Western Standard: How Canada’s ‘Human Rights’ tribunals became political weapons — $750,000 fine for hurt ‘feelings’ over trans comments

Last week, BC’s “Human Rights” Tribunal ordered former Chilliwack School Board Trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 to the Chilliwack Teachers Association over injury to the “dignity, feelings, and self-respect” of a small but unknown number of LGBT teachers and staff.

What exactly did Mr. Neufeld say or do to deserve this $750,000 punishment?

The Tribunal’s 50,000-word, 64-page ruling includes dozens of examples of Mr. Neufeld’s public comments from 2017 to 2022. For example: “The Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) program instructs children that gender is not biologically determined but is a social construct … Allowing little children to choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse. But now the BC Ministry of Education has embraced the LGBTQ lobby and is forcing this biologically absurd theory on children in our schools.”

Here is another example of speech for which Mr. Neufeld must now pay $750,000: “… if an anorexic person is suffering, you don’t pat them on the back and say, here, here, I’ll give you some diet pills, and you don’t have to eat as much. Sometimes the loving thing is saying something very challenging to a person who’s struggling with a problem. If an alcoholic is suffering because they can’t find any booze, you don’t hand them a case of beer. You tell them to, you know, buckle up and do without. Give them a cup of coffee instead.”

The local teachers’ union was outraged that an elected Trustee would publicly and repeatedly state his belief that there are only two sexes, that children should not be exposed to transgender ideology in schools, and that gender-confused children should be provided with compassionate help rather than with puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and eventual gender-reassignment surgeries.

Rather than seeking to persuade parents and other citizens to support SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity), the teachers’ union and the BC “Human Rights” Tribunal instead used coercive state power to silence and punish Barry Neufeld, one of their political opponents.

The woke activists used section 7(1) of BC’s Human Rights Code, which prohibits publishing or displaying any statement … that indicates discrimination (or even an intention to discriminate) against a person (or a class of persons), or that is likely to expose a person (or a class of persons) to hatred or contempt, because of the indigenous identity, race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or age of that person (or class of persons).

Albertans might be tempted to ignore this $750,000 compensation award for hurt feelings as run-of-the-mill Left Coast lunacy, another normal day in the People’s Republic of British Columbia.

However, the Alberta Human Rights Act restrictions on speech are nearly identical to BC’s law. Section 3(1) prohibits publishing or displaying any statement that indicates discrimination (or even an intention to discriminate) against a person (or a class of persons), or that is likely to expose a person (or a class of persons) to hatred or contempt, because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, gender identity, gender expression, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income, family status, or sexual orientation of that person (or class of persons). This is almost the same as section 7(1) in BC.

The Alberta Human Rights Act has an added section 3(2) stating: “Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject.” But courts have rendered that add-on meaningless and irrelevant. Section 3(2) is a sop to citizens who recognize that section 3(1) can, in fact, result in a Tribunal ordering a Christian to pay $750,000 to woke folks who feel offended by his socially conservative opinions.

In short, Alberta has the same provincial restrictions on speech that BC has. Alberta’s human rights laws facilitate the use of state resources against those who express socially conservative, libertarian, and other “politically incorrect” opinions. In both BC and Alberta, the door is wide open for woke human rights machinery to punish citizens like Barry Neufeld.

Neither the Supreme Court of Canada in Whatcott nor our federal Parliament in C-9 has succeeded in providing Canadians with a clear definition of “hate” that is not a personal, subjective sentiment. Provinces have done no better when it comes to defining the “contempt” which they prohibit in provincial human rights codes.

It’s bad enough that Canadians are subjected to vague and arbitrary Criminal Code restrictions on speech. BC, Alberta, and other provinces can remove the speech restrictions from human rights legislation and still leave in place all the laws that now prohibit discrimination in the provision of goods, services, housing, employment, etc.