Wot a bunch of utter gimboids; knee-jerk reactionary, hypersensitive, snivelling, whining, utter gimboids at that.

You cannot libel a group, only an individual. To say that the Jews lied about the holocaust is not a slander, it is only revisionism. Further, whether a statement is libelous or not is determined by two other factors acting in concert: reckless disregard for the truth, and malicious intent.

Right?

Wrong. Those criteria apply in the U.S., sure, but not in the neo-fascist state of Canada. In Canada, if you say anything nasty about anybody? -- you're screwed. For one thing, in such a case the assumption is of guilt, with a necessary shift of the burden of proof onto the accused. Secondly, even if what you said is the absolute truth you can still be held to have defamed the plaintiff if your intent was malicious. Stating a fact, therefore, can be hazardous to your freedom[1].

And how do we arrive at this state of affairs? Well, as much as I would like to blame it on a badly flawed Charter of Rights and Freedoms that contains a clause that reads: your rights are void where prohibited by law -- I can't. Not this time. Canadian libel law is a 500 year old anachronism based on a piece of English Civil Law enacted by Henry VII. English civil code forms the basis of all civil law in Canada except in the province of Quebec, where it is based on the French Civil Code.

So where does that leave us here in Canada? Looking at an illusion of Free Speech that is one hundred percent smoke. There aren't even any mirrors in this one. Oh, sure, I can call the ruling regime the neo-fascist ilLiberal Party of Canada all I want. Until one of them takes exception to it and whines and snivels to his lawyer. Don't think so? Tell that to Josh Beutel[2]. Mr. Beutel is a political cartoonist who was sued by Malcolm Ross, a New Brunswick teacher who taught holocaust denial in his classroom. He came to public attention when complaints were levied against him. By making himself newsworthy, he catapulted himself to public personhood. Mr. Beutel depicted him as a nazi in a cartoon. Ross sued and Beutel lost. This probably helped to promote a climate of fear in Canada[3]. There is a term for this process. It's called Libel Chill[4].

And now we have the police force of the largest city in Canada whose union is complaining that each and every member has been defamed by a newspaper which dared to report its perception of the truth[5]: Too many people of visible minorities are being busted, such suspects are not being treated equitably, therefore the Toronto police engage in racial profiling during interventions.

And by doing so they hurt somebody's poor feewings.

So the Toronto Police Association decided to sue.

And by this they expect to win back my respect?

Or perhaps they expect to rebuilt their self-respect[6] with petulant whining?

I don't fucking think so.

What I do think is that the lady doth protest too much. Let's face it: not all cops are angels. Candidates for the police force are taken from the general population and each and every one of them comes with a full set of prejudices. Some of which are, of necessity, less than beneficial and downright counterproductive. Moreover, these candidates are trained up by current verterans on the force and, of necessity, learn by osmosis some of the prejudicial viewpoints of the existing force. What results from this situation is a new generation of cops every twenty years or so that has to be taken in hand and redirected back toward the path of proper law enforcement. Law enforcement that respects, regardless of ethnicity, the human dignity and the rights of the individual.

I've seen it happen here it Quebec City; in the suburb of Ste. Foy. Reports of cops that are arrogant and out of control, a big to-do of concern and public hearings, oversight committees and corrective programs set in place and then twenty years later more reports that the cops were arrogant and out of control. Which is most probably the situation in Toronto.

But they won't face that reality, will they? Instead of accepting the fact that cops do go wrong and sloppy law enforcement can become entrenched in an entire department, they are attempting to silence the people who are saying it. And which is going to rebound to their detriment. I have no respect for authority and certainly not for lousy cops, and by blindly refusing to acknowledge that there can be any, the TPA is only encouraging me to a greater lack of faith in the Toronto police.

What is worse, they are also acting -- whether deliberately or inadvertantly is irrelevant -- to create an atmosphere of unaccountability. One in which they can and will sue anybody who dares to say anything critical about any cops. This can have the affect of creating a vicious circle wherein people won't trust the cops and will be less cooperative, and the cops will perceive a need to crackdown, which will create a greater climate of distrust[7].

If these bozos had the half the smarts they imagine themselves to have, they would ask for a copy of the study and send for it an independent analysis. If the analysis bears out the conclusions of the paper, admit you have a problem and act to correct the wayward cops. If it doesn't, publish that and let people make up their own minds.

FOOTNOTES:

[01] See this article by Jeffrey Shallit. It gives more background and is one of the sources for the material in this piece.
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[02] See this piece about Terry Mosher's take on the Josh Beutel Affair.
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[03] See this piece about Terry Mosher's take on the Josh Beutel Affair.
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[04]: As Jeffrey Shallit put it in the above linked article:

Libel chill means that people are afraid to criticize powerful people who might bankrupt them with a costly suit. It means that commentators have to think twice before needling public figures --- as cartoonist Josh Beutel learned when he was sued by controversial New Brunswick school teacher Malcolm Ross. Ever wonder why there's so little investigative journalism in Canada? The reason is simple: libel chill.

[05] As reported in The Star on 04 Nov 2002.
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[06] And I seriously question how much self-respect a person can have to take offense at such a slight. If it is true, then the self-respecting person takes it into account and attempts to correct the fault. If it is false, then it is meaningless. Get over it and get on with your life. Mind you, that can be difficult at times, as even a person with self-respect can suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous twits. The self-respecting person recognizes that as well.
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[07] To quote from the Encyclopedia Michael Nellis:

SECURITY DILEMMA: Following on the age old logic of the prisoner's dilemma and building upon the findings of behavioral science research, the security dilemma maxim dictates that under conditions short of full and lasting peace any action which one state takes to ensure its security, such as a military build-up, a change in troop distributions, or the signing of a collective self-defense pact, will make another state feel less secure. This second state will then often take actions to ensure its security which will make either the first state or some other state feel less secure. The spiral can be drawn on practically ad infinitum.