Janice Tibbetts Canwest News Service - November 23, 2008

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Human Rights Commission will release an independent report Monday that is expected to set the stage for a fresh round of debate over whether the organization should get out of the business of policing hate messages spread on the Internet.

The results of the six-month review come amid mounting pressure for the federal government to strip the commission's power to investigate Internet speech on grounds that it unjustly curtails free speech. The Conservative party, at its policy convention this month, voted in favour of a resolution to eliminate the human rights commission's authority to "regulate, receive, investigate or adjudicate complaints" in the area.Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who oversees the human rights commission, voted for the resolution, opening the door for renewed calls to legislate from free-speech advocates. Thus far, the government has avoided becoming entangled in the issue. Nicholson's press secretary, Darren Eke, suggested that the minister has no immediate plans to gut the 2001 provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which permits the body to fine or otherwise censure individuals whose Internet postings are "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." "We look forward to receiving the report," said Eke, adding that Nicholson would like to see a replay of a motion in the last Parliament, launched by Conservative MP Rick Dykstra, for the House of Commons justice committee to study the issue and then report to Parliament. Such a motion, however, cannot produce a law unless the government decides to go ahead with legislation based on the committee report. "The minister would welcome a similar motion being tabled in the committee this Parliament," said Eke. Debate over the power of the human rights commission to probe complaints of hate speech on the Internet has been festering for about one year, mainly in online blogs but with a sprinkling of coverage in the mainstream news media. A key issue is whether the commission's mandate in the field is already outdated and restricts free speech among the mushrooming numbers of bloggers and online publications. The investigative power over hate speech was first created more than 30 years ago to apply to telephone communications but the law was expanded in 2001 to include the Internet. Critics contend that the human rights power, which was intended to shut down egregious dissemination of hate propaganda, is being abused with nuisance complaints that would not survive a court challenge. Liberal MP Keith Martin has introduced a private members' motion to eliminate the commission's investigative power to police the Internet and he says he will lobby the all-party Commons justice committee to hold public hearings and submit a report that he hopes will become the basis for government legislation. Critics, including Martin, also contend there are hate-crime laws in the Criminal Code to punish true offenders, rather than those who have merely offended rather than promoted hate. "We have a right to be protected from hate speech but we do not have a right not to be offended," he said. Martin introduced a similar motion in the last Parliament after the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of Muslim law students said they were hauling Maclean's magazine before federal and provincial human rights commissions for publishing an excerpt from columnist Mark Steyn's book America Alone. The groups said the book espoused Islamic hate messages. Amid an outcry that persisted for months, chief commissioner Jennifer Lynch announced a review last June, acknowledging that "growing public interest and continued advances in technology all point to a need to examine issues surrounding hate on the Internet." She noted that the "rapid shift from print to electronic news," which has thrust the media under the human rights microscope, was not fully foreseen seven years ago. The commission appointed Richard Moon, a constitutional and free speech expert at University of Windsor, to conduct the study. However any legislative changes to strip the commission power must come from Parliament, said Philippe Dufresne, commission director of litigation. He added Internet hate comprises only about two per cent of complaints filed with the commission, which mainly focuses on investigations involving employment and services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper weighed in on the issue last month, telling reporters on Parliament Hill that "everyone has some concerns about this." "This is a complicated area of law, balancing what most people understand to mean by free speech with obvious desire to not have speech that would be intended to incite hatred towards particular groups or individuals." The Catholic Civil Rights League wrote Harper late last week urging his government to follow is party's policy resolution with legislation to end the human rights commission's power to probe hate complaints.(original link)

THE DOCTOR: If it's not copyrighted material, it's child pornography. If it's not child porn, it's hackers. If it's not hackers, it's hate speech. If it's not hate speech, it's "dissenting opinion". These are all excuses to take the freedom of the internet away. It is true that the actions of the commission will likely be to no longer attempt to enforce rules of hate speech over the internet. This was likely planned well in advance to normalize the idea of internet censorship in one form or another.The internet 1 was mostly HTML, bitmaps and simple java applets. Internet 2 (which we all use now) has seen an increase in 'compiled' pages of information from scripts, social networking applications such as MySpace and Facebook and the search engine "war", which has been won by Google. Internet 3 will be mostly 'paid-for access', (having different accessible tiers of data and surfing abilities), depending on how much you want to spend. It will also include many more 'online apps'. Office, graphic and even video programs will be on a server somewhere, and people would log in (and pay) to use it. Despite technological fact, these will be seen as improved over locally installed software because you "don't ever have to back anything up" and "you can work from any computer with an internet connection". It will be totally transparent security-wise, meaning there will not be any. This commission investigation was a test on the public to see if they would put up with it. People see hate speech all the time on the internet. On public sites like Youtube and virtually any message board there is going to be something said somewhere that someone would be offended by. Most people pay no attention and shrug it off, if they even register it mentally. Others feel if they are offended by something then it is someone else's fault and they MUST be compensated.It is up to that individual if they want to be offended by something. It is them that chooses to make a big deal about an anonymous internet comment most likely made by a child who doesn't know any better. People should know better in the first place, but if not and an offensive comment is made it should just be ignored. Perhaps sort of "parenting software" should be employed for those who are easily offended. They censor the client computer of offensive pictures and phrases. They don't see it, so they don't complain. They will, however, point out that the problem that it exists in the first place.