Kill the human rights commissions

Before they kill our freedoms

By George Jonas

Canada’s commissars for “human rights” are making the front pages again, this time by offering to balance “conflicting human rights.” At least, that’s what they’re selling, and some headline writers are buying it.

The National Post headline that went with Sarah Boesveld’s report last Saturday, for instance, read: “Gender vs. religion: Woman refused haircut by Muslim barber highlights problem of colliding rights.”

No, it doesn’t, actually. What it highlights is the coercive state’s ongoing attempt to deny the human rights it constitutionally guarantees, if they conflict with human ambitions it promotes or protects: In this instance, some matriarchal quest to empower women to have their hair cut by men of their choice, whether they like it or not.

The case itself is too silly for words. Unless there’s an Alice-in-Wonderland edition, the Charter’s guarantee of gender equality doesn’t authorize women to conscript barbers as their hairdressers. For barbers who refuse, invoking religion is, to put it mildly, overkill. “Sorry, I don’t do ladies’ hair” is all that need be said by anyone who finds it more congenial or lucrative to shave male customers.

For matriarchy’s martinets, however, hauling a citizen into an office on a frivolous complaint is all in a day’s work. Even if it goes no further, for the state to compel attendance in a matter so far beyond its competence — hair salons aren’t unisex by law, are they? — is scandalous. It calls for an apology and full restitution of the barber’s legal expenses.

It also calls for questions in the legislature.

What we need to understand is that the so-called “human-rights” industry, the provincial and federal human rights commissions (HRCs), do not protect human rights. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects human rights (grudgingly, up to a point), and in free societies, so do judicial traditions and case law. Juries, tribunals and certain customs (e.g., “a man’s home is his castle”) may protect human rights at times; so do occasional manifestations of common sense. What the HRCs protect (sorry for sounding like a broken record) is selected human ambitions and government policies supporting them, against human rights.

I repeat: against. Not for. Human rights commissions are the state’s antibodies for the suppression of human rights. HRCs are to human rights what the Ministry of Love in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was to love.

Offering me a job is your human right, but having me accept it is only your human ambition. Saying yes or no to your offer is my human right, not because of my gender or religion but because in a free market it’s my call. If the state interferes with the precedence of a right over an ambition for whatever reason of social policy, including a noble reason, the country is no longer free. Protecting and promoting ambitions against rights leads to an autocratic, coercive, statist society.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) came into being to guarantee what Canada’s human rights commissions (1977) had been designed to limit: free speech, press, conscience, opinion and economic intercourse. Together, the two, Charter and human rights, symbolize the divine omnipotence of the modern state that giveth and taketh away — whether rights and freedoms, or crass matters such as income and capital gains.

When the social engineer or

“human-rights” commissar suppresses human rights, he doesn’t do so because he’s an ogre, but because he’s a do-gooder. Human rights aren’t invariably pretty. Some may protect and encourage nasty ideas and exclusionary practices. Some may stand in the way of attractive schemes that would improve the lot of mankind, in my opinion no less than in the opinion of the human-rights commissar. All the same, they are human rights. As such, they trump even the most attractive human ambitions with which they come into conflict. But as this would interfere with the state’s social engineers; they brought HRCs into being to insulate the state from the consequences of freedom with a liberal (in both senses of the word) reign of terror.

Human Rights Commissions exist for the purpose of limiting otherwise lawful conduct in the name of some higher interest or ideal. Their beat is the ostensibly free zone where people choose their employees, customers, associates and corporate culture; where they decide what to think or say. The “human-rights” police control those who cannot be sued or charged because they had done nothing illicit or actionable, but poison the workplace environment for sensitive atheists by saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”

A short while ago, it looked as if Canada’s commissars had shot themselves in the foot when, instead of bullying their usual victims, small business- or tradesmen and such, they unwisely tangled with major media outlets and leading commentators such as the indomitable Ezra Levant and the dazzling Mark Steyn. In the ensuing melée, the commissars were badly mauled. Their attempted interference with the press disturbed even some of their backers and apologists. Many thought their days may be numbered, but then the sun sank, daylight faded, the bats started gliding again and now Dracula is stirring in his coffin. I suggest a stake through the heart.