The Canadian Bar Association a Legitimate Form of the HRCs?

I've always said that the Human Rights Commissions are a bigger problem than, well, the Human Rights Commissions. Part of the problem is that the kinds of people that Canada is admitting into the country are people who are ripe for the snagging by the HRCs, lulled into doing all the kangaroo suing that they want in the name of their human rights, civil rights, and other phoney complaints.

Well, Ezra Levant has expanded on this theory (observation, actually) of mine, when he writes about the HRC-type behaviour of the Canadian Bar Association (but he never makes that link).

Here's what he wrote at his blog, via an article of his at the Canadian Lawyer website (Levant is a lawyer himself):

In Canada, the bar associations are on the cutting edge of human rights and civil rights, relentlessly badgering Canada’s government on everything from gay marriage to racial quotas to outlawing spanking. Canada may be one of the freest countries in the world, but that’s never enough for the CBA.

This article is about the Ontario Bar Association being gifted an expensive tourism trip to Burma (spouses included) by the Burmese government, in exchange for its act of solidarity with the government via such things as "legal meetings" (which I think means a type of legal consultations). The Burmese leader/activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, has specifically requested that foreign tourists boycott Burma in order not to give credence to the government.

Similarly, the CBA has had friendly relations with China which, according to Levant, is to help downplay the Chinese human rights atrocities in exchange for expensive holidays, or other lucrative deals. Some of these deals include "teaching" the Chinese about criminal defence trials. "Nice" says Levant, "but China isn’t governed by Canadian law."

As Levant writes, the CBA is "on the cutting edge of human rights and civil rights" in Canada. But its shameful lack concern for human rights abroad makes it a hypocritical advocate for these very human rights in Canada. So phoney human rights concerns by the CBA, or manufactured human rights cases by the HRCs, kind of puts them both on the same level.

Levant needs to disentangle the root of these problems, both in the HRCs and now in the legitimate CBA, before he thinks he’s done with the whole thing. Something bigger than both is at play, and it’s not just the hard cash or fun holidays that these lawyers are getting.

My take is that high immigration and institutionalized multiculturalism makes these kinds of behaviors surprisingly easy in legitimate or illegitimate courts. If their national clientele is reduced, then the CBA's other phoney international activities (such as paid-for tourism trips to Burma) might garner the attention and outrage of the Canadian public. So far, both the HRCs and the CBA are seen as the good guys defending the humble, down-trodden victims who have lost their various rights.

Levant also writes that he is writing another book, and will be on a hiatus until the end of August. That gives me plenty of time to prepare for him my modest thoughts and blogs on the HRC debacle, to give him my take on the problem and the possible solutions. I hope to send him that email in September.