The Canadian Human Rights Commission has unfortunately overcome its previous doubts about its own power to restrict freedom of speech, in the form of electronic transmissions - ranging from the telephone to the Internet - which are found likely to expose people to hatred or contempt.

On Thursday, the commission delivered a report that recommended no major changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act.

In the light, or shadow, of complaints to the federal, B.C. and Ontario human rights commissions about an article in Maclean's magazine by Mark Steyn, the federal commission had asked Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor to review the hate-speech section of the CHRA. He recommended its repeal and the leaving of hate speech to the mercies of the Criminal Code.

All those complaints failed, the Steyn-Maclean's controversy faded and the federal body is less worried about the hate-speech section. It now recommends the addition to its statute of what the Supreme Court of Canada had already effectively read into it, 18 years ago. Then, the court said the section can pass muster with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the hatred or contempt consists of "unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification" that are "ardent and extreme."

The Supreme Court's interpretation thus means that the purveyors of hatred must have certain mental states, if they are to be reached by the section, but the commission's report to Parliament decides against the explicit addition to the CHRA of any requirement of hateful or contemptuous intention.

In the end, freedom of speech and expression are unduly trammelled by hate-speech legislation, whether the criteria involve the inferred contents of someone's head, or the supposed likelihood of the effects of words, or both.

Words that actually incite physical violence should remain punishable under the Criminal Code, but human-rights legislation and the Code should be free of dangerously vague prohibitions of speech.