Ontario: Where a crime doesn't have to be a crime ... but it's still a crime

Bernie Farber an anti-democratic extremist whose approval of state censorship and recalcitrant advocacy of the notorious Section 13(1) are well known, also has his fingerprints on this affront to freedom and the rule of law by our Human Rights Rackateers. Things were still going well for Bernie and the rest of the HRC Cabal back in December 2006 when this report was submitted, looks like they thought it would be no problem to slip a variant of Section 13(1) past an unsuspecting Ontario public.

The report offers insight into the Police State like mindset of our Human Rights Commissars, their initiatives read like a "How to" exercise in totalitarian control as contained in the recommendations of this report submitted to the Attorney Generals Office. We can only hope that the Ontario Government has chosen not to implement the more bizarre suggestions I've highlighted, more digging will be needed to see if the following recommendations were acted upon or not :

Addressing Hate Crime in Ontario
Final Report of the Hate Crimes Community Working Group to the
Attorney General and the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Highlights:

Get ready for the Orwellian World of "Hate Incidents", think of it as Section 13(1) by other means (Pg. 43):

1.1. The Working Group recommends that:

• the Ontario Government adopt standard definitions of 'hate incident' and 'hate crime' for all public purposes in the province, including victim services, criminal justice, statistical classification, public education, policy and program development, and program/project funding allocations; and

• the Ontario government urge the federal government to adopt these same definitions for all public purposes nationwide.

1.2. The Working Group further recommends that:

• the Ontario government propose and adopt the following definitions for these purposes:

• 'hate incident' means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members. A 'vulnerable or disadvantaged community' is any group or community identified as such on the basis of characteristics protected by the Criminal Code of Canada, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Ontario Human Rights Code, or Section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [Charter];1



Not content to invent new imaginary crimes, (that don't even have to be crimes), the HRC Commissars are demanding the authority to browbeat and bully the police into both taking the nonsense of "Hate Incidents" seriously and are also demanding that the police expend scarce resources to track them in depth. The HRC Commissars want the police to monitor innocent citizens whose only "crime" is entrapment by the bizarre "Hate Incident" definition.


Tracking Hate Crimes (P. 68)

The Working Group recommends that:

6.27. The Ministries of the Attorney General and of Community Safety and Correctional Services in collaboration with police services boards and representatives from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, develop within the next 12 months, standard forms and procedures for collecting and keeping statistics on hate incidents reported to the criminal justice system and that police services and Crown attorneys' offices keep statistics on all such incidents and report them annually to the two Ministers and the public.

• That these forms and procedures be designed to capture, at a minimum, all incidents that complainants have identified as hate crimes or hate incidents and all incidents for which there is evidence that suggests that they may qualify as hate crimes or hate incidents (as defined in this report), and, in respect of all such incidents:

- what investigation was undertaken;
- what charges, if any, were laid;
-why charges were not laid;
-what other charges might reasonably have been laid in the circumstances but were not and why they were not;
-whether any charges laid proceeded to trial and if they did not, why they did not;
-what the disposition of the charges was;
-whether, if the accused was convicted, the Crown raised hate or prejudice as an aggravating factor in sentencing;
-whether, in such instances, the court took hate or prejudice explicitly into account as an aggravating factor in sentencing; and what the sentence, if any, was.

• That police services and Crown Attorneys' offices begin, once these forms and procedures are in place, keeping statistics on all such incidents and report them annually to the two Ministers, the Hate Crimes Governance Committee (recommended below) and to the public.

• That the Ontario government enact regulations requiring that such statistics be kept and made available as indicated above.


What a world. This the best our Human Rights Commissars could come up with. Genius, pure evil genius assuming the light of day had never been shone on them. We can only hope these recommendations are disowned by the Government and never acted upon.

Update: Esteemed Reader JR makes a chilling observation:

JR said...

Good grief!! And we thought HRCs were bad. If the AG, et al implement any significant part of this lunatic report it will be nightmare time in Ontario.

From the Preface: “... Attorney General Michael Bryant and Community Safety and Corrections Minister Monte Kwinter appointed the Hate Crimes Community Working Group to advise the government on an overall strategy...”

The Attorney General recruited and appointed the individual members of the HCCWG. He therefore had more than an inkling of what he expected from them. So we can assume he’ll be taking their report seriously. Time to start writing strong letters.