The National Post (Canada) has a shocker involving our pals at the United Nations:
UNITED NATIONS - Canada yesterday appeared before a United Nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination to defend itself against allegations that racial injustices persist against black, Chinese and aboriginal Canadians, and that immigrants do not earn as much as people born in the country.If I recall the NYC expression accurately: Regis, I got your complaint right here!
At the same hearing in Geneva, committee members told Canadian officials Ottawa was wrong to resist giving the UN the power to rule on individual complaints of racism in Canada.
Forty-one countries, including Australia, France and Germany, have handed the committee jurisdiction over individual complaints. But the United States and the United Kingdom are among countries that, like Canada, prefer domestic courts to deal with allegations of racism.
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Canadian officials noted, however, that committee rulings on cases brought by individuals from other countries have leaned farther toward suppressing free speech than Canada is ready to tolerate, even though Canada itself is moving in that direction with progressively tougher anti-racism laws.
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The committee meets twice a year to review the anti-racism record of up to a dozen of the 162 countries that have adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, enacted in 1969.
It grilled Canada, which ratified the treaty in 1970, after receiving 200 pages of government reports about Ottawa's performance, and numerous other submissions from human rights and community activist groups.
Canada has some of the toughest anti-racism laws in the world, but submits to such grillings because it "believes that the world community will be gradually moved along if we and other countries support the processes," Mr. Moyer said.
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Regis de Goutte, a French magistrate who serves on the committee, said Canada's recent laws limiting expression on the Internet showed it is ready to limit free speech. "That shows they have accepted there are exceptions to freedom of speech and so should allow individual complaints to be heard by the committee," he said.
The bad news is that in 1994 (before the election) the US Senate ratified this full employment program for annoying bureaucratic twits and global whiners. The good news is that they inserted substantial caveats. The real question is why any country would allow a collection of bozos who can't find their butts with both hands to have even whining rights over them. Mr. Moyer offers an explanation that merely shows the depth of his cluelessness.
