In Canada, where the national human rights hate speech law has been used by petty martinets to punish those with whom they disagree, good news for all:
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that Section 13, Canada’s much maligned human rights hate speech law, is an unconstitutional violation of the Charter right to free expression because of its penalty provisions.
Canada has been a poster-child for hate-speech laws gone haywire. As usual with most left-wing ideas, this one began with good intentions that brought more misery than the problems they were supposed to solve, especially when one zealot makes it his business to use it for personal vendettas:
It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.
Will Canada’s over-reach on hate speech and its subsequent problems suggest to us here below the 49th parallel that similar lessons may be learned in the health care area? Probably not in either, sad to say.
