Sunday Book Review- Shakedown

In the Weekly Standard, Michael Taube takes a look at Shakedown: How Own Democracy is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights, and the story of author Ezra Levant.

In February 2006, Levant was the publisher of a conservative magazine, the Western Standard. After some consideration, he decided to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed "to show our readers what all the fuss was about." It was a gutsy move. Whereas most Canadian publications decided against publishing them, Levant thought people should be free to look at these cartoons in print and judge for themselves.

This decision changed the course of his life, especially after a heated radio interview about the cartoons with Syed Soharwardy, a Calgary imam. Described in Shakedown as a "Pakistani-born, madrassah-trained preacher popular on the Saudi lecture circuit who is the president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada," Soharwardy launched a complaint with a human rights commission (HRC) in Alberta following a failed attempt to get Levant arrested by the Calgary police.

What's an HRC? It was originally supposed to deal with a relatively mundane issue: helping poor Canadians deal with landlords and employers who, they felt, were
infringing on their civil rights. Plaintiffs acquired the pro bono service of a government lawyer, and the ultimate goal was to settle through mediation or (in worst-case scenarios) set up a tribunal. As Levant writes, HRCs "were a beautiful idea--that failed."

We've been critical of Canada's Star Chamber in the past. Read more about the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Sunday Book Review- Shakedown

In the Weekly Standard, Michael Taube review Ezra Levant's Shakedown, chronicling the author's harrowing experience with the Canandian Human Rights Commission:

In February 2006, Levant was the publisher of a conservative magazine, the Western Standard. After some consideration, he decided to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed "to show our readers what all the fuss was about." It was a gutsy move. Whereas most Canadian publications decided against publishing them, Levant thought people should be free to look at these cartoons in print and judge for themselves.

This decision changed the course of his life, especially after a heated radio interview about the cartoons with Syed Soharwardy, a Calgary imam. Described in Shakedown as a "Pakistani-born, madrassah-trained preacher popular on the Saudi lecture circuit who is the president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada," Soharwardy launched a complaint with a human rights commission (HRC) in Alberta following a failed attempt to get Levant arrested by the Calgary police.

Calls for freedom from western Canada

We spend most of our time here at NH Watchdog worrying about the state budget, stimulus spending, basically any granite-flavor wonkism you can think of. But we also like to stand up for free speech, and salute those who stand up for freedom when it is under attack. Such is the case today, as Calgary Herald joins the fray against one of our least favorite institutions of censorship, the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

Indeed, we have always held it to be a peculiar pathology that Canada, though reflexively rejecting a two-tier health system, would tolerate a two-tier justice system. That is, as an alternative to judgment by the standards of the Canadian Criminal Code under which the accused citizen is availed of many rights, predictable procedural expectations and customary defences, Canadians will also allow their free speech and publication rights to be policed under a system of agenda-motivated provincial and federal tribunals, where none of those protections exist.

Read the whole thing, if that's your preference, of course.