Will Saskatchewan Be the First to Abolish Its Human Rights Tribunal?

The CBC is reporting that the Saskatchewan government is considering abolishing its Human Rights Tribunal and moving the case load to the Court of Queen's Bench.

"The provincial government says it's considering a proposal to have human rights cases handled in the courts instead of before the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal.

Justice Minister Don Morgan confirmed in the legislature Thursday he's holding "negotiations and discussions" with the province's Human Rights Commission.

The agency, which is independent from the tribunal, investigates human rights complaints and can send them on to the tribunal for a hearing.

"We have received a recommendation from the chief commissioner that the Human Rights Tribunal matters could better be dealt with in the Court of Queen's Bench," Morgan said."

A National Post editorial says this is the best idea they have heard all week.

"This is the best idea we’ve heard all week: Saskatchewan’s Justice Minister says his province could soon dissolve its Human Rights Tribunal and move its caseload over to the Court of Queen’s Bench. There, defendants would enjoy something that human rights Star Chambers have long denied the accused: due process, including a proper hearing in front of a judge fully trained in Canada’s constitutional traditions.

Human rights, of course, has long been the mother’s milk of Canadian political life. But in recent years, it has become clear that the provincial and federal tribunals that operate under the human rights banner are even more problematic than the waning social ills — racism, sexism, homophobia — they are meant to address. Unlike in a proper civil trial, the accuser in a human rights tribunal proceeding gets his prosecution paid for by the government: He merely has to scrawl out a complaint to get the process going, and then watch his prey squirm under years of costly, often Kafkaesque, prosecution. In censorship cases — involving, most famously, Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn — human rights mandarins have made it clear that they have scant regard for free speech.

All this would be justifiable if there were a backlog of truly awful human rights cases to be adjudicated in this country. But bald-faced discrimination has been illegal, not to mention unfashionable, for decades. So the cases that human rights tribunals typically rule on these days are just bickering matches sparked by a cranky, politically correct agitator. In Quebec, for instance, a human rights tribunal recently ruled for an obese woman who wanted a parking space a few feet closer to the door of her apartment complex. A B.C. human rights tribunal is spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money prosecuting a comedian who made fun of a jeering lesbian at a comedy club."

Well, actually the status quo would not even be justifiable even if there were a backlog of truly awful (in someone's subjective opinion) cases to be adjudicated. The more cases there are and the more serious they are, the more important it is to have the process carried out according to natural law in a serious court, rather than a Stalinist show trial kangaroo court.

Still, I'm with the Post in hoping that this is the crack in the dam that unleashes a flood that washes away these unconstitutional and unjust travesties of justice.