Satirists of Canada: Your day has come!

Satirists of Canada: Your day has come!

The past few days have seen a considerable improvement in the climate for free speech in this country. First, the Canadian Human Rights Commission pitched out the egregious complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean’s (and Mark Steyn). And now, the Supreme Court of Canada, courtesy of the good offices of Justice Ian Binnie, reconfirmed the importance of and extended the purview of what counts as fair comment. A read-through of Binnie’s opinion—which spoke for the court’s 9–0 rout reversing a B.C. Court of Appeal decision that favoured anti-gay activist Kari Simpson over shock jock Rafe Mair—reveals a veritable free speech manifesto:

We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones…

In my respectful view, the addition of a qualitative standard such as “fair-minded” should be resisted. “Fair-mindedness” often lies in the eye of the beholder. Political partisans are constantly astonished at the sheer “unfairness” of criticisms made by their opponents. Trenchant criticism which otherwise meets the “honest belief” criterion ought not to be actionable because, in the opinion of a court, it crosses some ill-defined line of “fair-mindedness.” The trier of fact is not required to assess whether the comment is a reasonable and proportional response to the stated or understood facts…

In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists. The media regularly match up assailants who attack each other on a set topic. The audience understands that the combatants, like lawyers or a devil’s advocate, are arguing a brief…

Of course the law must accommodate commentators such as the satirist or the cartoonist who seizes on a point of view, which may be quite peripheral to the public debate, and blows it into an outlandish caricature for public edification or merriment. Their function is not so much to advance public debate as it is to exercise a democratic right to poke fun at those who huff and puff in the public arena. This is well understood by the public to be their function.

In light of all this, magazines, blogs and newspapers that stretch the limits of what counts as fair comment in this country (I’m thinking particularly of the scalding satirists that produce Frank magazine—50 per cent wrong and 50 per cent funny) can breathe a little easier today. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!

• WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson, 2008 SCC 40 [Supreme Court of Canada]• Free speech has limits [Ottawa Citizen]• Finally, good news on ‘human rights’ [National Post]• The right to offend [Globe and Mail]• Human rights complaint against Maclean’s dismissed [Globe and Mail]• Supreme Court ruling modernizes defence of fair comment [Globe and Mail]