Down With Everybody

A University of New Brunswick law student has filed a preliminary complaint with the province’s Human Rights Commission because blind people aren’t eligible to use the city’s Dial-a-Bus service on an as-need basis.

Everett Zufelt, who is blind and relies on a guide dog to get around the city, said there are times when he can travel comfortably, safely and with dignity on his own.

But Zufelt, who has lived in Fredericton since September, said there are occasions when he would find it useful to be able to rely on the city’s specialized transit service designed for individuals with disabilities.

…

When the bus system criteria was developed, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind was consulted and it did not support blindness as an automatic criteria for the Dial-a-Bus, MacNeill said.

The rest.

A nice double dip from Canada’s two courts.

REGINA — A Regina man charged under the Criminal Code for alleged posting Internet messages that are hateful against an identifiable group has had his case adjourned to May 28.

Terrence Cecil Tremaine, 59, appeared in Regina Provincial Court on Tuesday. The former lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan is alleged to have made the posting between Feb. 1, 2004 and Nov. 1, 2007.

In early 2007, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled Tremaine had violated the Canadian Human Rights Act for his postings to a white supremacist Web site.

The tribunal ordered Tremaine to stop disseminating such messages and pay a $4,000 fine.

The rest.

UPDATE:

It’s been pointed out to DWE that this isn’t double jeopardy, and that we got the dates wrong. Oh?

We’ll hold your hand this time, but from now on do your homework. Try to keep up. We’ll use boldface to help you out:

Warman v. Tremaine, complaint filed October 13, 2004:

[33] In the present case, there is no evidence that the Respondent was caught by surprise by the introduction of the evidence. The evidence was disclosed to the Respondent prior to the hearing and he admitted that he was the author of these postings. These postings are sufficiently similar to the allegations in the complaint, such that it does not effectively constitute a new or separate complaint. The Tribunal therefore rules that the post-referral evidence was properly admitted…

[68] On January 17, 2005, the Respondent posted the following…

[69] The next posting put into evidence appears in early February 2006, ten months after the complaint was served and some five months after the letter of “apology” referred to earlier in this decision…

[70] In the next posting, dated February 27, 2006, the Respondent asserts…

[71] On May 8, 2006, the Respondent’s attacks become more spiteful…

[72] Then on June 27, 2006, the Respondent proposes…

[73] In another posting on July 8, 2006…

Had enough, legal eagles? And so…

[Feb 2, 2007] 2 Terry Tremaine shall pay a penalty in the amount of $4,000. Payment of the penalty shall be made by certified cheque or money order, payable to the “Receiver General for Canada”, and must be received by the Tribunal within 120 days of Mr. Tremaine’s being notified of this decision.

And then, January 24, 2008. 

Police allege web postings dating back to 2004 violate a section of the Criminal Code dealing with promotion of hatred.

…

Police allege that between Feb. 1, 2004, and last Nov. 1, Tremaine promoted hatred against an identifiable group via internet postings.

Outta be a slam dunk for the cops. The other court of Canada already did the investigation and used the evidence to fine him for a human rights violation. Think that might carry some weight against him this time?

And yeah, we know, one’s a human rights commission, and one’s a court. Still reeks of double jeopardy to us.

He was hollering that he had a right to ride the bus, that Greyhound was denying him his human rights, that Greyhound was breaking the Canadian Charter of Rights and that if the police came closer he would stab himself with the knife. He also yelled obscenities.

The rest.

This highway has chosen young Native women as its primary victims. Many of the victims were forced to hitchhike as a means of travel, which is the reality of living on or near rural reserve areas with no public transportation.

To this day, the question still remains, if majority of those victims were not Aboriginal – if they were white – would we still be seeking justice for our vanished sisters ourselves? What is more, would the loss of these precious lives, stolen from our communities, remain in the minds of the general public, and in major news headlines?

The rest.

High estimates say that 30 people have died on the highway in 35 years. Police have the number at 18. The highway is 724 km long.

“The Conservatives are being honest to their own convictions, but they are in violation of their international obligations,” said Graham Riches, a University of British Columbia social rights specialist who has worked with the UN on the right to food.

The rest.

We’re at that point in the plot where the maverick investigator takes the call saying a third example of the strange spore has been found in a field in Idaho, and he pushes another pin in the map and goes “Hmm” thoughtfully.

But he still can’t get his colleagues to see that something’s going on.

The rest.

We doubt it’s a coincidence that the CHRC released a new page on their website to “expand knowledge” of Section 13. The CHRC has taken a beating in the press the past couple of months, and this release looks to calm the masses. The highlights:

Does Canada have an equivalent to the First Amendment?

No.

Is section 13 consistent with international human rights law?

Yes.

Well then, we feel better already. As long as we’re like Norway, Italy, and Luxembourg, but not the dumb Yanks, game on. By way of making everyone comfy, a Canadian justice puts it this way:

It seems fair to say that the American view is becoming a minority one in the world. Canada is part of what appears to be growing global consensus, which observes that careful restrictions of some forms of speech are both desirable and necessary.

Sounds better than Thomas Jefferson to us. Still no word on what “some forms of speech” means, who decides what they are, and who decides what is “desirable.”

DWE is seeing a lot of this lately. Get out of Iraq…let Darfur rot…Burma? Hmm, maybe time to send in the troops. (And we all know whose troops they mean).

Should Canada, and the rest of the international community, intervene forcefully in Burma to ensure that this desperately needed assistance gets through to the people who actually need it?

The rest.

Pupils were asked to imagine how it felt to be imprisoned without access to a fair trial and then express their feelings in the form of a poem, but without using traditional writing materials.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said: “The judges were impressed by the innovative ways in which pupils across the country took to the task and really put their minds into how individuals could continue to express themselves given limited resources.

“Aditi’s entry illustrates that perfectly. Using the tiniest scrap of paper she managed to produce a truly moving poem.”

The competition was inspired by the experiences of Irina Ratushinhskaya in the Soviet Union, Jack Mapanje in Malawi and a number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The rest.

Steyn and Wente on the racism of Ontario fisherpersons:

The Globe And Mail’s Margaret Wente has been a ruthless flayer of the Ontario Human Rights Commission since they made the mistake of catching her eye. And I couldn’t be happier about that, given the fatwa Chief Imam Barbara Hall issued against me and Maclean’s. Commissar Hall’s latest “human right” is the right to “fish without fear“. Ms Wente guts it:

Do you detect something fishy here? Maybe it’s the smell of empire-building.

The rest.