Vancouver Human rights cases are normally low-key, sedate affairs in Canada. They take place with little notice or fanfare in small boardrooms, and the issues are mostly personal grievances between individuals. But bigger stakes were being wagered at a human rights tribunal last week in Vancouver, with issues of Canadian identity, freedom of speech and discrimination converging in a single case. Supporters of Mark Steyn, a conservative writer, demonstrated in front of the tiny Vancouver Provincial Court building where the hearing was held into an article in the weekly newsmagazine Maclean's that critics said amounted to discrimination against Muslims. Steyn's supporters voiced their displeasure that the tribunal even had the right to rule on whether Steyn's article, 'Why the future belongs to Islam', constituted a breach of the British Columbia Human Rights Code by encouraging hatred towards Muslims. For Steyn, the magazine and his supporters, the debate is all about freedom of speech. The 2006 article, which was an excerpt from Steyn's book America Alone, cited basic and uncontested statistics that Muslims have higher birth rates than their non-Muslim counterparts. From that starting point, Steyn went on to his main thesis that an ageing and coddled nanny state in the west was no match for a hungry and youthful Muslim population. Some responses to the 5,000-word article when it was published online called for the killing of Muslims, their mass deportation or forced conversions. Such reaction prompted the initial complaint to the tribunal by Naiyer Habib, a cardiologist from Abbotsford, a city east of Vancouver. Dr Habib, who has lived in Canada for more than 40 years, said he and his family were also disturbed by what he considered an assumption by the writer that Muslims living in the west were isolated and not integrated into society. A group of law students who also complained asked Maclean's to publish a response to Steyn's piece. But the magazine's publisher, Ken Whyte, said he would rather go bankrupt than hand over editorial control in such a manner. Faisal Joseph, the lawyer representing Dr Habib and subsequent complainants, told the tribunal that the evidence of hate was clear. But Roger McConchie, lawyer for the magazine, said the case represents an 'encroachment upon personal liberty. A hard shove down the slippery slope to be sure, but one Maclean's says must be met with unflagging resistance from everyone who values freedom in a democratic society'. The magazine and Steyn say they consider the tribunal - which is weighing its decision - an unworthy forum for the important debate over when freedom of speech crosses the line into discrimination. For his part, Steyn is hoping that the tribunal rules against him - so that he can take the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Tomorrow: New York