McCain's compassion for the neediest

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Just as most liberals like to think of themselves as more idealistic and compassionate than conservatives, so most Canadians fondly suppose that Canada is morally superior to the United States. Yet as recent political events on both sides of the border confirm, neither assumption is true.

Consider, first, the fate of Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act. This private-members’ bill introduced by Conservative MP Ken Epp would make it a criminal offence for any person to kill a child before birth during a criminal attack on the mother. Such laws are commonplace in the United States, but under existing Canadian law, a person who deliberately kills a child in the womb by kicking, punching, stabbing or shooting the mother can only be charged with murdering or assaulting the mother.

Epp’s Bill specifically states that his Unborn Victims of Crime Act would not apply to “conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented.” Nonetheless, most liberal and socialist MPs have joined with the so-called Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada in opposing the bill. In the words of New Democrat MP Alexa McDonough, these critics fear that the legislation “could become a thin edge of the wedge in the direction of recriminalizing abortion.”

To make matters worse, Conservative Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has acceded to these concerns. Last week, he proceeded, in effect, to kill Epp’s bill, by announcing plans for an alternative government bill listing pregnancy as an aggravating factor in the commission of an assault on an expectant mother. In explaining this point of this initiative, Nicholson said: “Let me be clear, our government will not reopen the debate on abortion.”

Here we see the implacable resolve of the leading Conservatives as well the great majority of Liberals and New Democrats: That Canada shall retain the ignominious distinction among the world’s democracies of having no law to protect the right to life of children in the womb.

Barack Obama, the Democrat with the most liberal record in the United States Senate, is no less callous. While serving in the Illinois legislature, he voted against a bill passed by the majority that banned horrific partial-birth abortions. He even went so far as also to vote against a bill that mandated physicians to provide medical care for living, breathing babies who survive a botched abortion.

In contrast, Republican Senator John McCain supported the enactment of both kinds of legislation on the federal level. And he has solemnly pledged: “As President of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”

In a recent radio address, McCain insisted that Obama’s “extreme advocacy in favour of partial birth abortion and his refusal to provide medical care for babies surviving abortion should be of grave concern to reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of this issue. There is a growing consensus in America that we need to overcome narrow partisanship on this issue for both women in need and the unborn. We need more of the compassion and moral idealism that my opponent's own party, at its best, once stood for.”

Quite so. But what about Canada? Is there a growing consensus among Canadians about the urgent need to revive compassion and moral idealism for the protection of both women in need and the unborn in our country?

Evidently not. It seems that most Canadians, like most of our politicians, have no compunction about abandoning women struggling with a difficult pregnancy to the guilt and pain of abortion. And none of our major party leaders shows any disposition to safeguard the lives of even viable babies either shortly before or immediately after birth.

Our ancestors, both Liberals and Conservatives, would be appalled by such moral indifference. They understood the truth that we all have a moral obligation to help and defend even the last and the least and the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings -- including babies in the womb.

Standing up to Russian aggression

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Over the past week, Russian forces have invaded, occupied and, in effect, annexed one-fifth of neighbouring Georgia, but is that of any real concern to the Western democracies? Why should we care about the fate of a tiny country with a population of 4.4 million bordering on the Black Sea?

And eerily similar situation arose in September 1938, when the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler threatened to invade and annex the Sudetenland, a predominantly German-speaking region of neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Conservative British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain played down the crisis. Intead of rallying to the defence of democratic Czechoslovakia, he said: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is, that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."

Two days later, Chamberlain flew off to Munich; signed an agreement with Hitler to surrender the Sudetenland to Germany; and then returned in triumph to Britain, predicting "peace for our time."

Sir Winston Churchill knew better. To the dismay of most of his Conservative colleagues, he denounced the Munich agreement in the House of Commons as "a total and unmitigated defeat" for Britain and France.

Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, was no less outraged. He said: "We have seen today a gallant, civilised and democratic people betrayed and handed over to a ruthless despotism. We have seen something more. We have seen the cause of democracy, which is, in our view, the cause of civilisation and humanity, receive a terrible defeat."

This week, another brutal dictator, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has personally directed the invasion and occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two secessionist regions of Georgia. But this time, instead of cravenly betraying Georgia, the Labour Prime Minister of Britain, George Brown, and the conservative President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy are both stoutly insisting that Russia must implement an immediate ceasefire and respect the territorial integrity of democratic Georgia.

David Cameron, head of the British Conservative Party, is also backing Georgia. He maintains: "This is not some quarrel in a far-away land. What happens in Georgia directly affects us. For a start, it's about energy security. One million barrels of oil a day are delivered by the Baku-"Ceyhan oil pipeline. This runs right through Georgia, close to the areas affected by the conflict."

In Europe, as in North America, many leftists insist that the Georgian conflict starts and ends with oil. But that's nonsense. It is also about global security.

In underlining this point, Cameron explained: "History has shown that if you leave aggression to go unchecked, greater crises will only emerge in the future. Today, Russia says it is defending its citizens in South Ossetia. Where tomorrow? In Ukraine? In Central Asia? In Latvia?"

The leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Ukraine are alive to the danger. On Tuesday, they flew into Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to express their solidarity with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.

At a huge public rally in Tbilisi, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland exclaimed to the Georgian people: "Our neighbor thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no." President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine likewise admonished the crowd that "freedom is worth fighting for."

On Wednesday, Yushchenko' government followed up, by serving notice that ships attached to the Russian Black Sea fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian Port of Sevastopol and has been taking part in the Georgian conflict, will no longer be allowed to enter or leave Ukrainian waters without the permission of Ukrainian authorities.

Meanwhile, United States President George Bush has not only demanded the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia, but also ordered the United States navy and air force to land humanitarian supplies in Georgia and make sure they are distributed throughout the country.

Today, unlike 70 years ago, the leaders of most of the Western democracies seem resolved not to be weighed in the balance and found wanting in their determination to resist the aggression of a dictatorial European thug.

Student suppression of academic freedom

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Academic freedom used to be a hallmark of the Canadian university system. Apart from a few fascists, communists and other cranks on campus, everyone recognized that the free and vigorous expression of controversial ideas is essential to the life of the mind and the pursuit of truth.

Today, academic freedom is under attack as never before. On all too many campuses, freedom of expression is trumped by the contemporary canons of political correctness.

Consider, for example, the suppression of debate on abortion and the sanctity of human life. Earlier this year, the Canadian Federation of Students, an organization that purports to represent over half a million students at more than 80 universities and colleges across Canada, expressed support for students’ unions that “refuse to allow anti-choice organizations access to their resources and space.”

In conformity with this resolution, a growing number of students’ unions from Memorial University in Newfoundland to the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, have barred pro-life student organizations from using student facilities. In defending the adoption of this policy at York University, Gilary Massa, vice-president for equity of the York Federation of Students, explained that students will still be allowed to discuss abortion in student space, provided they do so “within a pro-choice realm.”

Massa sees no room for the discussion of abortion from a pro-life perspective. “These pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they’re sexist in nature,” she insists. “The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing….Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women’s rights.”
That’s typical of campus censors: They are very sure that they have an infallible grasp of the truth.

But that’s no excuse for stifling opposing opinions. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill pointed out: “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still,” because it would rob both present and future generations “of the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court agreed. In his celebrated dissent in the Abrams case, he wrote: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition.”

Holmes added: “But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”

The thought police on campus, as in Canada’s so-called human rights tribunals, are bent on stifling the expression of all opinions that they deem liable to expose women, homosexuals, Palestinians or some other favoured group to hatred or contempt. Holmes decried such censorship. He warned: “I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”

Of course, it’s evident that pro-choice zealots have reason to fear that they cannot win in an open and uninhibited public debate on abortion. Now that ultrasound images of babies in the womb are readily available, the more people contemplate the sanctity of nascent human life, the more they are apt to grasp the self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; including the right to life.

Abolish human rights censorship powers

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

While the Canadian Human Rights Commission has bowed to widespread public opposition to proceeding with a complaint against Maclean’s magazine brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress, less powerful and prominent Canadians should beware: For them, the threat of censorship remains.

Even Maclean’s remains under investigation by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in a parallel case initiated by Mohamed Elmasry, National President of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He has charged the magazine with expressing hatred and contempt for Muslims with the publication of an article by Mark Steyn on the escalating threat posed by radical Islam to democracy and freedom under law in Canada and other Western countries.

Elmasry has a low tolerance for criticism. In a newsletter published by the Canadian Islamic Congress, he has charged me and three other commentators with bearing primary responsibility for “today’s wave of anti-Islam vitriol” in Canada. And he has tried, but failed, to pressure President Paul Davenport of the University of Western Ontario into censuring Professor Salim Mansur for allegedly publishing columns "filled with hate-literature expressions" that "consistently denigrate Islam and Muslims.”

Ironically, it is not I, Mansur, Steyn or the editors of Maclean’s who are ill-serving Canadian Muslims, but Muslim leaders like Elmasry. By using Canada’s human rights tribunals to intimidate and silence their critics, these authoritarian Muslims are undermining the fundamental freedoms of all Canadians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Of course, more than a few non-Muslims also have scant regard for the historic rights of Canadians to freedom of expression. Recently, a gay rights activist threatened to denounce me to the Ontario Human Rights Commission for daring to suggest in a column published by The Free Press on Nov. 17, 2007, that same-sex couples do not have an equality right to adopt children. Specifically, I wrote: “Given that very few children raised by a homosexual couple have grown to adulthood, it is impossible to prove the competence of homosexuals as parents.”

In response to that statement, an array of intellectuals derided me as ignorant, malicious and ill-informed. But for all their bluster, no one could cite a single study to refute the experience of centuries which indicates that with rare exceptions, children thrive best under the care and guidance of their natural parents who are united in the traditional bonds of marriage between husband and wife.

However, truth is of no account in the censorship proceedings of a human rights tribunal. Typically, section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits the publication of even true statements that are likely to expose a protected person to hatred or contempt.

In general, the rules of evidence that have evolved over centuries to protect the innocent in a court of law do not apply in a human rights tribunal. Moreover, the federal and provincial human rights commissions pick up all the legal costs of complainants like Elmasry, but the accused can easily accumulate more than $100,000 in crippling legal bills.

Besides, the prospects for mounting a successful defence in a human rights tribunal are remote. With all the rules stacked against the defendant, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has never lost a case under section 13.

In the end, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, like its federal counterpart, will probably not dare to censure a powerful publication like Maclean’s for the publication of Steyn’s article. But let us suppose otherwise. If a human rights tribunal were to order Steyn to apologize for his article and to pay several thousand dollars in damages to Elmasry, would Steyn comply?

Not likely. And neither would any other self-respecting journalist obey such an oppressive edict. They would all prefer to end up in jail as a prisoner of conscience rather than obey a court order requiring them to apologize for upholding the truth as they are given to see the truth.

There is only one sure way to prevent such a travesty of justice in Canada. The censorship powers of our human rights tribunals must be abolished: The sooner, the better.

Mounting suppression of freedom in Canada

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
Thanks to a recent ruling of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, faithful Christians are free to publish their opposition to same-sex marriage in an Ontario newspaper or magazine. However, that is not the case in some other provinces where anyone who publishes anything opposed to the ideology of gay rights could be convicted by a human rights tribunal for expressing contempt for homosexuals.
And much the same goes for the publication of anything that might offend the members of any race, nationality or other class of persons favoured in human rights legislation. The editors of Maclean's magazine are aware of the danger: They are under investigation by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for publishing a controversial article by Mark Steyn titled “Why the Future Belongs to Islam."
Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall of the Ontario Human Rights Commission would also like to punish Maclean's. In a bizarre statement on April 9, she derided Steyn's article as an “explicit expression of Islamophobia” that the Commission would have censored, except for the fact that the Ontario Human Rights Code “does not give the Commission the jurisdiction to deal with the content of magazine articles through the complaints process.”
Hall wistfully added: “Limits to freedom of expression under some other human rights legislation in Canada are broader.” Quite so.
For example, the British Columbia Human Rights Code prohibits the publication of any matter that “is likely to expose a person or class of persons to hatred or contempt because of the “race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or that group or class of persons.” The Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act includes a similar provision.
Canadians should be especially wary of stating anything in a newspaper or magazine published in Alberta or British Columbia that might offend some Muslim zealot, gay rights activist or a member of any other class of persons covered in the human rights laws of these provinces. Furthermore, Canadians in all provinces should beware of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits posting anything on the internet “that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt” by reason of that person or persons identification with 14 different prohibited grounds of discrimination, including race, religion and sexual orientation.
Note that one might lawfully publish an article in a newspaper or magazine in Ontario or some other province, yet run afoul of the Canadian Human Rights Commission if the newspaper or magazine republishes that same article on the internet. Thus, while Maclean's has been exempted from punishment by the Ontario Human Rights Commission for publishing the Steyn article, Muslim complaints against the magazine for posting the article on the internet are pending before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Correspondingly, the Canadian Commission has placed Catholic Insight under investigation, because a reader in Edmonton took offence at the republication on the internet of articles upholding Catholic teaching on homosexuality that are exempt from censure under Ontario law.
If Commissioner Hall had her way, the Ontario Legislature would amend the Ontario Human Rights Act to expand the censorship powers of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Let us hope that the majority of Liberals and Conservatives, if not New Democrats, in the province are not so besotted with political correctness that they would be willing to go along with such a freedom-stifling measure.
The powers of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal are already excessive. On April 25, it decreed that Christian Horizons, the largest provider of residential services for developmentally disabled adults in Ontario, must pay $23,000 plus two years' wages to a lesbian employee who had been dismissed for violating the Evangelical Christian agency's moral code which requires employees to uphold the basic tenets of Christian morality, including abstinence from sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.
The outrageous attack on Christian Horizons underlines the freedom-stifling propensities of all of Canada's human rights tribunals. They should be deprived of all their coercive powers. Until then, Canadians cannot be secure in their inalienable rights to fundamental freedoms of expression, association and religion.

In Praise of Deference

The National Post
By Rory Leishman
With a compelling dissent in Wednesday’s five-to-four ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. D.B., Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein confirmed his distinction as one of the few appeal court judges in Canada who consistently respects the legislative authority of Parliament and the provincial legislatures under the Constitution of Canada.
At issue in this case was an appropriate sentence for D.B., a violent offender who had pummeled 18-year-old Jonathan Romero to death in a brawl outside a Hamilton shopping mall in 2003. Under a court order, D.B. cannot be named, because he was 17 years old at the time of the offence.
The altercation began when D.B. challenged Romero to a fight. Romero refused and looked away, whereupon D.B. knocked him to the ground with a devastating sucker punch.
Rothstein relates: “D.B. then continued the assault by jumping on top of Romero and punching him four more times on the face and neck. Romero was knocked unconscious and unable to defend himself.” By the time paramedics arrived, Romero was showing no vital signs. He was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead.
At trial, D.B. pleaded guilty to manslaughter, an offence punishable by a maximum youth sentence of just three years incarceration under the Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2002. However, in section 72, the Act authorizes the imposition of a stiffer adult sentence on a young offender aged 14 to 17 who has been found guilty of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, aggravated sexual assault or for a third offence that resulted in serious bodily harm.
Prior to sentencing D.B., the court was informed that he had a history of frequent fights and repeated suspensions from high school for “disruptive behaviour.” At the time of his assault on Romero, he was bound by two separate probation orders arising out of convictions for possession of stolen property and robbery, both involving threats and intimidation. While in custody awaiting disposition and sentence for manslaughter, he had engaged in several assaults with other inmates and staff members.
On this basis, the Crown asked the court to impose a stiffer adult sentence on D.B. Under terms of section 72, the onus was then on D.B. to persuade the court that a youth sentence would be more appropriate.
Counsel for D.B. argued that the reverse onus of proof in section 72 violates the right of violent young offenders to “life, liberty and security of the person” in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The trial judge accepted this argument and sentenced D.B. to the maximum three-year youth term. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the ruling.
Now the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada has definitively struck down the reverse onus of proof in section 72. In so doing, the Court has overturned the considered judgment of the Chretien Liberal government and the majority in the Parliament of Canada who backed enactment of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
During hearings on his appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, Rothstein promised to exercise due judicial restraint. He said: “The important thing is that judges, when applying the Charter, have to have recognition that the statute they're dealing with was passed by a democratically elected legislature; that it's unlikely the legislature intended to violate the Charter.”
Thus, in R. v. D.B., Rothstein held that in enacting section 72, “it was entirely appropriate for Parliament to consider the competing interests, on the one hand, of young persons to have their reduced moral blameworthiness taken into account and, on the other, of society to be protected from violent young offenders and to have confidence that the youth justice system ensures the accountability of violent young offenders. This balancing was a legitimate exercise of Parliament’s authority to determine how best to penalize particular criminal activity….”
While Abella, McLachlin and most other appellate judges have no compunction about rewriting duly enacted laws to suit their personal policy preferences, Rothstein respacts the separation of legislative and judicial powers. Would that we had more principled and democratic judges like him.

Court changes libel law for journalists

The London Free Press,
By Rory Leishman
Under the traditional principles of the common law as affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, journalists are no less subject than other citizens to the law of libel. Is that fair and reasonable? Or should the law of libel include a special exception for journalists to further vigorous debate on issues of public interest?
Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada served notice that it will consider this policy of the law in the context of an appeal by the Ottawa Citizen of a defamation conviction for publishing false and defamatory statements about the participation of OPP Constable Dennis Cusson in rescue operations at the World Trade Centre following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Under the law of libel in Canada, the agents of the newspaper had only one line of defence: Like all other citizens in a similar libel action, they had to prove their defamatory statements were true.
As it turned out, the Citizen could persuade a jury in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that only some, but not all, of its defamatory allegations against the police officer were true. On this basis, the trial judge awarded Cusson $100,000 in damages against the newspaper.
Backed by lawyers for the Globe and Mail and the Canadian Newspaper Association, counsel for the Citizen maintained in arguments before the Ontario Court of Appeal that the existing law of libel as it applies to journalists is too strict. The media lawyers called upon the court to uphold the guarantee of freedom of the press in section 2 of the Charter, by following the unprecedented ruling of the British House of Lords in Reynolds v. Times Newspapers Ltd. (2001), which held that it is a sufficient defence for journalists in a libel action to show that although they had published a false and defamatory statement, they and their editors had taken reasonable steps to ensure that the story was fair and its contents were true and accurate.
In an unanimous ruling last year, a three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal accepted this argument. Instead of upholding the law of libel as defined in a long line of precedents of the Supreme Court of Canada, these three judges on the Ontario Court of Appeal presumed to impose responsible journalism in the public interest as a defence for journalists in an Ontario libel action.
On this basis, it might be supposed that the Citizen would get off scot free, but not so. The Court of Appeal did not so much as order a new trial for the newspaper. Instead, it upheld the conviction of the Citizen on the ground that the newspaper had violated the law of libel as that law stood, before the court changed it.
Here we have a clear example of judicial activism and its chaotic consequences: There can be no rule of law, or any certainty about the requirements of the law, in a country where judges take it upon themselves to make major changes in the law as seem most appropriate to them.
In reasons for the Court of Appeal in Cusson, Mr. Justice Robert Sharpe frankly admitted that the court was imposing a far-reaching change in the law. He said: “In my view, it is open to this court to modify Ontario’s common law of defamation by adopting this new and distinctive defence if that change would accomplish a more appropriate balance between the Charter values of protection of reputation and respect for freedom of expression.”
What comes next? Upon further appeal, will judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada also trespass upon the legislative powers, by presuming to impose yet another change in the law of libel as seems best to them?
That remains to be seen. In the meantime, regardless of what the elected representatives of the people in the Ontario Legislature might prefer, the Ontario Court of Appeal has decreed that there shall be one law of libel for journalists in Ontario, and another for everyone else.