If there were a canary in the coal mine for Bill C-63 it would be university/college justice tribunals Part 1 of 2.
And there are a lot of canaries who seem to be pining for the fjords. But they aren't Norwegian Blue. More of them than during the Red Scare.
(The above sketch explains to those who don’t get the Monty Python joke about pining for the fjords)
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“The Canary in Coal Mine” refers to miners taking canaries into their mines. It wasn’t for some cheerful yellow companionship. The canaries were living warning systems. If someone noticed Chirpy pining for the fjords, it was time to leave; the oxygen levels were getting low. PETA wouldn’t let it happen now, but still, the point was that one dead canary was better than many dead men.
University and College Justice might as well be the proud uncle holding their bundled baby nephew Bill C-63. C-63? It sounds like their parents were a little too into Star Wars.
Of course, Bill C-63 and university justice are different, but there’s a lot in common; one can still use university justice today to see the dangers of Bill C-63 tomorrow. While Bill C-63 hasn’t passed the Senate or Parliament in Canada, university and college justice and human rights tribunals have long followed its rocky and uneven path.
If C-63 passes as is, the path may widen, but it will not be smoother; falls will tear skin and break bones, and signs will point to a destination people call Safety even though it will look like that old town called Utopia. The name Utopia bombed out during the focus group stage.
But still, Bill C-63's aspirations reek of utopian hubris. Of course, when looking at all the failures, the slips into tyranny, all those hurt—warning signs from history are again ignored—it’s always the same refrain: they didn’t follow the instruction manual properly, but we will.
C-63 arrogates itself to purify society. We’ve been there before, especially when punishing people by speculating on their emotions' scope, source and valence. But like with the real Puritans, such efforts quickly become tyranny. The human heart is full of mystery, and we can not submit it to arbitrary and subjective criteria for measuring hate: the absurdity of parsing distaste from dislike, an admiring glance from a leer, and a leer from a regular old-school flirt that suddenly becomes a pre-crime. In the most basic of relationships, we misread and misunderstand emotional signals all the time, but they will put together a panel full of mind and heart readers, and I’m sure it will be fine; I saw it in a sci-fi movie, and it worked out in the end.
The ADL says about 15% of Canadians are anti-semitic, so if we get a few of them (nobody ever ticks “anti-semite” on the wise sage panel box) in positions of judgment. Someone like me - who thinks that rubbing people the wrong way in noble pursuits ain’t such a bad thing - crosses their desk, it’s off with their head!
Oh, sorry, Canada, life in prison. The arrogance of these people where they play God and parse motive with their simplistic indicators, dislike or detest indeed.
The Apostle Paul, 2000 years ago, did not mince words when he condemned religious leaders who measured hearts by outward measures; we see the same in our non-coalition coalition; their Messiah complex is showing.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.1
Today, Paul might be charged with hate speech, and they’d probably nail Jesus for hurting people’s feelings when he cleared the temple moneylenders.
You know that when Jesus went off on the Pharisees (Matt. 23.13, “Woe to you etc, etc.” ) I think Justin would have give him the whole life sentence, it sounds more detest than dislike to me.
Despite the efforts of Princeling Justin, who, toward the end of this term, seems to be going a little mad—writer Jen Gerson put it beautifully when she said he seems to be his own personal Jesus Christ—the bill hasn't passed through the Senate or Parliament in Canada.
Yes, C-63 won’t go instantly to the clapping seal exhibition in Parliament.
Are we taking this too seriously? We have it pretty good in Canada; our political leaders are not murdered, and our country is not being bombed or shelled, but do we allow concerns to be silenced by pointing out worse things going on in the world?
No, the line of thinking that bases contentment on “things could be worse” devolves down to one shitty situation and some poor person who truly won the shit lottery.
Any sophist can make you look down the shit ladder and see all the people beneath; it’s not a refined skill. But injustice is injustice, and we should not be silent, even if it’s just your Uncle Albert being charged double for his Turkish Delight at the Giant Tiger.
People say you have to watch what you say, but does that mean cancel culture should intimidate free speech? Is a cowed silence what we want? To allow the loudest to suck all the oxygen out of the room? Is that wisdom or selfishness?
So, who are the dead canaries in the cage, then?
If university justice is the canary in the coal mine for C-63, one doesn’t have to search far to see dead canaries; indeed, we are ignoring this thoughtless advance of C-63; we have become blinded by a malignant confidence in the strength of our virtues.
I am feeling quite sentimental about Norwegian fjords myself.
“It pisses me off,” said one unnamed administrator. “These C-63 folks think they are so cutting edge; we are so far ahead of them, we eliminated truth as a defence years ago; it’s not our fault that we couldn’t give snitching pay to anonymous informants. It’s Doug Ford and his damn budget freeze,” he said.
“If we could raise tuition and start bringing in more international students with 5.5 IELTS and charge them $500 a month for rent, with three per residence bedroom, we’d be swimming in snitch money.”
The proposal is for ‘snitching pay’ of $20K for the anonymous complainant and a tidy $50K for the government. Of course, that won’t corrupt motives; look at history: who was this Judas fellow again?
We look at motive in criminal action as a mitigating factor, but in human rights, it’s not a sideshow; it’s on the main stage. The problem with proposed online hate crimes is that they are arbitrary; their incentives will breed corruption; they offer a lottery prize for the embittered while protecting them with anonymity and covering their costs. Zealots will ruin innocent lives.
Today, this is already part and parcel of university justice; they think they can call something non-disciplinary if they pay the accused, forgetting the damage from the ostracization, the banishment, the demonization, and the implied guilt that comes with any ‘human rights’ charges. In my case, when you are pulled out of class, it’s not a good look.
But when I mentioned policies and procedures, the ones that were written down, the ones that management believed were simply a wonderful university justice smorgasbord to be consumed while they played the role of the annoying 18-year-old who watched too much TikTok and was allergic to everything except when they were drunk, I would see those questions ignored. It wasn’t 12 angry men; it was 12 ADD-addled kittens playing and getting startled by a bug zapper. With apologies to Dung Beetles, it is Kafkaesque.
But Bill C-63 seems uni justice tweaked by too much Adderal and hubris; they are going all in with life sentences for hate crimes. The key differentiation is between “dislike” and “distest.” They will verify by listening to the person’s voice using the meanometer; if it’s “detest,” it’s off to the slammer. I detest green tea and Coffee Mate in coffee. Dislike doesn’t come close. This isn’t looking good for me.
University administrators are jealous but can’t have speech jails because of space issues. They need all that new room to get back to having special “let’s go back to segregating people by skin colour and have safe, diversity is not our strength, rooms.” After all, if you put the word safe into an initiative, it’s good.
Is there anything more dangerous than a room full of rich, entitled, white female academic virtue signalers showing off their empathy plumage?
One college thought that putting a feature called social escape on student phones was a good idea; for all those times kids find themselves in the Subway lineup and their friends keep switching the conversation to organizing child drug mule pedo photo shoots, and they don’t want to be rude and say they have want to have a look at the condiments, they will need social escape on their phone to fake a phone call because it’s easier to say the mum wants them at home to unplug the toilet.
After almost four months of being suspended from my professor/lecturer position, my chance to defend myself may come up in April. Still, they will delay it further, hoping I can no longer afford a lawyer.
The investigator has decided that allegations don’t need to be supported by much more than a pittance of evidence. Evidence is so retro, so 80s, that university justice is more from the modern feeling-based perspective. If a liar lies better than you tell the truth, maybe your mother should have signed you up for those acting lessons at the Fort Garry Community Centre because you are getting fired.
(To be continued)
If you believe in the importance of free speech, subscribe to support uncensored, fearless writing—the more people who pay, the more time I can devote to this. Free speech matters. I am a university professor suspended because of a free speech issue, so I am not speaking from the bleachers. The button below takes you to that story if you like.
Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.
But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.
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www. freedomtoffend.com
Matthew 23: 27-28 NIV