Bill C-61 explained
Stoddart wants to anonymize court proceedings
Jennifer Stoddart is proposing radical changes to the
long-standing rule that courts are open to public scrutiny. Under the
proposal, names and personal information would be removed from judges'
decisions and case information posted on the Internet. Initials –
"hopefully reversed" – would replace actual names as part of the
"anonymizing" process, she said.
In
a speech to the Canadian Bar Association over the weekend, Stoddart
said while personal details can be important to a case, she's not
convinced they need to be known to the world at large.
"The open
court rule, which is extremely historically important, has now become
distorted by the effect of massive search engines," Stoddart told
reporters yesterday.
Court Rules Immigration and Refugee Board Reconsider Asylum Claim for US War Resister
In a victory for US war resisters, Canada’s federal court ruled Friday
that the Immigration and Refugee Board should reconsider the asylum
claim of conscientious objector and Iraq war veteran Joshua Key. The
court ruled that Key had been forced to systematically violate the
Geneva Conventions as part of his military service in Iraq and that
such misconduct amounts to a legitimate refugee claim.
9-0 ruling modernizes defence of fair comment
"We live in a free country, where people have as much right to
express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones," Judge
Binnie said. "In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are
as much entertainers as journalists."
Brian MacLeod Rogers, a lawyer who represented a coalition of media
organizations in the appeal, said that the ruling "clarifies and
strengthens a defence that had fallen into murky depths and had become
too unreliable to be counted on when most needed."
Mr. Mair, a former Social Credit cabinet minister, made his
controversial comments during an Oct. 25, 1999, broadcast on radio
station CKNW. Using provocative images of Nazi Germany and the Ku Klux
Klan, Mr. Mair took issue with Ms. Simpson's public support of a Surrey
school board decision to ban three books depicting same-sex parents.
Beware ‘slippery slope' to censorship, hearing told
This not merely a slippery slope.
This is a small group of
individuals who have infiltrated what was a naive but well-intentioned
Human Rights Commission system, and have become a law unto themselves,
pushing a social agenda that is unaccountable to politicians or the
public.
Anyone reading the proceedings of the BC HRC case
against Steyn this week will see how clueless and biased the judges
are. These kangaroo courts are reminiscent of those seen in Communist
countries.
Ordinary people who assume that our bureaucrats and
public servants are basically honest basically good-willed people are
stunned when they find out what goes on here.