TAKE THAT, AL-QAEDA!

Ottawa to attack hate crime
(Robert Fife and Janice Tibbetts/National Post/08/04/04)

The federal government is finalizing a nation-wide plan to combat racism that asks law enforcement agencies to establish special hate-crime units and includes initiatives to educate Canadians about the dangers of hate, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said yesterday.

The plan, which is at the final stage of Cabinet approval, was designed, in part, to fight growing anti-Semitism, such as the firebombing of a Jewish school in Montreal and racially motivated incidents against Jews and Muslims in Toronto.

The 10-chapter blueprint is expected to include advertising to promote anti-racism messages, measures to strengthen ethnic communities and new money for crime-prevention programs aimed at reducing racist acts.

"We will have a national action plan to counter racism and that, I think, in all its components, will be an effective and comprehensive approach," Mr. Cotler said in an interview. "It has a panoply of initiatives. It has an education component. It has a legal component and it has an inter-cultural dialogue component ... [because] we have to mobilize a constituency of conscience in this country."...

Mr. Cotler said the multi- million-dollar and multi-year plan against racism and bigotry will also have a particular emphasis on teaching Canadians about hate and will encourage community leaders to preach tolerance.

The Heritage Department is at the helm of the multi-department plan, which is expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks.

"It is all about social inclusion, building on a multi-cultural society," said Fred Sherman, spokesman for Jean Augustine, the department's minister responsible for multiculturalism.

Mr. Cotler, Canada’s Justice Minister, is an intelligent and respected representative of the Jewish community and a prominent supporter of Israel. Just a day earlier, he had several wise and poignant things to say about the firebombing of a Jewish school in Montreal that may have been linked loosely to terrorism. How sad it is to see him associate himself with drivel about how modern anti-Semitism can be checked through dialogue, advertising and bureaucratic thought police.

Canada is too pragmatic, isolated, insular and English to take this nonsense as literally as the Europeans, but it doesn’t have many thoughtful voices challenging it either. The underlying assumption that hate and terrorism can only be defeated by the undermining of religion, tradition and historical virtues is pure continental dogma. The tragedy is that the majority, whatever their misgivings, simply don’t know how to think any other way, and wondering what it will take to make them is an increasingly depressing exercise. Mr. Cotler and his colleagues are the heirs of the 1930's Labour M. P.’s in Britain who honestly believed unilateral disarmament would shame Hitler into good behaviour.