Lawyers See Dollar Signs, Speak Appropriately

Vancouver Sun – The rules that allowed a Vancouver Catholic high school to sideline a lesbian teacher after her lifestyle became an issue have been in place for decades across the country and have been upheld by Canada’s highest court.

But labour and employment lawyers said Thursday it may be time for the Supreme Court of Canada to revisit the issue of how religious rights and freedoms can in some cases trump individual human rights.

If You Want The Public To Pay For Your Boobs, Get In Quick

Vancouver Sun – Albertans who have already had voluntary mastectomies or have started hormone therapy that has irreversibly led them to change sexes will be eligible to have their transgender surgery paid for by the province if they apply by July 31.

Funding for up to 20 people will remain in place for the sex-change surgeries until 2014-15, when the cash will dry up from Alberta Health and Wellness.

Epic Fail: Paper Tries To Stand Up For Free Speech, Ends Up On Its Knees

Bold ours.

Chilliwack Times, Open Letter to Readers – There has been much discussion lately about “free speech” in Canada. I use parentheses [sic] to denote a term that causes many individuals to have a gag reflex as they consider the term to be a uniquely American concept that has no relevancy with our sense of Canadian values. Call it “freedom of expression” or what have you, but I do have concerns about our willingness to acquiesce to seemingly arbitrary standards of conduct and speech imposed by quasi-judicial bodies. Their willingness to take away your right to expression should concern all of us.

Human Rights Is Big Bucks #19: Heather MacNaughton

Heather MacNaughton, Chair, British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. (2007-2008 numbers; latest available):

Salary: $172, 101

Rank out of 5,452 high earners in BC Government: 203

Paper: The Case For Working Solo

Globe and Mail – Here’s a question for you: How many employees do you need before you have to start worrying about potential actions under federal or provincial human rights legislation? One? Ten? One hundred?

The answer is “yes.”…

If the BC Human Rights Tribunal is any guide, all you have to do is fire an employee who is absent from work for an extended period of time due to a medical disability by email and you could find yourself paying damages of $35,000 (not including legal fees) for “hurt feelings” because the employee was not terminated in person.

Writer Nails It

Bold ours.

Vancouver Courier – In a culture where anyone can yell “discrimination” against anyone for any perceived slight, and go judicial on their assets, there’s a constant danger of a chilling effect. Not just on comedy, but on illustration, journalism, theatre and music.

Democracy was never supposed to be about the tyranny of a solitary offended citizen.

Human Rights Is Big Bucks #16

Update. See below.

CP – Comedian Guy Earle could end up paying a heavy price for his freedom of speech – up to $15,000 if his accuser has her way.

At an open-mic comedy show hosted by Zesty’s restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. three years ago, Earle, acting as volunteer emcee, lit into Lorna Pardy and her lesbian partner with a profanity-laced tirade that Pardy’s lawyer said left Pardy humiliated and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lawyer Devyn Cousineau said during her closing arguments at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing Friday that Pardy should be awarded between $10,000 and $15,000 in damages for the discrimination she suffered as a result of Earle’s homophobic comments.

TGET:

Cousineau said nothing about 10 or 15 thousand dollars, or any dollar amount whatsoever during her closing arguments.

Mr. Scott has his facts wrong, his Canadian Press article is inaccurate.

The Pardy Effect (Or: The Gutless Chumps That Make Up Canada’s Comedians)

CBC – A discrimination complaint before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has cast a chill over stand-up comics in the Lower Mainland, a comedy club manager says….

“I go out and I frequent rooms in the city because that’s how I find my talent. And I would say that people who are performing in rooms on a regular basis are a little bit more careful about their interaction with the crowd.

“I know that comics who have usually taken an antagonistic approach with the crowd are a little bit more — they sugar-coat their words now.”

Priorities, Baby

Rex Murphy, National Post – Meantime, real cases of human rights violation, individuals genuinely stranded and deprived of their rights as citizens, such as the couple in Caledonia, Ont., who’ve lived through a multi-year siege by local First Nations gangs, unaided by the Ontario government or the police–noiselessly pass by.

Where was the mighty Ontario Human Rights Commission during all of this? Adjudicating the locker room rights of a St. Catharines fitness club.

Free Speech Gets Murky When You Remember The Drunk Violent Guys

Winnipeg Free Press – But it’s not that simple. Members of minority groups can and do feel harassed, if not threatened, in some environments. Comedy clubs are frequented by enthusiastically imbibing young men.

Some of them, hearing “there’s the dyke table” from an irritated comedian who proceeds to unleash a torrent of abuse, could take it as permission to act out their own aggressions.

Video: Anatomy Of A Shakedown

Smyth: Earle’s Comedy Sucks, But He Has The Right To Suck At It

The Province – But is his vicious spat with a heckler in a late-night comedy club really a matter for a state arbiter? If this is a choice between offensive “humour” by bad comedians in half-empty neighbourhood nightclubs, versus an all-powerful government joke regulator, I think I’ll take the offensive gags.

Human Rights Commission A Joke

Montreal Gazette – Is there some contest to see how silly a complaint Canada’s human-rights commissions will try to take seriously? If so, there’s a new front-runner, as B.C’s Human Rights Tribunal grapples with a complaint from a woman who was insulted in a Vancouver comedy club. Talk about people unclear on the concept.

The Illegality of Being An Asshole

Globe and Mail – “It’s been three years of shite,” says Guy Earle, whose comedy career is currently on hiatus. “I didn’t think being an asshole was illegal in this country.”

Insensitive Blogger Dares To Question PTSD

National Post, Hugh MacIntyre – Plus I find her assertion that she is suffering post-traumatic stress from being called bad names a little over the top. Does she wake up screaming every night because some comedian insulted her? I somehow doubt it.

Lorna Pardy Has PTSD. Like We Didn’t See That Coming

TGET – Pardy says she suffers from PTSD stemming from the incident, and will later call a witness doctor to confirm it.

Enough With This Talk Of Justice, On With The Witch Hunt

TGET:

Guy Earle Legal Defense Fund Now Open

FFoF – REMEMBER:

The angry lesbians bringing this “hate speech” case (over a pair of broken sunglasses) get all their “legal” fees paid by your taxdollars, while Guy is out of pocket five figures and counting.

By Our Count, National Post Is Sixth Rag To Use Lame “Last Laugh” Line

National Post – Will lesbian heckler get last laugh in rights fight?

Human Rights Is Big Bucks #14

Toronto Sun – A comedian whose put-downs of a lesbian and her companion in the audience is hoping she doesn’t have the last laugh at a B.C. Human Rights Commission tribunal this week…

Pardy is seeking damages in the neighbourhood of $20,000.

What It’s Always Been About: Other People’s Cash

Vancouver Sun – People have a “right” to a full range of government-delivered social services, the United Nations will signal today as it launches a campaign to add city-dweller “rights” to a growing panoply of UN-endorsed economic rights.

Poor Lawyer Still Doesn’t Understand The Human Rights Hierarchy

Vic News – “We’re preparing an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court in Ottawa,” said lawyer from his Broughton-Street firm.

It’s discriminatory, he said, to offer free mammograms to women in their 40s while denying men of that age free prostate cancer screening tests, called PSA tests.

In 2006, Armstrong took his complaint against the Ministry of Health to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

The tribunal, however, found no evidence of discrimination between the genders.

No Statute Of Limitations On Bigotry

British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal Annual Report 2008 – 2009 – [page 8] The Code requires that a complaint must be filed within six months of an act of discrimination, or the last instance of a “continuing contravention” of the Code.  The Tribunal may accept late-filed complaints if it is in the public interest to do so and no substantial prejudice will result to anyone…

[Page 9] A complainant filed a complaint five years after he was fired and told it was due to restructuring. In unrelated civil proceedings, he learned that one respondent said he was fired because of his disability.  It was in the public interest to accept the late complaint because the complainant did not discover the discrimination until the later civil proceedings. The respondents were not prejudiced by the delay.

Warriors. Come Out To Pla-eee-ay!

West Kelowna News – A former employee of the Westside Warriors hockey club has filed a complaint of sexual harassment with the B.C. Human Rights Commission.

Marie Carrothers lodged the complaint against the hockey club, its parent company Vision Sports Group LLP and Brent Fournier, a volunteer with the hockey club.

Carrothers claims she was sexually harassed by Fournier on two separate occasions in 2008 and 2009.

The allegations came to light two days after she was fired by the Warriors on January 19, 2009.

Stumped? Don’t Sweat It. There’s a Human Rights Act For Every Situation

Vancouver Sun – A task force has backed complaints from teachers-on-call (TOC) about the practise of classroom teachers selecting their own substitutes, saying callouts should be based on qualifications and seniority not personal preference…

“Refusing to allow someone to work on the basis of age would be a violation of the BC Human Rights Act,” says a report by the task force, which was struck last year to examine complaints about poverty from TOCs.The report was tabled at the BCTF annual general meeting Sunday but has not yet been debated.