This is just what we need – more disincentives to get involved in politics.

We can all agree that sitting on the sidelines and grousing about our politicians, without doing much about it, isn’t doing our society any favours.

Mike Del Grande doesn’t seem to be one of those individuals. His track record includes two decades of membership in organizations like the Silver Springs Community Association, the Scarborough Homeowners Alliance for Fair Taxes, and the local Neighborhood Watch program. He was awarded the Volunteer of the Year award in 1991, served as a school trustee for three terms, and has been elected to the Toronto city council since 2003.

Yet Del Grande was rewarded for his service to his community by being hauled before a human rights tribunal.

His crime? He had organized, through the Silver Springs Community Association, a mayoralty debate during the last municipal election. He invited the six candidates widely seen as the front-runners, including Rob Ford and George Smitherman. Even with six candidates, Del Grande was worried about the time constraints. “There’s no time for fluff”, he told the Toronto Sun, mentioning that as it was, each candidate would only have a minute to answer each question.

The candidates not on the list could do little more than sit at home and fume. All but one, that is. A certain JP Pampena figured that, on account of his disability (he was blind), he was entitled to launch a human rights complaint while his also-ran colleagues were not.

Now it may be abundantly clear to everyone who does not work for a human rights body that this case is completely without merit. But yet Mr. Del Grande had to submit a defence and attend preliminary hearings, taking up his time and costing the taxpayers money (the city of Toronto paid his legal bills). Only then did the Tribunal dismiss the complaint, stating that there was “no evidence [to suggest] a connection between the applicant’s experience and the prohibited ground of discrimination.”

Upon learning of the dismissal, Del Grande echoed what all of us are thinking about the system. “…it shows how lopsided the process is,” he said, “that anyone can launch a complaint and it is a freebie and the respondent has to go to great lengths to defend themselves.”

Not to mention the chill that this places on many facets of public life – on free speech, on political discourse, and now on the organization of candidates’ meetings. In a day and age in which political participation is at an all-time low, this is exactly what Canada doesn’t need.