Fresh Ezra and Mark the Knife

Maclean's Inside the Queensway blogger Kady O'Malley did an impressive job with her thumbs live-blogging today's committee hearing featuring Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. Here's her post if you're looking for something to read before the transcripts go up. She writes.

3:47:24 PM
And — questions! First up, Brian Murphy, who wanders around his question for a while — and wonders if either of the witnesses believe there should be *any* limit on speech at all. He points to some cases that the tribunal has dealt with, some of which, he avers “shock the conscience of the Canadian people” and even crossed the line into criminal speech. Do the witnesses believe in the Criminal Code? “Let’s not truck with the administrivial aspects — let’s get to the heart of the matter: Should there be limits on speech?”

Levant notes that there *are* laws against some kinds of speech — fraud, uttering a threat, that sort of thing – but that laws against hate speech penalize ideas.

He also gives a pretty decent defence of his position — which incorporates some fancy legal citing, although honestly, I’d *expect* both of these witnesses to be able to argue their respective cases in their sleep by this point.

Steyn also agrees with him, and points out that, although the excerpts Murphy declined to read the full text were, indeed, offensive, referring to the Jewish lobny and Hitler, he believes that it shouldn’t be against the law to “champion repellant ideas”. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and hatred is “part of what it means to be human”. Why, even Jennifer Lynch, he notes, seems to harbour a “teeny bit” of hatred towards he and his co-witness, which produces light chuckles from the crowd.

My impressions? Well, Mark and Ezra are always worth hearing and I think they did really well. Intererestingly, Ezra's opening statement was a catalogue of some of the most egregious procedural abuses--the neo-Nazi memberships, the posting of hate online by CHRC staff, etc. Mark seconded that in his remarks, though he spoke against Section 13 on principle.

What can I say about the questioners? For the most part, the opposition parties, well, it is obvious they do not read blogs and are mentally wedded to the notion that Section 13-type laws really do protect people against hatred.

If it hadn't been the endorphins kicking in from being able to hear such articulate defences of freedom of speech by two of my favorite Canadian writers, I would have experienced the tempation to despair that so often afflicts me up here on the Hill. Rational argument does not work here. Patient explanation over and over and over does not work. There is a mindset that's just about set in concrete. And it's a mindset that thinks state censorship is a good thing if it keeps people from hating each other.

Maybe the shock of the allegations--Ezra admitted that he could not believe what he had discovered until he went over every piece of the evidence--will wake people up. And the best thing that happened today is that the committee has asked for all the documentation--the Tribunal transcripts, the on-the-record admissions of various shenanigans. Let's see what they do with it. Right now the shock seemed to annoy some of the MPs.

In conversations out in the hall, I wondered out loud whether there would have been the same kind of opposition by most MPs if the freedom of speech related to the right to pornography or some kind of obscene expression in the "arts" or whatever. People would have been spitting mad about those "rights" being taken away.

Mark wrote about that in the latest Maclean's column that I am not sure is available online yet.

Kady O'Malley is the petite blonde, sitting with fellow Maclean's colleagues and standing before the ubiquitous Dr. Roy. You'll also see the tall and handsome Brian Lilley, sporting his new beard.
And you'll see blogger Stephen Taylor with Ezra.