Commissars Without Borders

Here's another control freak whose reach exceeds his grasp—Canada's official languages watchdog Graham Fraser. Before we ask whether or not our nation really needs such a personage (I say no; what say you?), one might observe that, as in the case of the OHRC's Babsy Hall, once you give a petty perfectionist the power to lord it over you, you can be all but certain that that's exactly what s/he is going to do. The Toronto Sun comments on the man and his mission:

Official Languages Commissar Graham Fraser, a former journalist for such high-brow news agencies as the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Maclean's, has somehow bought into the fiction that his job has no boundaries.

This happens all too often when lefties are given a title.

It eventually goes to their head.

For that reason, Fraser needs to give his own ego-inflated head a shake for his plan, conceived totally without authority, to spend $40,000 of taxpayers' money to send secret shoppers throughout Ottawa this month to see if private businesses are offering equal service in both English and French.

If he tried that KGB-like tactic in Calgary or Edmonton, there'd be hell to pay and likely a bounty put out on his spies.

In the multicultural mosaic of Toronto, he'd find shops and restaurants where neither official language is spoken.

But so what?

They're private businesses, and therefore they're none of Fraser's business whether they speak English, French or the click language of the Kalahari Bushmen.

They're totally outside his boundaries...

Boundaries? 'Tis to laugh. Mentioning boundaries to the likes of Fraser and chief "human rights" commissar Hall— who view such limits as mere challenges to their authority, as lines to be breached and, ultimately, effaced— is as absurd as it is futile.