I had a call from a client all concerned about her Charter rights being violated by her employer. While it was dubious that her contractual rights, let alone her rights under provincial human rights legislation, had been violated in any regard, the simple rule is that the Charter applies to state actions. Still, we have people always going on about their rights, not realizing that the rights they clam are mere privileges bestowed by the applicable legislature.

Racial profiling is an issue for the police. Some racial profiling is apparently acceptable when you are running an affirmative action program.Other racial profiling is not good,as in  when the police stop a driver simply because he is black. Now racial profiling has taken on  a whole new realm, that of international hockey, according to Gilles Duceppe:

Doan says all he did was make a sarcastic remark to a teammate, Curtis Joseph, who was infuriated by a penalty call in a game against the Montreal Canadiens.

He says he told Joseph: ''Four French referees in Montreal, Cuje, figure it out.'' And Joseph has backed up his story.

But Duceppe called even that comment unacceptable. He said his party is right to demand answers from Hockey Canada.

''That's what you call racial profiling,'' Duceppe said.

Now that Doan had the ethnic profile of these homer refs, what was he going to do about it? Nothing. Why? Because there was nothing he could do. He's the citizen on the ice and the refs are the cops.

Noticing someone is from Newfoundland because of their accent is not "racial profiling" it's being alive and not deaf. Same thing with someone from Quebec. It would only be possession the power to affect the identified and then the actual taking of action  that would make this observation racial profiling.  This has gotten beyond ridiculous.