February 2008 Archives

Mike Duffy says that, three years ago, Chuck Cadman led him to believe that he was voting to sustain the Liberals because it would be the best way to maximize his insurance benefits.

That sounds about right. Certainly, Cadman didn't vote with the Liberals out of conviction -- his raison d'etre was his opposition to the Young Offenders Act, a centrepiece of Liberal criminal justice policy.

Below is my column that I wrote at the time for the Calgary Sun. I didn't know what benefit Cadman could possibly get from the Liberals. But Duffy's private conversation with Cadman explains it -- he simply got to avoid an election, so his family did not have to go uninsured even for a five-week election campaign.

There has been a lot of talk these past days about ethics -- the Conservatives' ethics, the Liberals' ethics, even the media's ethics. But no-one has dared to question Cadman's own ethics. It's best not to speak ill of the dead, and Cadman was a good man who led a noble life, and suffered too much in too many ways. But his final political act, though it's unpleasant to mention it, was a betrayal of the principles he claimed to believe in, and all for a few weeks of extra insurance coverage. Of course Paul Martin blurbed the book.

I worked with Chuck Cadman for two years on Parliament Hill when he was first elected a Reform MP. As a politician, there are really only two things to know about the man: He was appalled by the soft Liberal approach to youth crime -- his son had been murdered, which is what spurred him to enter politics -- and he refused to learn Ottawa's vocabulary of B.S. and spin. He was blunt and honest and didn't practise the blacker political arts.

That second trait is why he lost his Conservative Party nomination to a local television personality last year, who bussed in hundreds of instant party members for the vote. And it's also why he won the general election anyways, beating that carpet-bagger and returning to Parliament as the only independent elected in 2004.

Tough on crime and plain spoken. Which is exactly not the Cadman we saw on TV voting to save the Liberals last week.

Sure, it looked like Cadman -- pony-tailed, chewing on gum as he voted, barely containing a smile as Liberals cheered for him. But nothing else clicked.

Why did Cadman, who has spent eight years scorching the Liberals on youth crime, suddenly save that same Liberal party and its policies -- instead of allowing the Conservatives a chance to implement the youth justice policy Cadman himself helped write?

But what about the other half of the man -- that no-baloney style? For weeks, Cadman had hummed and hawed over whether he'd vote for the Liberals.

He hinted and feinted, mugging for the cameras, talking about polls and feelings, sounding like a cross between a high school drama student overacting the part of Hamlet, and, well, a Liberal.

A Liberal named Tim Murphy, to be exact. Murphy is Paul Martin's chief of staff, the one caught on tape trying to get Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal to vote with the Liberals. Murphy told Grewal not to defect outright, like Belinda Stronach did, and not to make a fuss. He told Grewal not to admit to any deal. He told Grewal to explain a vote in support of the Liberals as something his "constituents" would have wanted, so as to avoid an election.

Those were the official excuses written by Murphy for Grewal. And they happened to be exactly what Cadman had been so unconvincingly muttering for a week.

Stronach admitted her treachery by crossing the floor -- she took the political hit for being a traitor, but she got her reward immediately by being appointed to cabinet.

Cadman followed Murphy's suggested talking points to Grewal -- don't cross the floor, stay calm, pretend it's about the voters back home -- as if voters in Surrey, B.C., don't desperately want to turf the Liberals.

But what else did Murphy say to Grewal? He said to wait -- further discussions would be held. Rewards could come later, once press scrutiny dies down a bit and the Liberals are no longer in such jeopardy.

I used to trust Cadman, when he was about a stricter young offenders act and straight talk. But now he's about supporting a criminal-coddling party and mouthing incredible pro-Liberal talking points.

I thought I could despise nothing more than Stronach's showy sell-out. Well, I can -- it's a man who doesn't have the honesty to admit to his party, his neighbours or the public that he sold out.

� 2005 Sun Media Corporation. All rights reserved.

Can the late Chuck Cadman do what Stephane Dion can't, and end the Liberals' annus horribilis? Liberal MP Garth Turner thinks so. He is even talking about bringing down the government. (But then Turner does that from time to time.)

Sometimes an oasis in a desert turns out to be a mirage, though. This passage in a news story caught my eye:

In an e-mail to The Canadian Press, Sandra Buckler said the tape - which the publisher of the book was selling for $500 a copy - is an excerpt of a longer interview between the prime minister and Zytaruk.

"We are deeply concerned that an edited excerpt of a taped conversation between Mr. Harper and the book's author is being bootlegged for five hundred bucks a pop by the author. We call on the author to provide Canadians with a complete, unedited audio copy of the author's conversation - from start to finish - with Mr. Harper."

Those facts should be ringing alarm bells. An edited clip of a longer tape? We've seen how that can end. And the $500 a pop cash grab for that clip should be a flashing light. We all have to make a living; that's part of book-selling hype. But for a journalist to sell audio clips for $500 seems a touch like, well, selling stereo equipment out of the back of a van. If there's nothing fishy here, why the hurry?

It was odd to hear the radio interview with author Tom Zytaruk -- he didn't have basic facts about his own allegations. He seemed wobbly and unprofessional and unbriefed; surprised, even. He looked the same on TV. And that was before I'd thought of the rest of the tape, or heard about the $500-a-pop, get-it-while-the-getting's-good action. I'd sure like to hear the rest of Zytaruk's tape -- not just of the rest of his conversation with Stephen Harper, but his conversation with Mrs. Cadman, the source of the rumour. For that is another piece that doesn't quite fit here: Dona Cadman is herself a candidate for Stephen Harper's Conservatives. Why would she run for a party that had tried to bribe her late husband?

Believe it or not, when I was working for Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance was descending into its civil war, it was Warren Kinsella who gave me a minute of good advice while we rode an elevator together. It was a simple rule: get all the facts -- all of them -- in front of you before you start communicating in the middle of a crisis.

That clearly applies to the Tories here -- it sounds like no-one in the party has yet had a calm, friendly talk with Mrs. and Ms. Cadman, to really get the facts. What exactly did Chuck say? When did he say it? Did Mrs. Cadman really read the draft of the book carefully? Is the draft she received the same as what was actually published? What is the nature of her deal with Zytaruk? How does he get paid? How does she feel about running as a Tory candidate? Who suggested that Paul Martin write the introduction to the book? Why? What editorial input did he or other Liberals have? Who decided to leak that sexy tid-bit to the press? Who made the decision to do so the day after the budget, when the Liberals were in the soup? Do the Cadmans have any e-mails or other communications from Zytaruk? Do they have an recordings of the interviews themselves? Did they say anything to reporters in the heat of the moment, out of pressure -- that is, did Zytaruk write something that wasn't true, and did a reporter surprise them with it, and did they agree with it just not to embarrass Zytaruk and the book, and themselves, and Chuck's memory? Just the facts.

But I think the Liberals, and their chorus in the mainstream media, don't have all the facts in front of them either -- facts about the tape, and Zytaruk's motivations, and the nature of the book -- a vanity biography, apparently commissioned by the family, and blurbed by Paul Martin -- and other things that seem a little out of place.

Given the success of recent Hail Mary passes by the Liberal opposition, big, small and just plain pervy, it wouldn't shock me if this silver bullet ended up blowing up in their faces, too. 

I can understand why the Liberals have embraced the Chuck Cadman allegations -- or, more accurately, third-hand allegations, three years after the fact, when the man in question is deceased. Anything to change the channel from their budget debacle. You've really got to listen to the fogginess of the allegations here to understand what we're dealing with. Add in the facts that:

• the two people at that meeting who are still alive categorically deny the allegations;
• the allegations were made public as the book's publisher was putting the book to market;
• for some reason, former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was given a draft copy of the book;
• it's impossible to buy a million-dollar insurance policy for someone quickly dying of cancer;
• such an expenditure by the Conservatives could not be secretly approved;
• a cautious, calm hand like Tom Flanagan would not think a single vote was worth the near-million dollars such a policy would cost, given the imminence of the Liberals' defeat;
• nor would Flanagan think it would be a sound political risk to put such a bribe to a principled man like Cadman (or anyone); and
• to put it to him a few minutes before the vote they were trying to influence would be absurd and incredible.

Is there some way for us to measure the accuracy of the Liberal claims, other than by gut feel? Is there a way to see how carefully they measure facts, and how ethically they deploy them?

I think there is. Because, as part of their Question Period attack against the Tories yesterday, I came across this gem:

My first reaction was delight, to learn that I had, in fact, been a "former member of Parliament". My second response was embarrassment, because I don't think I showed up even for a single vote.

My third reaction was anger that I was accused of "suspicious activity" and being part of a plan to "flout election laws". That's pretty clear: Raymonde Folco is accusing me of taking part in an illegal act.

Except that it's not true. Not only was I never an MP, but I never received -- nor was I even offered -- any compensation for stepping aside as the Canadian Alliance candidate for Stephen Harper. Of course, I would have liked to have been compensated for my election expenses to that point, though that would hardly have counted as "suspicious" and certainly wouldn't have "flouted election laws". But my wishes didn't happen.

Being called a law-breaker is about the worst defamation you could say about someone, especially a lawyer like me. It's a complete fabrication, factually inaccurate and completely unfair. But, because it was uttered in the House of Commons, it is protected by "absolute privilege". Ms. Folco is immune to a lawsuit.

Today my lawyers fired off this letter to her. And, until she repeats her accusations outside of Parliament, the letter is all that can be done, legally. I'm relying on Ms. Folco's title as an "honourable member" of the House of Commons to correct the record voluntarily -- and to do so with the same conspicuousness with which she first blighted the record.

But given the zeal of the Liberals to trump up the Cadman claims into something real, I'm not holding my breath that they're going to admit to any factual errors or unethical charges right now amongst their barrage of accusations.

Here are three documents regarding the current state of the Alberta Human Rights Commission's prosecution of me for printing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago.

A few weeks ago, Syed Soharwardy said he was going to drop his complaint against me. He finally did so, as confirmed in this letter I received yesterday.

Basically, Soharwardy dinged Alberta taxpayers for close to $500,000 to prosecute his complaint, but when he started to feel the heat in public reaction -- he hated being called a censor and a fascist -- he walked away. In a real court of law, he'd be on the hook for everyone's time and money, as well as paying his own way. In this kangaroo court, he bears no costs at all -- the commission's expenses are foisted on Alberta taxpayers, and I'm left holding the bag on close to $100,000 in legal bills.

I'm not off the hook, of course. An identical complaint was filed by Soharwardy's friends at the Edmonton Muslim Council. So the case proceeds against me still.

But, as I mentioned before, I'm not going to let Soharwardy -- or the commission -- off the hook. It's contrary to our Canadian values of rule of law and natural justice to let some creep abuse the system for two years, and then all but admit it was all just an attempt to punish me politically.

I've written before that I intend to file a Statement of Claim -- in a real court -- against Soharwardy for the tort of abuse of process. I haven't yet decided whether to sue the Edmonton Muslim Council or even the commission itself (likely under a related tort, called abuse of office). The commission's response to my access to information request will help me decide.

Going on the offensive isn't just about recouping my enormous legal costs. It's about having real courts, following real Canadian laws, steeped in real Canadian values, teaching a moral lesson to those who would try to corrupt our Canadian system with Saudi values of censorship and intolerance of dissent. And, of course, pour encourager les autres.

Alberta is generally regarded as the freest province in Canada, but we have had our share of embarrassing episodes of censorship. In fact, about 70 years ago, the Edmonton Journal won a special Pulitzer Prize for fighting against the provincial government's Press Act. That unconstitutional bundle of laws required provincial newspapers to publish the government's "other side of the story" on demand. (Come to think of it, that's precisely what Mohamed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress are demanding from Maclean's magazine.) 

Today's Calgary Herald looks like it's on its way to another Pulitzer, for keeping the free speech fight alive -- proving true Thomas Jefferson's statement about refreshing the tree of liberty in each generation.

Columnist and radio host Rob Breakenridge points out the absurdity of these commissions, and how they have become their own worst enemy through their repeated abusive conduct. I'm glad he thinks so -- that's what I mean by "denormalizing" the commissions.

And the paper's unsigned editorial writes "clearly, something is wrong with Alberta law, if a body set up to decide if a person was denied a job because of race or sex, has been given a censor's powers." I think the paper is too generous to both the provincial Tory and Liberal leaders for their tepid promises to "review" the commission, but the Herald is right to flag this as a start. It often takes a while before a big boulder of change gets rolling, and the Herald will rightly be able to take much credit for any amendments that will come in the months or years ahead. 

When Warren Kinsella quit the National Post a few weeks ago (though, to be accurate, they were only printing him once a month by that point), he announced that the universe had balanced itself out, in that he had joined the Canadian Jewish Congress's legal committee. Having sat on my share of Jewish community volunteer committees over the years -- including one with Kinsella himself -- I can testify that they're not really the same thing as a paying column in a national newspaper. If there are 350,000 Jews in Canada, I'd estimate that there are about 350,000 volunteer positions to be filled.

But I underestimated Kinsella's impact. Today, the CJC has put out an urgent news release: somewhere in Toronto, a school desk was found to have some anti-Semitic graffiti scribbled on it. If finding a swastika scrawled on a bathroom wall was cause for an Orange Alert, this graffiti -- on a desk, people, a desk! -- is War Measures Act material.

It's embarrassing to see a once-great institution like the CJC be reduced to issuing red alerts over kids' graffiti. I'm not in favour of anti-Semitic graffiti, especially on Toronto campuses. That's vandalism, and it's also downright rude. But it says something about the CJC that while they're awfully brave at tackling anonymous graffiti, they don't dare criticize, say, the annual Israel Apartheid Week Jew-bashing festival on Toronto campuses. That would mean butting heads with their more, uh, spirited friends.

The "hate" problem in Canada isn't anonymous swastikas being secretly scrawled by rebellious kids, who likely don't even know what they're doing, other than it seems to annoy the grown-ups a lot. The "hate" problem in Canada is a growing body of Canadians who are importing alien values of violence and censorship to support their broader goals of jihad. According to a CBC poll, fully 12% of Canadian Muslims surveyed felt that the 2006 jihadist plot to murder the Prime Minister and bomb Toronto buildings was "justified". That's tens of thousands of people who haven't assimilated our western, liberal values.

A Canadian Jewish Congress that lived up to its name would give a damn about that. Instead, we've got ourselves a very expensive graffiti patrol. Oy vay.

Earlier this week I received a very moving letter from a soldier in Afghanistan. That letter, in turn, prompted this one:

----- Original Message -----

Dear Ezra,

My cousin, Cpl. Jordan Anderson was killed in [Afghanistan] last year.  When I read
the e-mail you posted today from another brave soldier, I could only think
of Jordan and how he too believed in protecting our freedoms and in his own
words: "making {Afghanistan} into somewhere I could visit one day".

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=b7ad0353-41b9-47a4-9fdb-b3e26a4749a4


I am embarrassed that this man is risking his life to protect the freedoms
that our grandfathers fought for, and back here in the comfort of our
suburbs, our politicians are allowing these kangaroo courts to destroy our
will to think for ourselves.  They should be renamed Sheep Rights
Commissions, because if they are allowed to continue, we will slowly be
transformed into a nation of sheep, willing to think and do only what our
intellectually superior bureaucrats and academics believe is right for us.

I will make it my mission to raise as much money for your fund as possible,
so that our men and women in Iraq can concentrate on their mission, and send
their absurdly hard earned paycheck back to their families.

I'm looking forward to watching you "fight like hell", although I strongly
suspect your adversary is a straw man, and will go away long before you
reach the courtroom steps.

Godspeed Mr. Levant.

[name deleted]

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3402280031

------------------------

It took me a long time to write back. I went on the Facebook group and learned about Jordan; I read some of the news clippings. But mainly I thought: how could my comfortable, safe "battle" here in Canada even be compared to real battles in a war zone? I was touched and sad and grateful all at the same time.

I wrote back, saying that we in Canada should take a moment to think about what Jordan and others like him face, on our behalf, every day. Jordan fought not only for his own freedom, but for the freedom of strangers half a world away.

His story, and his cousin's letter, are both tear-jerking and inspirational. It makes me want to redouble my own meagre efforts to live up to Jordan's enormous example. He paid the ultimate price for freedom; surely I can pay a more gentle price.

Jordan's cousin permitted me to publish his letter, and I do so with feelings of gratitude, inspiration and even love for a man who I only got to know after he made the supreme sacrifice.

One of the strangest things about Richard Warman’s threatened lawsuit against me is his complaint that I dare to call him litigious and a censor. It’s strange because it’s so obviously a fair comment, based on the facts of his track record. But the really weird part is that he doesn’t see the irony in it. I mean, demanding that I censor my comment that he’s a censor? Or threatening that he’ll sue me because I say he sues a lot? It’s absurd, and I wonder if there’s anyone in his circle of friends who will tap him on the shoulder and tell him that. I doubt it.

A reader of my blog sent me a copy of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s 2003 Annual Report, which has a staggering story of, well there’s no other way to say it, Warman’s “censorship” and “litigiousness”.

Scroll down to page 12 for the whole story. Here are some excerpts:

Richard Warman wrote the Kamloops library, which had included [David Icke’s] book in their collection, alleging that the book defamed him. He requested that the library pull the book, threatening to add the library as a defamation defendant if it refused. On the advice of legal counsel, the library removed the book from circulation.

The BCCLA took swift action, contacting Attorney General Geoff Plant and expressing concern about the chilling effect that this type of prior restraint could pose.

:::

Unfortunately, the story gets worse. The BC Library Association ran, essentially, a news story about the Kamloops situation on a portion of its website titled “Censorship in BC.” The Library Association reported on the content of the book and Mr. Warman’s threat of suit. This came to Mr. Warman’s attention and he again threatened to sue.

The Library Association refused to modify its website, rightly in our view, and Warman has now

filed a defamation action against it. The Library Association has retained counsel, pro bono, and

intends to vigorously fight the lawsuit, with the continued support of the BCCLA.

Gentle reader, can you even imagine a scenario that better fits the definition of censorship than that – demanding a library remove a book, and suing the librarians for even talking about it?  And all as “prior restraint” – that is, trying to ban a book before it’s even been assessed as defamatory by a court.

I’m grateful to the reader who sent me that BCCLA report – research tips are always welcome.  So I’ve thought of another research challenge for readers skilled at Google and the Wayback Machine and who have some time to help: Let's document every occasion that Warman has either filed a suit against someone or threatened to do so.

It will be useful to my case, because it will demonstrate just how censorious and litigious Warman really is, and that my comments about him were legally fair. I've got a ton of examples already, but I'm sure there are many more. Send me your research by e-mail, to ezra@ezralevant.com and be sure to include any relevant Internet links, or actual .pdf's or other copies of his threats and suits.

Thanks for your help!

The incomparable Margaret Wente has another report about the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This one is about a man called Paul Lane who lied on his job application -- he didn't disclose that he had a serious mental disorder when he applied for a high-stress position testing artillery software.

A couple of days after he started work, he asked his boss to monitor him for inappropriate behaviour, which he attributed to "emotional abuse" in previous jobs. Soon after that, he told her he had bipolar disorder and said he was susceptible to manic episodes that might require him to take as much as three months off work. Then he started having paranoid delusions and stopped functioning entirely.

Like all employees, Mr. Lane had been hired on 90 days' probation.

On Day 8, the firm decided to cut its losses and cordially told him it was letting him go. Given the nature of its work, there was no way to reassign him.

:::

The tribunal awarded Mr. Lane $34,278.75 in lost wages, $10,000 for "reckless infliction of mental anguish" and $35,000 for "violation of his inherent right to be free from discrimination." It also ruled that the company must hire a consultant to provide all employees with human-rights training. The HRC trumpeted the verdict as a "landmark" decision for the rights of the mentally disabled.

Personally, I wouldn't wish bipolar disorder on my worst enemy.

But rights slice both ways. Mr. Lane applied for a job for which he clearly wasn't suited, and misstated facts to get it. Now he stands to collect nearly $80,000, and he was only on the job for eight days.

:::

These bodies are fast losing their legitimacy. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Most of my comments these past two months -- and most of the media's recent criticism -- have focused on the commissions' ambitions to regulate speech and thought. But the strength of Wente's report, and hers last week too, was that she focuses on the main work of the commissions. Many of the critics of the commissions' adventures into censorship still think that these commissions have other, important work to do. Wente proves that's simply not true. Her reports of absurdities aren't anomalies, they're random samples, par for the course. Keith Martin's private member's bill to delete the thought crime provisions is a good start. But these commissions shouldn't just be pruned -- they should be pulled out by the roots.

I came across this great blog post today. It makes several good points, but the best was to simply remind me about Canada's greatest fighter against neo-Nazism and Holocaust revisionism, Ken McVay. From his bio:

McVay often spent 18 to 20 hours a day typing, and soon found that he had somehow amassed over 3500 pages of information. As the flood of information increased, so did demands for the information; requests inundated McVay's electronic mailbox, and he soon found himself a defacto, full-time Holocaust researcher and librarian to the world of the Internet.

Today he has built one of the most extensive and thorough information sources about the Holocaust and the activities of racists and white supremacists in the world. McVay devotes countless hours to the maintenance and improvement of this massive collection, which now exceeds one million pages.

And here's what McVay had to say about censorship, when interviewed by a German newspaper:

Do you share the willingness to grant freedom of speech even to the enemies of freedom?

McVay: Yes, I do. What possible good comes, for instance, from forcing these Nazis underground? Will that make them stop hating? Has it ever stopped the hate? As a people, we must start taking responsibility for our behavior, and for our problems, rather than expecting "government" to do it for us. In short, we need to learn to carry our own baggage, and to face our social problems squarely.

So what does a real anti-Nazi hero look like? A modest volunteer who has quietly compiled 1 million pages of rebuttals to neo-Nazis around the world, or a self-important blowhard who, when he’s not congratulating himself for snapping photos of swastikas in locker rooms, is comparing his own tribulations to those of Jesus, Moses and Mohammed?

McVey ought to be careful, though. As a “free speecher”, he’ll be smeared as a crypto-Nazi soon enough.

Thanks, Old Jed!

UPDATE: In my comments, the singer-songwriter himself weighs in. I think he might have discovered a new human right! Hilarious:

Thanks for posting it, Ezra. Your clips on youtube are awesome, and I'm glad I can lend some moral support, if not hit the donate button quite yet.I know my singing isn't the greatest, but what the heck, maybe they can throw that in with the lawsuit."His satiric songs were not only libelous, but his off-key singing was offensive to the ears"

Syed Soharwardy, the radical Muslim imam who complained to the Calgary Police Service and the Alberta Human Rights Commission because I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, has disappeared lately. He was on a bit of P.R. campaign a few weeks ago, when his ghost-written Op-Eds appeared in several newspapers. I think he felt pretty good about his "make love, not jihad" campaign, until Licia Corbella gave him the smack-down of a lifetime. Then he wisely decided to just stop digging.

Looks like one of his press releases was republished on a lefty site today. Here's the response I wrote to his Herald column; Licia's dynamite column ran instead. I might as well post my reply now.

P.S.: Soharwardy claims he's dropped his complaint against me. Not according to the commission he hasn't.

Censorship and the Code of the East

        After wasting close to $500,000 of Alberta tax dollars – and costing me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine the better part of $100,000 in legal fees – a Muslim preacher named Syed Soharwardy says he’s going to abandon the complaint he filed with Alberta’s “human rights commission” two years ago when we published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

If this were a real court, Soharwardy wouldn’t be able to walk away from his mess without paying my costs – a judge would order it. And he wouldn’t be able to stick taxpayers with his bill – he’d have to pay his own way in a real lawsuit. Soharwardy’s embarrassing explanation of his flip-flop demonstrates one of the flaws of human rights commissions: they attract nuisance complaints that wouldn’t be tolerated by real courts.

And even if Soharwardy does follow through and drop his complaint – he hasn’t, yet – an identical complaint was filed by Soharwardy’s friends at the Edmonton Muslim Council. So the human rights commission will continue to grind away against me, as it has for two full years now.

So why is Soharwardy distancing himself from his mess? Soharwardy wrote in the Calgary Herald that he now believes in the “Code of the West”, where a “man’s word is his bond”. That’s great, though I have no idea what that has to do with his nuisance suit. But it’s a change from the Code of the East that Soharwardy advocated in the Herald a few years ago, when he said that the entire world should live under Sharia law – where the Koran would be our constitution, as it is in Saudi Arabia. No, thanks. Even women at Soharwardy’s own mosque don’t like that – they’ve filed their own human rights complaint againt Soharwardy, accusing him of mistreating them to the point of harassment. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve seen a videotape of a meeting at his mosque; the women were seated at the back of the room, and whenever they tried to speak, Soharwardy shouted them down. That might fly in Saudi Arabia, but I don’t want women in Canada treated that way. Perhaps Soharwardy has a different Code of the West than I do.

Soharwardy says he has now reconciled himself to Canadian values, and has abandoned the illiberal views he brought with him from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And he says he’s eager to “sit down with [me] and discuss it”. Forgive me if I doubt the man’s sincerity – as recently as last month, he asked the Calgary Police Service to arrest me for hurting his feelings (they very politely told him that in Canada, the police don’t do that sort of thing). And a few weeks ago, Soharwardy’s lawyer threatened me with a lawsuit like the one he’s filed against the dissidents in his own mosque.

I’m not so sure I’m interested in meeting with a bully like that – someone whose website is overrun with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (and the weird claim that Spanish Conquistadors committed a “holocaust” by massacring the Muslims they discovered in South America). I’ll stick to more polite company.

Soharwardy told the Herald that “most Canadians” see my interrogation as a free speech issue; he didn’t say that he sees it that way. But he did concede that “Canadian society is mature enough” to handle looking at those cartoons. Well, that’s awfully big of him. I know Canadians were waiting for a madrassah-trained imam who’s popular on the Saudi lecture circuit to give us his approval that we’re “mature” enough to read what we want.

What’s really going on here is that Soharwardy is simply upset at the hostile P.R. he’s received since filing his complaint. All over the world – from CNN to the National Post to a thousand websites, people are calling Soharwardy as they see him: a censor, intolerant of others, using a secular government agency and public money to enforce an Islamic fatwa. I may be getting pummelled in human rights “court”, but Soharwardy is getting pummelled in the court of public opinion.
 

His column in the Herald was an exercise in damage control, trying to recast himself as a reasonable man who accepts our freedoms. But the very night his column was published, he told CBC’s The National why he really dropped the complaint against me: not because he has some epiphany about freedom, but because “people were looking at Ezra Levant as a martyr of freedom of his speech ... taking this into a different direction that I did not want.” Soharwardy started this human rights circus, but he never thought he’d come across as the clown.

Soharwardy might want to forget about all this, but I don’t. I’ve instructed my lawyers to sue him for the tort of “abuse of process”.

When the complainant in a two-year censorship exercise admits the whole thing was just an ill-considered lark, such a suit is not just about recouping my losses. It’s about holding a little tyrant, and the government agency he hijacked, to account, and having grown-ups -- that is, real judges in real courts -- tell them that what they’ve been doing is morally and legally wrong.

Soharwardy tried to get Saudi justice. Now I’m going to get some Canadian justice.

I sometimes get e-mails from Canadian Forces troops in Afghanistan, who are always thoughtful about the larger purpose of their mission. It's clear to me that they think and talk a lot about the moral importance of their mission. I believe they are true idealists. Of course they are: in a time of war, with a near-certainty of deployment to the front lines, it takes a very special and selfless person to volunteer to join the army.

If my correspondents are any indication, our troops truly believe in spreading our Canadian ideals of liberty, rule of law, democracy and peace. I don't think the media tells us about that heartening phenomenon enough, other than a few exceptional reporters like Christie Blatchford. (Here is one of her all-time best from Afghanistan.)

I received an e-mail yesterday from a soldier in Afghanistan. After I wrote back to thank him, he wrote to me again encouraging me to post it on my blog.

How does one repay such generosity? I'm not just talking about his financial generosity -- I'm talking about his generosity of spirit, his deeply-held belief in freedom and the personal sacrifices needed to sustain it.

He is far too kind to suggest that what I'm doing, from the warmth and safety of Canada, is in any way comparable to what he's doing, in real danger and discomfort, daily. I was stunned when I received his note. Here it is. Good God we're a lucky nation to have men and women like this. I don't deserve such praise. I hope as a nation we can live up to his standards.

----- Original Message -----
From: [deleted]
To: <mailto:ezra@ezralevant.com> ezra@ezralevant.com 
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 1:12 AM
Subject: Best of luck Ezra... Though you shouldn't need it.

Dear Mr. Levant;

I am a Canadian soldier currently deployed in Afghanistan.  Yet even here, I keep abreast of events back in Canada.  Upon learning of the possible upcoming lawsuit you may face for your stance against censorship and soft tyranny, I felt I had to somehow help out.

Therefore, today I have donated one thousand dollars to your defence fund.  As you may know, our Risk and Hardship allowance (and a portion of our pay) is non-taxable, so don't worry; even though I'm pretty much a middle-class Joe at the rank of Sergeant, that sum isn't going to cripple me financially.

The reason I decided to give you some of my Risk and Hardship allowance is because you too are faced with hardship and risk.  My brothers in arms and I are not the only ones trying to defend our freedoms and improve the lives of others.  I see these qualities in yourself as well. 

So, I've decided that some of the money that the federal government is paying me to defend people's freedom should be spread a little more evenly around to someone who's doing a job that is ultimately just as important as mine.

The Taliban want to take over Afghanistan not only because they seek power; for them, the control of the country is only a means to an end.  What they truly want is to control how Afghans think, act and speak.  Well, they're not the only ones.  It irks me that some of the same traits of our enemies are so common and banal back in Canada. 

So Ezra, thanks for being a sentinel on our home front.  We'll fight the bastards over here, you fight their ideological brethren back in Canada.  Also, best of luck in your defence; not that you'll need it, you seem to have a pretty solid case and the necessary skill to fend off your assailants.

If the plaintiffs see the writing on the wall, decide to withdraw their lawsuit and it turns out that you don't need the money, I ask that you give it to a registered charity of your choice.  If you prefer, it's also fine if you make a donation to a federal politician who's willing to stand up and defend our freedom of speech.

Sincerely,
 
[name deleted]
Sergeant
Joint Task Force Afghanistan

This morning I was on the country's biggest morning show, CTV's Canada AM, to talk about today's federal budget. Here's the clip of my conversation with Seamus O'Regan.

I'll be on CTV's Newsnet early this afternoon -- so I'll immediately be held to account for any errors in my morning predictions!

Paul Schneidereit has become a leading voice calling for reform of Canada's human rights commissions. Here is what must be at least his third column on the subject, in Halifax's leading daily paper. Schneidereit reminds us that it wasn't too long ago that the Supreme Court of Canada, in a razor-thin 4 to 3 decision, upheld the section 13 thought crimes provision of the human rights act, but with this proviso:

...[the majority of judges wrote that] there was "little danger that subjective opinion as to offensiveness will supplant the proper meaning." But exactly what the majority said would not happen, in fact has.

That's a keen observation; those who argue that section 13 is a constitutionally valid infringement on speech ignore how the human rights commissions have run wild with the narrow powers granted to them by a narrow decision of the court. It seems likely to me that if Mark Steyn's case or my case -- so clearly outside the small ambit granted by the court -- were to come before the court again, they'd put the commissions back in their place.

My case or Mark Steyn's might just come to that; with a 100% conviction rate at the federal HRC, it's doubtful that we'll be acquitted at the first instance. It is good to know that Schneidereit's views will be represented at any such appeal; he is the past president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, which promised to intervene legally should either of our cases go to a full-blown hearing.

Nina Grewal, the Conservative MP, has written a letter to a constituent saying she's for a "fundamental review" of the Canadian Human Rights Act in light of recent abuses of the "hate speech" section by the federal human rights commission. She refers specifically to Mark Steyn's case and my own. Hers is not a rip-snorting defence of free speech -- Grewal's style is always understated, even cautious -- but it's a good start:

There are, however, areas where reform may be required; specifically the willingness of commissions to consider questions relating to freedom of speech.  I am worried that by censoring one kind of expression, it will be easier to start censoring others.

Like Keith Martin, the Liberal MP who has proposed a private member's motion to delete the offensive section 13 of the law, Ms. Grewal is from British Columbia. I think there is a libertarian streak in that province, across all party lines.

Of course, being from B.C. isn't the only commonality Ms. Grewal has with Dr. Martin: both are visible minorities. Most Canadians, especially British Columbians, don't even notice such things anymore -- politics, business and life in general in B.C. is completely integrated. They were the first province to have a Sikh premier, for example; twenty years ago their Lieutenant-Governor was of Chinese ancestry; their current Lt-Gov. is Aboriginal.

The most frequent argument marshalled by the defenders of section 13 of the CHRA is not really an argument -- it's to make ad hominem attacks on anyone who supports free speech, claiming they're in league with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. That insult is getting more and more ridiculous all the time, given that the leading advocates for amending the law are visible minorities and Jews.

In 2006, I was hit with two identical human rights complaints because I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the Western Standard magazine. We were simply doing what news magazines do – publishing the news. But an anti-Semitic Calgary imam named Syed Soharwardy and the intolerant Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission that I “discriminated” against them, and demanded cash and an apology from me. Since then, their fatwa has been prosecuted by the Government of Alberta, using taxpayers’ dollars and government bureaucrats.

Instead of bowing my head in submission, I decided to fight back, publicizing the Alberta government’s January, 2008 interrogation of me in videos that have now been seen well over 500,000 times on YouTube.

Over the past month, the public’s reaction to seeing their government interrogate a journalist has snowballed into a national discussion about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of mosque and state. What started out as an issue reserved to the blogosphere and talk radio has jumped into the mainstream media, and even into Parliament. To my delight, the Canadian public – across the political spectrum – has been overwhelmingly supportive of free speech and critical of these Orwellian commissions, and groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists and PEN Canada have recently weighed in, too, and very vigorously.

We’re winning in the court of public opinion – and I say “we”, because it was the blogosphere that moved this story from the “undernews” to where it is today.

Well, now I’m being threatened with a lawsuit because of our campaign for freedom.

Richard Warman

Just before the weekend, I received an e-mail from Richard Warman, the former investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who quit the commission in 2004 to become the commission’s biggest customer. Approximately half of all complaints filed under the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s section 13 “idea crimes” provision have been filed by Warman. The CHRC has a 100% conviction rate under that section, and besides ordering the poor shleps Warman complains about to pay fines to the government, they’re often ordered to pay thousands of dollars to Warman himself, too, for his “hurt feelings”. Unlike the paycheque he got when he used to work there, the cash he gets from commission fines is tax free.

Warman and his friends at the CHRC aren’t hitting me with a human rights complaint – not yet, anyways. But he is threatening me with the most bizarre defamation lawsuit I think I’ve ever encountered.

Absurd complaints

It’s not the first threat I’ve received from him; back in December, when I mentioned him in passing in a National Post Op-Ed, Warman fired off another threatening letter to me. You’ve got to read it. I mean, really -- it included the complaint that I dared to call him “anti-racist”, rather than anti-racist. That’s right: the fact that I used quotation marks around those words was one of the reasons he was threatening to sue the National Post and me.

If that was Warman’s most petty complaint, his most ironic complaint was that I called him a censor who abused the legal system, and that if I didn’t immediately censor myself with a retraction and apology, he’d hit me with a lawsuit. That blissful lack of self-awareness would be cute if it wasn’t accompanied by a threat – sort of like when Warman encouraged some young rowdies to “take the piss out of… people who are so pompous and so full of themselves” by assaulting them with a cream pie. It was unsettling to watch a lawyer conspire in the commission of an assault.

As a publisher and columnist, I’ve seen dozens of letters threatening defamation lawsuits, and I didn’t think much of his December letter other than that it confirmed to me that Warman was indeed what his track record of human rights complaints would suggest: he truly is the most easily offended man in Canada.

Warman hires a lawyer

Well, Warman has just sent me another letter, quite similar to the first. This one was written by a Toronto lawyer. You can see it here. It’s ten pages long, but most of that is simply rehashing several of my own blog posts. The rest of it is a mix of vanity, self-righteousness, hyper-sensitivity and plain old inaccuracies. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s called politics, or the clash of ideas. But normally such self-congratulatory flatus is posted on a blog, not dressed up as a threatened lawsuit.

I’m a defamation lawyer myself, and if I had to sum up Canadian law in four words, it would be this: get your facts straight. If your facts are correct, you have the right to your opinions on those facts – even extreme or radical opinions. So Warman’s complaint isn’t really a threat of a lawsuit. It’s a letter to the editor.

And that’s the problem here. Warman is so used to operating in kangaroo courts – so used to human rights commissions that are run by non-lawyers, with arbitrary procedures, no fixed rules of evidence, no meaningful standards of guilt, where truth is not a defence and fair comment doesn’t exist – that he thinks he can take his Orwellian thinking out from the cloister of these star chambers into the real world. That’s my earlier point: I don’t think Warman even knows how ridiculous he looks.

The doctrine of fair comment

Warman may not share my opinion that he wastes taxpayers dollars, or acts as a censor, or that human rights commissions are a joke, etc. And his opinion might even be more reasonable than mine (it’s not). But it’s not unlawful for me to have my views. Not that my views are particularly radical – many of my exact words are echoed in the language used by PEN Canada, the CAJ, the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Noam Chomsky(!) and a dozen newspaper editorial boards across the country. That might hurt Warman’s feelings, but hurt feelings aren’t the test of defamation law.

Most everything in those blog posts was my political opinion. I did assert a few facts: I wrote that Warman encouraged some young ruffians to assault a man with a pie. That’s not a matter of fair comment, it’s either factually accurate or not. Gentle reader, click here and tell me whether that fact is true or not. I’m just not sure how Warman can deny that, but it will be interesting to watch him try.

The other factual assertion I made is that Warman himself planted anonymous posts on the Internet sites that he was stalking for a complaint. Again, it’s pretty tough for Warman to take issue with that, given that both he and commission staff admit under oath that’s how they operate.

Well, Warman has tried to deny it in the past. But that didn’t really work. Here is an interesting exchange before the tribunal: at first Warman denies that he posted anonymous, provocative comments to a website he took to the commission; then, when confronted with the fact of it, he sheepishly admits to that practice. If you’re bored, you can read this lengthy affidavit by the webmaster proving that the bigoted remarks about Sen. Anne Cools were made by Warman himself. Here’s a timeline of facts related to the Anne Cools remarks.

I started poking around a little bit about those disparaging comments about Sen. Anne Cools, because they’re obviously a source of embarrassment to Warman – he seems to have complained to the National Post when they attributed those words to him. The Post decided to cut bait and move on – they’ve been Canada’s best champions of free speech, so they deserve a little slack for not digging in. But, unless I’ve missed it, in at least two other legal actions – his defamation suit against Free Dominion, and his human rights complaint against Marc Lemire – Warman has conspicuously omitted any reference to their claims that he made the Anne Cools remarks. If those bigoted comments weren’t made by him, the assertion that they were would be defamatory, and would be the strongest part of those suits. I’ll bet you a dollar this subject doesn't find its way into any suit against me, either.

These folks just keep coming

Look: I didn’t want any of these fights. I just wanted to publish a magazine. Two years ago, when the first, absurd, hand-scrawled human rights complaint was filed against me, I tried hard to make it go away quickly and inexpensively, by writing this earnest reply. But neither Syed Soharwardy nor Shirlene McGovern would let me go that easily. Now, both of them are gone -- both quit. (But I'm not free; a new Alberta human rights officer is still prosecuting the Edmonton Muslim Council's version of the complaint against me.)

Now, after staying silent for months, Richard Warman wants to enter the fray. Not as a debater with arguments, but as a silencer, outlawing arguments. A man more certain of his case would rely on words, not lawsuits, to rebut me – and would take his lumps for his bad behavior, such as encouraging the physical assault on David Icke.

But Warman doesn’t appear to believe in debates. He believes in what he calls “maximum disruption” of his political adversaries. On page 8 of that speech, Warman can’t even bring himself to categorically rule out violence against his foes. He defines unacceptable violence as violence that is “indiscriminate” and “places the safety of other individuals at risk” – because such indiscriminate violence that hurts bystanders is morally “suspect” and “puts in jeopardy broader public support”. It’s tough to imagine true human rights activists like Martin Luther King or Mohandas Gandhi parsing acceptable and unacceptable violence that way. And it’s clear that the intended assault on David Icke slips through his loophole. Perhaps I should be glad Warman hit me with a lawyer’s letter, and not a pie in the face.

I’m going to fight like Hell

As a defamation lawyer, I know that Warman’s complaints are baseless. So, other than the nuisance and cost of defending the threatened suit – the “maximum disruption” that Warman promises – there’s nothing to fear. For me, at least.

But what about for Warman? Until now, he could beaver away on his human rights complaints while I railed harmlessly in the media. I had no impact on him, other than on his ego. But now he’s changed that. He’s threatened to lock himself into a formal legal process with me, in a real court, with real rules – not the loosey-goosey kangaroo court where he used to work.

Before, he could ignore me; now he has to answer my questions about his conduct under oath; if he sues, he will have to disclose documents touching on the many matters at hand – everything from e-mails to files on his hard drive. “No comment” and “that’s confidential” don’t work in an examination for discovery.

Warman as a surrogate for the commission

And though it seems likely that Richard Warman will be the sole plaintiff against me if he sues, in effect it’s as if section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act itself, the idea crimes section, is threatening to sue me, because Warman is such a dominant user of that section. If the political campaign to rescind section 13 succeeds, no-one will be affected as much as Warman. No wonder he’s so mad.

In that sense, it is as if the commission is threatening to sue me. And since my discussion of Warman’s unusual relationship with the commission is one of his complaints against me, they get dragged into this, indirectly. Before, they too could ignore me. If I'm sued, I'll have standing to apply to the court for subpoenas, both for internal commission documents and to compel the testimony of commission staff.

I must admit that I’m surprised Warman would do this. I had not yet received his threatening letter when I wrote this post last week, remarking on the wisdom of Warman for keeping a low profile. I think he’s so used to slam-dunks, he thinks this case will be the same. But this time will be different.

We’ve got a solid case in law – and unlike many of the poor shlubs Warman fights against, I’ve actually got lawyers, and I think the truth will come out. But that’s not really what the next year or two is going to be about.

Court of law and court of public opinion

Warman might think that this is another episode of him shooting fish in a barrel. But that’s probably what poor Shirlene McGovern thought, too – I was just another politically incorrect chump to rough up.