Spreading like a forest fire

Canadian Press's Colin Perkel did a little story about Marc Lemire's criminal complaint against the Canadian Human Rights Commission that got picked up in yesterday's Globe and Mail, one of maybe two news stories that paper has run on the CHRC or "human rights" commission abuses in general.

Yesterday's story though, was like a little snowball at the top of a mountain starting an avalanche, or the little spark that Smokey the Bear warns could start a forest fire.

The fire is spreading, the avalanche has begun. By the way, I don't subscribe to the Globe anymore, but I noticed that yesterday's story got picked up in the package of clippings circulated around Parliament Hill every day.

Today, the Toronto Star -yup, you read that right--the Toronto Star, picks up Perkel's folo, revealing the federal privacy commissioner is going to investigate the whether CHRC investigators stole the unsecured wireless Internet connection of a young woman who lives about a block away from their offices to post on a white supremacist site. The Globe is running Perkel's follow up too.

Ezra Levant writes about this story's significance:

But the National Post is way out in front. Joseph Brean, being the good all around reporter that he is, took part in a three-way conference call with some of the CHRCs top legal counsel and has filled a page with their self-justifications and whines.

Rights group defends itself, is the headline. It is JUICY. I cannot wait to see what Ezra Levant does with this report. Or Mark Steyn for that matter. Or what Ezra writes about what Mark writes and vice versa. I see guaranteed entertainment for weeks to come based on this story.

Brean writes:

By way of introduction in an interview this week, Ian Fine, senior general counsel and director-general of dispute resolution at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, wanted to read out loud some of the nastiest material his staff have dealt with, to prove the seriousness of their mission.

"Savage commie Jews hate European beauty and nobility," he said, quoting a prominent violator of Canada's most controversial hate speech law,

-snip [blah blah subscribe to the National Post for the rest as I don't want to violate posting etiquette and go beyond four 'graphs]

It was the most bizarre moment in an unusual conference call with three senior CHRC staff, who had mustered for the beleaguered agency's first public relations offensive, a calculated effort to rebut the "misinformation" that is turning some public opinion against them, and inspiring high-level demands that their powers be severely curtailed.

"The reality is we read the papers. We know about the current debate, we know the parameters, if you will," Mr. Fine said. "If you think that we're concerned, upset, from time to time discouraged with some of what we've been hearing and reading in the press, you're right, we are. Because to be quite clear about it, we do believe in what we do. We believe that in our society there should be limits on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, that there is a line, not one that we draw, but one that must be drawn nevertheless. We are comfortable with what we do."

It is interesting that CP Reporter Joan Bryden is off the CHRC beat and now the venerable wire service has a reporter, Colin Perkel, who is actually breaking stories and not responding to a smear campaign of guilt by association.

I wonder when Kirk Makin of the Globe will turn his attention to the CHRC matter. Kirk?

Lots more at FreeMarkSteyn and Mark Steyn's site.