I have a few more points, Madame Boivin.
I've been to the Supreme Court of Canada a number of times defending section 13 and defending this kind of legislation, and David and others among us have as well. For us to come here like this, having been in the forefront of organizations that have appeared before courts at every level—I spent six years on the case dealing with Ernst Zundel, which at one time was at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada at the same time. When Frank Dimant says we come to this with a heavy heart, it's true.
What you're talking about and the kind of amendment you've described is something we've talked about for years, but it hasn't happened. We have no reason to expect that it will.
One of the key things about section 13—and I think you're right about the section 13 that we would like and that we would have liked to have seen, and it's the section 13 that was considered by Chief Justice Dickson and the four-judge majority in Taylor. It wouldn't be seen as having penalties; it wouldn't be seen as draconian. It would be seen as mediative, that there would be mediation available; there would be an attempt to persuade people out of the errors of their ways in a way that the Criminal Code is not set up to do.
You're 100% correct, although it's not as stark a difference as that because we know that, for example, part of the role of a modern police force is almost a mediative role. You call the police to some kind of a dispute and the first thing they're going to try to do is make like Henry Kissinger, going back and forth trying to be the mediator, the diplomat. It's not quite as stark as that.
I think what we have to recognize as well—and this is where B'nai Brith has come in this—and as I've said, in many ways I've led the attempt to reconsider it.... I've tried to speak to my colleagues and other Jewish organizations who have been equally interested in the past, to try to reason through the problems with section 13 and where we go.
I think we have to recognize one thing. There's an expression, “You jump the shark”, and that appears to have happened with section 13, whether for better or worse. For section 13 to work, for the mediation to work, for the idea of section 13 to be a principle that we all can look to—the principles of section 13 are equality, tolerance, not trying to punish somebody for saying the wrong thing, but trying to work together to find a way to have a safe zone for every Canadian. People have lost respect for it.
I'm the last person who needs to tell parliamentarians about the importance of public respect for the law. I've written articles. I've been skewered in the press for things I've said defending that kind of legislation. I have to recognize as well that we're at the point now where the feeling is that because of the abuse of concerns, and there have been real abuses thus far, really at every level, not because the people who are trying to administer the law are trying to be abusive—most of the time they're not. I've spoken to these people—commissioners, provincial and federal human rights commissioners, the lawyers, and the people who are trying to administer the law—and they want to do the right thing.