A Victory For Free Speech
With the release of the Moon report, Parliament has no excuse not to kill the censorship powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission
Comment by Ezra Levant, November 25, 2008, in the National Post
The scandal-plagued Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has had a rough year — and it just got rougher.
On Monday, Richard Moon, a University of Windsor law professor, released his report on the CHRC’s troubling penchant for Internet censorship. Moon had been hand-picked by the CHRC to review its conduct, so the whole arrangement had at first looked pretty cozy. In the past, Moon had written favourably about government limits on free speech. That, plus a large payment for his brief report, made Moon’s review look like a PR stunt, especially since the CHRC simultaneously hired the pricey lobby firm Hill & Knowlton to provide “communications” advice. It all looked like a strategy to offset six months of bad press — not to mention embarrassing investigations into the CHRC’s conduct by the RCMP, the Privacy Commissioner and Parliament’s Justice Committee. Continue Reading »
