right? And a cow will jump over the moon!
Globe and Mail:
In the case of pornography, the existence of obscene materials has prompted much acute reflection on sex roles and stereotyping. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that much feminist work could not have been made to appear so powerful without the evidence that certain types of obscenity provide about attitudes toward women. Moreover, the existence of such material has helped to prompt, and inject a sense of urgency, into debates about sex and sexuality that have been taboo in our culture for too long.
Zundelsite:
Cloaking themselves in more political correctness? Another noisy reader segment's gripes addressed?
Globe and Mail:
The same is true for hate literature. Denials of the Holocaust have also been a great spur to careful historical documentation of Nazi atrocities. They have also encouraged the pursuit and prosecution of war criminals and the commitment of resources to fight racism and all manner of other prejudices against minorities.
Zundelsite:
Did we not tell you? Holocaust Revisionism was and is the bogey man. Holocaust Revisionism is and has been beneficial to society. It is removing the Stain of Cain from Germans world-wide and from German-Canadians specifically. Ernst Zundel has repeatedly proclaimed that - from inside courts as well as inside jails in Canada and elsewhere! Where was the Globe and Mail then? One lousy editorial in 1985!
Globe and Mail:
Such evidence gives the lie to the commonly heard idea that obscenity and hate speech silence women and minorities and prevent their participation in the political process. In fact, not one plausible scintilla of social evidence has ever been advanced in favour of this position, and all the evidence is set dead against it -- as the classical defences of free speech predict.
In contrast, anti-free-speech laws do not remove the underlying causes of what is wrong with society. Instead, they eliminate the most effective weapon we have for improving things.
Zundelsite:
Finally! It has taken the Globe and Mail 30 years to say that out loud - and not run and hide in a mouse hole! Criticism is beneficial. That's how lies are changed or replaced by truths - as is happening right now to that avalanche of Holocaust propaganda.
Globe and Mail:
As the English poet John Milton put it, since the "survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scoot into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read."
Zundelsite:
What would the scribblers do if there was not a John Milton?
Globe and Mail:
But these are not the only issues that the Supreme Court has overlooked in the past. Besides the irrelevance and fiscal waste of anti-speech laws, and the fact that unwelcome speech frequently has surprising and important benefits, there is another powerful argument that has gone unacknowledged.
This is that freedom of expression is a constitutive element in respecting the moral dignity of persons. Censored citizens become mere objects or tools of others' wills. Their dignity as moral persons is denied, for mere objects or tools have no will of their own. Nor can they be fully fledged fellow citizens, free and equal among us, for they are denied that condition essential to the meaningful exercise of their democratic rights and duties -- their autonomous will. This, too, is the mark of tyranny.
Zundelsite:
This is exactly what Canada - with the active participation of most of the Canadian media - has done to Ernst Zundel! For decades! They have denied him the dignity of a moral person that he genuinely strives to be - merely because he espouses unpopular ideas according to his conscience and dares to criticize the power elite in Canada. They have blatantly denied him his democratic rights and made him into a mere object to be hated, ridiculed, vilified and persecuted in public. They have left a record of disgrace!
Globe and Mail:
These issues will not be disappearing any time soon. They demonstrate that Canada needs a more sophisticated and mature approach to understanding and respecting fundamental freedoms, and to addressing serious social problems. The Little Sisters and Sharpe cases afford the court a clear opportunity to take important steps toward this goal.
Zundelsite:
These days, sexual deviation is "in" - they may well win their respective cases. As to the Irvings, Doug Collins and the Ernst Zundels of the world - don't hold your breath! Not until the mainstream media will shake off their intellectual terrorism will anything much change. A free press would not do what has been done to Ernst Zundel.
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Thought for the Day:
"Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone."
(F.E. Holme in Proverb Lore)
Back to Table of Contents of the Sept. 2000 ZGrams