Federal Court Rules: CHRC will get their fiendish wish;
Lemire has to fight on two fronts in two courts
Marc Lemire now has to fight against Section 13 at the Court of Appeals
and against a lifetime gag order at the “Human Rights” Tribunal
In what has become more and more typical in Canada’s repressive thought control regime, the Federal Court of Appeals has dismissed the stay motion filed by Marc Lemire. The stay motion was seeking a short reprieve to allow the court to actually rule on Canada’s draconian shameful internet censorship legislation – Section 13 of the Canadian “Human Rights” Act.
To most people, it seems logical to actually find out if the legislation you’re fighting is even constitutional and legitimate before they pass sentence on you … but hey this is CanaDUUH. Sentence first, then we’ll see if the laws ok later.
The Ruling:
In the 3 page ruling by Justice David Stratas dismissing the stay motion, J.A. Stratas totally dismissed the idea and concept of freedom of expression. While many Canadians love and cherish freedom, and the Charter of Rights of Freedom’s enshrines freedom of expression as a “fundamental right”, the courts and government bureaucrats simply dismiss it as if it is not there, and pay nothing more than mere lip service to it. While reading the decision, I was surprised not to see a statement such as “freedom of speech is an American concept”. As crazy as that is, that’s what the Canadian Human Rights Commission thinks, and their senior investigator testified to it, when questioned under oath by courageous lawyer Barbara Kulaszka.
The Justice found that “the appellant (lemire) invites this Court to infer the existence of irreparable harm from the possible denial of freedom of expression to be caused as a result of remedies granted by the Tribunal” Gee, even the Supreme Court of Canada found that Section 13 *WAS* a violation of our freedom of expression. How hard is it to really believe that if the “Human Rights” Tribunal slaps a lifetime speech ban on Marc Lemire that it won’t cause “irreparable harm”. And this is not just a hypothetical … the Tribunal has a 100% conviction rate, and a 100% rate of issuing lifetime gag orders / speech bans.
The ruling by Stratas gets even more bizarre. The “Justice” that writes that “…there is no evidence setting out what expression the appellant intends to engage in…” Get that!! Marc Lemire would have to set out what he intends to say, in order to get a stay of the gag order, before the underlying law is even found to be legitimate?
This is straight out of the movie Minority Report, where government agents would swoop in and arrest people for “Pre-Crimes” before they committed the crime. Welcome to Absurdastan Canada… where in order for Canadians to enjoy freedom of expression, we have to pass it by the government in sworn legal affidavits and have some judge review it?
“Under section 13, citizens are subject to lifetime speech bans–not in the Soviet Union, not in Saudi Arabia, but in Canada. Section 13 prosecutes not crimes but pre-crimes, crimes that have not yet taken place. The phrase “pre-crime”, by the way, comes from a dystopian science fiction story written by Philip K. Dick in 1956. Half a century later, in one of the oldest, most stable democratic societies on the planet, we’re living it…”
Mark Steyn Oct 5, 2009 |
Even if we were to follow the Judges “logic”, what exactly would/could Marc Lemire have even put in an affidavit about his future thoughts? It may take up to six months for a ruling on if the law is even legitimate, how does anyone know exactly what they are going to say, weeks or months in advance?
Unlike President Obama, whose every word is scripted and fed to him on a teleprompter, not many people can script every possible word they may want to say in the future. The Section 13 censorship law is extremely vague and hinges on specific words used and in what fashion the words might “expose” someone to “hatred” and/or “contempt”. How could anyone put into an affidavit exactly what and how they might want to discuss a situation months into the future.
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Two-Front – Maximum Disruption Campaign
After nine years of fighting Marc Lemire, the CHRC must have realized that he is not going to give up very easily. So they took a page out serial Section 13 complainers handbook; Richard Warman’s “Maximum Disruption”. The basic strategy of “Maximum Disruption” is to hit your enemies on as many fronts as possible, and that’s exactly what the CHRC has done.
Marc Lemire now has to fight in two different legal venues simultaneously. Firstly at the Federal Court of Appeals where the judges are going to determine if the draconian censorship legislation Section 13 is even constitutional. And at the same time, in front of the Canadian “Human Rights” Tribunal, where Lemire has to fight for his basic freedom and fight off a lifetime speech ban (which if Lemire violates could mean up to 5 years in jail!)
The CHRC is hoping that Lemire’s resources will be drained and he will not be able to fight both cases. This is why we desperately need your help.
Impact Persecutions to Silence Thought
All of this vagueness, and oddities like submitting an affidavit on things you might say in the future, is more proof that Section 13 can not be saved, reformed or tinkered with. The entire legislative framework is corrupt from top to bottom, and completely rigged against everyone that is ensnared by it.
The end game for the censors and enemies of freedom is crystal clear: to Silence Thought. That’s why they spend millions of dollars on these Section 13 cases and even while their censorship empire is crumbling around them, they keep spending and spending. After all, how many people who have seen what is happening to Marc Lemire would dare post controversial “politically incorrect” opinions on the internet?
It’s just easier to self-censor yourself, and avoid the 9+ years of harassment. And that’s how thought and expressive activity gets silenced. The censors undertake ‘impact prosecutions’ and grind those victims that dare to resist into the pavement under the weight of their unlimited tax-payer funded money and egged on by their cheerleaders in special interest groups and the judiciary.
“Now what? If I write about censorship will the censors censor that? If I were to defend someone’s right in principle to be rude about radical Islam, it might constitute my being rude in practice about radical Islam which might be misunderstood by hypersensitive types as rudeness toward Islam generally which might be misunderstood as hate speech rather than just bad manners. Who knows? All in all it’s much safer to write about daisies. Such pretty flowers.”
John Robson | Ottawa Citizen “Self-censorship? Me? Absolutely!” Dec 14, 2007 |
Take a look at the Marc Lemire case. This is the 9th year of fighting the censors … all because he posted a SINGLE document on his website, that he didn’t write or endorse, and was simply a transcript of a radio show broadcast out of the United States. As soon as Lemire was notified that someone took issue with the document, he took it immediately down, and undertook to never post it again.
That made little difference to the censors. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, and the “Human Rights” Commission – in their parting “F*ck You” to freedom – continue to spend money like drunken sailors at the bar, to silence Marc Lemire.
As a notable freedom fighter would say: disgusting!
Here is a copy of the full ruling by the Federal Court:
Section 13 is at odds with this country’s entire legal inheritance, stretching back to Magna Carta. Back then, if you recall–in 1215–human rights meant that the king could be restrained by his subjects. Eight hundred years later, Canada’s pseudo-human rights apparatchiks of the commission have entirely inverted that proposition, and human rights now means that the subjects get restrained by the crown in the cause of so-called collective rights that can be regulated only by the state.
Mark Steyn Oct 5, 2009 |