Ezra Levant, the publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard magazine, appeared before a closed hearing of the Alberta Human Rights Commission last Friday. The hearing was ostensibly to determine if the complaint against the Standard and Levant (publishing hate literature) warrants a further hearing. Levant published the controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed in 2006.
Dirk Deppey does a very nice job of rounding up what actually transpired at Friday’s hearings, mostly because Levant has posted video of the day. (The videos are also available on youtube.) The actual hearing involved Levant and his lawyer sitting across a table from Shirlene McGovern, who is identified by Levant as an agent and human rights officer with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, an agency of the provincial government of Alberta.
Despite Levant’s hyperbole (he describes his interrogator and the entire process as an example of “the banality of evil”) and grandstanding (if you can call calmly reading a statement in a tiny meeting room grandstanding), this is an important case. Levant essentially manufactured this debacle by tinging his reporting/reprinting of the cartoons with his usual schtick in order to challenge the hate crime/speech laws. Does a Canadian citizen have the right to complain to the government if someone publishes a cartoon that seems to violate a religious article of their faith? And does the government then have the right to punish the publisher (or even to subject them to any legal or judicial process)? It’s hard to see past Levant’s U.S.-style conservatism, but the issue of freedom of speech, a freedom not exactly enshrined in Canadian law, is important and an ongoing source of controversy in this country. For the record, the hate laws in Canada carry a punishment of up to 2 years in prison. A conviction may result if it can be proved that the cartoons were abusive enough to incite violence against a person or group or if the cartoons only “promoted hatred.”. This is our law.
Anyway, center-right columnist weighs in with his pro-censorship rant here. The left-wing rabble.ca site has some more-or-less coherent discussion at their boards.