It truly is frightening to think our ability to express our opinions openly is at the mercy of an agency so entirely clueless about the nature and
source of free speech.
But such scarily ill-informed notions of the role of free speech in a democracy are not confined to the CHRC. Our own Alberta Human Rights Commission
(AHRC) also buys into the notion that free expression is secondary to political correctness.
Last December, commission panellist Lori Andreachuk ruled that Red Deer Pastor Stephen Boissoin was guilty of hate speech for a letter he wrote to the
Red Deer Advocate in which he encouraged readers to join a "war" against gays, who he likened to pedophiles and pimps, and whom he blamed for
diseases, among other things.
Andreachuk insisted "the eradication of hate speech is paramount" to freedom of expression. Freedom of speech, in other words, must take a back seat
to the AHRC's definition of hate and its fixation with stamping it out.
Human rights commissions are out of control. They need to be severely curtailed or, better yet, dismantled.
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