Rory Leishman:
Garnett Genuis is an admirable, pro-life MP. However, with the best of intentions, he has come up with a misconceived proposal for amending the Canadian Human Rights Act that would inadvertently increase the powers of Canada’s human-rights oppressors to harass pro-lifers.
At issue is private member’s bill C-257, which Genuis introduced in Parliament last year, that would add “political belief or activity” to the prohibited grounds for discrimination in Section 2 of Canadian Human Rights Act. As it is, the Act already prohibits discrimination on the bases of “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.”
Genuis has published an article on his Parliamentary website entitled “No to Political Discrimination,” in which he maintains: “Canadians should not be discriminated against for their political beliefs or activity.”
Is that right?
Suppose a health-care facility in a First Nations community should hire an employee who turns out to be a disruptive member of a notorious white-supremacy organization. Would the inclusion of “political belief or activity” as a prohibited ground of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) prevent a health-care manager from firing that racist?
No one can know the answer to such questions, because Canada’s human rights adjudicators have no respect for the rule of law. They have chosen, instead, to confer upon themselves such vast discretionary powers that, under many circumstances, their decisions are inherently unpredictable.
Nonetheless, human rights autocrats have established a pattern over the past 40 years of consistently using their arbitrary powers to suppress the rights and freedoms of both conscientious pro-lifers and supporters of the natural family. Thus, despite the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Ontario Human Rights Commission has ordained that all Christians who reject the ideology of transgenderism must obey the Commission’s order that biological boys who think and live as girls are entitled to use girls’ washrooms.
Likewise, human rights commissions in Ontario and elsewhere have ruled that pro-life physicians must either kill a patient who qualifies for medical assistance in dying or effectively refer that patient to an unscrupulous physician who has no qualms about aiding and abetting in a suicide.
Given this track record, there is no reason to believe pro-life Christians would benefit from the addition of political opinion and activity as prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act.
What, then, can be done to revive genuine freedom of conscience and religion in Canada? By now, the answer is, or should be, plain: Abolish the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and eliminate all of our oppressive human rights commissions, federal and provincial.
Nothing less will suffice. Prior to the Charter, the common law provided Canadians with extensive protections for freedom of conscience, religion, opinion, expression, and association. Up to only a few years ago, it would have been both illegal and unthinkable for any government or judicial official to compel a conscientious pro-lifer to assist in a suicide.
Furthermore, there is no disputing that prior to enactment of the Charter, Canada was one of the freest countries on earth. Granted, Canada was also far from perfect at that time. Some Canadians abused their freedom by saying hateful things and unfairly discriminating against, for example, Jewish and Chinese Canadians to a far greater extent than occurs now.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to build a utopian society without hate speech and unfair discrimination, we Canadians have allowed arbitrary judges and human-rights commissioners to subvert democracy and the rule of law. What has been the result? We are far less free than we were throughout the pre-Charter era and we are still living in a less-than-perfect society.
Sir Winston Churchill warned that having “super men and super-planners … making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, is a violation of democracy.
“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe,” Churchill famously added. “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise…. Indeed, it has been said democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”
