Discrimination Based on "Social Condition"

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has a broad goal, namely to make sure no one ever has to hear anything that might cause offense or be hurtful. Now, that sort of goal is difficult to achieve if only a handful of predictable and easily identifiable identity groups qualify for the protection.

What to do?

Well, the commission has been thinking long and hard and has come up with a solution by finding a new identity group worthy of protection...that of social condition.

The best thing about the new class of potential victims, as far as the commission itself is concerned, is that "social condition" really doesn't identify any single person on any particular day, and on a different day it could mean everyone. It is joyfully undefined and is, in effect, the trump card of all identity groups that could be used to put the chill on anyone provided the government can be sufficiently persuaded to bring charges.

In short, if you want to open up a Tim Horton’s franchise in Quebec and put up a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” sign, not only do you not know whether you are violating the law by discriminating against shoeless, shirtless, and thus possibly impoverished people, the Human Rights Commission thinks that it is a good thing that you do not know, because the law should be “flexible” to let them prosecute you if they think they ought to be able to. The Human Rights Commission would like the Human Rights Act to become Schroedinger’s Law, so that all of your actions exist in an indeterminate cloud of legality or illegality until some dizzy bureaucrat opens the box and looks at your case.