During the recent provincial election campaign, Premier Ed Stelmach said he was open to reviewing the censorship powers of Alberta's Human Rights Commission.

One of its tribunal judgments, for instance -- concerning Stephen Boissoin -- is a textbook example of why he should review them right out of Alberta's human rights code. Not only did the tribunal showcase virtually every deficiency of rights commissions, some remedies it now demands cannot be supported from the legislation.

In 2002, gay marriage was earnestly debated in newspapers across the country, and Parliament. Boissoin -- then a Red Deer youth pastor with an active street ministry -- opposed it on religious grounds and wrote strongly worded letters to his local paper, the Red Deer Advocate. Darren Lund, a University of Calgary professor, complained to Alberta's Human Rights Commission, which appointed a tribunal chaired by Lethbridge lawyer Lori Andreachuk.

Lund emphasized Boissoin's onward-Christian-soldiers tone, persuaded the tribunal they were hateful, and said an assault on a gay teenager three weeks later could be connected to them.

Andreachuk agreed the letters were "likely" to expose gays, a "vulnerable" group, to hatred due to their sexual orientation.

This finding was bizarre to begin with, though hardly unique among speech-related human rights hearings. Most people give human rights commissions no thought, except when people such as Mark Steyn or Ezra Levant are forced to justify their opinions to an arm of government. Then, when some apparently ludicrous result is announced, many suppose it's just another politically correct idiot getting it wrong.

They must think that because they would riot if they knew the truth, that limiting speech is the goal, and intentional travesties the means.

Take Boissoin. Had he been in court, he could have defended himself by pleading fair comment, absence of harm or of the intent to harm.

But none of that matters to human rights councils, which are concerned only with "effect."

As a B.C. tribunal put it in another newspaper case, the code contained no "intent requirement, nor does it require any proof of actual harm. Consistent with the focus of human rights laws in general, the provision is concerned with the impact of the message on members of vulnerable groups, not the intent of the author."

Nor could he say rules of evidence had been abused. Section 30 (2) of the Alberta Human Rights Act says it's OK: "Evidence may be given before a human rights panel in any manner that the panel considers appropriate, and the panel is not bound by the rules of law respecting evidence in judicial proceedings."

That left Boissoin at the mercy of any irrelevance, hearsay or circumstantial evidence Lund offered that the tribunal would accept. There is not a court of law in the land, for instance, that would connect the letters and the assault as this tribunal did.

And in vain Boissoin pointed to the section of Alberta's act that says, "Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject."

In 1990, then-Supreme Court chief justice Brian Dickson declared it no more than window-dressing: "I think it mistaken to place too great an emphasis upon the explicit protection of expressive activity in a human rights statute. . . . Perhaps the so-called exemptions found in many (provincial) human rights statutes are best seen as indicating to human rights tribunals the necessity of balancing the objective of eradicating discrimination with the need to protect free expression."

Andreachuk evidently found this persuasive. Thus do the Davids go naked to meet their Goliaths, except that unlike Michelangelo's statue of the Israelite king, they don't even have a slingshot.

Commissions were given such powers to fight discrimination in employment and accommodation, not for interest groups to silence their opponents in kangaroo courts. The system is out of control.

Nor does Andreachuk understand the limits of her mandate. Announcing the punishment last Friday, she awarded $5,000 "damages" to Lund -- "although not a direct victim, (he) did expend considerable time and energy."

The act contains no such permission and in any case, Lund was no victim of discrimination. The payment amounts to a bounty for volunteer human-rights vigilantism.

She also ordered Boissoin never to communicate disparagingly of homosexuals again, or of Lund. Again, she stretches her mandate: Lund was not discriminated against -- actually, no person was -- and the mere fact he chose to engage Boissoin in debate before a tribunal hardly empowers Andreachuk to bind Boissoin's speech. Presumably, if Boissoin wishes to be rash, Lund has the law of defamation and the Court of Queen's Bench at his disposal.

Is that not sufficient?

Finally, Boissoin is to provide Lund with a written apology for the sincerely held opinion he published in the Advocate.

As apologies that do not spring from changed minds mean nothing, this must be seen for what it is: the kind of recantation squeezed by an inquisition from some unfortunate, a denial of conscience for the sole purpose of grinding the dissenter's face into the dust, the better that he may eat his words.

In its present form, Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act is profoundly anti-liberty, leaving Albertans the right to say only what does not offend their neighbours on any of 13 different grounds.

It has been used to guillotine legitimate discourse on matters of immediate public importance, and removes from men and women that most basic of all human attributes -- the right to their own opinion.

Premier Stelmach, do something for liberty, now. Repeal Section 3(1)(b) from Alberta's human rights act.

To stand up for our hard-won freedoms and western way of life, write to:

Office of the Premier
Room 307, Legislature
Building
10800 97th Ave.
Edmonton, Alberta
T5K 2B6

(No stamp is necessary.)

Or phone: 1-780-427-2251

Fax: 1-780-632-6888

To call toll free call: 310-0000

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