Human rights fiasco tomorrow at the War Memorial?

Human Rights Commissions in Canada have become Orwellian opposites of real human rights like freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.

Thus, when I find out that the Canadian Human Rights Chief Commissioner is going to be laying a wreath tomorrow during Remembrance Day ceremonies in downtown Ottawa, I join thousands of others across Canada who are appalled by this.

Canada's veterans did not fight so that these commissions could try people for their opinions in courts where no rules of evidence apply and truth is not a defense.

I hope Jennifer Lynch reconsiders. I also hope she actually reads the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As much as that document does make an attempt to find those universal principles upon which human rights are founded, it still errs in that it grants states the powers to grant or restrict rights. That is totally outside our Western tradition. We have rights because God gave them to us--we're made in His image after all-- and the state can only recognize them.

But that said, I don't think it is appropriate to use Remembrance Day to mark the 60th anniversary of the UDHR.

I'm feeling ill. I have a wicked sore throat. But if I feel strong enough I may go downtown and get a photograph of the travesty that I hope Ms. Lynch does not follow through with.

Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Blazing CatFur, Jay Currie and others have already weighed in.

'Fur has posted a copy of a letter my friend Denyse O'Leary has sent to the Veteran's Affairs Minister:

Dear Mr. Thompson,

As a blogger who was forced to become involved in the ongoing battle against the infamous "human rights" commissions when friends were coming under assault, I am stunned to discover that the CHRC - target of a number of investigations for assault on the civil liberties of our citizens - is permitted to lay a wreath at the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa.

The Commission employs/uses people who actually post racist filth the Internet, if testimony under oath is to be believed.

My father was one of the few men to survive his squadron of Bomber Command in World War II. He was shot down on, I think, his 43rd mission but escaped to Gibraltar via the Resistance. (He burst into tears (very rare for him) when I showed him a photo of his flight graduation - all the men he graduated with had died.)

A couple of months ago, he phoned me, asking, "What is happening? Why is Mark Steyn charged? Why is Maclean's Magazine charged?"

I had to tell him that, as a blogger/journalist/commentator, I myself might not be safe. The problem is, no one can know who the CHRC or their provincial/territorial counterparts will attack next or why.

He said, somewhat plaintively, as he is nearly ninety - "It makes me wonder why we fought the war ... "

Please, Mr. Thompson, can you stop this travesty? Please try.

I realize that there is a good chance you can't. As a Minister of the Crown, you hardly carry the same weight as the "human rights" thugs - who can generate faux outrage at the drop of a hat. So the memory of the men who died will be soiled by this completely contrary association, and the rest of us must cringe.

But can't you at least distance yourself from these state-paid thugs? Preserve a bit of what my father's fellow airmen died FOR? Could you support a Canada that makes the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights - of which my father was so proud - meaningful again?

Denyse O'Leary
Toronto