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Lisa Bildy: Human rights rules on gender ideology are just blasphemy laws

$750,000 fine for criticizing gender ideology proves human rights tribunals cannot be saved

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Last week, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered Barry Neufeld, a former school board trustee, to pay $750,000. Neufeld had boldly criticized curriculum for young children that embedded gender ideology. LGBTQ teachers in the Chilliwack school board, who make up about 16 per cent of the staff, will get the money. Blasphemy laws have returned to Canada.

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They don’t resemble the blasphemy laws of old. Through much of history, the state’s powers were used to punish challengers to the religious orthodoxy of the day. The Enlightenment’s focus on individual liberties hastened their decline in Western societies. For a time, freedom of speech, thought, and religion were seen as antidotes to oppressively enforced beliefs.

Lisa Bildy: Human rights rules on gender ideology are just blasphemy laws Back to video

Oppressively enforced beliefs are back. But those beliefs don’t emanate from pulpits. It’s no longer Christianity demanding adherence to beliefs, but the secular religion of social justice. Neufeld learned the hard way that gender identity is now an unquestionable tenet of this new faith. Human rights tribunals are its enforcers under the guise of punishing “discrimination.” The curriculum he criticized, introduced in 2016, roughly coincided with “gender identity” becoming a protected class under human rights codes across Canada.

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Traditionally, discrimination meant denying access to services, employment, or accommodation based on immutable qualities. Now, human rights tribunals use state power to enforce progressive dogma.

This shift is not entirely new. In 2006, publisher Ezra Levant faced a discrimination complaint for reprinting the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. He and Mark Steyn, who faced similar complaints for commentary on Islam published in Maclean’s magazine, drew attention to tribunal overreach, leading to the repeal of section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act, which had empowered the tribunal to punish “hate speech.” But section 13’s proponents are becoming emboldened again. Court decisions rendered in the interim have only encouraged them.

Neufeld’s case, under provincial human rights law, is the kind you would expect under the federal Online Harms Bill, introduced by the previous Liberal government and floated again by the current government. It proposes to restore those hate speech enforcement powers to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Under this bill, individuals who feel “harmed” by online speech would have the power to drag the speaker through a costly, multi-year process, at no cost to themselves. But that’s obviously already happening, at least in British Columbia. In an interim decision in Neufeld’s case, B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal decided that, although previous decisions of the tribunal had found otherwise, it actually does have the power to regulate online posts under its existing legislation. Other provinces have similar legislative powers.

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Many parents and citizens would be shocked by what the tribunal considers “hate speech” and “discrimination.” They should read the case, if only to understand how expansively these concepts were interpreted. They should also understand that the bureaucratic machinery exists only to protect certain favoured groups and ideas within the social justice canon. Universal human rights are an illusion in Canada.

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Those who follow free speech cases are no longer surprised by such decisions. Over the past two decades, courts, governments, and tribunals have expanded the limits on free expression, rarely reinforcing broad conceptions of this fundamental freedom. The balancing act is often couched in phrases like, “Free speech is sacrosanct in our democracy, but of course there are limits …”

This case expands limits on freedom of expression in two significant ways. First, disparaging gender ideology — even when targeting ideas, not people — was found to be discriminatory. B.C.’s human rights commissioner argued that’s the way it should be. Excluding opinions on matters of “legitimate public interest” from the tribunal’s authority, she argued, created a loophole that should be closed. Mark Steyn avoided punishment for his commentary on Islam, also litigated in B.C., because it was considered political commentary within the bounds of free expression. Today’s human rights functionaries won’t abide such limits on their power.

Second, the expanded interpretation was applied to an elected trustee, whose role is to challenge policies and raise concerns about educational changes. Bureaucrats now dictate what elected officials can say on public policy matters.

The tribunal’s decision also included a passage chastising those who do not believe in gender identity, positing that failure to do so constitutes discriminatory “erasure” of transgender people. Expressing beliefs against gender identity — such as skepticism about changing one’s sex or concerns about males entering women’s spaces — may therefore be severely penalized if deemed “discriminatory” or “hateful” by the administrative state.

The $750,000 fine against Neufeld is unprecedented in the human rights context. While framed as compensation for “harm” to LGBTQ teachers, it was clearly intended to financially ruin him for his speech and refusal to embrace gender identity. It also serves as a warning to anyone considering criticism of the new faith. Blasphemy laws are back.

Public outrage is growing, and politicians are being pressured to act. Reining in these star chambers is no longer good enough. Legislatures must abolish them, along with the human rights codes that they enforce. That requires political backbone, so don’t hold your breath. Instead, call, write, or sign a petition like ours at the Free Speech Union to let your political leaders know how many Canadians oppose financial ruin for expressing opinions on issues affecting themselves and their children.

Lisa Bildy is a lawyer and executive director of the Free Speech Union of Canada. She can be found on X at @LDBildy. 

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