INTOLERANT LAND

INTOLERANT LAND  
Link Byfield
Calgary Sun - March 25, 2005

It would be fascinating to ask a large random sample of Canadians what their  highest civic ideal is. I suspect most would say: "To me, Canada is about  tolerance." And they would be kidding themselves. This country believes no  more in "tolerance" than it does in freedom. People who are "tolerant"  defend the rights of everyone to free speech, freedom of belief, and freedom  of peaceful assembly - even for those they disagree with. The word  "tolerance" comes from the Latin word "to endure."

Two things in Alberta this week make me wonder how much we are willing to  "endure" ideas and opinions we don't like. The first was a United Church  minister in Edmonton writing to the federal government to formally accuse  Edmonton East MP Peter Goldring of "promoting hatred against a minority  group." Note that this is a Criminal Code offence punishable by two years in  jail. Goldring had convened a townhall meeting on March 9 to seek  instructions from his constituents. Most have already told him they want him  to oppose same sex marriage in Parliament. Now he wanted to know if he  should push for a national referendum. (I had been asked to give the case  for a referendum.) Of the 250 people present, more than nine out of 10  wanted a referendum. A handful of dissenters, however, spoke out forcefully  (and impressively) in favour of gay marriage. Tensions ran high and  resentments on both sides flared, but moderator Doug Main kept order.  Afterward, several of the dissenters wrote scathing letters in the Edmonton  Journal. It all seemed like a textbook example of grassroots democracy at  work. Until, that is, "Reverend Doctor Ted Kolber" of the United Church  weighed in with his hate charge against Goldring to the federal minister of  justice. Having not been at the meeting himself, his evidence consisted of  two letters in the newspaper, neither of which provided legal specifics. I  doubt that anything will come of it, though these days one never knows. And  that's my point. An apparently educated man thinks that because he disagrees  with an MP's political position on gay rights, the MP has committed a crime  by speaking it.

The second story is much worse. It happened at the University of Calgary -  which one would have assumed is a bastion of political free speech. One of  the student clubs, Campus Pro-Life, wanted to mount a large, graphic display  equating Canada's policy of unrestricted, on-demand, government-funded  abortion with other atrocities in human history such as slavery in the U.S.  and systematic slaughter of Jews under the Nazis. The students argue that  this kind of horrifying oppression happens whenever a government decides  that living humans of a particular class are not "persons," because they are  too young, too black, or too Jewish. Whether or not you agree, it's a  thought worth debating at a university.

Unfortunately, the University of Calgary refused the students permission to  mount their display. They did it off-campus at the LRT entry to the  university, where two thugs tore up their large posters. The students then  planned to bring the big posters onto campus on the sides of a van, but were  blocked by campus cops. When they then started plastering small, letter-size  posters on lampposts and walls (the way students do with everything) the  security force tore them down, and banished the young people from the  campus. They even set up check-points to stop and search vehicles with  flashlights for banned thoughts. Prohibited political posters? Police  checks? At a Canadian university? If you're thinking: "Well, they shouldn't  go around making people feel uncomfortable," you do not believe in free  speech. You may not even believe in truth. But if you think the students  have a right to make their point, you could phone U of C vice-president  Roman Cooney at 403-220-7451 and tell him so.

Link Byfield is chairman of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.  He can be reached by e-mail at contact@citizenscentre.com.