Wednesday, December 19, 2007

What are "Human Rights"?

I always thought that human rights were about discrimination.
You know....the right to rent an apartment, get a job, and be protected from discrimination due to race, religion, or sexual orientation.

It would be foolish to assume that people in power don't skirt the law by behaving in a politically correct manner...while still discriminating.
Finding loopholes or other excuses for not giving someone a job, or an apartment, or any number of things.

Opportunists are resourceful, and always have been.

I suppose that once the commission was formed, jobs
appointed...and discriminators properly scared shitless by the existence of the commission...clear cases became fewer and further between.
Meaning that perhaps, re-defining human rights is in order to justify it's existence.
Or maybe lines and logic become blurred when lawyers and bureaucrats get together to  feed at the trough of endless public money for tribunals.

Who knows?

I read this article by Ezra Levant on Censorship in the Name of Human Rights.

He says:

"Few human rights complaints still fall into those categories. A quick canvass of Alberta’s cases over the past few years, for example, reveals not a single complaint from someone denied rental housing based on race. The most common cases seem to be employees quitting over squabbles with other staff — a female back-hoe operator claimed her rights as a woman were violated for being called “honey” and other locker-room talk on a construction site; a male hair stylist claimed his rights were violated because the girls at salon school called him a “loser.” Another common complaint is sick or injured people being dismissed for not being able to do their jobs anymore, claiming that they have a “human right” not to be fired. In 2004, Albert’s Family Restaurant in Red Deer was ordered to pay $4,900 to a kitchen manager who was fired because she had contagious Hepatitis-C — illegal discrimination based on disability, said the commission."

This is something I'm confused about.
What about the "human rights" of all the customers and other employees of the restaurant who don't care to contract Hepatitis-C?

The guy in the hair salon school...was this really worth a tribunal?
Couldn't this be handled by Labour Board?
Or a stern talking to of staff and students during a meeting?
Is this what "human rights" have been boiled down to?

So, apparently...you can file a complaint with the commission if you're pissed off or unhappy...or if your feelings have been hurt by your employer.

Who knew?

Damn.
What's the statute of limitations on that shit?
I've got some filing to do.

Just for good measure, here's a horror story about how a hard working immigrants life was ruined by a hidden agenda, and the human rights commissions role in his financial and emotional ruin.