Sunday, June 08, 2008

Earth to speech-warriors...

...get a grip.

The starboard side of the blogosphere is all a-twitter and a-shriek about a couple of missing lines in the written transcript of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's March 25th hearing (Warman v. Lemire). Yup, the lines are important, and indeed that part of the transcript makes little sense without them.

But how did the intrepid speech-warriors find out?

Well, free-speech poster-boy Marc Lemire compared the transcript to an audiotape of the proceedings. And where did that audiotape come from?

Why, the CHRC CHRT, he tells us.

Now, wielding Occam's Razor, as we are so often required to do when the right side of the aisle gets overexcited, which is more likely: a) deliberate deception, despite the fact that the audio recording of the hearing can be downloaded from the CHRC CHRT and has legal precedence over the transcript in case of any discrepancies? Or, b) honest error?

You be the judge. Because when the speech-warriors make yet another shrieky accusation, judgement is sorely needed.

UPDATE: And for all their moral posturimg, why do they have such a hard time telling the truth?

UPDATE: (June 10) I was informed by email this morning from a CHRC CHRT official that the DVR audio file in question may be accessed by filing a routine access to information request.

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