Sunday, April 13, 2008
Northern SLAPP: Free speech under seige in Canada
The Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation is alive and well north of the border.
Regular readers of conservative blogs, at least, know that a gadfly named Richard Warman is suing a group of high-traffic Canadian bloggers and journalists under Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act. The bloggers in particular will no doubt struggle with huge legal fees to defend this lawsuit, and will not even have the opportunity to depose Warman to adduce facts in their defense. Canada, you see, does not have freedom of speech as it is understood in the United States.
One of those bloggers is Kathy Shaidle, who writes Five Feet of Fury. Go to the main page and just keep scrolling. Another is Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals. Both bloggers deserve your support, whether moral, spiritual, verbal, or financial.
MORE: Ezra Levant is appealing for financial support for himself, Kathy and Kate, and I've made contributions to all three. If you care about free speech, think about giving money that you would otherwise donate to a political candidate or an NGO instead to these three bloggers, who actually need your help.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Apr 13, 09:23:00 AM:
Why doesn't someone sue Richard Warman?
By , at
Mon Apr 14, 12:16:00 AM:
I'm of the view that Warman himself isn't the problem. Even left wing crazies have a right to their political views. What's really odd is that Canadians have allowed this perverse totalitarianism to creep into law. Chambers has been consulting north of the border apparently.
By , at
Mon Apr 14, 09:42:00 AM:
This is rich:
"Alan Borovoy, one of the architects of rights commissions as we know them in Canada, called for Section 13 to be scrapped, noting its recent use against Maclean's for material that complainants felt was anti-Islamic. "It just never occurred to anybody that this instrument we were struggling to create would be used against the expression of free speech," he said."
