Peter Menzies: Threat of Being Dragged Through the Rights Tribunal Process Is Enough to Chill Speech

Commentary

Barry Neufeld, a former Chilliwack school trustee recently fined a shocking $750,000 by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, didn’t just say that biological sex is immutable.

No, he used social media and public meetings to campaign tirelessly for years against Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) education programs. According to his accusers, he referred to them as propaganda, equated non-binary gender identity with abuse, and suggested that educators were grooming students.

The human rights tribunal decided that kind of behaviour crossed the line from public policy debate to hate and that as a result an unsafe workplace was created for teachers. It then delivered a life-altering punishment so severe no one else would dare tread the same path. As LGBTQ activist Morgane Oger put it:

“The Tribunal found a sufficient connection between Neufeld’s public rhetoric and the teachers’ employment … it emphasized that discrimination in employment is not limited to conduct occurring physically in the workplace or carried out by a direct supervisor. A workplace can be ‘poisoned’ by speech that permeates it [emphasis mine].

“That is a major clarification. Public officials — trustees, councillors, MLAs — cannot assume that statements made on Facebook, at rallies, or in interviews are legally insulated from employment consequences simply because they occur ‘off-duty.’”

There you have it.

Oger, a Vancouver tech leader and Pride Society board member, made headlines last year for suggesting that Charlie Kirk “found out” and his assassination was “ironic karma.”

Worse abuse was directed at Kirk’s widow, so it’s fair to conclude Neufeld and Oger live at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Besides the stark contrast in their viewpoints, there is also the fact that those who share Oger’s perspective, while facing no institutional censure themselves, are far more successful at and interested in silencing their opponents than Neufeld and his supporters are.

Human rights commissions and their expanding interpretations—or what Oger calls a “clarification”—are what was so dangerous about the Online Harms Act Canada was contemplating when Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister a little more than a year ago.

That legislation, which contained some sensible proposals to protect children, also offered some alarming provisions that would have given people free rein to complain to the Canadian Human Rights Commission if they felt “harmed” by statements made by others, no matter how remote. The commission would have had the power to impose $20,000 fines—a mere pittance by British Columbia standards, it should be noted—while toughening Criminal Code hate speech laws by imposing life sentences and ordering house arrests in anticipation of what might be said.

Which is why I described the bill a year and a half ago as “a totalitarian, freedom of expression-suppressing wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Fortunately, that bill died at the same time as Trudeau’s political career and has yet to be revived by his successor. However, the government has tabled other legislation related to hate speech in this session of Parliament.

Bill C-9, also known as the Combatting Hate Act, creates a new offence for intentionally promoting hatred through the public display of certain symbols, and adds new criminal offences associated with obstructing access to places of worship. The Conservatives have raised alarm about an amendment to the bill that removes the religious defence to hate speech in the Criminal Code. The government tabled a motion in the House of Commons on March 6 to curtail debate on the bill to fast-track voting on the proposed legislation.

There has also been talk of legislation for protecting children and suggestions that youth under 14 not be allowed to register accounts and be active on Facebook. Australia imposed an age limit of 16 recently which caused Meta to delete more than half a million accounts. The devil is always in the details with this type of sticky wicket legislation but, given the Trudeau government’s more problematic instincts, legislation restricted to child protection would be a welcome replacement.

But don’t hold your breath. OpenAI was recently summoned to Ottawa to explain why it did not alert police after it flagged the account of the Tumbler Ridge school mass killer last June. OpenAI officials explained this was not done because the account activity in question did not meet its definition of an “imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others.” It has since indicated its updated protocols would have prompted a notification.

AI Minister Evan Solomon expressed disappointment that OpenAI had not arrived in his office bearing “new safety protocols” while Justice Minister Sean Fraser said that if OpenAI doesn’t want to further heighten its threshold, then the government will do it for them. And if it does that, more people who use social media tools will be getting visits from Canadian police who, it is worth noting, had recently returned firearms to the killer’s home having come to the same conclusion, it appears, as OpenAI.

Regardless, it sounds like the Online Harms Act’s dream of establishing a new Digital Safety Commission to supervise speech is creeping its way back onto the table. Many Canadians, given their political leanings, may like that idea.

Others will not, fearing the power of the state will expand beyond policing their actions and any direct threats to interpreting opinions as equally malevolent. Certainly, such appears to have been the case for the soon-to-be impoverished Neufeld, although he may find relief in an appeal to the B.C. Supreme Court. Or, he won’t.

Either way, the very threat of being dragged through the human rights process is now more than enough to throw a chill on speech for those, including politicians, who may find the public school system’s inclinations too radical for their liking.

Relativism will, again, have triumphed and free speech, the foundation of democracy, will be the victim.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.