"Do you know how copper wire was invented? It seems two Scots were arguing over a penny…"

In a saner era, there was no tribunal before which an aggrieved Scot might complain of someone telling jokes about the stinginess of his countrymen.

Even if there had been, and some offended Scot complained to it, the most sensible response would have been to tell the complainer: "Oh, grow up!"

However, that's not the nature of bureaucracies; they thrive-and grow in power and influence (not to mention budget)-by nurturing just such grievances.

Yet if some tribunal had agreed (in our hypothetical case) to investigate the complaint of the Scot with wounded feelings, surely if the teller of the story could adduce evidence that most Scots are actually proud of their reputation for parsimony, that fact would-in the minds of reasonable people-be grounds for dismissing the complaint.

Not so, however, when a complaint comes before one of Canada's 'human rights' tribunals in this super-sensitive age; for it's a matter of record-you can read it on the web-page of the Canadian Human Rights Commission!-that "truth is not a defence" under the Canadian Human Rights Act (see Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 892.).

Does this really matter? Indeed it does! For there are, in the end, only two ways of discerning truth: by Divine Revelation, or by open disputation. So in any case where factual disputation is not allowed, the complainant has, ipso facto, been inferred by the tribunal to have powers of Divine Revelation. If truth is not allowed as an argument, no other conclusion is possible. The complainant becomes, by inference, our new Divine Authority.

As a society, we ought to be very, very careful to whom we are willing to attribute that kind of power.