I know Roy Hamel,

and though he is still not taller than I, he always laughed at my jokes.

He is, even more than Ferris Bueller, a righteous dude. Pray for his conversion to the True Faith, would you? I can't imagine heaven without him.

Even political parties are not immune from censorship. Ron Gray, president of the federal Christian Heritage Party of Canada, has been called before a commission to account for views his party has maintained on homosexuality for the last 20 years.

The commissions have also been at work in censoring religious institutions. The conservative Catholic magazine Catholic Digest and its editor, Father Alphonse de Valk, have been denounced to the commission for publishing official Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality.

These cases are still pending, but their outcome is predictable. Unlike in a court of law, there is no presumption of innocence for the defendant, and the commissions have returned a verdict of guilty in virtually every hate speech case they have ever heard.

A number of prominent Canadians are now alarmed at the danger to free speech posed by these commissions. The Liberal MP from Victoria, Keith Martin, has put forth a private member's motion that calls for the repeal of the hate speech clauses in the Human Rights Act. The Canadian Association of Journalists and PEN Canada are on record as supporting the repeal of this section. Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who was involved in the establishment of these commissions, is now calling for the scrapping of all hate speech clauses in both provincial and federal legislation.