The Shotgun Blog
« À la recherche du etatist perdu | Main | A newsroom doing it's job »
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tim Hudak would disband the Ontario Human Rights Commission
Tim Hudak, a candidate for PC Leader, has announced that he would scrap the conterversial court known as the Human Rights Commission.
For too long, individual rights have been trampled and ignored by an increasingly dysfunctional Human Rights bureaucracy. The McGuinty government’s system has advanced nuisance claims and denied justice and legitimate complaints, costing individuals and businesses thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs and clogging the system.
“Under Dalton McGuinty’s leadership, the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Tribunal have lost sight of their real job – to protect individuals in real cases of discrimination and harassment,” said Tim.
Tim proposes that the Tribunal be scrapped in favour of a court-based system operating under the rules of evidence. Complaints would go to specially trained judges, similar to the existing Domestic Violence and Family Law Courts. These judges would have a mandate to hear real cases of discrimination or harassment – not politically-motivated cases of hurt feelings.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on May 13, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Wow, Randy Hillier has a lot of supporters.
BTW What a terrible photo of Hudak on his website. He does not look like Premier material.
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-13 9:24:59 AM
That's a good start Tim.
Break up the foreign owned monopoly Beer Stores in Ontario in favour variety store outlets the same as in Newfoundland and Quebec and you have my vote Tim.
Posted by: Joe Molnar | 2009-05-13 9:33:23 AM
Just want to offer congratulations to the people posting articles to the Western Standard over the last couple of weeks.
Relevant, timely and important issues. Thoughtful analysis and a very welcome breath of fresh air from some of the nonsense that seemed to have dominated before.
Keep up the great work!
Epsi
Posted by: epsilon | 2009-05-13 10:43:25 AM
It's about time. It still puzzles me that governments at all levels have let these hugely unpopular star chambers persists for as long as they have. The longer they let them continue, the worse they look.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-13 10:56:58 AM
Epsi wrote:
"Relevant, timely and important issues. Thoughtful analysis and a very welcome breath of fresh air from some of the nonsense that seemed to have dominated before.
Keep up the great work!"
Translation: you're not threatening Conservative hacks anymore with libertarianism. Keep it up!
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-13 11:25:06 AM
quick someone write a post about legalizing pot!
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-13 11:33:45 AM
Only two days shy of three weeks more...
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-13 11:52:11 AM
Translation: you're not threatening Conservative hacks anymore with libertarianism. Keep it up!
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-13 11:25:06 AM
A more likely scenario is that the Toronto "libertarian" scribblers are holed up in an underground parking lot that is surrounded by Tamils, don't have Internet access, and are too afraid to leave. One of the unintended consequences of unrestricted immigration.
Posted by: The Stig | 2009-05-13 12:23:02 PM
we still have some longshot odds on whether His Majesty,
Marc Emery, WS freedom hero # 003, walks or swings.
.$20---. who's gonna be first?
Odds shifted considerably since his 2 co accused betrayed him to the DEA.. but if youy are a true freedom fighter you just know none of this matters and Emery will walk away a free man- honoured for his service to the right to be intoxicazted -
he will b back in your face prouder and louder than ever--
_________________advertisement_________________________
prohibition is bad
legalization is good
that's all there is to it
send $20 to the
419 Walkathon/Runaround for Marc Emery
together, we can make a difference
Posted by: 419 | 2009-05-13 12:23:02 PM
Funny Stig.
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-13 12:25:01 PM
The problem is not the lack of rules of evidence.
The problem is not that a tribunal cannot administer the Human Rights Code as fairly as a court.
The problem is: the Human Rights Code.
Ezra Levant's problems, and Macleans' problems, were not the result of poor rules of evidence or less-professional-than-judges adjudicators. Their problems were: OPPRESSIVE LEGISLATION...BANS that have no place in a free society.
I'm beginning to think that if there is a point to miss, PC leadership contestants will be the first to do so.
Posted by: Paul McKeever | 2009-05-13 8:10:30 PM
419 and many other on this blog remind me why I can never consider conservatives moral persons.
They openly cheer for the use of force against specific individuals and revel in its application -- all because they don't approve of the person's lifestyle.
That is hatred of freedom in its purest form. It's a dark and dangerous emotion. It's why I own guns.
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-14 12:12:13 PM
No, Robert, you own guns because you also approve of the use of force against specific individuals. And please don't give us a bunch of hooey about a life of crime like Emery's being a "lifestyle." Using this impossibly loose standard, being a rapacious warlord guilty of causing tens of millions of deaths could also be considered a "lifestyle," and therefore legitimate.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-14 12:27:22 PM
Paul, your point that the bans should not exist in the first place is well taken. But it is the loosey-goosey standards of evidence and procedurals that allow these quasi-judicial monstrosities to actually get away with their assault on liberty.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-14 12:28:45 PM
Shane,
The key difference you are missing is that Mr. Emery's lifestyle is not hurting anyone else. Rather like wearing a silly hat. It may be destructive to your reputation and may make it harder for you to get a job. But the silly hat is not hurting anyone else, so why would you ban the silly hat?
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-14 12:40:11 PM
Hugh, I suppose that depends on how you define "hurt." If you describe it in the narrow sense of "to cause personal injury," then non-violent robberies, burglaries, and fraud don't hurt anyone either.
Furthermore, being stoned can cause you to hurt yourself or someone else, even unintentionally. The act of driving a car drunk in itself hurts no one, but the accident that is many times more likely to occur certainly can. Just like an unscrupulous arms dealer selling guns to terrorists, the direct act harms no one, but it facilitates trouble down the road.
The trouble with this argument is it looks only at immediate consequences, rather than more distant, unforeseen ones. Who knows how many people Emery has helped along the road to full-scale, hard-drug addictions, or even to get shot in grow-rips of people growing from the seeds he sold?
Bottom line: Emery is a drug smuggler. Drug smuggler and harmless lifestyle are mutually exclusive terms.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-14 1:01:51 PM
Well I know that you've had this argument several times on this blog. And I'm sure you've had the arguement plenty of times outside of this blog. We don't really have to rehash it.
Let me just say that the harm to society done by drugs does not compare to the harm done by making it illeagal. (funding criminal organizations for example)
(By the way the 'gateway drug' argument is the most idiotic in the whole debate. Did you know that 100% of cocaine users have consumed H2O? We should ban H2O to prevent people from using cocaine!)
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-14 1:22:32 PM
Well I know that you've had this argument several times on this blog. And I'm sure you've had the arguement plenty of times outside of this blog. We don't really have to rehash it.
And yet you tried.
Let me just say that the harm to society done by drugs does not compare to the harm done by making it illeagal. (funding criminal organizations for example)
And you continue to rehash it. Drugs was not supposed to be the subject of this forum at all. Didn't you threaten to kick posters for straying off topic a while back? But it's okay for you, is that it?
(By the way the 'gateway drug' argument is the most idiotic in the whole debate. Did you know that 100% of cocaine users have consumed H2O? We should ban H2O to prevent people from using cocaine!)
I know that 20 percent of marijuana users go on to harder drugs, as opposed to only five percent of those who don't use marijuana. Making "gateway" arguments based on all or most of the population makes no sense, since you can't have a fourfold increase on 90 percent. But a jump from 5 to 20 percent is most certainly significant.
You have not emerged from this for the better, Hugh. You said that we don't have to rehash the drug argument, and then proceeded to do just that. You threatened to delete off-topic posts a few months ago (which, along with Janet's flipping off people from behind a slammed door, provoked a mini-rebellion among the regulars), but have no trouble with making off-topic posts yourself. You really are quite the hypocrite.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-14 1:49:06 PM
If I'm a hypocrite then either you agree with what I do or you agree with what I say. Either way you are in agreement with me!
And I appreciate your support...
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-14 1:59:56 PM
"If I'm a hypocrite then either you agree with what I do or you agree with what I say. Either way you are in agreement with me!"
Your logic, please?
P.S. This isn't the equivalent of a fourth-grade nothing's "I know you are, but what am I," is it?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-14 8:29:03 PM
I'm rubber and you are glue
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-15 10:18:59 AM
Since our last encounter, Hugh, your credibility has reached rock bottom...and you have started to dig. If you've nothing intelligent to say, then say nothing. It is better to keep your mouth shut, and be thought a fool, than to open it, and remove all doubt.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-15 11:22:29 AM
Ha ha ha, that bounced of me and hit you! nah nah nah nah...
Posted by: hughmacintyre | 2009-05-15 11:30:29 AM
Hmm. He kind of missed the boat on this one. It's correct that the system by which complaints were made to the Ontario Human Rights Commission was, to put it bluntly, broken. The Commission was and remains a controversial organization, and the system was widely known for being dysfunctional.
And, as of just over a year ago (June 30, 2008), the Commission's role in the process was pretty much eliminated. Its mandate shifted, and it no longer handles complaints.
Now, things go straight to the Tribunal. Which has been revamped and improved.
What's more: The Courts, for the first time in Ontario history, now DO have jurisdiction to hear claims based in discrimination under certain circumstances. I've spoken to at least one judge who is *not impressed* by this turn of events, believing that the Courts are not the place for these issues to be adjudicated.
And if you look at the volume and nature of issues going through the Tribunal today...our Courts do not want to take on this case load, and would be unable to do so effectively in any event.
Posted by: Dennis Buchanan | 2009-07-29 9:39:28 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.