In the Maclean’s kangaroo court case, Nigel Hannaford of the Calgary Herald, predicts:
Goodness knows what the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will do with their hearing about Maclean’s and Mark Steyn. Probably what they did with their 1997 case against North Vancouver columnist Doug Collins: Release the steam by calling them horrible people but not quite hateful enough to be convicted, then write in some judicial refinement for future use against less well-equipped defendants who have no powerful friends and can’t afford counsel like Julian Porter and Roger McConchie.
(Via Instapundit.)
That seems likely to me. Ruling for the complainants here would be a Pyrrhic victory for the censors. As Andrew Coyne, a blogger for Maclean’s, wrote:
Actually I am rooting for [the complainants], in a strange sort of way. Don’t tell my employers, but I’m sort of hoping we lose this case. If we win—that is, if the tribunal finds we did not, by publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, expose Muslims to hatred and contempt, or whatever the legalese is—then the whole clanking business rolls on, the stronger for having shown how “reasonable” it can be. Whereas if we lose, and fight on appeal, and challenge the whole legal basis for these inquisitions, then something important will be achieved.
Internet Scofflaw 