April 2008 Archives

I wonder if it will work: Mohamed Elmasry and his Canadian Islamic Congress are trying to become the Canadian version of Al Sharpton, the U.S. shake-down artist and race hustler.

Sharpton, and his competitor, Jesse Jackson, trump up grievances or outright manufacture stories to stoke racial anger, and then set themselves up as the mediators of those same grievances -- often with a hefty financial payment to them as part of the solution.

When Elmasry, the Jew-hating president-for-life of the CIC, first complained about Maclean's magazine's book excerpt from Mark Steyn's America Alone, a tidy cash payment was part of their proposed solution.

Of course, Elmasry lacks Sharpton's media savvy, so in his Maclean's shake-down effort, he sent out three Muslim students and a Gentile to do his bidding (the Gentile has since left the team). It made sense: even Elmasry knows that it's a bit hard to square his own "human rights" complaint with his public statements justifying the murder of Jews.

(It will be interesting to see if media coverage of Elmasry's sock-puppets press conference today note that they are not, in fact, the complainants against Maclean's -- Elmasry the Jew-hater is.)

But that's what we've got here: an ethnic shake-down racket. In the U.S., racial grievances are trumped up and then "solved" when the natural currents of political correctness -- usually in the form of companies' aversion to calls for boycotts -- outweigh the shakedown victim's sense of outrage at being conned. There are no human rights commissions enforcing the media and corporate surrender in the U.S.; it's all about risk management and image management by those companies. That's why Sharpton and Jackson cultivate their media celebrity status: it's their sole leverage to get the cash.

Canada doesn't have the same heritage of racial division that the U.S. does, for obvious reasons, and so we lack much of the deeply ingrained liberal guilt -- the same sort of guilt that has rocketed a clearly unready Barack Obama to the lead of the Democratic Party. And most Muslims have only arrived in Canada in the past twenty years -- Canadians really haven't had a chance to become politically deferential to their claims of being victims, and the tepid reaction of most of Canada's Muslim leaders to 9/11 didn't help their claim to victimology, either. But we've been good at mimicking U.S. racial politics, by osmosis.

It will be interesting if Elmasry can pull off a Sharpton -- he'll be one rich anti-Semite if he can.

Elmasry's gambit has failed as a PR effort alone. To be sure, his sock puppets have received an enormous amount of ink and airtime -- which, in itself, proves false their points about being "marginalized" in the media. Nonetheless, despite having had acres of newsprint to argue their points of view, it's clear that not only are they failing to convince people, they're actually stoking up Canada's free speech instincts, and anger towards the CIC. As usual, Peggy Wente's column back in December said it best:

Curiously, the four complainants in the case are all law students or graduates from York University's Osgoode Hall. You might think that law students, of all people, would be very big on stuff like civil liberties, tolerance and free speech. I guess not.

"There is a fine line between freedom of expression and promoting hatred," said Muneeza Sheikh, one of the complainants. "Our feeling was that the article definitely did promote hatred."

Darn those feelings. They can make you feel so bad. If feelings were facts, no one in Canada would be allowed to state a controversial opinion.

...The CIC has lots to say about Islamophobia in Canada, but not a word to say about rape victims being flogged in Saudi Arabia or teddy bear demonstrations in Sudan. Plenty of Muslims wish it would just shut up, and for good reason. If the CIC wants to know who's fuelling prejudice against Muslims, maybe it should look in the mirror.

Wente's view has been nearly universal amongst Canada's commentariat: the CIC is trying to import Saudi or Egyptian values to Canada, and no matter how they try to dress it up, it's still illiberal censorship. I know from speaking with several journalists who have interviewed Elmasry's sock puppets that they are demoralized and truly surprised by the negative reaction they've received.

So the media pressure that Sharpon and Jackson rely on in the U.S. just hasn't materialized. And -- thankfully -- most Canadian Muslims simply ignore the bigoted buffoonery of the CIC, so a mass boycott of Maclean's or other Rogers affiliates just won't happen.

Thus today's gambit by the CIC: use the threat of HRCs as leverage for a shakedown against Rogers. As Debbie Gyapong points out, the CIC has also used the threat of criminal charges as leverage, too. You'd think the three sock-puppets, each being law school grads, would know that trying to pressure someone into doing something by threatening to file charges against them is a crime in itself, called extortion (a threat to file a civil suit is specifically exempted, but not a criminal complaint.)

I wonder what Maclean's will do. They've been immune to public pressure from Elmasry. If anything, the battle in the court of public opinion is going overwhelmingly in their favour. The only leverage Elmasry has is the near-certainty of a conviction by the HRCs.

Will Maclean's blink? Will they pay off Canada's Al Sharpton wannabe -- the Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry and his PR front of law students?

I don't know Ted Rogers but I know Ken Whyte. I think he'll say the same thing he said when Elmasry's agents came to shake them down the first time: he'd rather go bankrupt than to be a party to their extortion.  

Commenter "Kriilin" points me to this website, that has a YouTube clip of me on last week's CTV pundit's panel. I like partisans, and Don Boudria is as loyal a Liberal as they come, but every once in a while there is a news item that just can't be jammed into a "blame the other party" message. The strange case of Brenda Martin is clearly one of them.

Here's the clip.

I was on Mike Duffy's partisan panel again today. I don't think I was particularly strong, but it was still fun to hold up the Conservative end of the argument. I was on the show last week and it was a lot spicier -- I'm going to try to find that clip and post it, too. In the meantime, here's today's.

I've been talking with friends in the PMO for months, and they are genuinely surprised that Stephane Dion hasn't pulled the plug on the government yet. Well, surprised probably isn't the word for it -- Dion's indecision no longer surprises them. A more accurate way of phrasing it would be that the Conservatives were fully engrossed in planning an election -- first for April, then for June. I've joked before that if the government hadn't passed a law setting a fixed election date, Stephen Harper's minority government would last forever.

And, in a way, why should Dion bring down the government? Because Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae want him to do so?

On what issue would he run? Afghanistan has been neutralized as a campaign issue; the Liberals have consented to Conservative criminal justice reforms; with economic worries growing, costly Kyoto proposals are less resonant than ever with the public. So what would it be? One of the inside-the-beltway mini-scandals of the week -- from Karlheinz Schrieber to Cadscam to Elections Canada -- each of which falls apart under scrutiny, and none of which has animated anyone off of Parliament Hill?

And then there's the buzz around Ottawa that more criminal charges are set to follow those filed against Benoit Corbeil, the head of the Liberal Party's Quebec wing. I understand that a number of quite senior Liberals have been "invited" to meet with the RCMP in the past week; I wonder if Corbeil has cut some sort of deal. Triggering an election -- only to have charges announced against another half-dozen Liberal bosses in the midst of a campaign -- is not a risk that Dion wants to take, nor should Ignatieff or Rae for that matter.

No, I think being the aimless captain of a drifting ship with a slow-burning mutiny is a preferable scenario for Dion than going to the polls. Let's watch Rick Mercer's beautiful song and dance on the subject one more time.

Ed Driscoll links to my post about human rights commissions trampling on the property rights of a gay bar. Today the complainant is a straight woman who wanted to stop in for a drink. But who might the complainants be taking on gay bars in a few years time?

Driscoll has a premonition, from England:

Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.

Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.

Driscoll's right. For if there is a new "human right" not to be offended -- a brave new trail blazed often in the name of gay rights -- can't that phony "right" be used against gays?

The only reason I emphasize this is because some people still have trouble condemning the counterfeit "right not to be offended" when it's in the abstract, or especially when the offensive party is a neo-Nazi or other bigot. But they're missing the whole point: the precedent is being set. Even if they don't believe in free speech or property rights for their opponents, liberals should protect the concepts for themselves.

The thing about human rights commissions, the thing that worries me so much about them, is that when you create a government organism that can violate real rights -- like property rights, and the sanctity of contract, and freedom of association -- everyone is at risk. We see that with free speech: neo-Nazis are the official reason why Canada has thought crime laws, such as section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. But once you accept the fact that some thoughts are illegal, well then everyone's at risk. That's the folly of the Canadian Jewish Congress: they think they'll always be riding the back of the tiger, not being mauled by it.

Pete Vere sends me this interesting case study of the wild animal biting madly. A Montreal gay bar, Bar Le Stud, told a woman named Audrey Vachon that she wasn't allowed in -- it was a men-only establishment, and had been happily operating that way for eleven years. Then the human rights commissions got involved, and Bar Le Stud has copped a plea bargain. We don't know the details of how much money Vachon got paid or -- and you know this was part of the deal, it usually is -- the kind of "sensitivity training" that Bar Le Stud's staff have to undergo.

A gay bar -- like a straight bar, like a Christian church -- has age-old rights that long pre-date our fads of "human rights". Bar Le Stud has property rights, which include the right to exclude people. They have freedom of association. They have contractual rights. Strangers have no "right not to be offended" by them. They have no "right" to come onto their property, to change the purpose of Bar Le Stud, and to interfere with its peaceful practices. But now they do.

Misguided gay rights activists -- like Darren Lund, and even Richard Warman -- have used the bludgeon of human rights commissions to batter down the real rights of others. But they have laid down precedents that, in this case at least, are being used against gays.

It doesn't happen often, because conservatives, and straights, and Christians, aren't as active as their opponents in the grievance culture that Canada's HRCs foment. And, of course, even if they were, the grievance-activist bias of HRC staff would probably dismiss those complaints.

But that can only last so long. As Mark Steyn pointed out in his last Maclean's column, Adolf Hitler didn't invent Germany's censorship laws, nor did he write the emergency powers provisions that the Nazis abused. They were all written by the liberal Weimar Republic.

Leftist and ethnic-identity activists have loved the HRCs because they have usually picked on those groups' enemies. But the dangerous precedents have been set, and everyone's rights are at risk, as Bar Le Stud has found out.

ADDENDA: I know what real "gay rights" are. They're the same as real "Jewish rights". The right to private property. The right to self-defence. The right to free speech, sanctity of contract. The right to be free of violence, etc. Those were the rights that were stripped away from Jews by the Nazis; those were the reasons the Jews were killed -- not because of words, but because of deeds. Gay rights means property rights of a gay bar. But human rights commissions don't care about such real gay rights, any more than they would for anyone else. They're about feelings, and because Bar Le Stud hurt someone's feelings, real gay rights were trumped. 

Question: if Bar Let Stud can't keep out Audrey Vachon because she's a woman, can they keep out an anti-gay protester? Can they keep out a skinhead?

Mark Steyn comments on Giacomo Vigna's libel notice against me. Steyn makes some good arguments, but my favourite part is a song Steyn wrote for Vigna. Here it is:

I feel dizzy
Oh, so dizzy
I feel dizzy, not fizzy and gay
In a tizzy
I can't handle any brief today!

(Twirls around, flouncing barristerial robe)

I feel worried
Oh, so worried
I'm so worried I hurried to say
That I really can't proceed today

(Climbs up on witness stand and surveys himself in CHRT mirrored ceiling)

See the barrister in that mirror there:
What's that strangely anxious look mean?
Couldn't really say
Haven't seen a doc
Can't elaborate
But I'm not serene!

(Leaps from witness stand and embraces Judge Hadjis)

I'm not fluey
I'm not screwy
It's just hooey I knew he would buy
For I'm judged
By a pretty wonderful guy!

That last couplet is so precious -- and I really can see it as a Broadway musical number. I picture someone bouncy and a little cherubic, like Nathan Lane, playing Giacomo "Jackie" Vigna. And when he grabs the startled tribunal judge, I picture that role played by someone crotchety and slightly deaf, like Wilford Brimley or maybe even Fred Thompson who's back to acting now. I would have suggested Fred Gwynne, who played the straight-laced southern judge opposite Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, but Gwynne has passed away, and I wouldn't want Vigna filing a human rights complaint against me, alleging that I was comparing him to, well, Vinny.

That said, I think there could be some wonderful elements in a Vigna musical borrowed from My Cousin Vinny. I'll never stop loving this clip, no matter what the Canadian Human Rights Commission says:

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve received yet another threat of a lawsuit from a member of the human rights set. This one is from Giacomo “Serenity now!” Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Here is a copy of Vigna’s home-made libel notice. It’s Cherniaky in its logic and Kinsellian in its command of the law.

Vigna’s letter is a classic case of why lawyers should not represent themselves, even if they think they’re saving a few bucks: their judgment is clouded by their emotions.

I mean, seriously, look at why Vigna says he’s going to sue me. On page three of his threat, he’s underlined what he says makes him really mad at me. He complains that I made fun of his courtroom antics, when he told a tribunal chairman that the whole hearing had to stop because Vigna didn’t “feel in a serene state of mind”. I compared Vigna’s lame series of excuses – a discussion that went on for twenty pages of court transcripts! – to a student who pulled the fire alarm to get out of writing an exam.

You’d think that Vigna would want to forget about that awful, awful day when he turned the tribunal hearing into his own therapy session. But not Vigna – he says he’s going to sue me for calling his drama audition a “farce”.

Alright, readers, skip the next few paragraphs. They’re a private message from me to Vigna, barrister to barrister, and friend to friend.

Pssst. Giacomo. If you’re embarrassed by me poking fun at you on my little blog, how are you going to handle a whole trial about your Dr. Phil moment? There was nobody paying attention to your hearing last year – certainly not Richard Warman, the nominal plaintiff, who didn’t even bother to show up that day. Nobody really cared that you had an “episode”. Do you really want to have a full-blown trial, in a real court, about your statement that:

“I don’t feel very well. I feel dizzy, I feel anxiety, and I am not in a serene state of mind to proceed with this file today. I have a lot of things worrying me right now and I don’t want to elaborate… I am not dying, Mr. Chair, I don’t have the flu, but I am not mentally capable of proceeding under these circumstances.”

Don’t you see that, if you want to get even with the fellow who made you look like a fool, you would have to – geez, how do I put this gently – sue yourself?

Giacomo: Don’t. Aim. The. Gun. At. Your. Own. Foot.

OK, everybody else, you can start reading again.

Vigna’s demand letter continues in the same vein for quite some time. On page four and five, he again underlines what really made him mad – the video montage of George Costanza’s dad shouting “Serenity now!” on Seinfeld. I’m not sure what legal defence I’d use on that one – truth or fair comment. I think the judge would be too busy laughing to even listen. Again, I can’t believe that anyone would actually want to have a trial on the important legal question of whether or not his whimpering merits a comparison to a Seinfeld character. Maybe we can call in some expert witness to testify about just how badly Vigna embarrassed himself that day. Was it a Seinfeldian humiliation? Or did it reach South Park levels of self-degradation? I could talk about that for a week at trial, but I don’t know if Vigna could, without – you know what’s coming – losing his serenity.

But page eleven of his threat gets interesting. That’s where Vigna moves from merely beclowning himself to actually endangering himself.

It’s one thing for a defamation court to laugh about Vigna for a week, deciding whether or not he’s a fool like Seinfeld's Kramer. But it’s more serious when the subject at hand is his unethical conduct. The man should really get a lawyer to give him cool-headed advice.

I suppose my favourite part of Vigna’s libel notice is the very last page, page 13. I’m not just talking about Vigna’s use of the royal “we” to describe himself. (We all do that. Sometimes when I’m at Tim Hortons and I order two donuts, I say “we” want two donuts, because I don’t want the cashier to think I’m eating them both myself). And I’m not just talking about Vigna’s suggestion that I hire a lawyer to get good advice – this from a fellow who has clearly not shown his own letter to anyone who will talk him down from his ledge.

No, my favourite line is his last sentence. After 13 pages of threats, 13 pages of trying to strike terror into my heart, what is Vigna’s coup de grace? What is his “or else”?

Vigna threatens to have the trial… in French!

Whatever turns his crank, I guess. The French do have a theatrical tradition of farces – I pick up a real Jerry Lewis vibe from Vigna, though his serenity monologue was a little bit more Three Stooges.

(It's not surprising that Vigna threatens to use Canada's official bilingualism as a weapon against me. It's similar to his use of "human rights" law as a weapon of censorship. Official bilingualism and human rights commissions were supposed to make Canada better, to protect minorities -- at least that's how they were sold to us. That they are now used cynically and abusively by people like Vigna tells you that even government bureaucrats don't believe the propaganda of Trudeaupian idealism. Those policies are just one more weapon with which to attack their political opponents.)

Vigna’s threatened lawsuit is so obviously frivolous and vexatious, it’s laughable. I hope it goes no further. But, unfortunately, if he really does proceed with a suit, I won’t just be able to laugh – I’ll have to run a defence, and that costs money. And even if I beat Vigna in court – in a year or two – I’ll still have to shell out money for lawyers along the way. I really don’t see how even a quick trial would cost less than $30,000. And remember, that’s on top of Richard Warman’s lawsuit against me and my fellow bloggers, and that’s on top of the human rights commission complaint against me, which still continues.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Vigna has piled on. Other bloggers have written about Vigna’s tomfoolery but, as far as I can tell, I’m the only one he’s threatening to sue. And I don’t doubt there will be more suits on top of those.

There’s a term for this: SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation. It’s Richard Warman’s specialty, and now Vigna’s getting in on the game. And, I’ll be candid: if it weren’t for the support of the blogosphere, I’d probably crumble under the pressure of it.

But so far, so great: I’ve been able to fight these bullies. As I’ve said before, I’m up for the fight, and I believe in it. I actually think I’m suited for it. The only thing I’m missing is financial strength.

I hate to ask again, so soon after asking for help to fend off Warman’s suit, but if you want to chip in to help me fight off Vigna, please do. Even a bare-bones defence is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars – and I’ll have to come out to Ontario for the trial, too.

I didn’t ask for this suit. But it’s clear to me that the human rights industry can’t win through arguments, so they’re going to try to bludgeon me (and others) into submission.

Well, I’m not rattled – I’m still serene. I’m going to fight them as long as it takes. Please help me if you can.

Yours gratefully,

Ezra "Tranquility" Levant

Nelly Hechme is the innocent bystander whose Internet connection was hacked by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, so their investigators could cover their tracks when they went online under their secret codenames to surf white supremacist websites.

(I know. That entire sentence is insane. But it's true.)

Hechme has now done another interview with the Canadian Press, and the story is even worse than previously reported. According to Hechme, her Internet connection was secure -- it was actively hacked by the CHRC. Here are some other excerpts from her interview:

"It's horrible," Hechme said. "You never want something like that attached to your name."

...Hechme, 26, who lives close to the commission's offices in Ottawa, said she was "completely shocked" when a reporter contacted her about the disclosure.

"It was like the "Twilight Zone." I didn't know what the heck was going on," said Hechme, an administrative assistant with Bell Canada.

"I don't like the fact that my information was just put out all over, including my age, where I live, pictures of where I live. It's very disturbing."

So far, the commission has not explained why or how its investigators might have commandeered Hechme's connection or offered any alternative explanation for how Hechme and "Jadewarr" became linked.

That's a lot calmer than I'd be if I had my Internet connection hijacked by rogue operatives of a government bureaucracy. But the best part of the interview isn't Hechme's information. It's Ian Fine's stunning statement that they did nothing wrong.

Ian Fine, senior general counsel with the rights commission, said he was unable to comment on the specifics of the case in light of ongoing investigations but denied any wrongdoing.

"We are quite confident that, at the end of the day, it will be established that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has done nothing untoward, nothing wrong, in this whole scenario," Fine said.

Is there anything that's out of bounds over there? More to the point, is there anyone over there who will take responsibility? What about Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissioner? Does she share Fine's view that there's nothing wrong with illegally hacking a private citizen's Internet account? Of how about Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister? Is there some special exemption from the Criminal Code for his "human rights" vigilantes? Just how bad does it have to get before he utters a word besides "no comment"?

Hechme, meanwhile, is pondering civil action, saying it's not fair she's been caught up in the murky web.

She's particularly distressed at finding her name associated with white supremacists and wonders whether that link - now firmly forged through the reach of the Internet - might come back to haunt her.

"This is the part that bothers me the most. I don't know if my name is going to be flagged if I want to cross the border, if I apply for a job," she said.

"I don't even want anyone questioning my name. Ever."

Good idea. I think Hechme should sue for an enormous sum -- I think the CHRC would pay just about anything to avoid having to reveal the truth about their vigilante activities in a real court, with real rules of disclosure -- not a human rights tribunal that's in the CHRC's pocket.

And besides grotesque revelations about the Hechme case, how many other private citizens have had their Internet accounts hacked? What else would come out if the CHRC was ever held to normal standards of accountability?

Sue, Nelly, sue! 

h/t Dave P

Mark Steyn links to Pundita, and draws attention to her comment that:

the weakness of the Free Speech movement is that it's not coordinated and there is no war council. That weakness is easily exploited by the movement's opponents.

I usually agree with her analyses, but not here. (I thought her use of the phrase "pre-crime" to describe the "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred" wording of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was brilliant -- it showed the abnormalcy of criminalizing something that might or might not happen in the future.) But on her call for a war council, I politely disagree.

One of the advantages of freedom loving people -- as opposed to the centrally-planned groupthinkers who constantly beset us -- is that we think of ourselves as individuals. To use a leftist phrase, we "celebrate diversity" -- intellectual diversity, that is. A centrally-planned, command-and-control "war council" doesn't quite fit with our way of thinking. More to the point, it often doesn't work. I think it's a case where spontaneous order beats planned chaos. I think it's the nature of the Internet, too, and the nature of free speech itself: a messy cacophony that just happens to work better than the alternative.

Let me give you a practical example. Should we free speechers use the tactic of filing section 13 complaints against our opponents?

There are plenty of reasons why we should. It would be free, first of all. It would cause our opponents to waste time and money, and possibly demoralize them. It would tie up the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the Tribunal, with busy work -- so they could do less harm to others. Carefully chosen complaints could demonstrate the absurdity of trying to outlaw hurt feelings. (I think of Steyn's observation that every music store in North America that has a "rap" section would surely violate the prohibition against the word n*gger.) It would be especially fascinating to tag supporters of HRCs with complaints themselves -- even to tag HRC staffers (and there are plenty of bigoted HRC staffers out there).

On the other hand (and this is my view) to file such complaints would legitimize an illiberal, unconstitutional, unfair process. It would further entrench precedents of political censorship. It would concede that HRCs are valid. And -- God forbid -- if the idea was to overwhelm and overwork the HRCs, there's always the chance that such an increased workload could lead to bigger budgets and staffs!

A central war council would have to choose one of these two approaches. I rather prefer the ability for me to decline to do so, but for Jay Currie to do so with gusto.

Another example is whether or not to fight this fight in court, and if so, how hard. The National Post has tried to avoid getting bogged down in court with Richard Warman, even going so far as to issue an apology to him (that didn't save them from a lawsuit from him, though -- in fact, it probably encouraged it.) I, on the other hand, look forward to squaring off with Warman in a real court, with real rules of procedure and disclosure, and with real laws interpreted by actual judges.

Who's right? We both are. The National Post has written more about the abuses of HRCs than any other Canadian medium. Why should they spend money on lawyers and spend time in court, instead of writing more great reports and editorials?

There are a hundred ways to fight HRCs. Some free speechers have more time than money -- they can do research, and even blog. Others have more money than time -- they can donate to the fights. Some have political connections -- they can press their MPs for change. Others have a facility with public speaking and writing -- they can call talk shows, or write letters to the editor. Still others are professional journalists themselves. I don't think that such a range of people could be "co-ordinated" even if one tried to do so.

I like the "multi-polar" approach that free speechers have achieved in the past four months. It wasn't too long ago that only a handful of voices were speaking out against HRCs. Now there are literally hundreds. There is a momentum, a synergy, that could not have been planned. From Binky and his excellent daily aggregation of news, to Old Jed's great songs (and awful voice), to the comedy of The Nose on Your Face and Iowahawk  to the deep research of John Pacheco and the "rantings" of Rick Mercer, this couldn't be planned -- to plan it would be to limit the fight to the imagination and experience of a few "experts", rather than to invite the whole world to fight back in their own way.

It is exceedingly satisfying to me to behold the daily battle -- uncoordinated, unplanned, but enormously effective -- that is being fought by amateurs and volunteers. It truly has been a grassroots effort in every way -- fighting against 14 well-funded HRCs and their retinue of high-priced help. We are winning, and winning more and faster than anyone could have predicted.

Of course, there are de facto leaders of this fight -- people who write or think or do more about it than others. Steyn is an obvious example of such; I am too, in my own way; the others in the Freedom Five are, whether they like it or not (I don't think anyone likes being sued, but I think they're all going to fight like hell).

Keith Martin is an important leader; those Tory MPs and staffers who are trying, behind the scenes, to get the federal government to make changes, are silent leaders. Every talk show host and op-ed writers is a leader, too -- in the sense that denormalizing the commissions is the first step to building a public demand for change.

I'm not arguing against co-operation -- we saw a splended and generous example of that, with Steyn's day-long fundraiser. But I think that what we're building here is a grassroots revolt, a taking back of Canada's laws, a reassertion of Canadian values over alien values of censorship and political correctness. It is populist by nature, it is instinctive. Like many others -- like Pundita -- I'll continue to offer up my own ideas of strategy for this fight, on my blog. I'm sure Kate and Kathy and Connie and Mark and Debbie and Blazing Catfur and a dozen others will, too. We'll find our way to victory, probably by many paths, but all converging on the goal together. We're already well on our way, don't you think?

Not surprisingly, the best column yet on human rights commissions comes from Mark Steyn, in this week's Maclean's. I think it's the best for several reasons, but mainly because it refuses to give any credit to human rights mumbo-jumbo, and actually analyzes what passes for arguments from the HRCs. The comparison between Marxist and Nazi totalitarianism is brilliant; the reminder of the impotence -- indeed, the counter-productivity -- of "hate speech" laws in 1930's Germany is persuasive. And the absurdity of privileged white women, like Barbara Hall and Jennifer Lynch, condeming "white hegemony" is hilarious. As I've argued before, there is nothing so devastating in politics as truly funny ridicule. That's what makes Jon Stewart's show so powerful -- not that he's particularly bright, but that he makes his viewers laugh at (mainly) Republicans. Steyn is both funny and bright, and that combination is unbeatable. Other than the unwittingly discrediting utterances of Hall herself, I think there is no better advocate for the reform that Steyn. Some excerpts:

It's true that "hurtful actions that undermine freedom" and lead to "unspeakable crimes" usually have some fig leaf of intellectual justification. For example, the ideology first articulated by Karl Marx has led to the deaths of millions of people around the planet on an unprecedented scale. Yet oddly enough, no matter how many folks are murdered in the name of Marxism-Leninism, you're still free to propound its principles at every college in Canada.

Ah, but that's the Good Totalitarianism. What about the Bad Totalitarianism? You know, the one everybody disapproves of: Nazism. Isn't it obvious that in the case of Adolf Hitler, "hateful words" led to "unspeakable crimes"? This argument is offered routinely: if only there'd been "reasonable limits on the expression of hatred" 70 years ago, the Holocaust might have been prevented.

There's just one teensy-weensy problem with it: pre-Nazi Germany had such "reasonable limits." Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia. As Alan Borovoy, Canada's leading civil libertarian, put it:

"Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law. Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech. And, in the opinion of the leading Jewish organization of that era, no more than 10 per cent of the cases were mishandled by the authorities. As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."

:::

The problem the Jews found themselves up against in Germany and elsewhere was not the lack of hate-speech laws but the lack of protection of the common or garden laws — against vandalism and property appropriation and suchlike. One notes, by the way, that property rights are absent from Canada's modish Charter of Rights. The reductio ad Hitlerum is the laziest form of argument, so it's no surprise to find the defenders of the ever-more-intrusive "human rights" enforcers taking refuge in it. But it stands history on its head. Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to "seize" dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn't "seize" anything because he didn't need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic's constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set — what's the phrase? — "reasonable limits" on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn't invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution. 

:::

Happily, beginning on July 1, under Ontario's "human rights" reforms, Commissar Hall will have far greater powers to initiate prosecutions against all and sundry. Under the new proposals, " 'hate incident' means any act or omission, whether criminal or not, that expresses bias, prejudice, bigotry or contempt toward a vulnerable or disadvantaged community or its members." "Act or omission"? Of course. The act of not acting in an insufficiently non-hateful way can itself be hateful. Whether or not the incident is a non-incident is incidental. I quote from "Concepts Of Race And Racism And Implications For OHRC Policy" as published on the OHRC website:

"The denial of racism used by so many whites in positions of authority ranging from the supervisor in a work place to the chief of Police and ministers of government must be understood for what it is: an example of White hegemonic power over those considered 'other.' "

Got that? Your denial of racism merely confirms your racism — because simply by being a "White hegemon" (like Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch) you wield racist power.

:::

It's not a left/right thing. It's not a gay/straight thing. It's not a Jew/Muslim thing. It's not a hateful Steyn/nice fluffy caring compassionate Canadian thing. It's a free/unfree thing. And the commissars are on the wrong side. 

Canada's human rights commissions are a manifestation of the "nanny state" -- where the government treats citizens like children in need of nannying. That's what most HRC cases are about these days: salving hurt feelings, throwing a few extra dollars (or a few extra tens of thousands of dollars) to people who can frame life's normal ups and downs as some sort of political grievance.

Mark Steyn isn't just a fellow victim of Canada's human rights commissions and a great advocate for their reform. He's also a good friend to me, and to the other writers who have criticized those human rights commissions, and have thus been sued by Richard Warman, Canada's most prolific human rights complainant.

Mark has generously offered to support our legal defence through the sales of his books and other merchandise. Until midnight tonight, he is donating his entire profit -- 50% -- from all sales from his website.

Mark's books and other merchandise (including the great Viva Steyn! shirt we first commissioned at the late Western Standard!) are well worth buying at any time. But until tonight, all of the profits go to help Kathy, Kate, Connie, Mark and me.

So please stop by his site and load up. Thank you -- and thanks, Mark!

If you want to contribute to my legal defence fund directly, feel free to do so through my PayPal account. Besides fending off Warman's suit, I'm also still fighting the Alberta human rights commission, which has been prosecuting me for two years now for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Judging by their snail's pace, that case might actually outlast Warman's SLAPP suit against us.

You can also contribute to my fellow defendants, here, here and here.

Thank you -- and thanks, Mark. I promise to keep fighting! 

 "This organization is not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations to this organization are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

I got a few laughs from the audience out of my speech in New York a couple of weeks ago. The biggest laugh, though, was nothing that I had written. It was when I simply read aloud section 3 of Alberta's human rights law in which I have become tangled for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

Section 3(1) is what I'm charged under. Its wording is thus:

3(1)  No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or

(b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt

because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons.

In other words, it's the Alberta version of the section 13 thought crimes provision of the federal Canadian Human Rights Act, under which Maclean's magazine and others are charged (and under which not a single defendant has ever been acquitted).

But that's not what got them laughing in New York. Section 3(2) of the Alberta law did:

3(2)  Nothing in this section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject.

Stop and read that again, this time slowly.

The law doesn't guarantee "the free expression of opinion on any subject". It doesn't say that section 3(1) operates only until it threatens the free expression of opinion, at which point the free expression of opinion trumps the censors. It doesn't say, "notwithstanding section 3(1), every Albertan has the freedom of expression", etc.

No, section 3(2) simply "deems" any section 3(1) censorship as not to have happened. Section 3(2) creates a legal fiction. A plain reading of section 3(1) allows censorship. A plain reading of my case, or Rev. Boissoin's (see para. 357 here), would show that's its effect. But section 3(2) simply declares that censorship not to have happened.

Section 3(2) is legal pixie dust, declaring that if any freedom of expression is infringed, the law will just "deem" that it never happened. Keep moving, nothing to see here. After all, who are you going to believe -- section 3(2), or your lying eyes?

The government just told you, in advance, that whatever it does with section 3(1) won't be "deemed" to interfere with freedom of thought. It doesn't quite say who is supposed to believe that fiction, or how that fiction is to be enforced, or whether it is a crime not to believe that fiction.

Clearly, my interrogator, Shirlene McGovern, believes that fiction. She grilled me for 90 minutes about my decision to publish the Danish cartoons. She evidently believed she had a license to censor -- section 3(2) told her so.

It got a laugh in New York. But it's not so funny when you're in Alberta. 

John Pacheco attended last month’s Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in the Warman v. Lemire case. That was where Canadian Human Rights Commission staff were grilled about their practice of going onto the Internet under fake identities, and posting bigoted comments.

Pacheco recorded that hearing himself (the tribunal bizarrely dismissed its court reporter for that one day) and compared his recording with testimony from the December, 2006, hearing in another one of Richard Warman’s complaints, against Jessica Beaumont. Besides having the same complainant (Warman) and the same tribunal chairman (Athanasios Hadjis), the two cases had something else in common: both involved the CHRC’s secret online identity “Jadewarr”. That’s the alias CHRC investigator Dean Steacy used to sign up as a member to the white supremacist group, Stormfront, a scandal in itself.   

Pacheco’s comparison found a lot of ugly things about how the CHRC does business. But the most striking fact he discovered was that Warman hid his knowledge of Jadewarr from the tribunal, despite being asked about it several times under oath.

Pacheco’s site has all the details. But here’s a summary:

One of the pieces of evidence against Jessica Beaumont was this print-out from the Stormfront website that the CHRC submitted to the tribunal. But after the CHRC disclosed that print-out, they realized that it said “Welcome, Jadewarr” on the corner of it – giving away the fact that the CHRC had logged in as a member of Stormfront. That blew Steacy’s secret cover. To hide his tracks, the CHRC switched the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out with a generic print-out of the same page from the Stormfront website, without the words “Welcome, Jadewarr” on it.

On December 12, 2006, the tribunal chairman, Hadjis, was trying to figure out the difference between the two versions of the Stormfront document, to understand why the CHRC wanted to switch the original evidence with a new version. Here’s what Warman, and the CHRC lawyer said when asked about the documents:

THE CHAIRPERSON: I’m sorry, I’m a little confused here...

MR. VIGNA: The layout, when you look at it, it might seem different, but if you look at the contents it’s pretty much the same.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Right.

...MR. VIGNA: Perhaps, Mr. Warman, you  can explain it.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, perhaps you can explain it.

MR. WARMAN: Sure.

THE CHAIRPERSON: I do see that the content is similar. It’s got the poem in it, but how come the layout is different, as Mr. Vigna has indicated?

MR. WARMAN: Sure. I will happily explain. The first one is a Commission document. The second one is a document that was printed off in my presence on Friday.

THE CHAIRPERSON: So, the second document was available on the Internet and printed off?

MR. WARMAN: Yes, on Friday.

THE CHAIRPERSON: On Friday.

MR. WARMAN: So, if it’s more appropriate, we can withdraw the first one and simply tender the second one.

Warman doesn’t disclose the difference between the documents, other than when they were each printed. But that’s not the real difference, was it? That’s not why they switched it -- a switch that Warman himself suggests.

Later on, Warman was asked about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out again:

MR. FROMM: …what’s the origin of it?

MR. WARMAN: I don’t know.

THE CHAIRPERSON: You don’t know now but you mentioned earlier that it was from the Commission. That’s what I heard you say.

MR. WARMAN: It originates in the broadest sense with the Commission.

THE CHAIRPERSON: So the Commission had produced this photocopy?

MR. WARMAN: Yes, but in terms of its specific origins, I have no idea.

That must have sounded a little bit strange: how could Warman have “no idea” about its specific origins, even though he said the generic replica of it was printed off in his presence the previous Friday? Hadjis, impatient as usual, let it pass.

Warman was asked again about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” version:

MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?

MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.

MR. FROMM: By whom?

MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.

Warman’s testimony is pretty clear: he swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr on the original print-out, and he didn’t know its “specific origins”.

The Beaumont hearing slouched onwards, and the strange matter of the switched evidence was forgotten. But Warman’s next case was against Marc Lemire, the webmaster of Stormfront. Lemire suspected something, and made a much bigger fuss about Jadewarr. In December, 2007, a year after Warman’s testimony in the Beaumont case, Steacy finally admitted he was Jadewarr in the Lemire case.

But it wasn’t until the March, 2008 hearing, when Steacy was cross-examined, that the whole truth came out – and that Warman’s testimony was exposed as misleading.

Steacy testified that Warman knew exactly who Jadewarr was, and he knew it well before the Beaumont hearing. Here’s Pacheco’s audio clip of Steacy testifying to that effect:

Since Steacy admitted he was Jadewarr, it’s not surprising to learn that Warman knew about it. Warman and Steacy had worked together, not just as colleagues at the CHRC where they were both “hate” investigators, but as “client” and “service provider”, when Warman filed a complaint and Steacy investigated it (a conflict of interest and another scandal). The two men were pretty cosy. In fact, Steacy told the March, 2008 hearing that everyone who knew who Jadewarr was knew the password, too – presumably, that included Warman.

But compare Steacy’s testimony in 2008 to what Pacheco dug up from Warman’s testimony in December, 2006:

MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?

MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.

MR. FROMM: By whom?

MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.

Warman swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr. But Steacy testified that Warman indeed knew who Jadewarr was.

Details about the group print-out of second, generic version of the document were discussed in the March, 2008, hearing too.

Steacy told the tribunal that he, Warman and CHRC lawyer got together. They logged in under Steacy’s Stormfront membership, Jadewarr, because, as Steacy testified, they had trouble finding the page otherwise. Here’s a record of that log-in by Steacy. Note the date: December 8, 2006, the date Warman said the document was printed out in his presence.

We don’t even need Steacy’s corroboration – Warman himself admitted that it was a group print-out. But from Steacy we learn who the group was, why the group was assembled and what they were trying to do.

Back in December, 2006, Warman’s vague answers were confusing. But in the light of the March, 2008 hearing, we see it was more than confusing, it was misleading. They were trying to keep Jadewarr’s identity a secret – even though they had an obligation to disclose that information to both Lemire and the tribunal, and another obligation to answer questions about it honestly.

“I have no idea” said Warman. “I don’t know.” But he did know.

The truth – as revealed 15 months later – was that Warman did “have an idea”. He “did know”. But instead of answering honestly under oath, he misled the tribunal.

I just can’t get that Johnny Cash song out of my mind – “as sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”

Richard Warman is now suing me and other bloggers for defamation. In his lawsuit, he denies going online under an alias and posting bigoted comments. Sounds familiar. I wonder what he’ll say “under oath” at our trial.

You can see Warman’s suit here. We'll be filing our statements of defence in a few weeks. If you want to help us fight back against Warman, you can, by contributing to our legal defence funds via PayPal -- my button is below this post, and my fellow defendants are here, here and here. 

 "This organization is not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations to this organization are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

UPDATE: A keen-eyed correspondent points out another difference between the two documents: the "Welcome, Jadewarr" version has a swastika on it -- but the second, generic one doesn't. According to my correspondent, cached web pages show that Beaumont never affixed a swastika to her posts. Was the original CHRC document doctored to make it more damning?

The worse, the better: that's an old revolutionary maxim, the first use of which I can trace to an old Russian socialist named Nikolai Chernyshevsky, though I'm sure others have made the point before him. Maybe even Moses.

The idea is pretty simple, though it's awfully pessimistic and even cruel: for people to be motivated to embrace change, things have to get even worse than they are now.

Which brings us to Barbara Hall, the awful new boss of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. She's the one who issued the guilty verdict against Maclean's magazine, without going through the trouble of having a trial of the matter. And, according to this interview with the National Post's Joseph Brean, she's just getting warmed up.

"I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that's a very low level," the activist lawyer and former mayor of Toronto said. In the long term she would like to see human rights complaints decrease, but in the interim they "may have to spike."

People aren't unhappy enough in Czarina Hall's Ontario. She will change that.

...she stood firmly by her position that media have a responsibility to put their writings through a "human rights filter" before publication, and said the commission is keen to call out those who do not, jurisdiction be damned.

Did you know that Canada's media now have a responsibility to Czarina Hall? That they can't just report the news, or express their opinions -- but that they must do both now through her own peculiar ideological prism?

"Every day we comment on things that aren't [formal] cases. Part of our job is to identify discrimination and to work to address it," Ms. Hall said. Often that is done through formal complaints, "but more often it is putting out a statement, having a debate, meeting with people, discussing and understanding the impact.

"Having a debate" -- that's my favourite. We've seen how she debates in the Maclean's case -- she accepts a complaint, and issues a defamatory verdict, without trifling to hear from the other side.

I believe Czarina Hall means every word she says. I believe that many people will be hauled before her, including Ontario media, even those who regard themselves as quite liberal.

I believe that things are going to get worse. She says so. Ordinary people who have never heard of the Ontario Human Rights Commission are going to hear about them, a lot. Czarina Hall will be a fixture in the media. She will become more famous than any other Ontario politician except perhaps the premier and mayor of Toronto. She will not govern herself, and so far no-one else has chosen to govern her.

It will be an awful few years in Ontario. But, as Chernyshevsky promised, because of that, the revolution will come more quickly.

It's hard to believe right now, but Barbara Hall is a greater force for the reform of these abusive commissions than any of the commissions' critics.

"When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."

-- Jimmy Carter, explaining the benefits of meeting with Hamas terrorists in Syria

h/t

I was saddened to learn of the untimely passing of my friend, Doug Aldridge. Doug was an ally of liberty, and fought both in the political arena, and in the media, too. I appeared on Doug's Internet radio show just two weeks ago. My thoughts are with his family.

Mike also has some reflections.

Maclean's magazine has been pretty quiet about its own persecution by Canada's human rights commissions. Mark Steyn has railed against them in his Maclean's column, and Charlie Gillis did a balanced report on Canada's Complainer-General, Richard Warman. But in the main, the magazine has taken the opposite approach to that which I took, both when I was publisher of the Western Standard, and now that the Western Standard, at least as a print magazine, is gone.

I think that's because of the nature of Maclean's: it's the establishment news magazine, over a century old, and it doesn't have anything to prove, unlike our scrappy upstart did. And we were, by nature, much more of a crusading publication. Maclean's reports the news, but they don't much want to make the news.

I think that all changed with Barbara Hall's abominable press release last week, in which she condemned Maclean's and Mark Steyn for  the political crime of "Islamophobia" -- without the bother of an actual hearing into the matter. There was no caricature of the nosy censor that Hall did not fulfill; she was truly what central casting would send over if a Hollywood screenwriter requested a modern day Big Brother, straight out of George Orwell's book, 1984. I've written before that the human rights commissions are their own worst enemies when it comes to the PR war in which we are engaged. I don't think there's anything I could say that would damage the HRCs as badly as they can damage themselves. The truth about them is so abnormal, that people just wouldn't believe me -- until they hear it from the HRCs themselves.

If I were ever to have a debate against Barbara Hall, I think the smartest thing I could do, in terms of convincing the audience of the rectitude of my views, would be to give Hall all of my speaking time, in addition to her own.

It took Hall's attack to pull Maclean's into the thick of the debate. They've written a wonderful counterblaste, which you can read here. Hall's threat also elicited rebukes from the National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun -- again, something that no partisan reformer like me could have hoped to have accomplished.

That's because, until now, I think that many people in the mainstream media -- who are, by nature, skeptical to the point of cynicism -- truly believed that the threat of bullying and censorship was limited to politically marginal writers. In other words: conservatives like Steyn and me. But Hall made it crystal clear: anyone is fair game now, and she's just gearing up. I suppose the fact that Hall is well known in Toronto, from her days as mayor, as a meddling zealot helped that city's media to take her seriously.

The good news is that HRCs won't shut up. They can't. Because they can't understand why the public -- and journalists -- aren't grateful for their attempts to politically reeducate us. They can't quite figure out why we are not ready for their brave new world where nothing offensive is ever said, a utopian future where the human emotion of "hate" is legally banished. For years -- in some cases, decades -- they have only interacted with fellow travellers. There is nothing so intellectually monochromatic as the "diversity industry". Many of them are truly stunned that anyone would have the impertinence to disagree. And of course, until now, those few dissidents who were foolish enough to present themselves, were simply hammered into submission.

But even if the HRCs were to emerge from their denial, and show uncharacteristic discipline and simply shut up, that would not help them. The genie is out of the bottle now; too many in the mainstream -- and indeed, on the left -- know about their shenanigans. The HRCs cannot turn the clock back to an era when they were free to muck about, under the radar of public scrutiny. A thousand bloggers have seen to that, and are now joined by real shoe-leather reporters, too.

And, even more than that, the HRCs have managed to plant for themselves a series of time bombs that are set to explode.

Mark Steyn's B.C. Human Rights Tribunal trial itself is a huge, yet unexploded PR bomb that will detonate in about six weeks. I'm a pipsqueak, yet the videos of my own interrogation have been viewed close to 600,000 times. I pity the HRC interrogator who has to spar with Steyn. And the Canadian Human Rights Commission, slow as always, hasn't even set a date for their double jeopardy trial of him yet.

My own case still slouches on. Though one of my complainants, Syed Soharwardy, has dropped his complaint against me, an identical complaint filed by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities continues against me. I'm ready to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Is Alberta's HRC ready for five more years of public scrutiny?

And to say the CHRC's section 13 thought crimes case against Marc Lemire has backfired is an understatement. Not only have his counterattacks blown the lid of the CHRC's corrupt tactics, such as their practise of posting anonymous, bigoted messages online, but their illegal hacking into a private citizen's Internet account has now attracted the scrutiny of Canada's Privacy Commissioner. How many more months of bad press will that give to the HRCs?

And then there's the defamation suit, filed against me and other bloggers by Richard Warman, the CHRC's former staffer, and Canada's top complainant under the section 13 thought crimes provision. That's going to be a PR nightmare for the CHRC for years. All of Warman's relevant conduct will be scrutinized -- unlike in his CHRC cases, where he is an absentee complainant, and where the tribunal has not required the CHRC and Warman to disclose all relevant documents.

Barbara Hall and friends are hoping that 2008 will be like 1984. I don't think it's going to end that way. I think that, on New Year's Eve, they'll be calling 2008 their annus horribilis.    

Winston Churchill said that the definition of a fanatic was someone who can't change his mind, and won't change the topic. I must therefore change my view of John Baglow, also known as "Dr. Dawg". This week, he wrote what can only be called a concession speech for the defenders of Canada's human rights commissions. Here are some of my favourite excerpts:

The opponents of Human Rights Commissions are winning. I'll be accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy by stating the obvious, but it doesn't take a weatherman, etc., as we used to say...

Meanwhile, who is speaking up for Human Rights Commissions? A few left-wing bloggers--the usual suspects. Present and former Human Rights Commission officials...

What can we do about it?

First off, we need to be clear: the current operations of human rights commissions, all fourteen of them (one per province and territory, and the CHRC) leave a thing or two to be desired in terms of both procedures and outcomes. There is such a thing as a frivolous, vexatious complaint; there are also complaints offered up in perfectly good faith that simply will not stand. Clearly there must be a comprehensive screening process at the outset, one based upon law and jurisprudence, that weeds them out before the entire ponderous and costly apparatus of a tribunal is brought to bear.

That was (although Levant's fatuous histrionics nearly erased this fact from public consciousness) precisely what was going on at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. It would have been the work of a few minutes, requiring no more than a letter at most, if he hadn't tried to turn it into the Trial of the Century, prolonging his own alleged agony on endless video recordings and loving every minute of it. But meanwhile, Mark Steyn's unpleasant words in Maclean's magazine, while screened out in Ontario (the OHRC is being harshly criticized, though, for daring to refer to that unpleasantness at all), are being put on trial before both the BC Human Rights Commission Tribunal* and the CHRC.

And now, to top it all off, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is no longer going to screen complaints. They'll all go to a Tribunal. Every last one of 'em. Good grief. The anti-human-rights folks are going to have a field day with this one. I wonder how many hundreds or even thousands of bogus complaints scribbled on cocktail napkins by those busy bees are going to be submitted to the OHRC before someone in charge finally gets the message?

The problem is this. Human Rights Tribunals are supposed to offer recourse to the average citizen suffering discrimination--people who can't afford lawyers, court costs and powerful opponents with deep pockets. Like any other quasi-judicial tribunal, access is relatively easy, and proceedings are informal. That's as it should be. But the only way a system like this can work, practically speaking, is to keep it from getting clogged. And to prevent clogging, a fair and effective screening process is a must...

The second point is that respondents are currently required to foot their own bills, win, draw or lose. This is simply wrong. If a complaint is not upheld, reasonable costs should be awarded. The respondent has a right to be made whole, just as the complainant presently is when a complaint is upheld.

Rather than issuing defensive statements, officials, ex-officials and supporters of Human Rights Commissions should gracefully concede that the current system is in some need of adjustment. I don't want to debate whether or not hatred and discrimination should be tolerated in a free and democratic society. The answer to that one is obvious, at least to me. Instead, we should be discussing how the current system, at least in the short and medium terms, should be altered to conform to the popular sense of fairness and justice.

The debate, then, badly needs to be reframed. So far, we've let conservatives set the terms, and the damage is becoming more apparent by the day. We've been diverted by the disingenuous use of "free speech" issues, which is only the thin edge of the wedge. Human rights legislation and the bodies that enforce it are the real targets. We need, therefore, to cast a cold and impartial eye on the processes and procedures of the Commissions, face up to their shortcomings, and lobby for changes. And there's no time to lose.

There are parts of this analysis with which I disagree. And Baglow makes other weak points that I haven't excerpted, such as his odd statement that human rights commissions are the only remedy that the downtrodden have to fight discrimination. (Really? Was it through human rights commissions that suffragettes and Indians won the right to vote, Blacks won their civil rights and homosexuality was decriminalized? Or was it their unbridled free speech -- free speech that, by definition, offended the existing establishment? But I digress.)

What we have here is the conversion of an opponent into an ally. He doesn't speak as an ally; he is not ready to make that dramatic a repudiation of his past arguments. But besides making an objective assessment of the bleak political situation for the HRCs, and scoffing at their self-serving and ineffective attempts at PR damage control, Baglow actually proposes some constructive reforms.

He believes that HRCs are swamped with frivolous and vexatious claims, and that it's only getting worse. He laments the abusive one-sideness, where even successful respondents have to bear enormous legal costs. I couldn't have said it better myself. Baglow doesn't go as far as I would; he still clings to the notion that the state should be able to -- could be able to! -- regulate emotions, like hatred. And he doesn't fully come around on the issue of free speech. But so what? Those are only differences of degree. Baglow is now like me -- a reformer. The only question is when we'll each stop pushing for change. Baglow says he'll be satisfied with a procedural overhaul of the commissions, some grown-up supervision of their abusive processes, and full indemnity to innocent victims prosecuted without cause. Any MP who put forward such a bill in the House of Commons would be my hero, even if he was, like Baglow, an NDP socialist.

Baglow is correct in calling me a radical. Radical comes from the latin word for root, and I think that human rights commissions are a problem that should be pulled out by the roots. I'm personally paying a price because of the Alberta HRC's attempt to gag free speech, but I'm no less troubled by their abuses against others in every other field imaginable, from construction companies to restaurants to hair salons. I regard it as an indulgence of "idea people", like bloggers and other journalists, to merely care about freedom of expression, which is the lifeblood of our "profession", but not to sympathize equally with mere restaurateurs who are punished in their own metier. It's vanity that suggests that words, by which bloggers live, ought to be free, but hand washing rules, by which McDonald's lives, ought to be regulated by these abusive beasts. I'm for the total liberation of Canadians from HRCs, not just liberating the chattering classes. But I'll start where I can, and I'll call John Baglow a 75% friend, not a 25% enemy.

When even hard-core lefties like Baglow see the writing on the wall, and respond as constructively and pro-actively as they do, you know we're winning.

Now all we have to do is get Baglow's leader, Jack Layton, on board. I'll keep working on Stephen Harper and company. Can you feel the bi-partisan love?

ON FURTHER REFLECTION: I've thought a bit more about Baglow's conversion. I believe it's a good thing, for it leaves on the question: "how much reform do we need?" as opposed to: "do we need reform at all?" But it is clearly insufficient to leave section 13, the thought crime/pre-crime provision, in place at all. It's an immoral, vague, subjective law. And, with a 100% conviction rate, any indemnification of improperly charged respondents is irrelevant. As we've discussed before, it's impossible to be acquitted of a "pre-crime"; it's impossible to be acquitted if the test if whether your remarks, true or not, hurt someone's feelings. So Baglow's concession on weeding out "frivolous" complaints doesn't work there, either -- for everything is an offence under section 13.

Yet, my feeling remains: if one of the most die-hard supporters of the HRCs concedes not only political defeat, but moral defeat, and actually changes his mind and calls for reforms, why that's a great victory indeed. Let the new debate be what changes are necessary; very few outside of the HRC industry itself still argue against reform at all. 

Don't eat at McDonald's on South West Marine Drive in Vancouver.

Listen. I love McDonald's, both for their food and for what they stand for philosophically. I thought that Super Size Me was a piece of anti-capitalist, anti-beef propaganda.

But when you're in Vancouver, skip the McDonald's on Marine Drive.

That's because the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that one of the employees there has a human right not to wash her hands when working in their kitchen.

Beena Datt claimed that she developed a "skin condition" that meant she couldn't wash her hands in compliance with McDonald's hygiene policy. That's the same hygiene policy that makes McDonald's like an embassy to Canadians travelling overseas -- when you're in a Third World country, and tired of eating in hygiene-challenged local restaurants, you can count on a western standard of cleanliness and quality at McDonald's.

In B.C., McDonald's hygiene policy isn't just a matter of corporate pride. It's a matter of the law -- both the Health Act and the Food Premises Regulations. And then there's B.C.'s Food Protection Guidelines issued by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. McDonald's subscribes to all of them. Hell, they probably helped write them.

McDonald's is fanatical about hand-washing, to their credit. They have hand-washing rules. Not just the obvious "wash your hands after the bathroom" rules. But other rules, like wash your hands after shaking someone's hand. Wash your hands after retrieving food from the freezer. Wash your hands after touching a door handle. They even have a chime that goes off every hour. It's a "we're all going to wash our hands now" chime. Seriously -- see paragraph 23 of the ruling.

Datt wouldn't wash her hands. She just wouldn't -- she said she couldn't. So her employment was terminated. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered that McDonald's pay her not only $23,000 for "lost income", but an additional $25,000 for her "dignity and self-respect". You see, in B.C. a food preparation worker's self-respect trumps a company's commitment to cleanliness. They violated her "human rights".

The $50,000+ penalty -- plus several years of legal fees and medical and rehab experts -- isn't the worst of it. Inventing a "human right" for a worker to go to the bathroom and then to handle meat without washing her hands in between, as an excuse for that $50,000 shakedown isn't the worst of it either.

The worst of it is that the BCHRT has ordered that McDonald's, in paragraph 298 of the decision, to "cease the discriminatory conduct or any similar conduct and refrain from committing the same or similar contravention."

Beena Datt and her filthy hands are gone. But the restaurant has been ordered not to enforce its hand washing policy in any future cases like Datt's.

I wonder what will happen if, God forbid, someone were to contract a disease from that McDonald's because of this insane order. Could such a victim sue McDonald's for failing to live up to its legal public health requirements, even though McDonald's wanted to do so? Or could the BCHRT itself be sued? Would your answer be different if it was just one customer who got an upset stomach -- or a dozen people dying from e. coli, Walkerton style?

And, dear reader, if you think that this decision is some rogue ruling, you just don't know human rights commissions. This decision has plenty of precedents -- such as the Alberta ruling that found a human right to work in a restaurant, while infected with Hepatitis. There, Ruby Repas only got $5,000 for her "human right" to be a health hazard. (That case, incidentally, was argued by the Alberta HRC's resident Muslim supremacist, Arman Chak).

In 2004, Repas won $5,000. Now Datt won $50,000 plus interest. What will the penalty be next time? If you were a restaurateur, what would you do: fire a hazardous employee -- or risk a potential $150,000 price tag?

And if you were a customer of McDonald's in Vancouver, or Albert's Restaurant in Red Deer, or any other citizen of Canada in whose name these absurd rulings are being ordered, how much worse must these commissions get before you agree with me that they are just not normal?

h/t BCF, AS.

ADDENDUM: Some commenters suggest that I am downplaying Datt's problem. I'm not. If she really did have a skin condition that stopped her from washing her hands, there are other remedies out there for her, from workers compensation to long term disability insurance, to switching jobs within McDonald's, or going elsewhere. All of those remedies predate the innovation of human rights commissions, and still coincide with them today. That's an added absurdity and unfairness with HRCs: my reading of the past five years of Alberta's HRC cases shows that they have essentially become an additional top-up to workers compensation claims. In this case, it's a $50,000 top-up. Not bad, for a McDonald's worker.

But HRCs don't have the expertise of workers compensation staff, nor are they bound by the same rules and precedents. And, it goes without saying, that in this case, they lack a basic understand of hygiene and food-borne illnesses. I have sympathy for Datt, as much as I would for anyone else who appears to have a long term disability, if that's really the case here (there was no testimony from doctors). For this to be twisted into a "human rights case", and for McDonald's to be ordered to accommodate her to the point of "undue hardship", and for a permanent order to be lodged against them reducing their hand-washing regimen, is abominable. 

Steven Skurka is an interesting fellow -- a lawyer who takes newsworthy cases, and loves to chat about the law on TV. But I only learned that he is part of the human rights racket when I read the distribution list of an order in the Warman v. Lemire thought crimes case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

That's the case that revealed that Canadian Human Rights Commission staff, besides posting bigoted and intolerant remarks on a white supremacist website, illegally hacked into an unsuspecting woman's unsecured Internet account, in order to hide their tracks. (Here's the wire story on that fiasco, that the federal Privacy Commissioner is now looking into.)

Mark Steyn points out that Skurka is repelled by the Ontario Human Rights Commission's verdict without a trial. Says Skurka (scroll down):

There was no hearing held for Macleans to defend itself. The rules of natural justice weren’t followed because there was no jurisdiction over the complaint. And yet the Ontario Human Rights commision felt entitled to hurl damaging slurs and innuendo in some parting comments against the background of a flawed complaint that was conceded to be in the wrong forum. There is something askew and disturbing in that picture.

Good for him -- this should be something that outrages every lawyer in the country. The Canadian Bar Association is too busy issuing their umpteenth denunciation about the unfairness of Guantanamo Bay, but as soon as they're done that and shilling for Kyoto, I'm sure they'll get around to it.

But I have to wonder: if Skurka is upset about the OHRC's obscene press release, how can he countenance the conduct of the CHRC in the Warman v. Lemire case -- a case in which Skurka is counsel for an intervenor on behalf of the commission?

Even before the stunning March 25th hearing that revealed the illegal hacking of Internet sites by CHRC "investigators", we already had revelations of systemic abuse of the CHRC in the Warman v. Lemire case. Warman, the complainant, was allowed to interfere with the investigations; information was not disclosed to Lemire, the respondent, as required; Warman filed the complaint while working as an investigator in the same CHRC branch that then investigated his complaint; just to name a few of the grosser flaws in the system. As Dean Steacy of the CHRC casually admitted that day, CHRC staff did pretty much whatever they wanted to, because there were no rules.

I'm glad Steve Skurka is disgusted with the OHRC's violation of norms of Canadian justice. But what's his own excuse for being a part of the CHRC's legal gong show?

Two weeks ago, CBC Sunday did an extended segment about how Canada's human rights commissions have been turned into political censors. Here's my extended review of that documentary. In short, I thought it was well done and a credit to the CBC, which has made up for lost time on the HRC/censorship issue.

To my surprise, the CBC Sunday had another go at the issue yesterday. Again, to their credit -- and my surprise -- the CBC turned the cameras on itself: Evan Solomon and Carole MacNeil interviewed the CBC's own "publisher", John Cruickshank, about the CBC's decision to blur the images of the Danish cartoons whenever they are shown (though, as I pointed out in my review two weeks ago, sometimes images can make it to the air, unblurred.)

It's dangerous to give a tough interview to your boss, and Solomon and MacNeil probably were about as aggressive as they could get away with, while still being loyal CBC employees. I say again, it is noteworthy that Cruickshank even consented to the interview; as far as I know, neither CTV nor Global have interviewed their own editorial honchos about their self-censorship on the cartoons. (Here's my 2006 radio debate against Scott Anderson, who as the VP editorial for CanWest, made the decision on behalf of that newspaper chain to ban the cartoons. Credit to him for allowing himself to be pummelled by me in public for 18 painful minutes.)

So how did Cruickshank do? Watch the video here and judge for yourself.

Cruickshank called the cartoons "artefacts of hatred". What does that mean? That Muslims hate the cartoons? Or that to show them means you hate Muslims? Will the CBC stop portraying swastikas, which are a symbol of Nazi hate? Will they be blurred in CBC documentaries about the Second World War? Isn't the point of news coverage to report the world as it is -- including controversies coloured by hate? Is Cruickshank implying that to show evil is tantamount to agreeing with evil?

This is one of my favourites of the 12 Danish cartoons. Is it really an artefact of hate?

Cruickshank said that the CBC didn't want to show the cartoons because there is "no way that you can control how your use is then used... it offends some and mobilizes criminality in others." What does that mean? That the CBC is allowing its editorial decisions to be vetoed by Muslim rioters overseas, or any other terrorist, who would use the CBC's broadcast of these cartoons as a figleaf to excuse their violence? Does Cruickshank think that the rioters of Nigeria or Pakistan or Iran rioted because they watch Canadian TV?

Cruickshank creates a false dichotomy -- and false comparison -- between Muslim terrorists (though he doesn't use that word; calls them "extremists") and the "extremists" who are "intolerant of any restrictions on speech rights". That's a cute turn of phrase, but to equate violent terrorists with free speech activists -- to say they're both just "extremists" -- is grotesque. It's also a handy way of marginalizing anyone who believes in some limits on free speech -- as I do, in cases ranging from fraud to defamation to forgery to copyright -- but thinks that the cartoons are reasonable, and shouldn't be censored. Is it really "extremist" to want to show these cartoons on the news? Is that a catch-all phrase for people who disagree with political correctness? And is it really appropriate to use the same word as was used to describe murderers and arsonists opposed to the cartoons? 

Cruickshank says "a public broadcaster endorses a form of speech hatred, by showing it". Again, that's like saying actors who play murderers on TV endorse murder, or reporters who report on earthquakes are pro-earthquake. Cruickshank obviously doesn't believe that -- I don't think anybody could -- but it's a way of marginalizing those who want to see controversial news that doesn't fit into the CBC's "Little Mosque on the Prairie" view of Islam.

But there was a moment in the interview, nearer to the end -- just like the moment at the end of my debate with CanWest's Scott Anderson, where we finally got through the well-rehearsed cliches, and finally got some frankness -- that was a revelation. With Anderson, it was his admission that he didn't think the cartoons were offensive, but that some others did, so he let their judgment trump his own. With Cruickshank, it was his comment that to publish the cartoons was simply being "macho". Pressed to explain, he said that critics called cartoon self-censorhip a "lack of courage... you're just afraid that your correspondents in the Islamic world are going to face the consequences of this. Well, yeah."

Well yeah? I appreciate the honesty: the CBC's news boss acknowledged, for the first time, that they are afraid that if they cover Muslim news in the wrong way, there could be violence against their reporters in Muslim nations. So they don't.

That is an astounding admission to make. It's not just a question about bias; it goes deeper than that. It's one thing for the CBC to wilfully have an editorial position that is pro-Muslim or anti-Israel, as has often been alleged. But it's quite another for the CBC news boss to acknowledge that their editorial decisions aren't even the result of their own views or decisions, but the result of external pressure by Muslim radicals, and the fear of Islamic violence. That's the equivalent of CNN's admission that it let Saddam Hussein change their reporting about Iraq, to guarantee access for CNN reporters.

Cruickshank's final remarks were not as shocking, but they were an interesting comment on the role of big, expensive, well-staffed old media companies, versus the growth of the Internet. Cruickshank said "we are under no obligation to put [the cartoons] on...  they're everywhere on the Internet". Well, not everywhere, of course. Not on CBC.ca, for example. But he's right in a way: when it comes to anything controversial -- oh, say, like the news -- it makes more and more sense to go to websites like the Drudge Report than to big, bureaucratic companies like the CBC or CNN who value political correctness above newsworthiness. It sounds more like an epitaph for old media than a defence. 

I'm back from New York now, and I look forward to catching up on some of the interesting stories of the past five days. It's been possibly the worst five days in the history of Canada's human rights commissions. The cause and the symptoms are the same: the HRCs are speaking for themselves now, which has been one disaster after another. They did much better when they were silent; but that is no longer an option for them now; and yet they are so out of tune with legal and moral norms in Canada that when they do try to argue their case, they only make it worse.

Tomorrow I hope to dig deeper into the nationally-published suicide note, otherwise known as Barbara Hall's press release on behalf of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and two self-serving Op-Eds published by Max Yalden and Pearl Eliadis, both of whom felt compelled to publicly justify their gravy train.

And I'll give you my thoughts on some of the outstanding columns of the past few days, from the Globe and Mail, the Sun chain and others.

I'll also comment on the Maclean's mini-biography of  Richard Warman -- and how I think it relates to his defamation lawsuit against me and the other defendants.

And -- hopefully this week -- I'll give you my review of David Mamet's new play, a political satire called November, which I saw last night on Broadway.

NYC conference

I was travelling all day Wednesday to make it to New York for yesterday’s fascinating conference on free speech in the age of jihad.

My topic was Canada’s human rights commissions, and how they have been hijacked by an alliance between domestic, politically correct leftists, and foreign-born, reactionary jihadis. It’s that awful combination that has turned Canada’s human rights commissions into instruments for the secular prosecution of Islamic fatwas.

I was amazed and impressed with how many Americans have been following the misconduct of Canadian HRCs, and how many people were well-briefed about Richard Warman and even Shirlene McGovern, my Alberta HRC interrogator. I also met activists, think tankers, journalists and bloggers like Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, who has some pictures and video of the day. I even met donors to my legal defence fund, which was great. The whole thing left me with a deep feeling of gratitude towards America and its commitment to freedom.

Two great lunches

Mark Steyn's luncheon speech was hilarious and powerful – in fact, his use of humour is one of the reasons that we’re winning this battle, especially against opponents who have had their senses of humour surgically removed. In this obscene press release, Barbara Hall of the Ontario HRC reminds everyone why, despite the flaws of their more recent mayors, Torontonians threw her out of office. She is the dictionary definition of the word “dour”, and I hope that she and her type continue their self-defeating attempts to stop the HRCs’ PR spiral. When they’re laughing at you, Barbara, you’ve lost. That’s why Steyn’s so effective, and why I like Rick Mercer’s rant on the subject, too.

Speaking of luncheons, I spent the better part of today at Peter Luger’s, and I have a few other important visits to make. There are so many great restaurants in New York that one is tempted to have all seven squares a day – first breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, etc.

Publishing – and republishing – an offensive comment

I want to address a quick point that some of my commenters have asked me to do. On Wednesday night, after a day in transit to New York, I finally logged on to the Internet to catch up on the day's excitement. I quickly approved 74 comments that were waiting on my post on the Warman lawsuit -- including a long rant by some anonymous commenter that I didn't read all the way through carefully enough. I approved that comment and the other 73, because I didn't spot any grotesque profanity or anti-Semitism (or anti-Tibetan propaganda from the People's Liberation Army) that I usually skim for. The next day, though, a friend sent me a note pointing out that the long ranting comment I approved had some sort of threat towards Warman in it. I re-read it, and took it down. I’m opposed to speech that exhorts violence – it’s where I draw the line between merely offensive speech and a crime. I know enough about the criminal definition of a death threat to know that the comment in question likely wouldn’t meet the legal test, but it was at the very least not the sort of thing that I want on my website. I’ll save the exhortations to commit assault and battery to Warman himself.

It was a trifle – the sort of thing that happens when you’re rushed and have 50 or 100 comments a day. But two things happened. The first was expected: Warren Kinsella, Warman’s friend, lived up to his growing reputation as a rage-a-holic, implying that I myself was calling for Warman’s death. Uh, nope – but when even the Toronto Star is opposed to human rights commission censorship, there’s not a lot for Kinsella to hang his hat on these days.

But the second thing was unexpected: Kinsella’s buddy "Dr. Dawg" (I don’t know who he is – it could be another pseudonym used by Dean Steacy, or even Warman himself) republished the “death threat” comment on his own website. It was styled as a criticism of me, but didn’t he just do – on purpose and permanently – what I had done inadvertently for a few hours? If it was inappropriate for me to briefly have that comment up, why is it okay for “Dr. Dawg” to continue to have it up, and Kinsella to link to it?

The Danish cartoons

I don’t think I’d normally respond to what “Dr. Dawg” says, but it made me think that this is an absurdity or hypocrisy common to many of the censors: if words are now “crimes”, how can you even talk about them, or investigate them, without committing that crime yourself?

Let’s start with the Alberta Human Rights Commission’s attempt to censor the Western Standard’s publication of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. The cartoons were an act of expression of their artists and publishers, but then they became a news artifact themselves. They stopped telling a story and became a story themselves. It was in that context that the Western Standard published them in 2006 – and was charged.

But what does that mean? That we are not allowed to refer to an empirical fact in a news report? Does that mean any reporter who cites a newsworthy item – a book, a speech, a comment, a cartoon, or even quotes a hateful person as part of a report – is morally or legally tainted with the meaning of the artifacts reported in that news item? That just doesn’t make sense. We can understand the proper distinction instantly with real crimes – we know that reporters who cover murder trials are not in league with the murderer, any more than the murderer’s own lawyers are.

Maclean’s magazine

An even clearer example is the absurd human rights cases against Maclean’s magazine and Mark Steyn. Many of the purportedly offensive or “Islamophobic” aspects of those complaints are not about comments made by Steyn himself, but rather comments made by leading mullahs around the world – but Steyn and Maclean’s are “Islamophobic” for daring to have reprinted them.

That’s the reverse of “Dr. Dawg’s” complaint with me. In my case, he says I shouldn’t have permitted the offensive comment about Warman (he’s right, though his questioning of my motives shows his desperation and bad faith) but it’s apparently fine for him to publish the same material purposefully and permanently. In Steyn’s case, the mullahs can say embarrassing things about Islam, but Maclean’s isn’t allowed to report it.

Anti-hate bureaucrats writing hateful things

Which brings us to the conduct of Richard Warman and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Last month, Dean Steacy, a CHRC “anti-hate” investigator, acknowledged that he and other CHRC staffers, including Warman, were not exempt from the prohibitions against hate speech – yet both of them went online and did just that. Under a sign saying ”White revolution – the only solution”, Warman wrote “I agree. Keep up the good work”, and signed off with Nazi shorthand for “heil Hitler.” On another post, Warman wrote that gays were “sexual deviants” who were a “cancer”.

Why is it legally okay for Warman and Steacy to join the white supremacist group Stormfront, and post bigoted remarks like that, but it’s not okay for other Stormfront members to do the same – even at the provocation of Steacy and Warman?

Do intentions matter?

The CHRC’s defenders might argue that it’s all about the intentions behind the publication – that Warman and Steacy didn’t really mean those bigoted remarks, they were doing it as some sort of weird “commit a thought crime to stop a thought crime” logic. But that’s not what section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act says. Intentions have nothing to do with it – it’s whether what you publish could expose someone to feelings of hate. What Warman and Steacy published meets that test regardless of what their intentions or excuses were.

A charge without a defence

In fact, the logic of section 13 is almost impossible to defend against – certainly, truth is no defence, for the truth or falsehood of a publication has nothing to do with whether or not someone can feel “hatred” after reading or hearing it. Judged against both the letter and the spirit of the law, not only are Warman’s and Steacy’s postings illegal thought crimes, but even the weird, self-destructive PR conference call that the CHRC big-wigs hastily arranged last week was illegal, too. That was the call where CHRC counsel Ian Fine started off by… reading out a litany of bigoted words, including n*gger. Perhaps Fine, the commission’s top lawyer, should read section 13 again – there is no exemption there to permit anti-Black, anti-Semitic bigotry in a press conference. What he did was illegal.

Even Kinsella repeatedly violates section 13. His own website is littered with swastikas – and one of his books has a swastika on the cover, too. Of course, a sensible person would see the context there – Kinsella is critical of Naziism. But, again, section 13 allows no such reasonable explanation. If a symbol could “likely” cause someone to feel “hatred or contempt” for another, it’s illegal. (Kinsella himself makes such a spurious and unethical charge against Steyn, by taking his use of various pejorative terms out of context; but Kinsella should not be our standard for ethics.)

We all know this is ridiculous. As Steyn has pointed out, to try to apply this impossible standard to all communication would result in the shutting down of, for example, every music store in America that contains rap lyrics with the word n*gger.

So what does it all mean?

No sane person would pretend that all utterances of the same words mean the same thing. Intentions mean a lot. Even the same physical act means different things with different intentions – bumping up against someone in a crowded alley is morally and legally different than purposefully assaulting them, though the deed is the same. An anti-racism pamphlet that uses the word n*gger is obviously not the act of racism that the use of that word by a Klansman might be. But Canada’s illiberal, censorious human rights laws don’t make that distinction – though Steacy, Warman and Fine might wish it were so if they’re ever charged for their bigoted words.

Even my own HRC interrogatrix, Shirlene McGovern, wanted to know what my “intentions” were behind publishing the cartoons – though the Alberta statute is as silent on intentions as is the federal one.

At yesterday’s conference, I was asked if I would ever file a human rights thought crime complaint against my tormentors – including HRC staff themselves. I said I would not, because I do not believe in using an immoral government agency that conducts illegal censorship through unfair processes. I don’t want that abusive agency to be a wild animal under my control. Unlike Kinsella, I’m just not an “ends justify the means” kind of guy. But, even if I were, I’d realize that while I might have a few “victories” over my opponents who occasionally make misogynistic or other bigoted remarks, I’d be creating legal and moral precedents for my own undoing later. One day, that wild animal will be controlled by someone else – as George Jonas reminds us, Hitler didn’t have to create censorship laws, he inherited them from the Weimar Republic that preceded him.

I believe the human rights commissions should be abolished, not legitimized. But I wouldn’t be surprised if others who are not as gentle or patient as I am start filing complaints against Warman, Steacy, Fine and others in the so-called “anti-hate” movement, just to give them a taste of their own medicine. But, given the CHRC’s illegal tapping of a private citizen’s Internet service, I think that a human rights complaint may soon be the smallest of their legal troubles.

I read this appalling press release by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. As Mark Steyn points out, they didn't bother going through the trouble of having an actual hearing into the Canadian Islamic Congress's complaint against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn -- they just skipped straight to their condemnation of Maclean's. I suppose it's more honest than the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which goes through a sham trial before reaching its 100% conviction rate.

But the I saw this wonderful press release by the Muslim Canadian Congress -- not to be confused with the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress. I like the MCC a lot -- they understand freedom and pluralism much better than the anti-Semitic CIC, or the censorious Canadian Jewish Congress. Even their stationery is wonderful -- look at one of their slogans: "End Gender Apartheid". Those are good people, who need our support -- and they need to be treated by the media as the legitimate spokesmen for Canadian Islam. Here is the MCC press release. My favourite excerpt:

a blog discussion that called for "the mass killing, deportation or conversion of Muslim Canadians" and position it as reflective of the view of media and ordinary Canadians.

Today I was sued by Richard Warman, Canada’s most prolific – and profitable – user of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. As readers of this site know, Warman isn’t just a happy customer of section 13 and its 100% conviction rate, he’s a former CHRC employee, an investigator of section 13 thought crimes himself. In fact, he was often both a customer and an investigator at the same time.

Being sued by Warman is like being sued by the CHRC

It’s impossible to criticize section 13 without criticizing Warman, because without Warman, section 13 would have been defunct years ago – almost no-one else in this country of 33 million people uses it. I’d call it “Warman’s Law”, but I’ve already given that title to another law enacted because of Warman. Warman’s Law is a law brought in by the B.C. government specifically to protect libraries from Warman’s nuisance defamation suits. (We should find some way to set up a Warman’s law to protect universities from Warman, too.)

Warman doesn’t just “use” section 13. As I’ve documented here before, he actively interferes with other CHRC investigators working on his complaints. For example, he called up Hannya Rizk, a fellow investigator he trained, and told her to improperly withhold information from the person Warman had complained about; he told Rizk to slow down her work to fit his other plans; he tried to get Rizk to improperly disclose confidential information about cases to third parties.

And then there’s Warman’s direct interference in the investigation of his own complaints – wandering right into the CHRC offices, hopping right on investigator’s computers, using their passwords, and just having a ball – violating not only privacy and confidentiality, but the integrity of the CHRC’s evidence – not that such sloppiness has detracted from their 100% conviction rate.

Warman isn’t solely responsible for the corruption of the CHRC, of course – he couldn’t get away with his antics without the cooperation and even encouragement of the rest of the CHRC staff, which happens to include some decidedly ethically challenged people. But Warman is the central figure in its abuse. That is a source of great pride for Warman, who professes a philosophy he calls “maximum disruption”.

The more I learn about Warman, the more I write about him. And, like the CHRC, he hates public exposure. Earlier this year, Warman’s lawyer served me with a lengthy Libel Notice, which I posted to my website here, with my commentary on it here.

Warman’s new lawsuit, which you can see here, covers much of the same ground – but not all of it. For example, you’ll see that part 4 of his Libel Notice – which made up a third of his lengthy complaint – has been dropped from his lawsuit. That part was Warman’s threat to sue me for discussing his conspiracy to assault his nemesis, David Icke. I guess it’s pretty tough to complain about that, when the whole thing was caught on video.

Warman’s suit would censor the conservative blogosphere

Warman’s not just suing me. He’s suing some of the biggest names in the Canadian blogosphere – from Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals to Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury (or, Five Feet of Furry, as the lawsuit says on page 2), to Free Dominion, the largest conservative chat site in Canada. Warman’s goal is breathtaking in its chutzpah: he wants to muzzle the Canadian conservative Internet. It’s not just his goal – it’s the goal of the CHRC itself, and its friends at the Canadian Jewish Congress, who have stated their goal is to “tame” the Internet – or at least those voices they disagree with. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the CJC was bankrolling Warman’s lawsuit – they’ve done joint legal work together before, and Warman’s number one defender is on the CJC’s legal committee. The CJC hates conservatives, and this would be a way for them to do damage to the conservative blogosphere without taking the political flak for it.

Take a look at the language Warman’s lawsuit uses to smear Free Dominion. At paragraph 17, Warman calls them an “extreme right-wing discussion forum”. Look at that language – hardly distinguishable from the CHRC’s and CJC’s boilerplate insults reserved for neo-Nazis. That’s what this lawsuit is about: an attempt by the CHRC’s biggest star to try to marginalize Canadian conservatism. And why not? The CHRC has moved from targeting white supremacists to targeting mainstream conservatives like Mark Steyn; the Alberta HRC has already gagged Christian pastors and taken a run at Calgary’s bishop, and two years ago they charged me with publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Surely attempting to criminalize conservatism is just the next, natural step for these congenital censors.

Warman has admitted to posting anonymous, hateful comments

I’m not going to go through every line in the Statement of Claim; the bulk of it refers to the revelation that Warman published bigoted comments about Sen. Anne Cools under a pseudonym, calling her a n*gger and a c*nt. I’m a little surprised that Warman would choose this as his hill to die on – after all, he has already confessed to calling gays “sexual deviants” who are a “cancer” and he would sign off his online remarks with Nazi shorthand for “heil Hitler”, so I’m not sure how denying his Anne Cools remarks salvages his reputation. Warman has a habit of trying to revise history when it’s embarrassing to him. Here are some excerpts from a transcript where he vigorously denies – then sheepishly admits – making bigoted remarks online under a fake name. And sometimes when Warman himself won’t fess up, he forgets to coordinate his answers with his fellow CHRC staff, who confess his dirty deeds for him. That kind of crap might fly in a Human Rights Tribunal – then again, what doesn’t? But good luck with those kind of shenanigans in a real court, with a real judge who’s wondering why his time is being wasted adjudicating a political dispute with no legal merit dressed up as a defamation action.

I’ve got a few more things to say about the Statement of Claim, but for strategic reasons and for legal reasons, I’m going to save them for my Statement of Defence. But there are a couple more things I’d like to point out.

A comedy of errors

Defamation law and law in general is a details business. So it makes me chuckle to see a Statement of Claim, that has obviously been in the works for three months, so riddled with little typos. I laughed out loud when I saw Kathy Shaidle’s site, Five Feet of Fury, called Five Feet of Furry on page 2 of the lawsuit. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it might even be cause for Kathy to file a defamation suit against Warman!

On page 4 Warman brags about his “Saul Hayes Human Dignity Award”, but on page 16 it’s the “Saul Human Dignity Award”. On page 14 he calls the Justice Minister Rob Nichols, not Rob Nicholson.

Or take the various names by which the National Post’s Op-Ed blog is described: on page 4 it’s “Full Comment”, on page 18 it’s “FreeComments” and by page 20 it’s “FullComments”, “Freecomments” and “FullComment.com”, all on the same page.

Kate’s first name is spelled Catherine on page 2 but Catherin on page 22. Her last name is spelled McMillan on page 2 but MacMillan on page 22.

Obviously, none of these typos will determine the outcome of this suit. But the kind of sloppiness that doesn’t even get the name of two of the websites and one of the defendants right is the same kind of sloppiness that makes other, more serious errors. The Statement of Claim is the foundation of a lawsuit – it’s the primary document. I love the fact that everyone – including the judge – will read typos and grammatical errors on almost every page and wonder: “what else is wrong with this?” My lawyers will be there to answer that question.

The inexplicable decision to sue the National Post

As per the typos, there are two other defendants in this suit: the National Post and its editor, Jonathan Kay. Six weeks ago, Kay briefly – maybe for an hour or two – posted a column about Warman’s Sen. Cools comments on the National Post’s website. But as soon as Warman complained, Kay took it down, and the Post later published an apology both in print and online. I obviously disagreed with that decision, but I’m not the one responsible for putting out a newspaper every day on a tight budget. Kay and the Post are in the business of publishing, not suing. They made the decision to cut bait, and move on to other, more important fights – as they have done with their outstanding coverage of the CHRC ever since.

But that act of over-generous magnanimity – legally unnecessary in my view, but probably a smart business decision – did not exempt them from Warman’s litigious nature. He’s suing them nonetheless. I’m not sure what Warman hopes to get from them – they’ve already apologized in a disproportionate way. It will be interesting to see how the Post responds. Will they try to cut bait again? If so, how? Or have they reached a point with Warman where they realize he is using this lawsuit as a punishment to them – maximum disruption-style – for their excellent reporting on Warman and the CHRC?

Warman will never sue Rogers

Speaking of big, corporate defendants, where is Maclean’s magazine and Mark Steyn on the list of defendants? I would never wish a Warmansuit on Maclean’s or Steyn, of course. But next to the Post, nobody’s been tougher on Warman and his bigoted, anonymous online comments then them. Could it be – perhaps? – that Warman doesn’t want to sue Maclean’s, which is owned by Rogers – which just happens to be the ISP through which the Cools comments were posted? Is Warman afraid that they will prove what he doesn't want them to prove -- that it was he who posted those bigoted remarks? I don’t know, but I’m curious. And I think a judge will be curious as to why comments in Maclean’s magazine, with its 2.8 million readers, weren’t regarded as actionable, whereas a few bloggers were. In a lawsuit that already reeks of politics, not serious legal matters, it’s just one more reason for judges to raise an eyebrow.

That’s because what any defamation suit is about is how much the plaintiff’s reputation has been reduced, and whether that reduction was fair. Warman and the CHRC have taken a shellacking in the press for three months, based on the true facts of Warman’s hyper-litigiousness, his confessed anonymous bigotry and other malfeasance. Warman has let the vast majority of these publications go (though he has tried to pick on a McGill university student). Just what is his reputation worth these days, what with all the revelations? What is he implying by ignoring Maclean’s pounding of him, month after month? And, regardless of what Maclean’s says or does, when a self-described human rights hero admits to posting anti-gay, neo-Nazi bigotry, as Warman does, what’s left of that reputation to defend?

Warman will avoid examinations for discovery

There is one more matter of interest in this lawsuit: the dollar amount at stake. Warman is suing for $50,000 plus costs and interest. From one point of view, that’s small potatoes – though I’d imagine that each of the defendants will spend close to that in legal fees. But it’s unlikely that Warman is suing for that sum out of modesty, or out of recognition that he has damaged his reputation through his own misconduct. The reason is more likely Rule 76 of Ontario’s court procedure, which permits a streamlined trial for claims of that size. In other words, by limiting his claim, Warman can avoid an examination for discovery – the extended pre-trial questioning, under oath, that parties have to submit to in normal trials. Under the expedited rules, Warman can escape such an interrogation until the trial itself – which will likely mean less questioning, less follow-ups, and a lot of “I can’t remembers”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – like the rest of the CHRC apparatus, Warman prefers to avoid scrutiny of his actions.

What happens next?

I don’t believe that all of the defendants have been served with the lawsuit yet. Depending on where they are in the country, they have up to 40 days to reply, or even more. If I know the other Internet defendants, they’re going to fight this like hell. I hope the National Post makes the same decision – especially since their magnanimous gesture to Warman was repaid with a lawsuit. As I mentioned above, I’m not going to blog about my Statement of Defence until I file it, for strategic and legal reasons. But, as I promised to do when I was first served with a Libel Notice by Warman, I can tell you that I’m not just going to play defence here – I’m going to use Warman’s lawsuit to put his conduct, and the very conduct of the CHRC itself, on trial.

When I started writing about Warman and the CHRC, I thought I would be a crusading journalist – uncovering ugly anecdotes about the commissions and their work. I actually haven’t blogged too much about my own case before the Alberta HRC, as that process continues to move along at their traditionally glacial pace. So the CHRC and its case against Maclean’s and other politically incorrect respondents was a natural focus for me.

But the CHRC and Warman don’t brook such criticism very well. I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Warman – probably the most litigious man in Canada – would sue me. In fact, I’m rather surprised that I haven’t been hit with a section 13 thought crimes complaint, too. Warman and the CHRC have one tool: censorship, whether in the form of an HRC hearing or a defamation suit. So when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything and everyone starts to look like a nail. Of course Warman is suing me, and Kate and Kathy and Connie and Mark. It’s what he does.

Well, not on my watch. I’m not going to describe the details of my fight-back plan now, but I’ll explain it as we roll it out. Suffice it to say, Richard Warman and the CHRC are used to shooting fish in a barrel. That stops now. If you think the never-ending saga of Canada’s HRC is interesting, well, things are just getting started.

What can you do?

Obviously, this fight isn’t just about Warman and the defendants. It’s about political censorship, the abuse of government power, and the freedom of the blogosphere. Warman wants to marginalize and perhaps even criminalize conservative ideas. Well, I want to denormalize the human rights commissions. It’s going to be a helluva fight – and an excellent opportunity to showcase the abusive, corrupt, bullying, censorious nature of the CHRCs and their star pupil, Richard Warman.

I don’t even think the importance of this fight is limited to Canada. The creeping censorship that Warman embodies is of the same breed as the censorship that Geert Wilders faces for his film, Fitna. It’s part of a global attempt to squelch ideas about liberty and other western values. It’s part of an unholy alliance between domestic leftists and foreign jihadis. In fact, it’s precisely what I’m talking about, with Mark Steyn, in New York tomorrow.

If you want to help, I can think of three things to do:

1.    Help me and the other defendants with our legal bills. I don’t know how Warman funds his dozens of defamation suits. As I mentioned above, I suspect the CJC helps him out. I know Kathy, Kate and Connie and Mark and, like me, they don’t have an extra $30,000 or $50,000 kicking around to fend off this nuisance suit. And that’s probably how much it will cost each of us to take this to trial. In my case, it’s a double-whammy – I’m already on the hook for legal bills fighting against the Alberta HRC complaint about publishing the Danish cartoons. This is clearly the HRCs’ attempt to pile on.

If you want to help, click on our PayPal buttons. Here’s the link to Kathy, Kate and Connie and Mark. And my PayPal button is below, and on my main page.

2.    Spread the word about this fight, and the other abusive distortions to our law that Canada’s human rights commissions and their courtiers are doing. That’s what I call denormalization – letting ordinary Canadians know that the agencies and advocates who used to promote our civil rights are now amongst Canada’s worst abusers of our civil rights – especially our freedom of speech.

3.    And, remember the second step in our fight-back plan: once we’ve raised awareness about the dangers of Canada’s out-of-control human rightsniks, we have to press our politicians to act. This lawsuit has just a handful of defendants. But that’s misleading, because what’s really at stake here is the right for anyone to criticize Canada’s HRCs, and the existence of conservative blogs at all. If we lose, no-one else will dare to criticize the HRCs – certainly not politicians. And Richard Warman’s campaign of bullying and censorship will continue. But if we win – and, by the way, we’re already winning – we’ll expose the depths of the corruption of the HRCs and we’ll be able to prune them back, or uproot them altogether. Warman might think that the defendants and I will be on trial. I give you my promise that he and the CHRC will be on trial every bit as much – and far more so in the court of public opinion.

If you would have asked me late last year what I was going to do with myself after shutting down the Western Standard, I might have had a few guesses. But I never thought I would be fighting off a human rights complaint from radical jihadis in Alberta, and a defamation action from a radical censor in Ontario -- and trying to get our politicians to listen. But I’m up for the fight -- I just need help paying the lawyers.

Can you please help me?

"This organization is not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations to this organization are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

I am not a sufficiently creative writer to dream up the kind of insanity that Canada's human rights commissions call "a day at the office."

Here's news -- in the Toronto Star, from a Reuters dispatch, no less -- of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal agreeing to hear a case about a man's "human right" to practise "bondage, discipline, submission, sadism and masochism".

The news story is very brief -- thank goodness -- so we're spared most of the details. Besides being a pain afficionado, Peter Hayes, the complainant, says he's a pagan. The story neglects to tell us whether his complaint is rooted in that quirk, too.

Look, I don't care what Hayes does with consenting adults in the privacy of his own home. Frankly, I doubt it has much bearing on whether he can be a chauffeur driver. But that's something for him to take up with the taxi commission. That the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is taking this case on -- on the taxpayers' dime -- merely shows how few real human rights cases there are, and that these tribunals, merely to stay in business and keep their burgeoning bureaucracies busy, must resort to stranger and stranger cases just to fill their days.

It's not just the thought crimes provisions of the HRCs that have to go -- their other "work" is a farce, too.

h/t EG

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the etymology behind "jadewarr" -- the nom de plume that Canadian Human Rights Commission investigators Dean Steacy, Richard Warman and other Stormfront members used when they posted their online bigotry. I had read that the name was based on a character -- the Jade Warrior -- from a book that Steacy had read when he was young.

James Fulford went a little bit deeper into who Jade Warrior was, and what the stories were like that left such an indelible impression on a young Dean Steacy. The Jade Warrior was one of 26 books with nearly identical plots in which a modern-day hero was transported to a sci-fi alternative universe. Fulford dug up this book review:

The story lines in each book are very similar. Blade is transported, totally naked, to a strange new dimension where he encounters a set of opposing societies, with one oppressing the other. His sense of what’s morally right leads him to join the oppressed people in their battle over their oppressors. He becomes involved with the leading ladies in the stories and has sexually explicit encounters with them, regardless if they are the oppressed or the oppressors. Some of his ladies are killed in some of the books. The dimensions are very similar to Earth, but with some different types of vegetation and animals, and different skin colorings on some of the peoples he encounters, such as dark blue, red, etc.

Fulford remarks on how Steacy probably sees himself as a Canadian civil service version of that omniscient saviour of oppressed societies, and that he probably thinks he's a superhero, too -- so trifles like posting bigoted messages on hate sites, and even stealing private citizens' Internet broadband to do it, are okay.

I agree with Fulford's theory, and I have no doubt that many of the staff at the CHRC are living out some sort of psychological therapy, whether it's as a utopian hero or some angry avenger. I can only imagine the kind of issues the CHRC's HR officer has to deal with.

But I couldn't help but guess what Steacy was like in junior high school, reading such junk. I mean, I'm sure we all read plenty of shlock when we were young -- I probably read twenty books from the Jupiter Jones detective series when I was in elementary school, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit. But I can't help imagining young Dean Steacy as a teenager: awkward, self-righteous, a busy-body even then, the kind of kid who would remind the teacher when she forgot to assign homework. And when the other kids were playing together at recess -- politically incorrect games like tag or catch -- young Dean would prefer to sit by himself and read about the Jade Warrior.

The Jade Warrior was a superhero, like young Dean, unbothered by any such flaws as self-doubt or self-criticism, angrily smiting sci-fi "oppressors". Young Dean would read, very slowly, maybe even twice, the pages about the Jade Warrior's romantic encounters with blue and red-coloured women from opposing tribes. Ha! Let the other kids play tag and catch.

Maybe when recess was done, young Dean would daydream about the book, and maybe even doodle pictures of the Jade Warrior on his notebook instead of paying attention in math class. The Jade Warrior. Jadewarr. That's so cool, he would whisper. I wonder if jadewarr was a nickname that young Dean begged his friends to call him -- but no-one understood it, and he wouldn't explain it. Maybe he even wrote a little bit of fan fiction, that took place in his school, and that featured some kids in his class -- the mean kids, and maybe a leading lady or two.

Hey, like I said, we all probably read some weird sci fi as kids. We all daydreamed of being pirates or detectives -- or even polyamorous society-liberators. But not all of us were so impressed by that junk that, decades later, when we were liberated from any adult shame by the anonymity of the Internet, we chose to name ourselves after those creepy sci-fi characters from our youth.

I'm sorry, but the CHRC is just one weird place.

I've been focused on the Canadian Human Rights Commission, because they are by far the most abusive in the country, they're the biggest, and they're the one most likely to be brought to heel -- if the federal Conservatives can be convinced to do the right thing. Alberta's HRC is dangerous, too, because they have actually gone farther than the CHRC in terms of limiting freedom of religion and speech (see paragraph 357 here) and their cartoon suit against me, now grinding into its third year.

But there are fourteen different HRCs in Canada at the federal, provincial and territorial level. I don't think there is a sane one amongst the bunch.

Last week I wrote a bit about Nova Scotia's HRC, and their three-year hearing about whether an Arab man's "human right" to watch Al Jazeera trumped his condo board's rule -- and the man's own signed contract -- to forbid big satellite dishes on the building (by the way, the satellite remained up throughout the dispute).

Well, it wouldn't be seemly for a prairie boy like me to be taking on Halifax's human rights nannies all by myself! Here's the Halifax Chronicle-Herald's Paul Schneidereit, bringing some hometown scrutiny to the NS HRC. An excerpt:

[NS HRC CEO Michael] Noonan claimed it’s the media that say human rights commissions are out of control. Actually, two of the men responsible for helping create human rights commissions in the first place – Alan Borovoy, Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel, and Irwin Cotler, former federal Liberal justice minister – have both said the commissions have gone off the rails in their efforts to censor free speech.

Noonan also accused the media of taking an "extreme" example, like the human rights complaints against Maclean’s, and using it to "divert public attention from the dirty little secrets hiding under the carpet of Canada’s grand multicultural tapestry." Huh? If the Maclean’s case is so extreme, why did both the federal and B.C. human rights bodies decide the case was worth investigating? Is Ezra’s case also extreme? How many "extreme" cases should the media ignore before it’s OK, according to Noonan, to complain? The second part of his allegation, frankly, is bizarre. Is he implying the media have cried foul about free speech being squelched to cover up real discrimination elsewhere? If so, that’s insulting and offensive. But, hey, it’s a free country … I think.

Noonan’s claim freedom of speech is concentrated in the hands of a powerful media elite is demonstrably wrong. He and the Osgoode Hall students who objected to the Maclean’s piece had their opinions printed by this paper. The Internet is full of opinions on this topic, just a Google away. Noonan said Maclean’s is to blame for the complaint (didn’t he say it was "extreme?") as it wouldn’t run the dissenting views of the Canadian Islamic Congress. But Maclean’s side of the story is different. They say they refused to be dictated to on the response’s length or layout, or whether there’d be cover art.

Those defending human rights bodies just don’t get it. 

Here's some more coverage of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the National Post today by Marni Soupcoff and Jonathan Kay.

Good points, but their columns rest on a common weakness: they're taking at face value the CHRC's claims about anonymous Internet websites and e-mails.

Normally, that's the sort of thing you have to do in journalism, as in life -- if someone says they received a bigoted e-mail, you generally believe them, because for someone to lie about such a thing is unusual -- and the sign of some sort of psychological malady. I, too, would have believed that the CHRC's Ian Fine received the bigoted e-mails he describes, and I even would have believed that Richard Warman was threatened by a man in the U.S. named Bill White.

But after last month's day-long hearing, where we learned that the CHRC regularly confects such bigoted comments themselves and goes to great (and sometimes illegal) lengths to hide their tracks, I just can't take any claims from the CHRC or Warman seriously that rely on Internet comments, the provenance of which cannot be independently verified.

Fine's list of e-mails can be dismissed out of hand -- he doesn't even give us their date or nominal sender, let alone an e-mail "header" that would permit the beginning of an independent verification. And the "Bill White" Internet site -- well, let's just say that Mr. White, who has never been seen in body, only online, has come in handy on quite a few occasions for the CHRC and Warman, such as when Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress tried to get the Canadian government to permit them to block foreign websites from Canadian Internet users.

It may well be that the e-mails to Fine were sent by someone other than his own staff. And it may well be that there is somebody named Bill White who is not just another sock puppet for Warman, Dean Steacy and others. It could be. And, with any other group of people, that would be the normal thing to assume. But we're long past the point where the CHRC can be regarded as normal, and where their statements -- even under oath -- can be believed without independent verification.

When I first came across this blog post, I admit I didn't believe it: "Sandy" Kozak, the Canadian Human Rights Commission officer investigating Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine, is the same as "Sandra" Kozak, the former Ottawa-area cop drummed out of the Carleton Place Municipal Police Service for "discreditable conduct" -- she had an improper relationship with a serial criminal. Kozak was too corrupt to be a real police officer, but she was just right for the CHRC, which snapped her up.

Then again, I didn't believe it when I first learned that CHRC investigators like Richard Warman and Dean Steacy were members of the white supremacist Stormfront website, and would frequently cruise that site posting the most abominable misogynist, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, and anti-Black filth. I just didn't believe the CHRC was that corrupt until I saw the proof of it. Posting bigotry to better fight bigotry -- sort of like a cop dating a criminal to better understand the criminal mind. I wonder if Kozak is the one who taught Dean Steacy how to steal wireless broadband from some innocent bystander without attracting the attention of authorities. 

It must have been tough for the Carleton Place Municipal Police Service to fire Kozak; according to this series of stories in the Ottawa Citizen, she was the first female cop in the CPMPS, and to lose that kind of politically correct window dressing must have been a blow to the force's PR image. But that's the way it is with real police: they don't turn a blind eye to corruption amongst their number, they aggressive investigate and punish it. That's why Canadian police have respect and trust -- we know that someone is watching the watchmen. No-one is watching the CHRC, and they know it, so their abuses grow worse by the year.

In a real police force, the police chief is responsible for his men -- and responsible for rooting out the bad apples. Not so at the CHRC, where their "general counsel", Ian Fine, when asked by the National Post about obvious abuses within the CHRC, dismissed them off-hand, and curtly said "that's the end of the matter". Could you imagine if news of a corrupt police officer was in the papers on a near-daily basis, and the chief of police simply brushed the concerns off with the back of his hand or, as other HRCs have done, simply called the rogue cop an "extreme" case, and told people not to focus so much on him?

Sandra "Sandy" Kozak had an ongoing affair with a criminal. Not an ex-con -- hell, everyone deserves a second chance -- but a serial criminal who was under investigation and criminal charges while she was dating him. Perhaps love got the better of her -- we've all heard the bizarre stories of women who are attracted to prisoners, and even marry them in jail-house ceremonies. Maybe Kozak was such a woman; but the ethical answer would be to choose a life of law enforcement, or a life of loyalty to a criminal. Because she couldn't see the conflict between her duty to the public and her oath, and her personal loyalty to a criminal, she was charged with "discreditable conduct", and eventually agreed to a plea bargain, whereby she agreed to leave the police in return for a severance package and the charge being dropped. She was blind to her own conduct, but the police force wasn't. That's called the rule of law. As the Citizen articles point out, someone drummed out of one police force that way wasn't likely to be hired by any other police force, even if she had the politically important quality of being a woman. She was just too corrupted, and she wouldn't even acknowledge it.

So of course the CHRC hired her. I'm sorry, but I can't think of any commentary or analysis that is more damning than that naked fact: a discredited, defrocked cop, who couldn't see that her personal relationship with a criminal was a conflict with her being a police officer, was hired by the CHRC. I bet the CHRC didn't even see that as a negative -- they probably thought of that kind of malleable morality was a plus: no nagging conscience to ask "are we sure this is ethical?" when planting evidence on websites, stealing Internet broadband, or corrupting the process of natural justice.

Kozak must be laughing. By being part of the CHRC, every day she gets to take her revenge on the justice system that dared to interfere with her dangerous liaisons. As a CHRC investigator, she routinely violates norms of natural justice, fair play and public accountability -- and she gets paid for it. Mark Steyn and Maclean's aren't just being punished by radical jihadis with a political and religious hatred for our system of laws. They're being punished by a bad cop who, every day, undermines the rule of law as a black karmic vengeance for it having dared to disrupt her love affair.

All I can add is: where the hell is the justice minister? 

Yesterday I wrote about how the Canadian Human Rights Commission is in their own dreamworld, denying that there is anything at all wrong with the way they conduct themselves, hoping that if they just brazen it out a bit, all of this unwelcome scrutiny will somehow go away. I admire confidence, but they're not exhibiting confidence -- they're exhibiting denial mixed with delirium.

I actually don't think the CHRC is as confident as they pretend to be; the very fact that they and Canada's other HRCs have started a coordinated PR fight-back campaign shows they know that their political environment is changing quickly, and what they could get away with in the past, simply through lack of public scrutiny, is unlikely to work in the future. I think they rue the day they accepted Richard Warman's complaint against Marc Lemire -- not out of any sense of reflection or contrition, but simply because he is the starting point for so much of the criticism against the CHRC itself.

But what about Warman? He's busy over at the Department of National Defence, working hard as a "Director of Special Grievances". He's no longer at the CHRC, but has he adjusted his behaviour to account for the new political realities?

Hardly. In fact, if it's even possible, the man has become even more petty, thin-skinned and threatening. When this student newspaper dared to publish an article about freedom of speech, mentioning Warman in passing, Warman fired off a letter threatening a lawsuit, just last Thursday. Here's the thoughtful account of it, as published on the blog of the student reporter, Byron Tau. Like some of the commenters on his blog entry, I'm impressed by the kid's sangfroid in the face of such a nuisance. Other, far more powerful people, have cowered before Warman's demands for censorship before.

That's the first thing that struck me -- Warman is still conducting his campaign of "maximum disruption", in an even more petty and abusive manner than before. (Come on -- threatening a student? What a lame bully.)

But the second thing was what Warman considered to be defamatory about Tau's article. According to Warman's nasty note, he was defamed because, amongst other things:

ii) the article wrongly asserts that I filed a human rights complaint against David Icke;
iii) the article wrongly asserts that I am the complainant in almost 50% of all Canadian human rights cases;

Now slow down just a moment and think about that. The legal definition of defamation is something that lowers your reputation. Is Warman saying that filing a human rights complaint against David Icke is something that would lower his reputation? Or than filing 50% of all Canadian human rights complaints is disreputable?

To Tau's credit, he corrected his slight errors -- Warman has filed a lawsuit against Icke, not a human rights complaint against him (and he also counselled an assault against Icke, but that's another matter). And Warman has filed about 50% of all section 13 thought crime complaints, not 50% of all complaints under all categories. But those are minor trifles, and Tau has corrected them. The thrust of Tau's piece remains.

Is Warman conceding that being a serial complainant is disreputable? Is he admitting that filing a complaint against Icke would be disreputable? Is he ashamed of his conduct at the CHRC, such that if someone were to overstate it, he'd be embarrassed?

Of course not; Warman, like the rest of the CHRC, believes in his own righteousness so deeply that he excuses his own misconduct. He's not admitting that his lucrative hobby of filing complaints is disreputable -- he's still pursuing them with gusto (or, more accurately, the CHRC is, with our tax dollars). So if Warman lacks any hesitation or second thoughts, why is he threatening Tau, and listing those two items as "defamatory"?

Well, because that's what Warman does: he bullies people. Sometimes it works, like in the case of the Toronto Public Library. Sometimes it doesn't, such as when he tried to bully me. I've never met Byron Tau, but I'm so proud that he has refused to be bullied by Canada's most litigious man.

I love this story in the National Post for so many reasons.

First, the fact that it's a news story at all is wonderful: the Canadian Human Rights Commission feels it necessary to put three staffers on a conference call with the National Post to defend the CHRC's battered reputation. That would have been unimaginable three months ago, and it's a sign of how well our campaign to denormalize these abusive, corrupt commissions is going.

The CHRC's damage control strategy is part of a coordinated, nation-wide spin campaign that all of the HRCs are engaging in. But these folks just aren't used to dealing with dissent, other than through censorship, so they're not particularly good at it. The Nova Scotia and NWT commissions have started their PR campaign this week, too, with embarrassing results.

Of course, what other HRCs do with one bureaucrat, the CHRC does with three -- that's a sign of how bloated their bureaucracy has become. With 170 staff, it could have even been more.

I don't generally go line by line through an article, but this one is just too delicious to pass up, so please allow me:

I have written 200 blog entries about Canada's abusive human rights commission since my own appearance before Alberta's kangaroo court. If I had to choose the most important milestones in our battle to reform these corrupt commissions, I'd list:

• Keith Martin's private member's motion,
• the Globe and Mail's editorial,
• the endorsements of PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists,
• Rick Mercer's "rant", and
• the Warman v. Lemire hearing on March 25th that put exposed the corrupt practises of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Today comes news of the most important development yet: according to this report, Canada's privacy commissioner is going to investigate some of the abusive practices of the Canadian Human Rights Commission that were revealed in that March 25th hearing -- specifically that CHRC staff illegally stole access to a private citizen's wireless Internet connection, in order to cover their tracks.

Here's why this is so important:

1. This is the first instance of anyone with actual power holding the CHRC to account. So far, only influence has been brought to bear on the problem -- that is, the bully pulpits of a thousand bloggers, a hundred newspapers columns and talk show hosts, and other voices of persuasion. But until now, no-one with the authority to do anything has done anything -- as per my chronic lament about the inaction of the federal Conservatives. But the Privacy Commissioner isn't just about persuasion, she's about enforcement of the law -- the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Those laws won't put Dean Steacy or Richard Warman in jail; but they can put the CHRC through the kind of scrutiny -- an audit, really -- that no kangaroo tribunal, overseen by an bored, weak pushover like Athanasios Hadjis, can do. The CHRC suffered an enormous setback after the March 25th hearing, despite a dozen tricks and outright lies told by the CHRC that Hadjis accepted. The shenanigans pulled by the CHRC to avoid scrutiny would be offences under a Privacy Act investigation. Just imagine what would be revealed in a real investigation.
2. Unlike most of the fights involving the CHRC, the political optics of this one cannot be muddied by the involvement of unsavoury respondents. In the past, partisan defenders of the CHRC have attempted to excuse its abominable conduct by arguing, essentially, "sure the CHRC is unconstitutional, abusive and corrupt, but the people it pursues are white supremacists, so it's acceptable." They've implied than any critics of the CHRC are in league with neo-Nazis. But there are no neo-Nazis involved in this privacy investigation -- just the CHRC and an unsuspecting woman whose Internet broadband was stolen. Actually, there was some neo-Naziism here -- bigoted comments posted by Stormfront members Dean Steacy and Richard Warman, the CHRC staff who anonymously posted anti-Semitic propaganda online.
3. Privacy, especially privacy from government, is something that most Canadians understand instinctively -- not only in the abstract, but in terms of their everyday lives. People are naturally reluctant to tell the government information, and are constantly irritated by government nosiness, from the income tax process on down. There is a natural skepticism towards government snooping, and the idea of CHRC keystone cops hijacking Internet broadband is revolting, and easy to understand. By contrast, defending free speech -- and defending offensive free speech -- can sometimes be an abstraction, or at least seem removed from the daily life of Canadians. Stealing wireless access is a very concrete act of a Peeping Tom -- all the more revolting when the Peeping Tom is a "human rights" commission. 
4. This privacy investigation is incredibly important in its own right. But it's also an important fountain of news stories that will denormalize the CHRC for months to come. Look at how this story is being reported: there's not a whiff of ideology in it. It's a straight news story. As I've written before, that's important -- because readers give far more credit to a straight news report than they do to an opinion editorial.

Here are a few excerpts from this stunning story -- written by Canada's largest news syndicate, CP, and published in Canada's best-read newspaper, the Toronto Star. Try to read the story as if it were the first time you'd ever heard about the CHRC's shenanigans -- which is surely the case for most Star readers. And stop and stare at the insanity of the sentence I've bolded. You and I are a little bit numbed to the craziness of the CHRC, since we've encountered it so often. What do you suppose a severely normal Canadian would think? Here's the excerpt:

Canada's privacy office is looking into allegations that federal human-rights investigators tapped into an unwitting woman's Internet connection to post messages on white supremacist websites, a spokesman said Friday.

The unauthorized use of someone's computer or network could constitute a serious breach of privacy, the office of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said.

"The possibility that the (commission) was accessing someone else's computer without their permission and in effect using their network to communicate is something we're certainly going to look into," Colin McKay, who is Stoddart's communications director, said from Ottawa.

"Hacking into anyone else's network for your own purposes certainly seems like a breach of judgment at the very least."

The allegations arise out of long-running hate hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal involving Toronto resident Mark Lemire.

During the hearings, Dean Steacy, an investigator for the human rights commission, admitted using the pseudonym "Jadewarr" to post messages on white supremacist websites.

Following a subpoena, Bell Canada revealed that one "Jadewarr" post in a chat room had originated from an Internet address belonging to Nelly Hechme, a woman who lives in an Ottawa high-rise close to the commission's office.

Hechme, 26, who apparently had an unsecured wireless Internet link, was reportedly dumbfounded by the use of her account and denied any connection to Steacy or the rights agency.

This is the worst news that the CHRC has yet received. The only thing that would top this would be if Marc Lemire's criminal complaint against the CHRC was accepted by the police.

This is what's called momentum. We're winning.  

From time to time I've linked to the Free Mark Steyn site, but I don't think I've given it proper credit yet. It's by far the most comprehensive aggregator of news about human rights commissions, and their abuses, on the Internet. I try to link to and comment on a few stories each day, but if you want a total media scan, make sure you go to Binky's site daily. By the way, he's also got a contest running.

Some recent links there include this opus by Kathy Shaidle and my interview on Doug Aldridge's Internet radio show.

Here is Mark Steyn's new column from Maclean's. How many weeks in a row can I keep saying it's his best yet? Some of my favourite parts are:

So, in order to goad their target into saying something just a teensy-weensy bit offensive, both the chief investigator, Dean Steacy, and the "complainant," Richard Warman, began logging on to Mr. Lemire's site under their respective aliases. I say "respective aliases" but at one point Mr. Warman was logging on to Internet "hate sites" under Mr. Steacy's secret identity, "jadewarr." He'd misplaced some "hate message" or other, and so strolled over to the commission and was allowed to use the government's computers, passwords and covert hate-site membership ("jadewarr") until he'd found what he was looking for. Richard Warman is supposed to be a private citizen who has filed a "complaint," yet he's allowed full access to the state's investigation. If Mr. Warman got mugged, would he be permitted to wander into the Ottawa police forensics lab and fiddle around with hair and fibre samples from the scene? Dean Steacy denied in court that there was any collusion between the CHRC and their lone plaintiff, and one can see his point: who needs to "collude" when Mr. Warman enjoys open access to the system?

Does every Canadian citizen have the right to monkey around the CHRC computers on complaints they've got an interest in? If so, I'll be in at 10 a.m. next Thursday to poke around the files relating to the Maclean's case. If I need to bring two pieces of picture ID, do let me know.

:::

Although the CHRC behaves like a rogue agency way beyond political accountability, it remains formally the responsibility of the minister of justice. So what does Rob Nicholson have to say about his Frankenstein monster? Sadly, he seems to have had reconstructive surgery and entered the witness protection program. Way back on Jan. 22, I sent a written request for an interview with the minister, copied to his media relations honcho, Christian Girouard. Didn't hear anything. But that's okay. They're busy people, and I'm a patient chap. As the months ticked by, I sent a written reminder to M. Girouard. And, eventually, on Friday, March 28, we called, and were told that my "interview request" was in the system and the fellow to speak to was Darren Eke. A message was left on Mr. Eke's voicemail, but he never returned it. So on March 31, we called again, and were assured by his assistant Megan that a reply was en route via email. Still hasn't come.

I usually manage to get a response from the White House, the Pentagon, Downing Street, even Buckingham Palace within less than three months. I don't mean I call up and demand to be put through to the Queen, but her press office is usually willing to have a word with the press, that being their job. By contrast, the Justice Department appears to have a media relations office that prefers not to relate to the media. Look, maybe it would be quicker if Mr. Eke or M. Girouard just forwarded their reply via Dean Steacy and he could access that lady across the street's computer and post it as "jadewarr" for me to read on manitobawhitesupremacists.com.

I believe that human rights commissions are being sufficiently denormalized in the court of public opinion that it's time to put pressure on politicians to do something about it. In other words, we should continue to expose the corrupt practices of the Dean Steacys and Richard Warmans of this world. But we should start to move the pressure to the people who are supposed to be in charge of the whole thing -- and, in the case of the CHRC, that's Rob Nicholson. I'm a Conservative partisan, but my love is not so blind that I can defend Nicholson's inaction -- though, given that a lawyer from Nicholson's department is actively intervening for the CHRC in the Lemire case, I don't think we can even say the Tories are neutral or inactive in this matter.

I know why Nicholson wants to keep his head down here -- he doesn't want a controversy, and he certainly doesn't want to be labelled "anti-human rights" if he abolished the commission, or even amends section 13, the thought crimes section. But that would be a fake political scandal, for the HRCs only concern themselves with fake human rights these days, such as the right not to be offended.

The real scandal is how the HRCs operate, and how they have arrogated unto themselves the power to censor political and religious thought in Canada. If Nicholson won't do the right thing and rein in the commissions, then he ought to wear their misbehaviour.

My goal -- and I hope it's yours -- is to make the scandal of propping up these corrupt commissions far worse than any fake scandal that would come from shutting them down. Steyn's pointed column is a step down that road.

Old Jed, a political version of Weird Al Yankovic, has a new one.

Here was his last one.

I still think his first one is my favourite!

Yesterday I wrote about Michael Noonan and his intellectually incoherent Op-Ed in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Noonan is the boss of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, who compares his battles to the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid.

So what has Nova Scotia's answer to Nelson Mandela been up to? What injustices has he and his team of freedom fighters been fighting?

Well, they just had a very exciting hearing about the human right to watch Al Jazeera TV.

According to this proud press release:

Ahmed Assal filed a complaint in 2003 with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. He alleged that by refusing to permit him to install a satellite dish to receive Muslim and Arabic language programming, Halifax Condominium Corporation No. 4 discriminated against him on the basis of his religion and ethnic or national origin.

So, after four years of investigations and hearings, Halifax Condo Corp. #4 -- that is, Assal's neighbours -- "won". And by "won", I mean, they are out thousands of dollars in legal fees and hundreds of hours of time. With Assal, we have the answer to Shakespeare's question, "what's in a name?"

A condo corporation is a group of people who are united not just by the fact that they live next to each other, but that they contractually agree to details about the management of their homes -- including bans on satellites. It's a property rights issue and a contracts issue. But Assal thought he could save his own legal fees and make it a human rights issue.

The fact that his complaint was dismissed in the end means little; he still hijacked a secular government agency for four years; embarrassed and abused his neighbours; sought to undermine the entire basis of condominium law; and did so all without a dime of his own money. This is the kind of work that Noonan claims is on par with liberating millions of South African blacks. What a fool.

Mark Steyn points out how Rev. Stephen Boissoin, the defendant in the infamous Lund v. Boissoin ruling last year (see p. 357 for the HRC's ruling that the right of an officious bystander not to be offended trumps Boissoin's freedom of speech and freedom of religion), has been blackballed in the press, especially in his hometown of Red Deer.

But it's worse than that. Almost any mainstream newspaper in the country, especially the newspaper of record in a city like Red Deer, would normally give someone like Boissoin a chance to publish a rebuttal, even a simple letter to the editor, when he has been so pilloried, by name. Of course, the Red Deer Advocate has the right to blackball Boissoin or anyone else -- like Maclean's magazine, it's private property, and if their editors want to be "offensive" or "unfair", that's for their owners, readers and advertisers to take up with them.

But in Boissoin's case, the Red Deer Advocate's editors are not freely making their own decision. They're acting under duress from the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

You see, the original complaint was not Lund v. Boissoin. It was Lund v. Red Deer Advocate and Boission. But, when faced with the prospect of a five-year legal battle, unlimited legal fees, and a near-certain conviction, the Red Deer Advocate did what any bottom-line-oriented company would consider doing: they cut their losses, and struck a plea bargain with the Alberta HRC. The full terms of that deal are not known; if it's anything like most other HRC plea bargains -- including the one the Alberta HRC offered to me in the cartoon case -- it would involve a cash payment to the complainant, an apology, and some sort of re-education seminar. I doubt that it was brazen enough to specifically include an undertaking to blackball Rev. Boissoin, but it didn't need to be; after the expensive and time-consuming hassle the HRC put the Red Deer Advocate through, they wouldn't be foolish enough to go printing anything smacking of Christianity or conservative morality again in a hurry.

Over the past few months, I've pointed to human rights commission cases that make it to the Tribunal stage (in Alberta, the "police", "prosecutors" and "judges" are all called the "commission") as examples of the absurd and illiberal nature of these commissions. But the vast majority of their nefarious work is done without any public record, let alone a hearing in a kangaroo court. Reading the annual reports of various HRCs, it seems like twenty cases are settled for every one that goes to a hearing. So for every Western Standard or Maclean's fight, there are a dozen or two Red Deer Advocate surrenders.

It's not libel chill -- because libel chill is fear of defamation suits, and defamation suits are only to be feared by newspapers that get their facts wrong. True facts are no defence to human rights complaints. And a dismissed defamation suit comes with legal costs payable to the roughed-up defendant -- not so for "victorious" human rights respondents (of which there haven't yet been any, under the federal CHRC).

I hate the unconstitutional infringements of free speech these HRCs are championing. I hate their kangaroo court procedures. Those punishments are limited to the poor souls who are actually dragged before the HRCs. But everyone in Canada -- especially other media -- are victims of HRC libel chill. That's why Stephen Boissoin can't get his letter of rebuttal into the Red Deer Advocate. They know what happened to them once, and they don't want it to happen again. 

To my delight, human rights commissions are moving from the editorial pages to the news pages. That kind of exposure is important in the campaign to denormalize them. The debate in the blogosphere is mature -- and has tired out some people -- but it's just getting revved up in the mainstream media.

Art Spiegelman

Here's a great story in the National Post about Art Spiegelman, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus graphic novels. Maus was a gripping read; I still remember some of the more haunting panels from it. I was amazed to learn that Spiegelman has been following the war against free speech waged by Canada's human rights commissions. But perhaps I shouldn't be amazed; Spiegelman and I have something in common, in that both of our magazines were kicked off the shelves of Chapter/Indigo for being too politically incorrect. (In the Western Standard's case, right during the chain's "Freedom to Read Week". Nice touch.)

The Western Standard's case and the Maclean's/Mark Steyn case have been big news around the world -- embarrassing news for Canada. How long does that sort of thing go on before our reputation as a liberal democracy is measurably reduced?

Here are some excerpts from that article, written by Joseph Brean:

This week, as the author of the comic-book Holocaust memoir Maus arrives in Toronto for a lecture on free speech and censorship, he thinks the country is still "caught in some kind of PC [politically correct] fever," which is symptomatic of a deeper cultural illness.

"So although I'm categorized as a party line liberal, it's one of the places where I part company with myself," he said.

He has been following, for example, the case of Ezra Levant, whose publication of the Muhammad cartoons in the Western Standard magazine is the subject of a complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Just as he faults Indigo for "assuming they're your parents rather than your service provider," he said all "these attempts at gate-keeping are in the long-term doomed" because of the free-for-all nature of the Internet and public curiosity. The Harper's issue, for example, sold extra well in stores that carried it.

"What I mean is I think that political correctness is a problem. It's not as big a problem, let's say, as racism, but it's a real problem because it does put limits on thought. And certain things have to be thought about, otherwise you're just too open to manipulation and control. And so I grew up as a kind of 1st Amendment [which guarantees freedom of speech] absolutist, child of [Holocaust] survivors who defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., without making me feel that I was somehow being a self-hating Jew," he said.

But doesn't Spiegelman read Warren Kinsella? How dare Spiegelman -- a liberal Jew, a child of Holocaust survivors, dare to speak out for free speech even for those with whom he disagrees? Won't Spiegelman bow down to Kinsella's moral authority as a Nazi-fighter? Doesn't Spiegelman respect the suffering that Kinsella has received at the hands of eight-year-old graffiti scribblers?

I find it impressive that so many advocates for free speech come from so-called victim groups -- Jews, visible minorities, gays. Not because their advocacy has any more authority than a straight WASP's views, but because it shows that they haven't bought into the grievance mentality that the human rights commissions and their courtiers breed, where minorities are taught to think of themselves are perpetually in danger, perpetually victims, perpetually being wronged and in need of government protection.

What a great news story.

Thérèse Boullard

And then there's this delicious report out of Yellowknife, about the Northwest Territories Human Rights Commission, featuring a rare and hard-to-get interview with their director, Thérèse Boullard. What are the grave human rights issues that Boullard is dispatched to heal? Has someone been kicked out of their home into the icy winter, because they were Aboriginal -- or because they weren't? Has someone been denied a job with the federal government because they spoke an Aboriginal language and English, but not French? Uh, no. Boullard's team of bureaucrats is focused like a laser on the case of a pizza delivery girl who was offended by some pop songs that were playing in the kitchen of Boston Pizza when she popped by to pick up her pies for delivery.

I have no doubt that the music was vulgar to her tender ears -- if you took the word "sex" out of pop music, you'd decimate the Billboard hit list. And if the music happened to be rap, there's not a lot of songs unmarred by words like "bitches" and "hos". I'm just not sure how the pizza delivery girl's virgin ears, or exquisitely refined musical taste, or Amish religious sensibilities -- whatever grounds she's complaining under -- make this a case for government intervention. If rough language in pop music is now a thought crime, there are a lot more dominoes to fall after Yellowknife's Boston Pizza is ordered to pay $5,000 for the delivery girl's pain and suffering and iPod. Of course, if the pizza cooks are Black, perhaps they'll be next up with a discrimination complaint against Boston Pizza, for ordering them to stop playing rap music that is a deeply entrenched part of the urban Yellowknife culture.

If you think running to the government is a ridiculous solution to not liking the music at work, Boullard will tell you you're wrong. She makes a special point of differentiating between her serious work as the Disc Jockey-General for the Arctic, compared to the unreasonable human rights commission cases in the news these days:

Responding to the recent barrage of criticism, NWT director Thérèse Boullard said, "I think quite often what gets reported on are the more extreme cases. What's not reported on are the thousands of more modest cases. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees equality, and the human rights commissions are one way of realizing that right," she said.

Boullard cited many cases, the results of which were small settlements, reinstatements and education programs introduced in the workplace.

"That's the norm. My experience is the most extreme cases get reported and get people questioning the relevance of human rights commissions," said Boullard.

In a way, I agree with Boullard -- we do need to shine more sunlight on the "moderate" cases of jilted pizza delivery girls with a love of opera. You know, the reasonable cases.

But look at the unwitting admission here: that there are indeed unreasonable and "extreme" cases that the commissions seize and run with. Boullard clearly implies that my own case (two years and running now) and Steyn's (a year) are unreasonable and extreme. But that unreasonableness doesn't trouble her -- what troubles her is that the press dares to report on that.

It's always helpful to stop for a moment, when hearing something like that, and imagine it being spoken by a real police officer, instead of a human rights officer. Imagine if someone in the RCMP, or the crown prosecutor's office, were to respond to complaints about police brutality, or about the wrongful conviction of an innocent man, or about abusive, corrupt practises in a police force, by saying "oh, you journalists only focus on the extreme cases", and then tried to switch the subject. Not fixing the problem; just pointing out that most of the time innocent people aren't shot or arrested or convicted.

Real police, who are trusted by the public to wield great power, even the power of violence, are held to very high standards of conduct -- in some jurisdictions, every time a policeman unholsters his sidearm, he must fill out a report. Internal affairs, police commissions and complaints commissions abound. Even Parliament scrutinizes the conduct of the RCMP, as with the recent spate of tasering incidents. We don't slough off the extreme cases, we focus in on them to nip them in the bud, to examine how such violations of our norms could happen, and to change policies and discipline rogue officers. It is impossible to imagine anyone in the real police or prosecution saying "ignore the innocent bystanders we shoot -- look at the crooks we shoot, too!" You get my point; Boullard doesn't.

Shannon Gullberg

That same report tells of a decision rendered by the scholarly Shannon Gullberg of the NWTHRC. Gullberg used to be the Official Languages Commissioner for the NWT, so she's used to operating in an Alice in Wonderland fantasy world, including explaining to Inuit why Ottawa wants them to learn français. According to the same Northern News Service report:

After being injured on the job and receiving total disability, the truck driver appealed the amount of benefits awarded him by the NWT Worker's Compensation Board, claiming the employment insurance (EI) he collected as a seasonal worker from Newfoundland should be included in the calculation.

When the WCB ruled his EI benefits be included on a one-time basis only, the truck driver filed a complaint in 2005 with the NWT Human Rights Commission, claiming, "being a seasonal worker from Newfoundland, with a limited education and limited job opportunities," WCB discriminated against him by excluding his EI benefits based on his social condition.

NWT human rights adjudicator Shannon Gullberg ruled in favour of the driver, writing in her decision that the man belonged to a "socially identifiable group in which social disadvantage and economic disadvantage exist," and, consequently, had been discriminated against.

In other words, a seasonal truck driver's disability pay had to be calculated using his unemployment insurance cheque, not just what he earned on the job that he lost. Gullberg isn't a Worker's Compensation expert -- they have their own tribunals, and can be appealled to a real court. But why would someone bother to appeal a WCB claim to a real court, when Gullberg was there to impose her own jurisdiction on the WCB, and order them to break their own rules, and recognize that Newfoundlanders are a "socially identifiable group in which social disadvantage and economic disadvantage exist"?

I wonder how long it will be until "Newfoundlanders" are "read in" to the Charter as a protected victim group, the same way gays were. If I were a Newfoundlander, I'd be disgusted that, merely by virtue of being from a "disadvantaged" province, I'm now some sub-class, some official victim in need of special group remedies. One day, Danny "Millions" Williams might even use his new Newfoundlandishness in a court case against Ottawa. That's the "social condition" nonsense that the Canadian Human Rights Commission wants to start implementing nation-wide, by the way.

It makes sense, of course. When there are no real cases of discrimination -- the NWTHRC gets less than a complaint a week -- you've got to work hard to keep all fifteen civil servants busy. And if there aren't enough squabbles over the CD changer at Boston Pizza to keep them occupied -- better invent some new grievances, and deem a half-million Newfoundlanders a new victim group.

Michael Noonan

It seems as though the HRCs, coast-to-coast, are starting some sort of PR campaign to fight back against the tidal wave of criticism that has washed over them lately. As far as I'm concerned, the more they speak out, the better. They've inhabited such a strange world -- a world with no diversity of opinion, a world that tolerates no dissent, a world of intellectual mush and sycophantic hangers-on who mutually reinforce their pre-existing biases and eccentricities -- that when they emerge to engage the public, they sound like kooks, divorced from reality. I'm still chuckling at Boullard, investigating the music at a Boston Pizza, while calling other HRC investigations extreme. They just don't get it; it would be entertaining -- unless you happen to be the operator of the Boston Pizza, who will spend $50,000 defending himself, and then $5,000 more in fines when he loses.

Michael Noonan is the latest HRC boss who has decided to bless the public with his deep thoughts. Here he is in today's Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

Human rights commissions are under attack from many corners. The media have been galvanized by a complaint of discrimination involving a columnist with Maclean’s magazine, filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress with the federal human rights commission and two provincial commissions. From the perspective of the media, human rights commissions are out of control and assaulting freedom of speech at every opportunity. A number of public commentaries I have read have used this issue to call for the abolition of human rights commissions. But who ever said freedom of speech meant you could not be held accountable for what you say and how it might impact another person or group?

This smacks of the "blame the victim" mentality all over again. The so-called mainstream media have taken an extreme example and used it to divert public attention from the dirty little secrets hiding under the carpet of Canada’s grand multicultural tapestry.

As Jonathan Kay points out, this is more proof of the folly of allowing radical activists like Noonan -- instead of real judges who are both learned in law and neutral -- tell us what our constitutional rights are. But again, note Noonan distancing himself from the Maclean's case, calling it "extreme" -- the exact words his NWT colleague used. Again, why should we exempt extreme cases from scrutiny? If they are indeed extreme, why are they allowed to proceed?

The real answer, of course, is that the Maclean's case, and my own, are not extreme, given the law. We have violated the thought crime laws, just as much as anyone ever has. That's because the law is so vague -- we both published things that are "likely" -- future tense! -- to "expose" someone to the emotions "hatred or contempt". Truth is not a defence. How on earth could we not be guilty of such a vague offence?

The sheer kookiness of Noonan's comment -- that focusing on the Maclean's case takes the public's eye off the "dirty little secrets" in society -- is a stunning insight into Noonan's upside down world, where censoring the press is legitimate, but defending free speech is "blaming the victim". That doesn't even make any sense. It's so dumb, even the opposite of it is wrong.

But don't let me interrupt the man's self-immolation: 

Freedom of speech is an important hallmark of a liberal democracy, but it is defeated when the means to express opinion is concentrated in the hands of a powerful media elite. If Maclean’s had been willing to present the dissenting view of the Canadian Islamic Congress, there might never have been a complaint in the first place. Billing oneself as Canada’s national magazine would seem to call for a broader expression of opinions.

...Be thankful for the existence of a human rights commission which is here to fight the good fight and ensure that human dignity is always on the public agenda.

Before we delve into the sheer moonbat nuttiness of this, stop for a moment, again, and do the thought exercise of pretending that a real judge said this. Remember, the Maclean's case is still before two HRCs, but here we have the boss of another HRC all but denouncing Maclean's as guilty. It's unthinkable that a real judge would weigh in on a case publicly before that case was heard. Not only would such a judge look like a fool -- after all, he hasn't heard the evidence; the case hasn't even begun yet -- but he is so clearly interfering with the process that has is underway in the other two jurisdictions. But why would that trouble a kangaroo court like Noonan's? And, in a way, Noonan is just saving time. Why bother waiting for the conviction, when we know that Maclean's will be found guilty under the thought crimes provision, as 100% of cases are?

If Noonan were a real judge of a real court, he'd be keelhauled before a judicial council, and disciplined by other judges -- if not outright removed from the bench. Because, like the police, even judges have to answer to a higher panel of oversight. Not the kangaroo courts and Noonan. He's above the law, and we're beneath it.

My favourite paragraph in Noonan's article, though, was his first:

I OFTEN wonder what they were feeling on the day they stood up for their dignity in Sharpeville, South Africa. Black men and women had been under the thumb of institutionalized racism for more than 200 years at the southern tip of the African continent. Where did they find the strength and the courage to face the jackboots of the state on March 21, 1960?

I don't know much about Sharpeville, but I like how Noonan's talking here. He's railing against "the jackboots of the state". But he's so drunk with his own sense of righteousness that he doesn't even realize that it is he who is now wielding the jackboot power of the state.

I know a little bit about South Africa and the end of Apartheid. It happened because of the decision by the white minority to relinquish power. That decision came about because of a relatively free debate -- a debate in which "offensive" ideas, like the equality of all races, was permitted in the main. There was some censorship, of course -- and, of course, that censorship was used by the Apartheid government to muzzle its more rambunctious critics. And that's the point: weak and powerless people often have no other remedy besides free speech. It was the case with the suffragette movement in the 1920s, with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa in the 1980s.

Michael Noonan might think he stands alongside the activists who brought down Apartheid in South Africa. But his analog in Apartheid South Africa would not have been a grassroots activist, debating the issues and changing minds one at a time, in the face of great odds and even some danger. He would have been the government censor, stamping out "offensive" ideas like the equality of races, using the power of the state to censor, fine and even imprison. Maclean's magazine does not have the jackboots of the state on. Michael Noonan does.  

In his case against Marc Lemire, Richard Warman was cross-examined on his testimony for three and a half days. He answered "I don't remember" 157 times. You can read through those three and a half days' worth of transcripts, or see a handy compilation here.

One might ask why the Tribunal put up with such obvious stonewalling -- but then, the Tribunal excuses almost any conduct from the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its friends.

One might ask how it is that CHRC investigators don't keep notes contemporaneous with their investigations, as every other bureaucrat, cop, reporter or normal citizen does in their own lives' work -- and if that failure to document their activities is actually a formal strategy to frustrate any attempt to hold them accountable. 

One might ask whether such an incredible litany of forgetfulness under oath constitutes ethical conduct by a lawyer like Warman.

But the question that I'm curious about is: how would Warman, dressed up in his uniform as a DND Director of Special Grievances, react to a soldier who would dare to look Warman in the eye, and conveniently "forget" the answer to everything he was asked?

I've received some interesting feedback on my last blog entry, describing Richard Warman's new job as a "Director of Special Grievances -- Enquiries and Investigations" at the Department of National Defence. Some feedback was posted directly to my comments section, and some has come to my e-mail. I expect a more, now that CF chat sites like Army.ca have taken note.

Some soldiers have noted that much of the Canadian Forces Grievance Board's mandate is mundane -- as you can see by this list, they deal with everything from child care to clothing allowances to "meal allowances during overseas travel". It's a clearing house for any dispute, it seems, no matter how bland or, sometimes, trivial.

I have no reason to believe that the DND is any worse than other government departments in dealing with the minutiae of a bureaucracy. But that's not what I'm interested in learning more about.

I want to know more about "Special Grievances" -- the sort that Richard Warman spends his time on.

Because amongst the list of potential issues are a few that seem to call out his name, from "harassment" to "discrimination". Even "Canadian Human Rights Commission" is listed. I'm sure that even Warman couldn't turn a dispute over pension benefits into an opportunity for "maximum disruption". But I'm equally sure that the Special Grievances Directorate doesn't waste its time on such matters.

So keep your e-mails coming. I want to know just how special a Special Grievance has to be before it's given to Warman for his special treatment.

If Warman is indeed using his "maximum disruption" approach, the cases I'm looking for are likely going to come from soldiers who have been drummed out of the Canadian Forces, or marginalized within it. Send those stories over in confidence.