As you may recall, NR’s own Mark Steyn was the subject of a spurious inquest from the government of British Columbia which shamelessly tried to deny him his freedom of speech. If you want more background, I wrote about the case here.

Well, the charges were dropped today. You can head on over to Steyn’s website for more details, including a PDF of the BC “Human Rights” tribunal’s decision.

The bottom line is that while it’s great Steyn is off the hook, free speech in Canada still does not exist in any meaningful way. It would be fair to say that Steyn and Maclean’s magazine were spared by the bureaucratic star chamber because they were well-known enough to fight back and attract considerable publicity. The next person in Canada who dares to excercise his freedom of speech in a way that attracts the government censors probably won’t be so lucky. And unfortunately, Canada is still rank with Human Rights tribunals acvtively looking for those that express politically incorrect opinions, reprint objectionable Bible verses etc. so they can go about their business of denying free expression.