This just in . . . The CIC wants to settle

The Canadian Islamic Congress wants to settle with Maclean's Magazine and Mark Steyn, according to this news release.

Well, it's gone too far. Unless the CIC and the Muslim law students are willing to ante up the magazine's and Steyn's legal bills for subjecting them to an abusive process; unless they are willing to admit they were wrong to file complaints; and unless they acknowledge the importance of freedom of speech and religion, then on principle there should be no settlement.

Nothing but unqualified, unmitigated apologies will do. Frankly, I think Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy was on the right track when he acknowledged he was wrong to file complaints against Ezra Levant and recognized the importance of freedom of speech and religion in Canada.
I say it took courage for him to do that. Let's see the CIC and the law students do the same thing.

Jonathan Kay weighs in at the National Post's Full Comment page:

Given that Maclean's editor Ken Whyte responded to that previous overture by stating that he would rather go bankrupt than publish an anti-Steyn manifesto, I would estimate the chances that the magazine accept this offer at about 0%. The issue has become a point of principle with Steyn and Whyte. As well, it has served to unite the formerly dispersed and somewhat obscure right-wing Canadian blogosphere around a single powerful cause, giving the centrist Maclean's ideological credibility among a tranche of Canadian thinkers who would otherwise ignore it. On a purely commercial basis, it would be foolish to throw that away by giving in to the CIC.

Come to think of it, it's fair to say that the Maclean's imbroglio has been one of the biggest shots in the arm to Canadian conservatives in general.

Yeah, and frankly we don't want this spectacle to end until the whole illiberal "human rights" apparatus, and its secular fundamentalist multiculturalist and anti-Western civilization edifice crashes and burns (metaphorically speaking).

It's time to return to the principles upon which Canada was built. And insist that newcomers respect those principles.