Will the real Steven Skurka please stand up?

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?