http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=919eb65e-d650-4517-b53e-3d5190b99214&p=2

Media are getting all lathered up over nothing
Human-rights cases against Maclean's and Levant are nothing to get excited about
PEARL ELIADIS,

What about the danger of being found liable for discrimination for being offensive? Just being offensive is not discriminatory. The Supreme Court has been clear: "As long as the Human Rights Tribunal continues to be well aware of the purpose of Section 13(1) (of the Canadian Human Rights Act) and pays heed to ... and extreme nature of ... 'hatred or contempt,' there is little danger that subjective opinions as to offensiveness will supplant the proper meaning of the section."

Inciting hatred or contempt is very serious business, even on the non-criminal side. It takes objective proof, and there must be evidence.

Are Levant and Steyn hatemongerers? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.

So what are these journalists complaining about? That someone has filed a complaint.

Complaints are filed all the time. Some succeed. Most don't. That is how the system works. Commissions dismiss more than 90 per cent of what comes through their doors, long before the matter ever reaches a hearing, and have no control over who files a complaint. The journalists are really suggesting that they should be above the law and that freedom of speech should insulate them completely.

Starting in June 2008, Maclean's won't even have commissions to filter out cases in Ontario. Instead, cases will go directly to a tribunal, as they already do in B.C., with no prior screening to weed out baseless complaints. Respondents will have to bear much higher costs. In short, those clamouring for the elimination of commissions should be careful what they wish for.

If these longstanding laws were truly a threat, they would surely have diminished freedom of speech in Canada by now. Instead, after three decades, Canadians enjoy the highest levels of free speech in the world.
We might, just might, wish to consider the possiblity that the reason for this is the fine balance we have struck between a critically important freedom and its reasonable limits.

Pearl Eliadis is a human-rights lawyer in Montreal.

:[]T.J.B.