NetGuido

Amid mounting public and political controversy, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has launched an independent review of the way it deals with hate speech on the Internet. Chief Commissioner Jennifer Lynch announced yesterday that she had asked Richard Moon, a leading constitutional expert at the University of Windsor, to conduct the study. His report, expected in October, will help shape the commission’s position on whether Internet hate laws should be changed, she said. Ms. Lynch said that the “tidal bore of interest on both sides of the equation” prompted her to take this “more formal step to lead some cutting-edge thinking.” The challenge is identifying Canadian jurisdiction over hate on the Internet and who put it there,” she said.” I’m a free speech. I’m also a human righter. We have a responsibility to lead the debate on how we can keep our policy up to date to effectively regulate hate on the Internet.” Last December, the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of Muslim law students used Internet hate sections of federal and provincial human rights acts to file a series of complaints against MacLean’s magazine for articles they said fostered hatred against Muslims. One of the articles in question was an excerpt from Mark Stein’s book, America Alone that appeared in the magazine in October 2006. In the book, Mr. Stein argued the West had grown tired and decadent and that the influx of Islamic immigration threatened our way of life. British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal completed a five-day hearing into one of the complaints earlier this month, but has not yet released a ruling. Ontario’s Human Rights Commission dismissed the complaint because it said it lacked jurisdiction over printed material, while the federal Human Rights Commission is still investigating. The MacLean’s complaints have sparked a furor over whether laws on Internet hatred unduly restrict freedom of expression. Earlier this year, Liberal MP Keith Martin introduced a private member’s bill calling for the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which makes it illegal to use the Internet or telephone to disseminate messages likely to expose identifiable groups or individuals to hatred or contempt. Mr. Martin followed that last month with a motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to hold public hearings on the matter. Around the same time, Conservative MP Rick Dykstra asked the Commons justice committee to examine the human rights commission’s mandate and how it interpreted Section 13.In an interview, Ms. Lynch played down the controversy stirred up by the MacLean’s complaints and the ensuing parliamentary man oeuvres as triggers for the review.” We’ve been working on this for a long time internally,” she said, adding she identified it as an issue last summer, soon after taking over as chief commissioner. That said, she conceded that the “velocity” of the public debate “took all of us by surprise. It’s clear the public want to have the debate. Our job really is to animate and lead on the debate.