Canadian politician cleared of using racist ink colours on 2002 pamphlet
Originally posted at Five Feet of Fury on March 8, 2009 in reference to this Canadian Press article of March 7, 2009.
During a hearing into the complaints last fall, Pankiw told the tribunal he simply believes aboriginals should not be given special treatment by governments or society.
“You can’t discriminate in favour of someone without discriminating against someone else. Discrimination is wrong,” he said. “I am an egalitarian. I believe in equality of all people.”
Pankiw gave as an example the case of a woman he knows who didn’t get into law school because a certain number of seats were set aside for aboriginal students.
“In my opinion, she was discriminated against,” he said.
Ezra Levant wrote about the case last year:
Smith found proof of Pankiw’s racism in the colour of ink used in the brochures: black and red, on white paper.
Those are “colours very much associated with aboriginal people, for whom four colours have come to be associate with the four cardinal directions and have great spiritual significance,” wrote Smith. “One can hardly claim that the symbolism in this pamphlet is not inflammatory.” A real judge would laugh that out of court. A real prosecutor would be too embarrassed to run with it.
The suit against Pankiw is clearly unconstitutional. In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that human rights commissions could only pursue “hate” cases against Canadians whose messages were pure evil — they were explicitly forbidden from touching political speech. Whether or not Pankiw’s views on Indian crime are “right” should therefore be up to the voters.
Comments
By CMax on March 10th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
To begin with, this is a quote from an article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090306.wsask0306/BNStory/National/home
“Daniel Poulin, a lawyer for the human rights commission, said since the pamphlets aren’t subject to the act, the panel was unable to consider whether Mr. Pankiw’s statements were objectionable.”
Jim Pankiw- what gets me is how racism-discrimination is such a hard thing to understand. Certainly it is related to oppression, and that is why advantaged people have such a hard time understanding it. If you attack an already oppressed group of people, you are irresponsible. It is akin to the lowest of blows, it is nothing more that dirty fighting. Moreover, how do you use equality against an already disadvantaged people? Seems to me the constitution got it right. Need I remind you Section 15(2) states: “Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantage individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race…”
The only reasoning I can come up as to why equality is used is because it is all about keeping the disadvantaged out. Yet this country was built with advantages, it is therefore hard to see how not allowing advantages to others is against the status quo. I would also think the constitution has a higher ideal/principle than some emotional opposition. Imagine if equality started at the inception of this country, there would be no reserves and the First Nations people would not be controlled and dominated by some legislation.
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