Canada: Hang the Rainbow Flag or Be Fined

"I've just flown in from California, where they've made homosexuality legal. I thought I'd get out before they make it compulsory."–Bob Hope, 1975
 
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Ransom said:
"I've just flown in from California, where they've made homosexuality legal. I thought I'd get out before they make it compulsory."–Bob Hope, 1975
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On a serious note, how does this fit into the context of your constitution in Canada?
 
Ransom said:
"I've just flown in from California, where they've made homosexuality legal. I thought I'd get out before they make it compulsory."–Bob Hope, 1975
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Was that on one of his USO appearances? That wouldn't fly today even though he was joking.
 
brianb said:
Looks like they've been doing this since 1995 (demanding conformity to their agenda). Since then Canada legalized gay marriage and now there's drag queen story time for kids.
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Legalizing gay marriage and mandating the flying of the pride flag are very different things. I still don’t understand.
 
DrHuk&Duck said:
On a serious note, how does this fit into the context of your constitution in Canada?
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Our constitution is a bit squishy: "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" (Constitution Act I.i) I guess if a legal argument can be made that mandatory hoisting of a pride flag constitutes a "reasonable limit" on Emo Township's right to free expression, then they're on the hook. Ironically, their town hall apparently doesn' t have a flagpole.

Note also that this complaint went through the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rather than the regular courts. Our human-rights laws are rather draconian and complaints aren't adjudicated in court by a judge—so the usual rules of evidence don't apply, and it's easier to get a ruling that you were discriminated against. They are inherently biased in favour of the complainant.

Alan Borovoy, one of the civil-liberties lawyers who helped set up the Human Rights Code, once expressed his shock at how the system was being abused. It was intended to protect people who were denied housing or jobs because of their race, that sort of thing, not as lawfare for people who took offence at contrary opinions.
 
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Ransom said:
Our constitution is a bit squishy: "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" (Constitution Act I.i) I guess if a legal argument can be made that mandatory hoisting of a pride flag constitutes a "reasonable limit" on Emo Township's right to free expression, then they're on the hook. Ironically, their town hall apparently doesn' t have a flagpole.

Note also that this complaint went through the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rather than the regular courts. Our human-rights laws are rather draconian and complaints aren't adjudicated in court by a judge—so the usual rules of evidence don't apply, and it's easier to get a ruling that you were discriminated against. They are inherently biased in favour of the complainant.

Alan Borovoy, one of the civil-liberties lawyers who helped set up the Human Rights Code, once expressed his shock at how the system was being abused. It was intended to protect people who were denied housing or jobs because of their race, that sort of thing, not as lawfare for people who took offence at contrary opinions.
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Reading online I came across this quote: “The Tribunal is independent of the federal government and operates independently of the Commission. This means that no one in the government can tell the Tribunal how to decide its cases.“

With this in mind, is there any legal recourse if one receives an unfavorable opinion? Is this tribunal considered part of the federal system, or is it considered a separate entity? I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around this system, but it somewhat reminds me of tribal sovereignty laws on our U.S. native reservations, which consist of a complicated web of federal laws that both apply and don’t apply depending on the offense and location.
 
DrHuk&Duck said:
With this in mind, is there any legal recourse if one receives an unfavorable opinion?
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Maybe we're about to find out:

torontosun.com

WARMINGTON: Mayor says he refuses to be bullied or pay fine for not flying Pride flag

A Northern Ontario mayor fined for voting against flying a Pride flag says he will not be bullied into paying the $5,000 penalty.
torontosun.com torontosun.com

I believe that unfavourable decisions can be judicially reviewed or appealed to a higher court, though I have no idea how that works in reality or whether such an appeal would be successful in overturning them. As I said, the system is biased in favour of the complainant. It costs nothing to file a complaint, while the defendant must bear the entire cost of his defence.

Lawyer/journalist Ezra Levant was the subject of a human rights complaint in Alberta in 2006 over his magazine publishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. Instead of complying, he took a camera into his hearings and exposed the system on YouTube. He was probably the person most responsible for the repeal of a contentious section of the national human-rights code a few years later, which defined "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" as discriminatory (as opposed to actually exposed the person to hatred or contempt).

There was some discussion at the time of what might happen if things hadn't ultimately gone Levant's way and he just refused to comply. As I recall, the whole thing would have been escalated to a court of law where stricter rules of evidence apply.
 
Ransom said:
I believe that unfavourable decisions can be judicially reviewed or appealed to a higher court, though I have no idea how that works in reality or whether such an appeal would be successful in overturning them. As I said, the system is biased in favour of the complainant. It costs nothing to file a complaint, while the defendant must bear the entire cost of his defence.
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Would you say this mayor’s actions are considered somewhat unprecedented in Canada?
 
DrHuk&Duck said:
Would you say this mayor’s actions are considered somewhat unprecedented in Canada?
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Couldn't say. I'd only be speaking about what I'd heard, and I don't generally follow human-rights tribunals. I assume the majority of their cases are low-profile and legitimate discrimination cases.

Levant likely would have refused to comply if his complainant hadn't dropped the complaint, but that's the best I can do.
 
Update: Mayor of Emo, Ontario has been fined $5,000 ($3,533 in US funds) because his municipality did not fly the gay flag. They are taking the money out of his personal bank account.

www.christianpost.com

Mayor's bank account garnished by LGBT group after town refused pride proclamation

The mayor of a small town in Ontario, Canada, is facing a bank levy from his personal account following a legal battle with a pride group who compared their legal victory to sexual intercourse
www.christianpost.com www.christianpost.com

The Human Rights Commission has sentenced the mayor to attend reeducation camp. Resistance is futile.
 
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