Kate Marland: Tearing down B.C. Human Rights Tribunal should be only the start

We are now well into the swing of David Eby’s faux-pas snap election. The candidates have been confirmed, battle lines have been drawn, and scores of scurrying volunteers are zipping door to door, eager to convince British Columbians that either the time is now for change, or the time is now to maintain the brilliant status quo.

At the moment, the B.C. Conservatives have yet to release a full platform. But if early polls are to be trusted, it seems like Lorne Doerkson’s hastily assembled coalition of the willing is poised to potentially rise like a phoenix from the ashes and form government. So the question becomes, how should a newly formed B.C. Conservative government wield their authority to defend free speech on the West Coast? (Note: David Eby, if you are reading this, these ideas are free for the taking).

First on the docket: eradicate the B.C. Human Rights regime of terror and its unstoppable commitment to distorting reality. The inimitable Amy Hamm has written at length in these pages on the subject of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, including last week with an impassioned plea to Doerkson to save us from “this star chamber’s far left ideologues.”

Not only is the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal routinely the horror of our national news cycle, but its twisted rulings have breached containment to make international news, as in the case of the individual, “Jessica Yaniv,” who lodged several complaints against a beauty salon for refusing to wax testicles. Let us not forget that this is the same institution that has established precedent that the use of “you people” can be discriminatory.

It bears constant reminding that our Human Rights overlords fined an elected school trustee $750,000 for remarks made about sexual orientation and gender ideology. Some amongst us would endeavour to reform this institution, but those would be individuals with far more institutional trust than me. I do not see a path forward for reform when we have done a cannonball off the deep end.

Luckily, the proposition to abolish the tribunal is not an extreme position. Saskatchewan abolished its human rights tribunal in 2011, placing the majority of case management with its human rights commission and sending cases that could not be settled to the Court of King’s Bench.

B.C. has also made major reforms to its human rights regime in the past. In 1983, Premier Bill Bennett abolished the B.C. Human Rights Commission in a slash-and-burn move, part of a massive budget overhaul that found its employees on the streets the very same day. The Free Speech Union has been calling for these tribunals to be abolished for months.

A B.C. Conservative government must also prioritize passing a law similar in spirit to Alberta’s Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, dubbed “Peterson’s Law.” Peterson’s Law protects off-duty expression, ensuring overzealous regulators cannot discipline professionals for statements made outside of the performance of their regulated profession. The law also prevents regulators from mandating diversity, equity and inclusion education or training.

Protections for regulated professionals are sorely needed in this province. Mere weeks ago, the Canadian Constitution Foundation had a recent victory in defence of a realtor targeted by the B.C. Financial Services Authority for social media posts critiquing the closure of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park. Such prosecutorial behaviour must be soundly stopped, and implementing legislation to rein in the ideological excesses of professional regulators must be a top priority for a future government.

A further move to protect the free expression of professionals would be the immediate repeal of Bill 36, the Health Professions and Occupations Act. The act exposes doctors to potential frivolous complaints, with broad prescriptions to mandate the implementation of vague anti-discrimination principles in order to “foster physically, culturally, socially, emotionally and spiritually safe practices.”

What constitutes a failure to foster a spiritually safe practice, for example, is not defined, and concerned medical professionals have been unable to get clarity on this issue. Responsibility for investigating complaints and disciplinary action has been removed from the elected members of their professional regulatory college and placed instead with government appointees, rightfully causing concern about the potential infiltration of activist ideology into these processes. This legislation has caused a chilling effect on the speech of regulated healthcare professionals and must be done away with.

Finally, a B.C. Conservative government must commit to a root-and-branch renewal of the school curriculum, which currently stifles heterodox perspectives and fundamentally fails to encourage civil discourse amongst students.

Since the 2023-24 school year, students must take mandatory Indigenous classes to get their high school diploma. One of the courses that can be taken to fulfil this requirement is “Indigenous Peoples 12,” in which one of the “Big Ideas” is how “through self-governance, leadership, and self-determination, B.C. First Peoples challenge and resist Canada’s ongoing colonialism.” Or take as another example, “English First Peoples 12,” which aims to teach an understanding that Indigenous “oral histories are valid evidence of ownership of the land within Canadian law.”

We may be given a rare chance here to actually undertake transformative change. Let us not continue to teach our children that they live in a genocidal country, or that the biological reality of their sex is something to be questioned.

Nine years ago, it was unimaginable that a doctor could be disciplined for refusing to administer an irreversible puberty blocker to a child. It was unthinkable that commenting on the issue could solicit name-calling, social ostracization and perpetual disciplinary action. We need to champion free speech and civil discourse here, and we must call upon a prospective B.C. Conservative government to make doing so a priority.

National Post