ZGram - 8/2/2001 - "Doug Collins speaks his mind" - Part I

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 2, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The "Doug Collins Story" has been told many times in many different shades
on our beloved Internet, and I will not repeat it here - other than to say
that, singlehandedly, this crusty old reporter is good for one more round.
This veteran columnist had hurt the feelings of the Chosenites by saying
Jews ran Hollywood and by a cheeky reference to "Swindler's List."

The essay below, which he penned, is good for a juicy two-part ZGram, and I
have been waiting for a tie-in to shoot it into cyberspace.  It sets the
stage for the continuing struggle before the Human Rights Tribunal sharks
in British Columbia, Canada.

Here speaks a man to minions:

START]

July 12, 2001

 Statement to Human Rights Tribunal

 Before Mr. Tom W. Patch

 By Doug Collins

   To begin with, I am not making this submission to discuss the often
incomprehensible intricacies of that scarecrow of a law known as the B.C.
Human Rights Code. I'll leave that to the lawyers and to the courts, before
which I hope to appear.

What is at issue, of course, is whether the order issued by this tribunal
against myself and the North Shore News on Feb. 2, 1999, infringes Section
(2b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and whether the
tribunal had the constitutional right to issue that order. In their wisdom,
the courts have determined that  you should rule on the issue before I can
apply for a judicial review of the law, and I submit that what you did
cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, which is
what the Charter stipulates.

As far as the outcome of this hearing is concerned,  I believe that we are
wasting our time. There is about as much chance of your deciding that your
order was invalid as there is of my becoming the next NDP premier of
British Columbia. Nevertheless, I comply with the court's direction and
also wish to put on the record what otherwise might not be on the record.

  We live at a time in which the decay of moral and political values is
rampant, and when it finds many willing servants in the annexes of
authority, such as human rights systems that deny human rights. It also
seems to be a time without shame. If it were otherwise there would be no
such thing as a Human Rights Code that in itself is a travesty of human
rights. It's a pity that George Orwell isn't around to write about it. He
might denounce it as moral illiteracy.

This tribunal produced the most dangerous attack on freedom of the press
that has been seen since the Alberta Press Act went down to defeat at the
hands of the courts in 1938.  The intention at that time was to force the
press to print what the government wanted it to print. This tribunal did
the same thing in instructing the North Shore News to print its decision,
something that no regular court has attempted to do, and as I understand
it, could not do.

I was also ordered to stop writing columns  with which you and the
complainant Harry Abrams found fault.  To be precise, you instructed myself
and the North Shore News "to cease publishing statements that are likely to
expose Jewish persons to hatred and contempt [which I submit I have not
done] and to refrain from committing the same or a similar contravention".
That was a publication ban, and in no way reflected the principles of a
democratic society. It also amounted to prior restraint of opinion.

   That being so, I have taken no notice of your order. Firstly, no judge
or jury could find that I or the North Shore News had exposed anyone to
anything harmful, and you yourself admitted that my writing had done no
discernible harm; secondly, the verdict in my view demonstrated the bias of
this tribunal and that of the NDP government; thirdly, if the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms means anything, it must mean that that decision was
unconstitutional. On which more later.

The columns on which you ruled and many others like it are in a book I have
published. I would be glad to give you a a free copy. There's a lot in it
about free speech.  According to your reasoning the four columns that were
complained about didn't contravene the B.C. Human Rights Code separately,
but did collectively.  That's a bit like saying that while four pints of
sour milk are sour, one of those pints would not be. There was no sense in
such reasoning, and lawyers who are not in the pay of the government or of
the pressure groups behind the complaints against me say that such a
decision would never survive in a court of law.

But this tribunal is, apparently, a court that can make its own rules.  Mr.
Geoff Plant put it well. As the Liberal rights critic in the legislature,
he stated while in Opposition that something has to be done about a human
rights system that produces, and I quote,  "too many goofy decisions". I
live in hope that as a  member of the new government he will do something
about it. I also live in hope that Premier Gordon Campbell will honour the
promise he made on Oct. 15, 1993, and on subsequent occasions, when he said
he would get rid of the B.C. Human Rights Act Amendments that restrict free
speech.

The Human Rights Commission and the lawyers who sit in this place denying
my right and that of the people of British Columbia to free speech claim,
predictably, that this tribunal's verdict is constitutionally valid in a
free and democratic society. If it is, then free speech in this province
has been cast into the dustbin of history. It would mean that opinions that
are hateful only to those who claim they are hateful, are not permissible.
It would mean that only politically correct opinions approved by government
are safe. As Federal District Court Justice Robert Warren pointed out in a
case in the United States, "The suppression of speech, even where the
speech's content appears to have little value and great costs, amounts to
government thought control".  Which of course is exactly what we are seeing
here.

   I draw your attention now to what the B.C. Press Council said in its
analysis of the amended Human Rights Code at the time of my first tribunal,
the one that found itself obliged, reluctantly, to acquit me. It said that
the Code is designed to kill speech that is not criminal.  Regarding
legislative intent, Mr. Corky Evans, an NDP MLA who became a cabinet
minister, made the extraordinary statement when it was being drafted that
the government needed this law because the courts didn't always do what the
government wanted them to do.  He seemed to dislike the role of an
independent judiciary, and favored a system that would indeed do what the
government wanted it to do.

The law was passed in June, 1993, and was introduced because the NDP and
its special interest supporters took exception to what I was writing in the
North Shore News. During the debate in the legislature my name came up 17
times. That's why it was called the Kill Collins Act.  But what I was
writing could never have been seen by the courts as hate literature. If it
could have been, I would have been charged under the hate speech provisions
of Section 319 of the Criminal Code. But neither the NDP government nor the
complainants dared to risk that. Hence Mr. Evans's statement.

What was required was a new set of rules, and tribunals often described as
kangaroo courts.  As the secretary of the B.C. Press Council put it, under
this Human Rights Code, anyone uttering a Newfie joke could be hauled
before a tribunal.  The late Mel Smith, a distinguished constitutional
lawyer, said that the law was so broad that even a business putting up
"male" and "female" signs in its washroom could be charged.

Section 71(b) of the Code states that no person shall publish or display
any notice, sign, symbol or other representation that INDICATES
discrimination or an INTENTION to discriminate, or that is LIKELY to expose
a person or groups of persons to hatred or contempt.  Indicate.  Intention.
Likely.  What could be looser than that? It should be of interest that
INDICATING criticism of the government was an offence in Fascist Italy, and
the LIKELIHOOD of opposing the communists was enough to send people in the
USSR to the gulag. The B.C Press Council has noted, too, that this law is
almost exactly the same as the South African Publications Act that was
passed during the time of apartheid. Those who support it and work for it
are not in very good company.

In British Columbia, under this law, organizations like the Canadian Jewish
Congress, B'Nai Brith, the Race Relations Association and similar groups
can harass and indimidate those who hold opinions to which they object.
Moreover, after Mr. Ujjal Dosanjh became Attorney General, he brought in
rules that permit the government itself to make complaints and to harass
people, whether or not  complaints come from members of the public.  To
him, too, hate literature is anything he sees as hate literature. That's
why a lengthy and bitter debate took place in the legislature in June of
1993, after which the Amendment to the Act was steamrollered through.

Let me offer you some comments made by the Opposition, all of which I take
from Hansard. I mention them in order to emphasize that this legislation
was pushed through in a discreditable way by a discredited government, and
that it did not represent the wishes of the people of this Province, who
were not consulted about it.  Nor was it ever part of an election program.

Mr. Gordon Wilson, then the leader of the Liberal Party but later an NDP
cabinet minister, stated on June 17: Hansard, Page 7370.  "This Act does
more to extinguish the right to freedom of expression than it does to look
after hate literature and the propagation of hate literature."

Mr. H. De Jong, Social Credit, Page 7373:  "The government is at last
showing its true colours in its total disregard for individual freedom
whenever it comes in conflict with the collective...I cannot  take pleasure
in the obvious political harm the government is doing to itself by
introducting this Orwellian police-state bill, saying that only politically
correct Newspeak will be tolerated in the socialist government of British
Columbia."

Mr. de Jong referred  to the bill as "compulsory niceness".... "Under this
legislation," he declared, "it seems that the only allowable bumper sticker
would be "Love thy neighbour, or else"."

Mr. David Mitchell, a Liberal MLA, had this to say, Page 7401:  "Who are
the great democrats who have brought forward this legislation? Who are they
who claim to be democrats in defining and defending the rights of all of us
in a free and democratic society? The name of their party is the New
Democratic Party. But if their legislation is to be their legacy they are
certainly not democratic and they are certainly not new...They're trying to
bring forward an idea that they propose, to compel all citizens to think
like them. That's what's wrong with this legislation....They are neither
new nor democratic."

Mr. Jeremy Dalton told the House how the proposed amendment removed the
right to free speech in British Columbia. (See Page 7371).  "How is freedom
of expression being compromised....? I will read into the record the
provision that will be removed from the current Human Rights Act if this
bill is passed. In Section 2 (sub-section 2) of the Act it states:
'Notwithstanding subsection (1) but subject to the Civil Rights Protection
Act, a person may, by speech or in writing, freely express his opinions on
a subject...' that's what's being eliminated by the proposed change in
legislation through this bill. It will clearly compromise freedom of
expression."

I could give you many more examples but the point has been made. This law
was by no means the will of the people at large; nor was it submitted for
prior discussion by those most likely to be affected by it, as is usual. It
was drawn up in secret, in consultation with the groups that wanted it, and
was essentially a  conspiracy.

Mr. Aziz Khaki of the government-subsidized Committee for Racial Justice
met with the attorney general of that time, Mr. Colin Gabelman. He also met
with Miss Anita Hagen, who was responsible for multiculturalism. The
Canadian Jewish Congress also made representations.   References were made
by government members during the debate in the legislature to the Ku Klux
Klan, cross burnings, White Aryan Resistance, Nazi-like activity, Molotov
cocktails and other things that had nothing to do with anything I had
written or done; or, as far as I know with what anyone else had written or
done. And as I have already stated, it was never shown that any harm had
been done by anything I had written. The government's case was an exercise
in vacuity and vagueness. It didn't like what I was saying. So ghosts and
monsters were made to walk.

[END}

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Tomorrow:  Part II

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Thought for the Day:

"It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent
lies before us."

(D'Israeli)