Free Speech Under Attack in Canada?

Mark Steyn's book America Alone is hardly a love letter to Muslims living in the west. Pointing to high birth rates for Muslims and a high level of conversion to Islam in an increasing infertile and post-Christian Europe, Steyn asks if Islam and the radical form he says is growing on the Continent is compatible with western democracies. While the book may be "alarmist" as some critics have described it or even "offensive" as Steyn himself says his writing can be, does publishing that opinion violate the human rights of others?

Khurrum Awan says yes, he and three other law students from York University's Osgoode hall have lodged complaints with the BC, Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions. According to the complaints, an excerpt of America Alone titled The Future Belongs to Islam, and Steyn's regular columns in Macleans magazine open Canadian Muslims up to hatred and contempt.

"Macleans has actually published 18 articles of similar content in the last two-and-a-half years" says Mr. Awan. "Without a single counterview response from inside or outside the Muslim community."

Awan dismisses the letters to the editor that Macleans has published in response to the book excerpt, calling those letters insufficient. In Awan's view, he and his group should have been given equal space in Macleans to rebut Steyn's arguments. A request was made but rebuffed with senior magazine staff reportedly saying they would rather see the magazine go bankrupt than publish the sought rebuttal. There are reports that the request for a rebuttal was extremely demanding, that the complainants would pick the writer, that there would be no editing and that the group would set the art direction for their five-thousand word reply. That is a version of events that Khurrum Awan disputes, Macleans declined comment.

Muslims are far from the first group in Canada to experience views they disagree with, the usual response from advocacy groups is to write a letter of complaint, organize a protest or boycott, all possible options says Awan but filing with three human rights commissions was seen as the best option.

"We think it's more effective to use a human rights avenue" says Awan. "There absolutely is a human rights concern because if you continue publishing inflammatory materials about a community, while shutting out the community in question, you can obviously see that it will lead to discrimination and prejudice against that community and subject them to hatred and contempt.

"So there is absolutely a human rights issue by us being denied an opportunity to respond on issues that relate directly to us."

Asked why he and his co-complainants chose not to respond to Steyn and Macleans through another media outlet, Awan says that was not acceptable, they wanted an opportunity to respond to Steyn, in Macleans, with equal space. Since the launch of the human rights complaints, an op-ed written by the group has appeared in a number of publications including National Post and The Calgary Herald.

The man at the center of this brewing controversy isn't prepared to change one word of what he has written or concede that he should ever have to defend his writings to any government body including a human rights commission.

Born in Canada, raised in Britain and now living south of Montreal in libertarian-minded rural New Hampshire, Mark Steyn agrees that his writing might be offensive to some but he says there is no human right not to be offended.

"The minute you have the human right not to be offended," says Steyn "then basically all your other rights go and you are living in a totalitarian state. It may be a soft-totalitarianism but it's totalitarianism none the less.

"If you don't believe in freedom speech for offensive speech, you don't believe in freedom of speech at all."

Steyn has spent much of his career working for newspapers or magazines owned by Conrad Black, a man famous for launching, or threatening to launch, lawsuits over words he took issue with. That says Mr. Steyn is different, the columnist says he believes in limits on free speech based on facts and truth and opposes limits on free speech based on a difference of opinion.

"For example, if you say that I am wanted for killing 32 prostitutes in Amsterdam last year" says Steyn. "And it turns out that I am in fact not wanted for killing 32 prostitutes in Amsterdam. Then I think I should have the right to take you to court about that. But there we would be arguing about the facts of the matter, to use a quaint old expression."

While most writers and journalists have remained publicly silent on Steyn's claim of free speech, Alan Borovoy, General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a man who was instrumental in getting human rights commissions established in Canada, is speaking out in favour of the beleaguered scribe. In Borovoy's eyes, the commissions he pushed for throughout the 1970s are now overstepping their bounds.

"Saying that you are opposed to this group or that group, or opposed to something they've done here, there or elsewhere, that was never the purview of human rights commissions, it was never contemplated" says Borovoy. "Whether or not it is constitutionally permissible to prohibit speech of this kind, in this way, it shouldn't be."

Borovoy may say opinion was never the intent of these commissions but recent rulings indicate that Steyn and others may be on the losing end of an argument, leaving Canadians to ponder the true extent of free speech in this country.

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