The "Doug Collins Story" has been told many times in many different shades on our beloved Internet, and I will not repeat it here - other than to say that, singlehandedly, this crusty old reporter is good for one more round. This veteran columnist had hurt the feelings of the Chosenites by saying Jews ran Hollywood and by a cheeky reference to "Swindler's List."
The essay below, which he penned, is good for a juicy two-part ZGram, and I have been waiting for a tie-in to shoot it into cyberspace. It sets the stage for the continuing struggle before the Human Rights Tribunal sharks in British Columbia, Canada.
Here speaks a man to minions:
[START]
July 12, 2001
Statement to Human Rights Tribunal
Before Mr. Tom W. Patch
By Doug Collins
To begin with, I am not making this submission to discuss the often incomprehensible intricacies of that scarecrow of a law known as the B.C. Human Rights Code. I'll leave that to the lawyers and to the courts, before which I hope to appear.
What is at issue, of course, is whether the order issued by this tribunal against myself and the North Shore News on Feb. 2, 1999, infringes Section (2b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and whether the tribunal had the constitutional right to issue that order. In their wisdom, the courts have determined that you should rule on the issue before I can apply for a judicial review of the law, and I submit that what you did cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, which is what the Charter stipulates.
As far as the outcome of this hearing is concerned, I believe that we are wasting our time. There is about as much chance of your deciding that your order was invalid as there is of my becoming the next NDP premier of British Columbia. Nevertheless, I comply with the court's direction and also wish to put on the record what otherwise might not be on the record.
We live at a time in which the decay of moral and political values is rampant, and when it finds many willing servants in the annexes of authority, such as human rights systems that deny human rights. It also seems to be a time without shame. If it were otherwise there would be no such thing as a Human Rights Code that in itself is a travesty of human rights. It's a pity that George Orwell isn't around to write about it. He might denounce it as moral illiteracy.
This tribunal produced the most dangerous attack on freedom of the press that has been seen since the Alberta Press Act went down to defeat at the hands of the courts in 1938. The intention at that time was to force the press to print what the government wanted it to print. This tribunal did the same thing in instructing the North Shore News to print its decision, something that no regular court has attempted to do, and as I understand it, could not do.
I was also ordered to stop writing columns with which you and the complainant Harry Abrams found fault. To be precise, you instructed myself and the North Shore News "to cease publishing statements that are likely to expose Jewish persons to hatred and contempt [which I submit I have not done] and to refrain from committing the same or a similar contravention". That was a publication ban, and in no way reflected the principles of a democratic society. It also amounted to prior restraint of opinion.
That being so, I have taken no notice of your order. Firstly, no judge or jury could find that I or the North Shore News had exposed anyone to anything harmful, and you yourself admitted that my writing had done no discernible harm; secondly, the verdict in my view demonstrated the bias of this tribunal and that of the NDP government; thirdly, if the Charter of Rights and Freedoms means anything, it must mean that that decision was unconstitutional. On which more later.
The columns on which you ruled and many others like it are in a book I have published. I would be glad to give you a a free copy. There's a lot in it about free speech. According to your reasoning the four columns that were complained about didn't contravene the B.C. Human Rights Code separately, but did collectively. That's a bit like saying that while four pints of sour milk are sour, one of those pints would not be. There was no sense in such reasoning, and lawyers who are not in the pay of the government or of the pressure groups behind the complaints against me say that such a decision would never survive in a court of law.
But this tribunal is, apparently, a court that can make its own rules. Mr. Geoff Plant put it well. As the Liberal rights critic in the legislature, he stated while in Opposition that something has to be done about a human rights system that produces, and I quote, "too many goofy decisions". I live in hope that as a member of the new government he will do something about it. I also live in hope that Premier Gordon Campbell will honour the promise he made on Oct. 15, 1993, and on subsequent occasions, when he said he would get rid of the B.C. Human Rights Act Amendments that restrict free speech.
The Human Rights Commission and the lawyers who sit in this place denying my right and that of the people of British Columbia to free speech claim, predictably, that this tribunal's verdict is constitutionally valid in a free and democratic society. If it is, then free speech in this province has been cast into the dustbin of history. It would mean that opinions that are hateful only to those who claim they are hateful, are not permissible. It would mean that only politically correct opinions approved by government are safe. As Federal District Court Justice Robert Warren pointed out in a case in the United States, "The suppression of speech, even where the speech's content appears to have little value and great costs, amounts to government thought control". Which of course is exactly what we are seeing here.
I draw your attention now to what the B.C. Press Council said in its analysis of the amended Human Rights Code at the time of my first tribunal, the one that found itself obliged, reluctantly, to acquit me. It said that the Code is designed to kill speech that is not criminal. Regarding legislative intent, Mr. Corky Evans, an NDP MLA who became a cabinet minister, made the extraordinary statement when it was being drafted that the government needed this law because the courts didn't always do what the government wanted them to do. He seemed to dislike the role of an independent judiciary, and favored a system that would indeed do what the government wanted it to do.
The law was passed in June, 1993, and was introduced because the NDP and its special interest supporters took exception to what I was writing in the North Shore News. During the debate in the legislature my name came up 17 times. That's why it was called the Kill Collins Act. But what I was writing could never have been seen by the courts as hate literature. If it could have been, I would have been charged under the hate speech provisions of Section 319 of the Criminal Code. But neither the NDP government nor the complainants dared to risk that. Hence Mr. Evans's statement.
What was required was a new set of rules, and tribunals often described as kangaroo courts. As the secretary of the B.C. Press Council put it, under this Human Rights Code, anyone uttering a Newfie joke could be hauled before a tribunal. The late Mel Smith, a distinguished constitutional lawyer, said that the law was so broad that even a business putting up "male" and "female" signs in its washroom could be charged.
Section 71(b) of the Code states that no person shall publish or display any notice, sign, symbol or other representation that INDICATES discrimination or an INTENTION to discriminate, or that is LIKELY to expose a person or groups of persons to hatred or contempt. Indicate. Intention. Likely. What could be looser than that? It should be of interest that INDICATING criticism of the government was an offence in Fascist Italy, and the LIKELIHOOD of opposing the communists was enough to send people in the USSR to the gulag. The B.C Press Council has noted, too, that this law is almost exactly the same as the South African Publications Act that was passed during the time of apartheid. Those who support it and work for it are not in very good company.
In British Columbia, under this law, organizations like the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'Nai Brith, the Race Relations Association and similar groups can harass and indimidate those who hold opinions to which they object. Moreover, after Mr. Ujjal Dosanjh became Attorney General, he brought in rules that permit the government itself to make complaints and to harass people, whether or not complaints come from members of the public. To him, too, hate literature is anything he sees as hate literature. That's why a lengthy and bitter debate took place in the legislature in June of 1993, after which the Amendment to the Act was steamrollered through.
Let me offer you some comments made by the Opposition, all of which I take from Hansard. I mention them in order to emphasize that this legislation was pushed through in a discreditable way by a discredited government, and that it did not represent the wishes of the people of this Province, who were not consulted about it. Nor was it ever part of an election program.
Mr. Gordon Wilson, then the leader of the Liberal Party but later an NDP cabinet minister, stated on June 17: Hansard, Page 7370. "This Act does more to extinguish the right to freedom of expression than it does to look after hate literature and the propagation of hate literature."
Mr. H. De Jong, Social Credit, Page 7373: "The government is at last showing its true colours in its total disregard for individual freedom whenever it comes in conflict with the collective...I cannot take pleasure in the obvious political harm the government is doing to itself by introducting this Orwellian police-state bill, saying that only politically correct Newspeak will be tolerated in the socialist government of British Columbia."
Mr. de Jong referred to the bill as "compulsory niceness".... "Under this legislation," he declared, "it seems that the only allowable bumper sticker would be "Love thy neighbour, or else"."
Mr. David Mitchell, a Liberal MLA, had this to say, Page 7401: "Who are the great democrats who have brought forward this legislation? Who are they who claim to be democrats in defining and defending the rights of all of us in a free and democratic society? The name of their party is the New Democratic Party. But if their legislation is to be their legacy they are certainly not democratic and they are certainly not new...They're trying to bring forward an idea that they propose, to compel all citizens to think like them. That's what's wrong with this legislation....They are neither new nor democratic."
Mr. Jeremy Dalton told the House how the proposed amendment removed the right to free speech in British Columbia. (See Page 7371). "How is freedom of expression being compromised....? I will read into the record the provision that will be removed from the current Human Rights Act if this bill is passed. In Section 2 (sub-section 2) of the Act it states: 'Notwithstanding subsection (1) but subject to the Civil Rights Protection Act, a person may, by speech or in writing, freely express his opinions on a subject...' that's what's being eliminated by the proposed change in legislation through this bill. It will clearly compromise freedom of expression."
I could give you many more examples but the point has been made. This law was by no means the will of the people at large; nor was it submitted for prior discussion by those most likely to be affected by it, as is usual. It was drawn up in secret, in consultation with the groups that wanted it, and was essentially a conspiracy.
Mr. Aziz Khaki of the government-subsidized Committee for Racial Justice met with the attorney general of that time, Mr. Colin Gabelman. He also met with Miss Anita Hagen, who was responsible for multiculturalism. The Canadian Jewish Congress also made representations. References were made by government members during the debate in the legislature to the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings, White Aryan Resistance, Nazi-like activity, Molotov cocktails and other things that had nothing to do with anything I had written or done; or, as far as I know with what anyone else had written or done. And as I have already stated, it was never shown that any harm had been done by anything I had written. The government's case was an exercise in vacuity and vagueness. It didn't like what I was saying. So ghosts and monsters were made to walk.
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Tomorrow: Part II
Thought for the Day:
"It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us."
(D'Israeli)