The New Face of Toronto?

A well-intentioned movement is underway in Toronto. Its motivation is concern over the lack of municipal representatives who are non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual. To state their aim in positive terms, they want more Councillors who are Black, Asian, Indigenous, female, trans-gendered, gay, indigent, disabled.

To this end, volunteer groups offer encouragement, election experience, possibly financial aid to those not currently represented on the municipal scene. Is this noble venture in accord with the purpose of a municipal  council, or indeed any elected body?

Reportedly there are more than a dozen activist groups gearing up for the October 22 election. They are concerned with issues such as transit, the environment, the arts, gun control, adequate housing, bicycle safety. What these activists want are representatives whose municipal views more or less match theirs.

Advocating facial diversity runs counter to the purpose of government.

We elect people whose platform more or less is an accord with our idea of municipal governance. That's why I support my Councillor, not because she is a woman which I am not,  not because she is homosexual which I am not, not because she is Asian which I am not, not because she is dark-skinned which I am not. I vote for her because her vision of our great city matches mine.

Otherwise, we are in danger of promoting identity politics, so condemned by Barack Obama in his July speech to South Africans. Martin Luther King, Jr.  dreamed it this way, ". . . that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."

The Law Society of Ontario Flirts with Despotism

Trinity Western University in British Columbia requires students to abide by the rules of normal marriage, that is between a man and a woman. Because it disagrees with this rule, the Law Society of Ontario refuses accreditation to graduates of TWU law school. The Supreme Court of Canada agrees with the Law Society.

The only worthy intelligence to emerge from this contorted decision of the court comes from one of the dissenting judges who stated that law societies should concern themselves with legal training and, by implication, not intrude into social matters unrelated to law. This, especially against a private institution not subject  to outside influence such as the execrably misapplied Charter of Rights.

This same Supreme Court said that "for better or for worse, tolerance of divergent beliefs is a hallmark or a democratic society." That was in 2001. The weather vane atop the Supreme Court building recently caught a different breeze. A majority of the judges turned with the change of wind.

By expanding its authority into non-legal matters, the Law Society of Ontario has entered the early stage of despotism. Under the influence of special interest activists, it has extended its power into a matter beyond the scope of legal education. It has appointed itself arbiter of matters beyond its mandate.

What's next? Control of political opinion? Recently, that same Law Society of Ontario demanded all its members sign up for its version of social values. We have entered the era when silence may result in loss of licence to practice law, or send you to jail for refusing to use certain pronouns, or exclusion of participation in a summer student aid program. The Supreme Court of Canada is complicit in this malaise, this nascent despotism.

Our human rights system has broken down, abused by feel-good rights tribunal officers, self-appointed rights enforcers in the legal system, and special-interest activists.

No institution can demand respect. It gets such respect its actions warrant.

Steven Pinker and the Enlightenment

Seven years ago, Steven Pinker produced the The Better Angels of Our Nature. Somewhere in the book's 800 pages, the Harvard professor cited the Genesis story of Adam and Eve as if it were history, as if Cain killed twenty-five per cent of the world population when he murdered Abel. On this biblical tale he based the claim that violence in the world has decreased. No war ever killed that percentage of the population. Therefore the world is getting better.

The title of his next equally weighty tome bears the exhortation, Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. The publicity blurb tells us that presented data demonstrates that wonderful things are happening throughout the word "because of the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science." 

Pinker seems unaware that the so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century led directly to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Influenced by reason and science, thousands were dragged to the guillotine in Paris, tens of thousands more across France. Yet others were shot, drowned, or  burned to death in their homes and churches. The revolutionaries reasoned that science would end social evil, that it would cleanse society and create to a Republic of Virtue. In that spasm of unreason, the terrorists performed rituals to the Goddess of Reason.

Is that the temple in which Harvard Professor Steven Pinker worships?

Ontario's sell-off of people's power

Merrill Denison wrote the biography of Adam Beck, founder of Ontario Hydro, titled The People’s Power.

The monument to Sir Adam Beck looks out on the intersection of Queen Street West and University Avenue, downtown Toronto.

Ontario Premier Elizabeth Wynne has sold off to private interests 53 per cent of Ontario Hydro.

I suggest a sequel book titled The People’s Loss of Power.

I suggest 53 per cent of the monument be shrouded in purple.

Law Society of Ontario vs reality

The Law Society of Upper Canada, soon to self-resurrect as the Law Society of Ontario, is the trade association of Ontario's 50,000 lawyers and 8,000 para-legals.

The Society's latest gambit is to require its members (officially licencees) "to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in their behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public. And they must do so annually.

That's serious adopting and abiding, and beyond the Society's regulatory authority.

The Society's president explains that it's all about countering racism within the profession and towards the general public.

The hornet's nest has been disturbed. Some licencees claim the statement is compelled speech and that infringes on constitutional rights. A member of the Society's board is advocating exemption for conscientious objectors. Another licencee objects to being forced to adopt and promote someone else's "political ideology" as indeed it is.

The naiveté in this feel-good measure is the belief that law can stop racism. At best it may limit its overt expression. Partial solution rests with education. Even then. racism will continue to exist in one form or another.

The wealthy and others

Feed people's hopes, but give them only just enough to keep them from despair. -- Fransesco Guiucciardini.

 ...to keep hope alive, but never satisfied. --  Baltasar Gracian, A Truthtelling Manual.

 Do not refuse a poor man a livelihood nor tantalize the needy.
-- Ecclesiasticus.

I saw the many work for small wages which kept them always on the borderline of want for the few who made huge profits. -- Emma Goldman 1934.

A poor man does well so long as he keeps from ambition.

An honour to sign a death warrant?

A former sports doctor has been sentenced to multiple decades in prison for molesting more than 150 girls and young women. The Michigan judge said to the accused, "It is my honour and privilege to sentence you." She continued to berate the perpetrator in an over-wrought condemnation: "I have just signed your death warrant."

My objection? The judge's unnecessary words lacked quality.

From Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (part 2, chapter 42): "Abuse not by word him whom thou hast to punish in deed, for the pain of punishment is enough for the unfortunate without the addition of thine objurgations."

To punish someone, however heinous the crime, is a duty, hardly an honour and a privilege.

Internment Camps

During the two world wars, many Canadians were placed in internment camps. These people were immigrants from countries then at war with Canada. Although many of them had become citizens, they were perceived by the government of the day as posing a threat to our war effort. 

Today, these people, or their descendants, claim that the government's action was based on prejudiced policies directed at certain minorities. They are demanding apologies and compensation. There seems to be a great deal of ignorance as to what really happened in those dark days of the wars.

In an Immigration Law class I at Seneca College in the 1990s, the professor, a lawyer and an immigrant from Africa, asked the class, “Why is it that only visible minorities were placed in internment camps?”  In reply to what he believed was a rhetorical question, I informed him that more than visible minorities were interned, that many Caucasians, Germans and Italians for example, also lost their freedom for the duration of the war.  I got my worst mark from him in an otherwise “Outstanding” report.

 Let's examine a small piece of a personal record -- my late father's memoirs. My parents, German-speaking Austrians, had come to Canada in the 1920s. Aside from the usual expressions of prejudice and bigotry experienced by foreigners in any country, there were no problems. It was never clear to me if my parents were disliked because they were central Europeans who talked funny, or because they were Catholic, or because during the Great Depression they bought a shiny new Plymouth and two rooming houses in lower-class Toronto. Or was it because they made their own wine, a matter that provoked police investigation? No matter, World War Two was upon us.

 

Investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police visited the working places of foreign-born people (even if they had become Canadian citizens as did my parents). In the case of my father, this was the slaughter house of Canada Parkers in Toronto's west end. They questioned his boss, fellow employees, and possibly others. This incident became one of my mother's favourite jokes. The inspector asked the boss if my father ever talked about politics. "Politics?" the boss replied. "He never talks to anybody about anything." (He later recounted this story to my father.)

The Mounted Police came to our home, fingerprinted my father, and questioned him. As a seven-year old, I was always excited by the mounties. And here they were in our dining room, but not in uniform. “Do you have guns,” I asked hopefully. They replied no. They asked if my father if he belonged to any clubs. "All I could say was that I was a member of the Catholic Church at Dundas and McCaul," my father wrote in his memoirs. They never returned.

[In 2016, a terrible thought came to mind. At the time of the visit hanging somewhere in our home, possibly in the dining room, was a small oil painting of my grandfather’s house in Stadl-Paura, Austria. My parents had received it before postal service to Austria was closed in 1939. On the reverse, several relatives extended greetings. One of them wrote “mit treudeutschen gruss,” translated “with really German greetings.”  It was dated February 1938. Germany annexed Austria the following month. This greeting could have been interpreted as pro-German, making my father an enemy, and having him interned. Stranger things happened in those days of high tension.] 

Besides being a quiet-spoken person, my father, like most immigrants of the time, had come to Canada to escape the political turmoil of Europe, not to spread it. We never witnessed any “systemic” government prejudice, as some would have it, directed at us or other members of our extended family, all of whom were investigated, none of whom was interned. In fact, my Austrian-born Uncle Richard Reininger was given special status because his machine shop was engaged in war work.

On the other hand, a number of acquaintances express pro-Nazi opinions, some rather vehemently. "The government investigated all Germans and Austrians," my father's memoirs continue. "My neighbour across the road on George Street got picked up by the Mounted Police at two a.m. He was a member of an illegal club. He was kept in a camp until the war was over."

This was the Gembe family, with whose son Karl, I often played. My father added the poignant observation, "His wife could not understand why they didn't pick me up." The mother and three children, Hilda, Karl and Elfrieda, survive by renting rooms. Hilda was old enough to work. (I have a vague memory of Karl sporting a swastika on his sleeve, sometime before the war.)

Mr. Gembe was part of about 800 Germans interned during the war. They were sent into the northern bush to carve out the national parks we now enjoy. He spent his spare time building beautiful model sailing ships which he sent home.

The other German family up the street did not fare so well. The husband operated a car repair shop out of a garage. He got shipped away one night. Without his income, the wife and one small girl just moved away. We never learned what happened to them.

These people were quickly segregated from the general population, and placed in internment camps. Unfortunately, this meant great hardship to their families. But their internment was a justified exercise in national security. Not because of who they were, but because of what they did were these people viewed as security risks. That made them a legitimate target of suspicion. If investigation indicated a danger to the war effort, internment rightly followed.

Examination of the official record may well produce examples of rash governmental behaviour. But before any further compensation or apology is considered, there should be an impartial review of the evidence. Let's see what really happened. Judging the facts in the context of the time will, I believe, justify much of what occurred.

War propaganda and afterwards

"The evil that men do lives after them." When Shakespeare put those words in the mouth of one of the assassins of Julius Caesar, he was speaking for all generations. In one way or another, the evil we have been taught lives in each of us. I admit, some of it lives in me, however subconsciously.

In my defence, let me take you back to the dark, desperate days of the Second World War. This impressionable young boy living in downtown Toronto hears nothing but bad news. Every one on the street agrees it's all the fault of the Germans and the Japanese.  Nazi Germany is rapidly taking over much of continental Europe.  They are in Africa. England is about to be invaded.

Following their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese are advancing in China and southeast Asia. Australia is next to fall. We hear that a Japanese ship destroyed a lighthouse on Vancouver Island. Other Japanese invade Alaska. Canadian soldiers, only a few years older than myself, are being killed in places no one on the street had ever heard of, like Hong Kong. My school atlas tells us where it is.

With my central European background, I knew what Germans looked like. And a German family lived across the street. They looked like us. But the Japanese were a different story. I had never seen one in my life. They were from a different world.

Because of the war, a war started by the German and Japanese, food is rationed: meat, butter, sugar, tea, coffee, gasoline, car tires, alcohol. People talk about the black market. I see it as a very dark place where the rich can buy all the food and gasoline they want. The other black I hear about is blackout. When the sirens go off, men wearing white helmets with the letters A.R.P. across the front walk the streets, telling us to turn off all our lights.

We are getting ready to be bombed by the Germans or the Japanese. I wasn't sure which enemy would get here first. I did not like the idea of my home getting destroyed. My 16-year-old friends must register with the government, to get them ready to join the military. 

The tide slowly turns. Street talk is about air raids on the Germans. This pleases me because I feel it's better we bomb them than they bomb us. Because I don't know them. And they started it. The relentless propaganda gets me and all my friends to loathe the Germans and the Japanese.

The Japanese, I am taught to despise absolutely. I am told, and I believe, they could commit every atrocity they are accused of: torture, killing unarmed soldiers, forced labour by prisoners, starvation, execution and sex slaves. 

This anti-Japanese sentiment lingers so strongly in my mind that, one day some forty-five years later, as I enter a downtown department store, I stop cold. I stare wide-eyed at the enlarged Japanese face smiling down at me from the many banners scattered throughout the main floor. I am looking at the face of Alfred Sung, a Canadian fashion designer of Oriental descent. His products are being featured by the store. 

But what fills memory's eye is the smiling face I vividly remember from many anti-Japanese propaganda films, comic books and magazines. It's the face of that pilot machine-gunning innocent civilians fleeing the invading Japanese army. It is the face of that Japanese officer about to torture a prisoner. It is the face my generation was taught to hate.

War propaganda also taught us to hate the face of the blond German soldier, the one whose mouth wears a perpetual sneer, one who even in defeat flaunted a false sense of superiority.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The good news is two-fold. I like to think that all of my generation knows it was brainwashed. And that life's experience has taught us how to deal with it, and to accept everyone equally. The other good news is that just as young minds can be taught hate, they can be taught love and caring and understanding. Let us pray that is what we, allies and enemies, pass to the next generation.

Toronto's Identity Politics

Before Toronto expanded to its present boundaries, the city's motto, created by the city's first mayor, extolled the virtues of Industry, Integrity, Intelligence. These civic ideals stood us in good stead since our founding in 1834.

To appease every enclave of the enlarged city, every activist and political-correctness enforcer, every identity group or community, our motto was changed in 1998 to Diversity Our Strength.

Rather than celebrate mutually shared aspirations, such as the common good, our new motto invites us to observe what separates us racially, ethnically, sexually, politically, and financially. The city fell into the trap of identity politics with its hint of victimhood. Diversity is a condition, a fact, not a value or goal.

The old motto encouraged a citizen to say, "Here I am. How can I help?" The new motto, "Here, Toronto, are my rights and my demands. What can you for for me and  my particular cause?"

Each minority group clamours for its own representation and share of the budget, its own agenda, all leading to fragmentation of civic purpose, quotas and negativity. This guarantees we will not have our best people in positions of influence and authority, just an average of mediocrity.

Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed that one day his children would "not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

A court explains minute differences

A man, reaching for a water bottle,  drove his car "some 20 metres" over a bike lane and onto a sidewalk killing a pedestrian in East Toronto.  He was charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. The Ontario judge set him free explaining, "We cannot hold drivers to a standard of ideal decision-making when making split-second decisions." He found the defendant had made an "imprudent but reflexive decision."

Thus the court differentiates between a split-second decision and a reflexive decision.

Following the reasoning of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008, the judge acknowledged that taking his eyes off the road was a "departure from what a reasonable prudent driver" would do in the situation, but it was not "a marked departure" from that standard.

Thus the court differentiates between a reasonable departure and a marked departure.

The learned judge went on to explain the difference. The provable period of inattention by the driver was between 0.74 and 1.18 seconds.  The court allowed that this "minuscule period of inattention" qualifies as a "momentary lapse of attention" and therefore not criminal.

Thus the court differentiates between "a minuscule period of inattention" and "a momentary lapse of attention."

How thin can our courts slice legal baloney?

In all this, the trial court accepted the uncorroborated statements of the defendant. He may have been doing something else besides, or in addition to, reaching for a water bottle.

Not Enough Time to Cook?

 It is estimated that cave people worked less than 20 hours a week to produce life's essentials. In 1930, economist John Manyard Keynes believed that, due to increased productivity, his grandchildren would likely have to work only 15 hours a week. In 1968, Mechanix Illustrated predicted: "People will have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work week is about four hours."

Here we are in 2017, at hand the greatest time-savings devices ever known. For most the work week is longer and more stressful. Technology has not delivered the promised dividend of time. It has increased the burden of living. Its benefits have flowed to the already rich.

This perceived shortage of time has given rise to a previously unthinkable e-commerce business. For a fee, someone will buy, measure, cut, chill, box and ship every ingredient for a meal to your door. According to a purveyor of this service, "There's not enough time in modern lives to receipt-collect or grocery-shop." (New York Times, March 31, 2013)

With an array of push-button devices at our command, why is there "not enough time"? Why has technology not improved our lives to the point where we can stop after four hours of work? As Shakespeare has observed, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.

Water, water, everywhere. So is hokum

Aren't we a sophisticated bunch?

About the time of the First World War, people purchased sealed bottles. Manufacturers convinced them that opening the bottles during the night would ensure of a supply of fresh air. Yes, people paid for bottles of air.

During the time when many African nations were on the verge of independence, a new product appeared -- The Independence Box. People were told that the boxes contained all the wonders of independence: freedom, security, success, comfort, but on condition it be not opened until independence was realized. For sure, by then the vendor was gone.

Today, many people pay for bottles of water they can acquire next to free from a faucet in their kitchens. Dansani, the top-selling bottled water in the U.S. is municipal tap water. Aquafine is sourced from the local water supply.

Need we be reminded of the words attributed to B.T. Barnum? "There's a sucker born every minute."

What may be next expect?  One of today's modern aggravations is noise. Given that some people willingly pay for air that is free, water that is next to free, soon they will pay for silence. Cartons of bottled silence will soon appear in supermarkets. Whenever people want quiet, they need only open the bottle and enjoy the emerging silence.

*  *  *

Evian, amid great fanfare, announced the opening of a carbon-neutral factory in France.  So now, they will charge more for a product that costs to produce.  The same report cites the Global Footprint Network, "It is environmentally absurd to sell bottled water when tap water is cheaper, better and far less energy intensive."  They might have added that tap water requires no plastic bottles many of which foul our waterways and add to recycling costs.

Human Rights. How Much for Hurt Feelings?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal have done it again. They have forced a landlord to pay compensation to a tenant for hurt feelings, real or imagined.

In showing a rental unit to prospective tenants, the landlord did not remove his shoes. According to the complainant, that violated his Muslim practice. The victim also claimed the landlord violated his prayer space. Pray tell, how else might a prospective tenant be shown the apartment without entering the prayer space, actually the bedroom? Neither of these complaints has a religious basis. They are cultural or traditional practices in certain parts of the Muslim world.

Too bad, Tribunal Vice-Chair Jo-Anne Pickel wrote in her 38-page (yes 38 pages) judgement. You hurt his feelings, pay the guy $12,000.

Which raises another question. How was the penalty arrived at? Was it related to what the Vice-Chair had for breakfast that morning? Would the award be even more ridiculous had a stranger parked in her reserved spot?

Human rights tribunals are feel-good outfits. So, if you can concoct a vaguely plausible complaint, go there. It cost nothing. They supply a lawyer. The taxpayer foots the bill. Complaints are accepted face value. The accused must prove innocence. In the end you get a bag of money. The place is a cash cow.

Death by Doctor

In "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell takes merited jabs at the use (and abuse) of the English language. He wrote, "Pretentious diction [lends] an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements."

We see an example of the "air of scientific impartiality" in the matter of euthanasia. Regardless of one's position in this issue, clear, honest language is called for. The terms "mercy killing" and "death with dignity" have been replaced by "assisted suicide." The language is abused.

The death is not suicide, nothing to assist. The medical person occasions the death by lethal injection. The process is more accurately described as "death by doctor" or more graphically, "killing by doctor." Some may wish to consider the process dignified.

Evolution, a logical view

A superior being cannot "descend" from an inferior being.  Humans could not have descended from monkeys or apes or any other form of lower species.
 
The popular diagram of evolution shows an object emerging from a primordial ooze. Succeeding stages in this process depict a series of species each "descending" from its predecessor.

A more logical model of evolution shows humanity present ab initio. The force that ultimately produced us as we are today carried us through our stages of growth, always there, always human.

There may be a common source of all life. Each of the lesser species developed to the maximum of its particular characteristic. That's where they remain today. The human species, on its unique journey, thrust up and beyond all other forms of life.

Discontent

We are in an era of observable discontent. Former times, if not good, were tolerable, causing most of us to ignore the signs of protest. The power base of late mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, consisted of voters who felt left out of the good municipal life. He became mayor with almost half the votes cast, more than 383,000. The system was not working for them, the former suburbs.

In Great Britain, discontent moved 17 million to vote to leave the European Union. Few guessed 62 million Americans would cast ballots for Donald Trump, the ultimate candidate of discontent.

It may be argued these results were a good thing. They alerted us a revolution may be brewing, unless changes were made.

We like to believe we live in a society blessed with equality before the law, opportunity for all to achieve financial comfort, and freedom of expression. None of these is true.

Reasonable access to the legal system is a financial impossibility. Economic benefits go to a minority. Diversity of opinion is snuffed out when all political parties present the same policies. The media censors the whole truth, publishing only what suits their agendas. They no longer observe and report, but seek to direct public opinion.

Too often we for what we dislike least.

Discontent.

Drug Dealing by the Government

While the federal government pimps for marijuana interests, the provincial government claims it simply cannot live off the avails of  drug dealing.  The Ontario Attorney General claims: "The revenues that are going to be raised (from marijuana taxes) most likely are going to be reinvested back in ensuring that we are protecting youth and the vulnerable."

It's a poor investment if all profit goes to rectify damage caused by the original action.

In fact, our money-addicted Ontario government will receive millions in revenue.  It is telling us that, on one hand, drugs do harm, while the other hand grasps the money.  The harm to our "youth and the vulnerable" is collateral damage.  Why did Premier Kathleen Wynne not voice objection to its legalization?

The  millions in revenue will be used to assuage the catastrophic effects of legalization.  Many of those dying each day from drug overdose began their downward odyssey with marijuana.

Another reason to legalize a drug about which science admittedly does not know the full effect.  How many tobacco company lobbyists have paid for access to the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? Over the years, the government has spent millions of dollars to discourage smoking. We now have it legitimizing the re-appearance of discredited tobacco interests and their prospect of financial gain beyond the dreams of avarice.

It required but a few years for the computer industry to be controlled by a handful of conglomerates. So too, tobacco interests will inevitably control the "party drug" trade. After all, they did finance those early protests. To what extent are they financing existing operations?

All the while, government revenue will continue "protecting youth and the vulnerable" and pay for their rehabilitation.  Another example of privatizing profit while socializing the problem.  These costs should be charged directly against corporate profits, and not as a deductible expense.

Where is the outcry in the media against this mischief?  Are they quiet in anticipation of bolstering sagging revenues from the promotion of the non-smoking uses of this drug?  How else to explain the publicity showered on this looming menace?  We regularly see in newspapers and on television screens acne covered youngsters trying to look mature blowing smoke into the cameras or chewing on drug-laced cookies, all the while making tough-guy statements to the compliant media.

Thank you, Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne.  Future addicts and their families will sing your praise.

The Prime Minister to apologize for executions?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues his apologies. Last year, he apologized for Canada's exclusion of Asians a century ago. These would-be economic migrants attempted to enter Canada illegally. In other words, they attempted to break the law of the time.

The Prime Minister will soon meet the demand of gay activists for compensation and apology for the incarceration of homosexuals when that behaviour constituted a breach of the Criminal Code. In other words, they broke the law of the time.

Capital punishment has been abolished. The Prime Minister must compensate and apologize to members of the families of those who were executed. Taking the lives of convicted murders is now punished by prison. Applying the Prime Minster's logic, the lives of those executed were ended wrongfully even though hanging was the law of the time.

Political correctness runs rampant at the Ontario Human Rights Commission

Just as we believed there couldn't possibly be any more avenues of mischief the Ontario Human Rights Commission (aka tribunal) might tramp down, these righteous people have expanded their mandate to include language engineering.

According to news reports, our bleeding-heart Commission has added to its ever expanding list of nonsense grievances the refusal to address someone by that person's customized pronoun.

(These same people, not long ago, dreamed up a make-work project by demanding the government give them authority to censor the internet. Common sense blew that one out of the water.)

Yes. I can drag you in front of those apparatchiks should you refer to me as he or him rather than my chosen pronouns  -- maybe and perhaps. Yes, I have the right to change adverbs into pronouns. And never refer to me as you, say couldbe.

It's political correctness run rampant.

For not using my selected pronouns, you will have disturbed this snowflake, insulted my personality, caused people to look at me funny, lowered my libido, offended my dignity, caused me to lose my job or fail my university exams. More grievances are on the way.

The good news is they will order you to give me a bag of money. That will immediately rectify all of the above.

The cash return is the main reason why anyone would appeal to this tribunal. At no cost to the aggrieved, and all the costs to the taxpayer, it's worth a try.