Good legislative news from Canada
From the
Ottawa Sun:
Hate speech provision in Human Rights Act struck down
An Alberta MP has succeeded in his bid to repeal a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act long seen by free-speech advocates as a tool to squelch dissenting opinions.
Conservative MP Brian Storseth saw the Senate give third and final reading late Wednesday to his Bill C-304 which repeals Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, an act that had been used to, among other things, attack the writings of Sun News Network's Ezra Levant and Maclean's columnist Mark Steyn.
Section 13 ostensibly banned hate speech on the Internet and left it up to the quasi-judicial human rights commission to determine what qualified as "hate speech."
But, unlike a court, there was no presumption of innocence of those accused of hate speech by the commission.
Instead, those accused had to prove their innocence.
Mark's dealings with this beggars belief -- you can read more
here (long form) or
here (synopsis).
Posted by DaveH at June 27, 2013 8:27 PM