Have you ever.
I'll just say one word about Germany. Pre-Hitler Germany had anti-hate legislation very similar to what we have in Canada now, and in the 15-year period before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of the day, they thought the prosecutions were well handled some 90% of the time. So it didn't matter at the time it was most needed.
When you talk about what you do about the Human Rights Commission, and that what I'm advocating may disable it somehow, I would say au contraire. I began by making the point that I'm very much in favour of the rest of what human rights commissions do, and I think those programs should be strengthened.
I do not think the provision or the addition in the human rights legislation of definitions of hatred would help all that much. In fact, I was rather surprised that anyone would think it would make that much difference. Just to give you one example, the definition talks about “strong detestation”. I ask a question: Is “strong detestation” any clearer than “hatred”? That is just the problem with these definitions. And it's not their fault. It's not the fault of the judges who wrote it. That's the problem when you make words like that the basis of an offence in law. There is inherent, inescapable vagueness.
Human rights commissions could still perform a valuable function where expressions of hatred are concerned. They have an educational mandate, and they could make increasingly imaginative use of that mandate to promote, to publish responses, and to undertake preventative programs. There are all kinds of things human rights commissions could do.
In all fairness, I'm not as au courant with what commissions are doing these days. I've been drifting into other fields. But at one time I worked rather closely with Dr. Daniel G. Hill, the first director of a human rights commission in Canada, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and he had a lot of imaginative educational programs. I think there is a lot commissions could do about it.
That's why I say I want to get back to the response I gave to Mr. Rae earlier. It's not an either/or proposition. We don't have to use the legal stick or do nothing.