We were relieved to read of the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) declining to hear the recent complaint against Maclean’s magazine and polemicist Mark Steyn. As we’ve written here before, we felt the complaint brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress represented a possibly grave threat to free speech. While the article in question, “The future belongs to Islam,” was no doubt controversial and possibly offensive, it was more hate-able than hateful.

The CHRC agreed, writing in an announcement, “The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike … Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court.”

We’re not entirely satisfied, however. While this statement is reassuring, the point of principle at stake here is whether or not commissions working outside the court system with a process that disregards due process should be entitled to censor or censure Canadian publications at all. That is, we agree with the CHRC in this case, but believe the commission should not have the power to make such a decision in the first place.

There is a private members’ bill before Parliament that would abolish section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, under which the CHRC bureaucracy derives its censorship authority. That legislation should pass. This decision was a victory in the battle at hand. Abolishing section 13 would be a victory in the war to preserve free speech — a fundamental human right — in Canada.

The political shift
Just a few weeks ago, if you asked people about Stéphane Dion’s leadership, they’d be too busy snoring to articulate an impression.

“Dion,” we might have said, “you mean the skinny guy with the funny accent who shows his strong opposition to the government by allowing its legislation to pass?”

But since the launch of the federal Liberal party’s bold “Green Shift” carbon-tax plan, Dion has managed to shift the entire public debate. Their plan, which is to cut personal and corporate income taxes and to finance that income tax cut by taxing carbon products, represents the first real attempt to grapple with greenhouse gas emissions put forward by a Canadian party.

The plan has everyone — for and against — talking. NDP leader Jack Layton, who favours a vast expansion of government regulation of emissions through a cap-and-trade system (one that has cost billions and failed to cut emissions at all in the EU) says there ought to be more direct government intervention. Stephen Harper, visionless and apparently terrified, is sputtering about how “insane” the plan is and warning that it could “screw everybody.”

If by everybody, he means his own party’s elected members, he could be right. A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll conducted after Dion’s plan was announced showed that when the plan was explained briefly to Canadians, they supported it by a margin of 47-39.

We would quibble with Dion’s specifics: we’d like to see the tax cuts be much more dramatic, and the new levies higher too. We’d like to see the tax apply to gasoline —which it does not — even though prices are rising on their own. But these details are almost beside the point at this stage.

The astonishing thing is that, riding a losing streak and looking to change the game, Dion swung for the fences on one of the biggest, most challenging issues of our time and hit a grand slam in transforming public discussion about the environment.

The other parties are on notice: it’s time to bring an equally bold environmental initiative to the table. There’s going to be an election this year. And the planet could win.

Justice for cyclists
The car driver who opened her door into traffic, killing a cyclist by knocking him into traffic last month, has been charged with “Open Vehicle Door Improperly,” under the Highway Traffic Act. Kudos to the police for taking this step. Enforcing laws that protect cyclists is one big step towards making the roads safer for all their users.