Freedom such a fleeting thing, even in Canada
by George Jonas
CanWest Publications
January 17, 2008
Watching a video this weekend of publisher Ezra Levant's interrogation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission reminded me of an episode that happened ten years ago. I was having a heart attack in Arizona. "This is nothing, wait till you see the bill," said the doctor who admitted me to hospital. A young man with a somewhat mordant sense of humour, he described himself as a "medical refugee" from the health care system in Alberta.
"Let's see," he muttered, "Jonas, eh? Oh, yeah. Well, thank your lucky stars you're not one of those left-lib columnists. If you were, I'd let you die like a dog. As it is, I'll get you the best damn cardiologist in Arizona."
And so he did. I received outstanding care in the Phoenix hospital (they certainly know from heart attacks in the geriatric capital of America) but even among these fine caregivers, a couple stood out. One was a nurse in the emergency ward where I spent the first night after admission. The second was a cardiologist who performed an angiogram on me a few days later.
The nurse, as it happened, was a young male who told me he was Jewish. Though he didn't tell me, I think he was also gay. The cardiologist was a young female who told me she was Egyptian. Though she didn't tell me, I think she was also Muslim.
Both were skilled, enthusiastic, and devoted. They illustrated how foolish it is to think of people as anything but individuals when assessing their suitability for a job. Self-evident as this may be -- it hasn't been news since the dawn of the Enlightenment 200 years ago -- it was pleasant to see it confirmed in Phoenix.
Yet neither outstanding male homosexual nurses nor fine Muslim female physicians diminish the desirability of freedom. They don't change my mind about governments having no right to proscribe discriminatory conduct for individuals, any more than they have a right to prescribe it. If I have my heart set, for whatever reason, on advertising for a female nurse, a heterosexual bookkeeper, or a Catholic janitor, there should be no legislation forbidding me to do so.
Any society prohibiting such discrimination -- prohibiting it, that is, for anyone but the government itself, for public jobs or accommodation -- is no longer free.
I opposed human rights commissions 30 years ago (the federal HRC was set up in 1977) for two reasons. First, I believed these tribunals confused human rights with human ambitions. My decision whom to hire -- or who to work for -- is a human right. My "decision" of who should hire me -- or work for me -- isn't. It's a human ambition, laudable as it may be. A right may not be laudable, but it still trumps an ambition. Or ought to, in a free society. Anomalously, human rights commissions were proposing to champion human ambitions against human rights.
Then there was freedom of opinion and expression. I believed any state bureaucracy that could outlaw someone writing "help wanted male" (because it was "intent to discriminate") could outlaw anybody writing anything -- and would, sooner or later. HRCs would become Canada's Orwellian thought police.
Balderdash, said the 1970s-style thinkers of Trudeaupia. No way. Canadian Civil Liberties Association's General Counsel A. Alan Borovoy, who promoted HRCs in those days, dismissed what he considered my shopworn arguments of "slippery slopes."
The arguments may have been shopworn, but the slopes were slippery. By 1998 even Borovoy had changed his tune. "Ever since the government embarked on a course of trying to outlaw expressions of hatred, it's shown that there is a slippery slope. One thing has led to another," he said in relation to proposed "hate speech" legislation in British Columbia.
By the time Levant was hauled in front of the Alberta HRC last week for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that some Muslims considered offensive, many of the one-time architects of HRCs were disillusioned with the monsters they created. Who could have imagined? We certainly didn't. Never in a thousand years.
Levant's interview was videotaped, and several segments are available on the Internet. My favorite moment comes when the AHRC's lady commissar says in response to one of Levant's statements:
"You're entitled to your opinion, that's for sure."
How refreshing! An eyelet of memory of Canada as a free country? A bureaucrat's admission of no jurisdiction?
Then the moment passes. "I wish this were a fact," replies the publisher.