Canadian Lawyer: I’m Embarrassed By Osgoode Graduates

[Toronto Sun, Edward Greenspan] I’ve never before been embarrassed by a fellow Osgoode Hall Law School graduate until now.

My fellow alumni are the three complainants behind the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal complaint against Maclean’s magazine for publishing supposedly “Islamophobic” articles, including columns by Mark Steyn. It is embarrassing that these complainants graduated from Osgoode Hall when it is apparent that their education seems to have lacked any lessons in the true meaning of civil liberty.

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LA Times Columnist: Welcome To The Kangaroo Court

More international bad press for Canadian human rights commissions.

[Jonah Goldberg] Steyn — a one-man media empire based in New Hampshire — was published a few years ago in Maclean’s. Now the magazine and its editors are in the dock before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal on the charge that they violated a provincial hate-speech law by running the work of a hate-monger, namely Mark Steyn. A similar prosecution is pending before the national version of this kangaroo court, the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

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The Bus Driver Paradox

“There is no real reason for us to discriminate against older drivers,” say Sandra Hentzen, Coast Mountain’s vice president for human resources. “Nothing special happens at age 65 to make you a worse driver. If we forced drivers to resign, we’d be violating the human rights code.”

An Alberta precedent?

But the school boards that have decided to block over-65 drivers from their fleets are relying on a 1999 ruling by an Alberta human rights panel for their precedent in believing that the new anti-discrimination law should not apply to bus drivers.

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Denver Post Columnist: I’m A Bureaucrophobe

More international bad press for Canada’s human rights commissions.

[Denver Post, David Harsanyi] Canada has a lot to answer for: Rush, Celine Dion, Barenaked Ladies, Tom Green and Howie Mandel, to name a few. But its latest transgression is serious.

Federal Judge Admonishes Canadian Human Rights Tribunal

[Ottawa Citizen] A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision that ordered the National Capital Commission to make the huge York Steps accessible to the disabled has been overturned by the Federal Court of Canada.

In 2006, Ottawa resident Bob Brown, a quadriplegic, won a tribunal decision over the NCC’s grand York Steps, an award-winning $1.7-million pedestrian link between ceremonial Ottawa and Lowertown, descending from Sussex Drive by the U.S. Embassy. The tribunal found that the 45-step project was discriminatory because the steps were not accessible to the disabled, and ordered the NCC to work out a solution at the site. Building an elevator was estimated to cost at least $427,000.

The NCC appealed the tribunal decision and Federal Court Justice Simon Noël agreed that the commission did all it could to accommodate the disabled.

…

“Had it proceeded in the correct fashion, the tribunal would have been alive to the fact that from the earliest planning stages of this urban development, the NCC was fully aware and anxious to fulfil its public duty to accommodate all members of the public,” Judge Noël wrote.

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Economist Has Big Idea, But No Access To Map

“Prevent water exports.” The United States owns all of one Great Lake, and half of the other four. We’re wondering how Canada could stop them from draining the whole works if they felt like it?

[Chronicle Herald] With all these changes happening in the world, surely it is time for Canada to develop its own water strategy, including finally passing legislation to prevent water exports to the United States that could threaten our well-being.

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Japan To UN Human Rights Council: Thanks For The Advice

[M&C] The Japanese Justice Ministry executed three death-row inmates Tuesday, including a man convicted of murdering four girls in 1988 and 1989.

Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, was hanged for killing the girls, ages 4 to 7, in Tokyo and neighbouring Saitama province while Shinji Mutsuda, 37, was convicted of murder and robbery. They were executed in Tokyo.

Yoshio Yamasaki, 73, who was convicted of murdering two women in 1985 and 1990 for insurance money, was executed in Osaka.

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Japan refused to abolish the death penalty at a UN Human Rights Council meeting last week in Geneva or grant a moratorium on executions after the council reviewed the nation’s human-rights practices for the first time.

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