Conflicted and Challenged

It's a tough one. On the one hand, it would be awfully nice if differences among people were respected. On the other hand, it is difficult to prevent people from advancing their opinions about those differences. On the one hand, Canadians are fond of considering themselves generally to be open-minded, fair, invested in equality and the concept of multiculturalism. On the other hand, there are instances when multiculturalism has encouraged the introduction of cultural and heritage values that smack up against Canadian egalitarianism and respect for others.

Aside from which we're not all invested with patient kindliness. Some of us are openly critical of others who bring their cultural values along with them, rejecting those that most Canadians value. Most bedevilling is the more relatively recent importation of cultural/religious animosities against other cultural-religious groups, practised in one's country of origin, and not at all welcome for installation in Canada. Apart from which the country has its own home-grown religious, ethnic, racial and cultural bigots.

Nothing is ever as simple as we'd like it to be. In the best of all possible worlds people would get on with their lives, without the need to impose their views publicly when they represent views that are inimical to the multiracial-tolerant nature of Canadian society. Ideally, we should be invested with enough respect for others that we are truly a tolerant society. The fusion of tolerance and trust adding up to acceptance of others simply seems to elude us, although most people do make the effort.

We'd like to protect ourselves as a society from the ravages of hate-mongering, of deliberate slander seeking to cause harm to those whom we distrust or feel we have reason to dislike. It's a battle against human nature, alas. Where 'belonging' to a specific ethnic or religious or political group is a human comfort, and where disparaging those who are different represents a human fault. We seem to require the insider-outsider equation to feel ourselves fully confident.

We took comfort, as Canadians, in knowing that our various Human Rights Tribunals upheld the rights of Canadians to be protected from the spreading of hate against readily identifiable groups different than the majority in some way. We took pride in the fact that the country's laws protected its citizens against violations of our human rights. And then everything began to unravel. Something like making a home so airtight that fresh air was never allowed in.

Freedom of speech is a basic tenet of Canada's human rights guarantees. In silencing voices that offended by their deliberate intent to criticize or to belittle others we created a monster of censorship and political correctness that backfired on society. In ways other than condemning racists for their incendiarily hateful rants targeting minorities. People whose moral or religious convictions were assailed because they found it impossible to accept looser interpretations of social or cultural values were also targeted.

We're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater in eradicating Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, much as it creates more pain than it was meant to. For there are legal guarantees under the law of the land against deliberately, distinctly injurious slurs against others that may create social disequilibrium of a truly serious nature, and we can resort to them, through our courts of law. Still, it's a tough call to make, to yank a social responsibility tool out of existence.

But it's time had come. From its original purpose of ensuring equal treatment of minorities through remediation to its latter-day conception of brutal punishment for those it felt had overstepped the boundaries of political correctness, Canada's Human Rights Commissions have neatly managed to put themselves out of business.

Rescat en pace.