May 2008 Archives

Shirlene McGovern hasn't yet read the article she was hired to investigate

By Ezra Levant on May 31, 2008 1:13 PM | Permalink | |

In an earlier post, I pointed out how Shirlene McGovern, my Alberta Human Rights Commission interrogator, thought that the 12 Danish cartoons of Mohammed included three additional hoaxes, circulated by radical imams to whip up riots in the Muslim world. McGovern's written notes indicate that she had no clue that those three additional cartoons -- which depicted Mohammed as a pig, and having sex with a dog -- were fabrications made by Muslim agents provocateurs. The very first result in a Google search for "Danish cartoons" would have shown that was the case. Maybe one of the fifteen government bureaucrats working on my file might have tried that, but would have shown rather too much initiative.

But a keen-eyed correspondent reminded me of something even more startling: the very Western Standard article that the HRC is investigating reports that fact.

You can see a .pdf of the article, exactly as it ran, right here.

Here is a snapshot of the paragraph in which we point out the hoax cartoons:

Bloc MP: CHRC "must be carefully examined", "unpopular" opinions must be protected

By Ezra Levant on May 30, 2008 11:38 PM | Permalink | |

France Bonsant is the Bloc Quebecois MP from Compton-Stanstead. Her office recently replied on her behalf to an inquiry by a constituent about Keith Martin's private member's motion to abolish section 13, the thought crimes provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. You can read the entire exchange here. Some excerpts (with my favourite parts bolded):

...The Bloc Québécois is also concerned about upholding basic rights, including freedom of speech, which is fundamental in a democracy.

The Bloc Québécois is well aware of the concerns raised following the complaints filed with various human rights commissions. In our opinion, these commissions should not become tools for condemning legitimate opinions even if they are unpopular.

...While we need not wait for a crisis to act, we must choose our course of action carefully. Before powers are removed from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Bloc Québécois is of the opinion that the full situation must be carefully examined and all the options weighed.

For instance, additional guidelines could be established regarding possible recourse before the Commission, by indicating cases that should be dismissed from the outset, to be sure not to eliminate recourse that could be very important in other cases.

As a result, the Bloc Québécois is not prepared to support motion M-446 at this time. We maintain that the issue should be more thoroughly examined in order to take an informed and appropriate approach.

It's not the full-throated call for reform that some other MPs have written, but I found it encouraging. It is not objectionable that an MP would wish to study a matter further before agreeing to abolish a particular law. While there is no easier excuse for non-action than a call for further study, I sense that this reply is genuine -- the debate about human rights commissions has largely been in the English language blogosphere and mainstream media. I don't regularly read the French language press, but I'm sure my Google alerts would be pinging if they were covering the subject. They haven't been.

In that context, it's like Bonsant and her Bloc colleagues are where the Anglo MPs were back in December -- the HRCs are barely on their political radar screen (I've written about two cases there: the Quebec HRC ordering a town council not to pray; and ordering a gay bar to allow straight women in. In other words, they're just as nutty out there.) I imagine that when a Montreal jihadi follows the example of Mohammed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy, and hauls a Quebec critic of radical Islam before Quebec's HRC, the Bloc will more than catch up. In a way, Quebec's entire "reasonable accommodation" debate about radical Islam has been that province's parallel to English Canada's reaction to radical Islam in our HRCs. They're fed up.

I'm pleased that Bonsant -- and, if her letter is accurate, the Bloc Quebecois as a whole -- is interested in a review of the CHRC, with the spirit of freedom of speech in mind. That's exactly what Rick Dykstra has proposed to the Justice Committee. I don't expect the Bloc to take a leading role in that inquiry, but it's nice to know that, at worst, they'll come along for the ride.

Why not send a quick note of encouragement to Madame Bonsant, here.

Government to launch inquiry into CHRC "investigative techniques", section 13

By Ezra Levant on May 30, 2008 2:21 PM | Permalink | |

Jason Kenney, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, was also instrumental in getting this issue onto the government's agenda.

Here's the text of it:

Whereas concerns have been raised regarding the investigative techniques of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (the "Commission") and the interpretation and application of section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act (the "Act"); and

Whereas the Commission operates independently and reports to Parliament;

Be it resolved that the Justice and Human Rights Committee examine and make recommendations with respect to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and in particular:

a) review the mandate and operations of the Commission;
b) review the Commission's application and interpretation of section 13 of the Act;
c) Solicit and consider oral submissions from the Chief Commissioner and oral or written submissions from other interested persons or organizations;
d) Submit a report, including any proposed amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act arising out of the results of the Committee's inquiry.

The government's proposed inquiry comes on top of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's announcement last month that she is investigating the corrupt and abusive conduct of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. And earlier this month, Ottawa police referred a criminal complaint about the CHRC to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are now conducting a criminal investigation.

I don't think the CHRC is going to be a pleasant place to work for the next year or so -- longer if criminal charges are laid.

These official investigations are on top of the nearly-unanimous public outrage at the CHRC's behaviour, which has drawn criticism from across the ideological spectrum. Groups ranging from PEN Canada, to the Canadian Association of Journalists, to the former executive director of EGALE, to the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, to every newspaper in the country from right to left, have united in opposition to the CHRC.

This is not the end of our campaign, of course. As Winston Churchill said after the breakthrough British victory at El Alamein, "this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Back in January, I outlined a two-phase plan:

1. Denormalize the commissions; and

2. Press legislators to act.

It's time to emphasize point two, but we should still keep up on point one. Point one is the easy part; frankly, Canada's HRCs undo themselves on nearly a daily basis. Think about the wall of negative press that's coming their way on Monday, when the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal starts their show trial of Maclean's magazine. When the Government of Alberta tried to censor the press 70 years ago, the Edmonton Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for their resistance, and the government of the day got a black eye. Let's keep helping the HRCs to give themselves black eyes.

But let's really dig in on this Parliamentary inquiry now -- phase two.

From what I understand, the motion has not yet gone to a vote at the Justice Committee, because of other procedural wrangling that's been tying up the committee. The first step is for the committee to pass the resolution, and that requires a majority of votes.

The second step is to make sure that whoever is conducting the inquiry into the CHRC's misconduct conducts a wide-ranging investigation, looking into all aspects of the CHRC's corruption. Just off the top of my head, that includes everything from the CHRC's habits of posting bigoted comments online; to their illegal use of police search warrants; to their refusal to disclose records to respondents as required by law; to their corrupt investigative practises and their inherent conflicts of interest; to their clear anti-speech animus; not to mention the obvious issues of Internet hacking.

No doubt, Canada's grievance industry -- the race hustlers, the second-rate lawyers, everyone who makes a buck off the system -- will be at any inquiry in spades, arguing desperately, maybe even in tears, for the retention of their meal ticket. They have to be countered; this can't become another convention of complainers-for-hire like the Canadian Race Relations farce I attended. It's got to represent not only the aforementioned pro-free-speech groups, but plenty of "severely normal" people, too. I think witnesses ought to include Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, to ask them what they think of the importance of freedom and the price we should pay to defend it.

The inquiry needs to do a lot of homework first, too -- lest it be bamboozled by the PR spin of the CHRC. Had I not read thousands of pages of transcripts and other documents, I wouldn't have known that Ian Fine was lying when I debated him last weekend in Edmonton. Fine might not even have known he was lying, if he was relying on his own staff to tell him the truth about their conduct. When you're going up against serial tricksters, you've got to be prepared.

But that comes later. For now, let's get this resolution through the Justice Committee. We can put together a briefing book for the MPs later, and even put together a raft of witnesses from whom the inquiry should hear. I think that should include everyone from Alan Borovoy to Marc Lemire. And I think Richard Warman himself should be subpoenaed to answer questions about his own online bigotry in the name of "human rights". I'm not sure his "I can't remember" shtick will go over as easily in Parliament as it did before the kangaroo courts. (Question: what is the penalty if a subpoenaed witness is found in contempt of Parliament?)

So let's get to work.

1. Write to Rick Dykstra giving him your support.

2. Write to Rob Nicholson, too. Though he was not the first to join the fray, he has done so. And, though many would have liked him to have moved faster, remember that governments -- especially a minority federal government, in continual jeopardy of an election -- move more slowly than the blogosphere does. All things considered, they're on track.

And though Nicholson's approach -- a Parliamentary inquiry -- may seem too deliberate for those of us who already know that the CHRC is a corrupt, abusive mess, an inquiry is the proper approach for a serious government that is contemplating wholesale changes to the CHRC. The i's must be dotted, and t's crossed. And, though such an inquiry will take months, I don't see it as a delay -- the opposite: I see it as a chance for the CHRC's worst actors to be subpoenaed, pinned down under oath, and grilled. That doesn't happen too often -- but when it does, amazing things happen, as the March 25th hearing proved. Imagine an inquiry conducted by someone who wasn't just a human rights industry patsy like those that stack the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals.

3. Write to the rest of the Justice Committee's members -- of all parties. The list of them can be found here. Encourage them to support the resolution for the inquiry. Remember, this is a non-partisan issue; plenty of Liberals have signed on to reforms, too. And I have just received an encouraging letter from the Bloc Quebecois that I'll post shortly.

4. And take a final moment to write to Jason Kenney and Keith Martin to thank them too. Kenney helped stick-handle this issue through the Conservative side of the aisle; and Martin helped give the issue important early momentum -- and non-partisan credentials -- through his own private member's motion.

We're winning.

Tory MP: repeal section 13, "weed out corruption", fight "tirelessly" for freedom

By Ezra Levant on May 29, 2008 11:40 PM | Permalink | |

John Cummins is the Conservative MP for the B.C. riding of Delta-Richmond East. On May 18, he received this letter from a constituent. Some excerpts:

I have always voted Conservative federally. Always... But, unless I see concrete evidence before the next election that the Conservative Government is taking concrete steps to rectify the many problems endemic to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, I will not be voting Conservative in the next election. I will be encouraging others to follow my lead.

...It takes a lot to get me out of my chair, and I have never written a letter to my MP or MLA before...

The [CHRC] is corrupt and it is a direct threat to our fundamental freedoms. I cannot think of a more deadly combination...

The Government's submissions in the Lemire case are a disgrace and an embarrassment... Please note that the right not to be offended is NOT enshrined in our Bill of Rights. It is more important than the current price of gas or whether our troops should be in or out of Aghanistan. In fact, when you think about it, it is why our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan...

It's really a great letter. Again, you can read the whole thing here.

Two days later, Cummins replied -- not just to his constituent, but with a forceful and principled letter to the Prime Minister's office, too. You can see a copy of that letter here. Its text (I've bolded some great lines):

Dear Prime Minister:

I am writing on behalf of [name redacted] who wrote (copy enclosed) regarding his concerns with the Canadian Human Rights Commission...

In his letter to me, [name] states, "the CHRC is corrupt and a direct threat to our fundamental freedoms." He states that he wants to see the corruption weeded out, Section 13(1) repealed and to see the CHRC returned to its original, limited mandate. You should know that I am in full support of [name]'s request regarding the CHRC. Canadian soldiers have given their lives fighting for the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These rights should be passionately and tirelessly protected.

I am asking that you respond to [name]'s concerns as expressed in his letter to me.

Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.

Yours truly,

John Cummins, M.P.

Delta - Richmond East

Those are two great letters, by two Canadians who care very deeply about freedom.

Please take a moment to send Cummins an e-mail of encouragement. Just click here.

And if you haven't yet written to your own MP asking for his or her views on the CHRC, please do so now. You can find your MP's contact information here (by name) and here (by postal code). If you get a reply, please send it to me by e-mail. We're racking up quite a tally of MPs from both the Conservative and Liberal parties. I'm impressed with the bi-partisan nature of this campaign, which is exactly how it ought to be. Freedom of speech is bigger than partisan politics, and I'm glad our Parliamentarians understand that -- in fact, the word Parliament itself comes from the Old French word "to talk".

Human rights interrogator Shirlene McGovern: ignoramus or dhimmi?

By Ezra Levant on May 29, 2008 4:32 PM | Permalink | |

One of the items disclosed to me by the Alberta HRC is the list of questions that Shirlene McGovern, the human rights "officer" assigned to my case, asked Syed Soharwardy. Soharwardy is the bigoted Calgary imam who filed this hand-scrawled complaint against me (and then abandoned that complaint after a wall of public backlash. The identical Edmonton complaint against me continues to slouch forward.)

HRC question 10.JPG She talks about the "most offensive" Danish cartoon -- the one with "mohammed as animal/pig; sex with animal".

But no such cartoons were ever published by a Danish newspaper, nor by our magazine. Here are the original 12 cartoons exactly as published in Denmark: we chose eight of those.

What McGovern is referring to are three cartoons fabricated by Danish imams, designed to be as offensive as possible, in order to whip up ignorant Muslim mobs that might not get sufficiently excited about the actual Danish cartoons.

In other words, McGovern was duped by jihadist propaganda. Soharwardy must have smiled like a cat when he heard her regurgitate those lies as if they were truths.

Now there are two possible explanations for why McGovern asked that false question.

The first possible explanation is that she is ignorant. That's probably the case. One would have to show a degree of intellectual curiosity to see what the real cartoons looked like, rather than accepting jihadist propaganda at face value. That might include such advanced investigative tactics as a quick Google search.

But, really, why should a second-rate bureaucrat at a third-rate government agency be an expert in jihadi tactics? Human rights commissions have expertise in precisely nothing; Alberta's Workers Compensation Board is expert in rehabilitation; Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board is expert in oil and gas development; etc. Human rights commissions are filled with people whose uniting characteristic is their mediocrity. My favourite example at the Alberta HRC is one of their in-house lawyers, Arman Chak. Besides being a Muslim supremacist bigot, he's most famous for placing dead last in the Alberta Law Society elections, where every lawyer in the province gets a vote. That's the kind of talent pool the Alberta HRC recruits from.

Human rights commissions are home to such anti-experts as the Vancouver clown, Judy Parrack of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, who ruled that McDonald's couldn't force its employees to wash their hands, since "there was no evidence about the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing frequency," to quote her exactly.

These are the bureaucrats who propose to tell me what I can or can't write about Danish cartoons -- bureaucrats who don't even know what cartoons were published in Denmark, and lack even a child's curiosity to find out.

Not that any purported "expertise" gives any government agency the right to censor a free press. But the outright buffoonery of the HRC is just insult on top of injury.

I think it's likely that Shirlene McGovern was just lazy and ignorant.

But there's another possibility: that she actually knew her file, that she actually did a moment's research, that she actually tried to give value for dollar to Alberta taxpayers, and that she spent, oh, say, one percent of the amount of time studying the Danish cartoons as I did and our magazine did.

And that she knew about the fake cartoons.

And that she knew they were a radical Islamist hoax.

But that she still went along with the hoax, in her role as the HRC's house dhimmi.

It's the less likely of the two theories, but it's possible. The secular Government of Alberta has put 15 bureaucrats to work prosecuting an Islamic fatwa against me for 800 days. If the Alberta HRC is now part of the soft jihad against radical Islam's critics, why not take another step down that road?

For now, I'll go with the ignornace excuse. But if, at my trial, I see Shirlene McGovern in a burka, I'll know I've got my explanation wrong.

The complainants have responsibilities, too!

By Ezra Levant on May 29, 2008 3:40 PM | Permalink | |

There's a lot of little nuggets in the FOIP disclosure that I got from the Alberta HRC. Like a letter sent to the two complainants against me, Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy and Yasmeen Nizam of the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. Did you know that complainants have responsibilities, too? Well, one responsibility:

maintain a current mailing address where you can be contacted.

So let's see. I have to retain my own legal counsel at my own expense, whether I win or lose; I have the stigma of a prosecution for 800 days and counting; I am to be "judged" by a panellist who is not a judge, and likely not even a lawyer, and who has no training in constitutional matters like freedom of speech of freedom of religion; I do not have the benefits that a criminal accused has, such as the "beyond a reasonable doubt" burden of proof against me; I have fifteen government workers beavering away against me.

And the real bigots complaining against me, who have hijacked our secular state to prosecute their medieval fatwa? Why, they must keep a mailing address. Fair's fair!

UPDATE: I discovered another letter telling Yasmeen Nizam, of the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities to keep her address up to date. I'm not sure if that responsibilitiy was posing a challenge to Nizam, or if the HRC staff were just really bored. This letter has that instruction WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS so perhaps there was some problem. I'd call that use of capital letters culturally insensitive on the part of the HRC -- it's like shouting at someone. I think that's discriminatory. Perhaps they can open another file and log another couple of hundred of hours on the taxpayers' dime.

But there is another line in this letter that made me chuckle:

you are expected to make every reasonable effort to minimize any losses you may be having as a result of what you are complaining about. Please keep a written record of everything you do to minimize your losses, or in other words, to improve your situation.

I can hardly wait for the hearing. I'd love to see Nizam's little grievance journal about the "losses" she continues to suffer because of some cartoons published two years ago. I can just imagine them now:

February 25th: I was driving down Whyte Avenue today and someone cut me off in traffic, and honked at me. Clearly an Islamophobe. Damn those Danish cartoons!

Fifteen Government of Alberta employees are working on my case

By Ezra Levant on May 29, 2008 1:44 PM | Permalink | |

UPDATE: E-mail link fixed.

I received the first, 200-page tranche of records from my Freedom of Information request to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, internal documents relating to their investigation and prosecution of me for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

There are a lot of gaps in those documents that my lawyer will try to get them to fill in -- it's obvious they don't want to show me certain things. But even the edited pages they have sent over paint a fascinating picture -- sometimes troubling, sometimes hilarious. I've skimmed through them, and I plan to post some interesting nuggets over the next few days.

One thing that surprised me was just how many government bureaucrats are working on my file. I obviously knew a few -- like Shirlene McGovern, my interrogator and fellow YouTube TV star. But then I started counting: there were fourteen people working on my file, plus a pair of mysterious initials!

In alphabetical order, here are "my guys", as I have affectionately come to call them:

Gerard Dale
Nichole Daugherty
Heidi Draper
Jennifer Drover
Pardeep Gundara
Dave Haynes
Donna MacKinnon
Charlach Mackintosh
Shirlene McGovern
Michael McQuaid
Marie Riddle
Kathleen Samuel
Tara Tkachuk
Wendy Wong
“L.B.”

Friends, until I received this information, I thought the complaint was about me. How selfish I was! Me, me, me -- that was all I could talk about! I couldn't go a day without bitching about my nearly $100,000 legal fees; or complaining about the 800 days I've been under the stigma of this prosecution; or whining about "freedom this" or "due process that".

I see now that this is much bigger than me. It's about putting bread on the table for fifteen hungry families. In the Alberta economy (unemployment rate: 3.3%) if these government bureaucrats couldn't prosecute me for a living, they might actually have to venture out from their 30 hour a week public sector union jobs and do some respectable work. The complaints against me aren't just about the "human rights" of cartoon-a-phobic radical Muslims. It's about the human right of a lot of government employees to continue to suck on the public teat.

What about Shirlene "Muzzle" McGovern's new car? Who will buy Pardeep "Gag Order" Gundara his new cabin at the lake? And doesn't poor Jennifer "Dhimmi" Drover deserve a wild weekend with her girlfriends in Las Vegas?

As they acknowledged in their own annual report, complaints to Alberta’s HRC are down 15% over last year. Any real business that lost 15% of its customers in a single year would either lay off staff or risk going out of business. Neither of those are possibilities here, of course -- so increasingly insane "human rights" complaints are entertained, merely to keep the office looking busy.

I've written a lot about the corrupt Canadian Human Rights Commission. But Alberta's HRC is just as nutty. It answers not to the provincial justice minister, but to the province's "Culture and Community Spirit" ministry. That's funny and sad at the same time.

Why not show your community spirit and send a note to Lindsay Blackett, the freshman MLA elected just two months ago, who is now minister of this portfolio. His biography looks surprisingly normal for a politician -- he coaches sports, and before becoming a politician, he sold electronics. In other words, he doesn't come from the grievance industry. He's also Black, living in a very white neighbourhood of Calgary. Which means he knows Albertans aren't bigoted and in need of a human rights commission to tell them how to behave. Otherwise, how could he have won his riding so handily? And Blackett isn't beholden to any ethno-politics for his victory.

Blackett is only two months on the job, so I doubt he's had a chance to become well-briefed on this file. I think it's time we sent him some correspondence to help bring him up to speed, don't you?

You can e-mail him here.

For 15 Government of Alberta employees, the human rights complaint I'm fighting isn't about me, and it certainly isn't about the law. It's about those 15 unionized grievance hustlers riding an 800-day gravy train, and not wanting the party -- at taxpayers' expense -- to end anytime soon.

Liberal MP: "many MPs" regard CHRC as a "threat to our democracy"

By Ezra Levant on May 28, 2008 12:59 AM | Permalink | |

Paul Szabo is the Liberal MP from Mississauga South. He is also one of the few Liberals who chairs a Parliamentary Committee -- namely, the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee. You can imagine that a man immersed in those topics is naturally sensitive to the corruption at the Canadian Human Rights Commission which touches upon all three elements of the committee's mandate.

It would not surprise me if the CHRC was subpoenaed to appear before this committee, in addition to the current RCMP and Privacy Commissioner investigations.

Szabo recently wrote a short but powerful letter to a constituent about the CHRC:

Keith [Martin] is a good friend and I will be supporting his initiative. Your assessment of the CHRC is also shared by many MPs.

Put him in the "good guys" side of the ledger! But you have to read the letter sent to Szabo to understand what he means by "your assessment" of the CHRC. Here's the constituent's assessment of the CHRC that Szabo says many MPs agree with:

I'm writing to convey my disgust at the conduct of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Everything about the agency, from their hundred percent conviction rating under section 13, to their illegal use of an innocent woman's computer, to the absolutely vicious hate messages their staff post on the internet is an affront do decency and Canadian values.

These servants of the Crown are circumscribing public discourse and I believe they are actually increasing the racial tension they are meant to be fighting.

I urge you to support your courageous colleague Keith Martin when his motion to eliminate section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Code comes to a vote.

The law does not allow for truth as a defence, since it hinges on what might happen in the future. It does not belong in Canada.

This is the only issue I will be voting on in the next election, and I will support the candidate that is most in favour of abolishing/limiting this threat to our democracy. I hope that is you.

That's an excellent summary of the situation. In addition, I think a powerful, to the point letter like that has a better chance than most to get noticed by an MP, and get a real -- not form letter -- answer.

I'd like to ask you, dear reader, to take a moment to send Szabo a letter of encouragement. I don't care if you're not a Liberal; this isn't a partisan issue. It's an issue that affects anyone who believes in free speech -- and Szabo obviously does. Please click here to send him your felicitations.

Richard Warman puts teenaged girl in danger, admits he just “doesn’t care”

By Ezra Levant on May 27, 2008 1:08 AM | Permalink | |

(See updates below.)

This is the fourth installment of my new blog feature called “Bigoted Canadian Human Rights Commission Comment of the Day”. But this one is more than just a bigoted post to a neo-Nazi website written by the CHRC’s star complainant and former employee, Richard Warman. It’s a bigoted post to a neo-Nazi website that put a 19-year-old girl’s life in danger.

Unlike some of Warman’s other targets, Elizabeth didn’t dig in and fight. She wasn’t committed to the neo-Nazi ideology – she had gone along with her boyfriend, and he was just an ex-boyfriend now, so her dalliance with his views was done, too. Elizabeth, unlike some of Warman’s other targets, really didn’t care much about the broader principles of censorship and free speech. She just wanted to go back to a normal life again.

She was just out of high school, and she wanted to get her life back on track.

So she did what the CHRC claims it wants people to do: she recanted. She changed her mind about the slogans she had been mindlessly repeating. In a “mediation” session with the government, she wrote a heart-felt letter, a scan of which you can see here. Here is the text of it; it’s really quite touching:

July 31, 2004

C/O Canadian Human Rights

Att’n Nancy LaLonde

Senior Complaints Analyst

I apologize for offending you or anyone else with the websites that I was associated with. I am no longer affiliated with those beliefs or the movement and haven’t been for awhile. I realize how wrong it was and completely removed myself from it… I was not raised to be that way. I was raised in a Christian family, and was taught to help others in need and love everyone regardless of race, religion or culture. My parents taught us we are all equal. I was led astray by an ex boyfriend and now realize the mistake I made in following him and being associated with him and his beliefs. That isn’t me. I was the girl in grade school who befriended the new girl when nobody wanted to play with her because she was black.

I was wrong in following that crowd and am sincerely sorry for anyone I may have hurt or offended through my actions. I am truly ashamed for having strayed so far from the good things I was taught. I am in the process of regaining my parents trust and this is a step in that direction. I hope you will accept my apology for my past misdoings.

Thank you.

Elizabeth Lampman

That’s a beautiful letter. It was a private letter, a letter sent to the CHRC as part of a compromise, whose rules guarantee that such letters are confidential. But as the RCMP and Privacy Commissioner’s investigations tell us, the CHRC just doesn’t give a damn about the privacy of mere citizens.

Formal section 13 “hate speech” charges against Elizabeth were dropped. But that didn’t satisfy Richard Warman. He had spent all that time undercover as a neo-Nazi, he managed to smoke out Elizabeth’s real identity, he managed to reel her in, like the skilled fisherman of Nazis he was, he had her on ice, heading into the CHRC’s anti-hate cannery. Another victory would be his – and perhaps some well-earned, tax free money for his “pain and suffering”.

And then… Elizabeth was let go! How unfair to him! He had fought with a prize swordfish for countless hours, and then someone threw her back out to sea! Elizabeth got away. Damn that Elizabeth! Damn her contrition! Warman had been robbed of his opportunity to do “maximum disruption” to her life.

But he wasn’t done yet. If Warman couldn’t get his pound of flesh from her using the CHRC, he could always do so using one of his many Nazi disguises. And so he did.

Elizabeth’s letter was sent to the CHRC and Warman – no-one else. And on October 22, 2004, Warman did what he often did: he pretended to be a Nazi called Axetogrind, and he published Elizabeth’s letter on the Vanguard News Network, the neo-Nazi website. Here’s what he wrote on that website:

PM Hale hasn't even finished his fight, but already we've seen many 'leader's' in the Church run for the exit. With friends like these...

www.onepeoplesproject.com/lampman.pdf

We should all keep our fingers crossed for PM Hale on the 15th.

Warman had leaked Elizabeth’s letter to an “anti-hate” website, which dutifully posted it for him to that link, above. (That link no longer works.)

Warman posed as an outraged neo-Nazi betrayed by Elizabeth, linking to the letter he pretended he had "discovered", telling his fellow VNN members that they should be outraged, too.

The very next neo-Nazi who commented on the website followed Warman’s suggestion. He wrote:

Talk about kissing Jew Boots!

Friends, that’s called spreading hatred. Not something that’s “likely” to spread hatred. It actually did spread it. Warman broke a confidence, broke the CHRC’s rules, broke his lawyer’s professional code of ethics, and broke section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

And he managed to get neo-Nazis denouncing Jews again.

(The rest of the post refers to Matthew Hale, a neo-Nazi leader who was sentenced to 40 years in an American jail for trying to arrange an assassination of a judge. Warman shows his support for Hale – “we should all keep our fingers crossed” for Hale’s legal appeal, clearly approving of Hale’s conduct. And while praising someone convicted for plotting a murder, he happens to reveal Elizabeth’s private disavowal of neo-Nazism.)

All of that is scandalous. But none of that is particularly remarkable at the CHRC, which has become a culture so rotten that they proudly hired a police officer thrown off her force for corruption.

If Warman couldn’t get his vengeance through the CHRC, perhaps he could get some of the neo-Nazis over at VNN to do his dirty work for him.

Was that a real risk? Could Elizabeth really get hurt? I don’t know; personally, I think that Warman and others who make their living fighting against “hate” have a vested interest in telling the rest of us that there is a lot of dangerous hate out there, so we’d better give them money and power to fight it. I’m skeptical. But Warman and the CHRC and the Canadian Jewish Congress tell us that these Internet neo-Nazis are a real danger – not just blowhards. If they really believe that, then Warman deliberately and knowingly put Elizabeth in jeopardy of violence.

A 19-year-old girl.

Nice.

Here’s what Warman had to say about it, under oath, before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. See page 992 of the transcript:

MS KULASZKA: …I want to put to Mr. Warman that someone in good faith wrote that letter and the next thing she knows you posted it all over the Internet on a site where she recants beliefs that probably many of these people believe in. Did it ever occur to you that this might lead to some problems for her? You're a person who is very concerned about your security. How about her security?

MR. WARMAN: You've asked a bit of a compound question, so the overall answer is no.

MS KULASZKA: You weren't concerned about her security?

MR. WARMAN: No. Again, you asked a compound question, so if you wish to break it down then I'll respond to it. But if you are just continuing with it as a global five-part question, then is answer is no...

MS KULASZKA: Did it ever occur to you that you could put her security in jeopardy?

MR. WARMAN: Sorry, can you refer me --

THE CHAIRPERSON: Page 12.

MR. WARMAN: No, I don't believe it's the type of letter that would do that.

MS KULASZKA: Then you don't believe the people who frequent this forum would ever do anything to jeopardize her security, correct?

MR. WARMAN: That's not what I said.

MS KULASZKA: The truth is, Mr. Warman, you didn't care, correct?

MR. WARMAN: If that's a real question and not a rhetorical, the answer is no.

There are other stunning parts of the transcript -- how the CHRC's lawyer, Giacomo "Serenity Now" Vigna, tries to shut down questioning about Elizabeth; how Tribunal chairman Athanasios Hadjis is, well, his usual biased, confused, lazy self. And there's Warman's convenient "forgetfulness" about who he leaked the letter to -- he couldn't recall. It really is worth a read.

Warman put a woman's life in jeopardy for kicks. She was no longer a "suspect" or an "accused" or a threat of any sort. The CHRC was done with her. But he wasn't. There was no purpose to his post other than raw, punitive vengeance.

That’s the hero of the Canadian Jewish Congress. That’s the ethical standard of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That’s the man who continues to work at the Department of National Defence, as their director of “special grievances”.

Fire. Them. All.

UPDATE: As per the sensible advice of several commenters, I have altered the photo of Elizabeth. I also acknowledge, as I did in a previous post, that a letter like Elizabeth's loses its authenticity when it is written under coercion, which by definition includes any "mediation" with the state. That said, the letter did seem credible, and genuine. But that's not the point: the point is, Elizabeth was free to go, as far as the CHRC was concerned. That clearly frustrated Warman, who threw her to the wolves on VNN.

RCMP investigation of CHRC makes front page news in Washington, D.C.

By Ezra Levant on May 26, 2008 12:46 AM | Permalink | |

Ian Fine might be blase about the RCMP's investigation of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (and the Privacy Commissioner's investigation, and Richard Warman's bigoted Internet posts, and just about every other scandal over at Fine's bunker), but the CHRC's troubles are big enough news to make the front page of the Washington Times newspaper today.

Now all we need is a Canadian newspaper to cover the story, too! (Kudos to CTV's Mike Duffy for scooping the whole country on the RCMP investigation last week.)

You can read Washington Times story here, written by Canada's own Pete Vere. I like his lede sentence:

One of Canada's oldest institutions and one of Canada's newest innovations are locking horns.

The Canadian Mounties have been asked to investigate a criminal complaint against the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), popular Canadian blogger Ezra Levant reports.

The complaint comes in response to accusations that investigators with the commission had hijacked the Internet account of an unsuspecting third party in order to post Internet messages to neo-Nazi Web sites.

and this detail was a deft touch:

Ironically, the investigation comes at a time when the Mounties are appealing a Tribunal decision against them.

The Tribunal recently ordered the Mounties to pay $500,000 to Ali Tahmourpour, a police cadet who accused the Mounties of discrimination after being expelled from their training program. The Tribunal also ordered the Mounties to give Mr. Tahmourpour another chance to join.

I have to give a lot of credit to Canada's mainstream media for their excellent coverage of the CHRC's troubles so far. Not just Op-Ed columnists, but the growing roster of shoe-leather reporters who have written news stories on the file, including Joseph Brean and Kevin Libin at the National Post, Colin Perkel from Canadian Press and Charlie Gillis from Maclean's. Perhaps they already have stories in the works about the RCMP investigation.

The RCMP's mere physical presence at the recent execution of an Elections Canada search warrant at Conservative Party headquarters generated a week's worth of front page stories -- even though, in fact, it wasn't an RCMP raid, or a criminal matter, at all. By contrast CHRC actually is under criminal investigation, according to this letter -- and so far, only Duffy has talked about it (and, I think, radio hosts Rob Breakenridge and Tom Young).

I can think of a lot of questions I'd ask, if I were a reporter. Who in the CHRC has been interviewed by the RCMP? How many times? Is the CHRC cooperating? Where were the interviews held? Has the CHRC retained criminal lawyers or other outside counsel? Have any CHRC staff? When did the interviews happen? Are they still ongoing? What documents, if any, did the RCMP take? Did they take any computers or other equipment? Have they interviewed former staff, such as Richard Warman? Have they interviewed CHRC lawyers, such as Giacomo Vigna? Have the RCMP obtained a search warrant? Has it been executed?

Each of those questions could be asked in the context of the Privacy Commission investigation, too.

I wonder which will happen first: a political solution to the problem of the CHRC, or a legal/criminal solution. And I wonder which one the Conservative government would prefer.

Liberal MP: "alarmed" by infringement of Charter; supports Martin's motion

By Ezra Levant on May 25, 2008 11:24 PM | Permalink | |

Andrew Telegdi is the Liberal MP from Kitchener-Waterloo. He is the vice chair of Parliament's Citizenship and Immigration committee.

A partisan Conservative constituent wrote to him saying that the problem of Canada's abusive and corrupt human rights commissions was his single issue in the upcoming election campaign, and that he would vote for whichever candidate -- even the Green Party -- would reform the commissions. Here is a copy of that e-mail exchange. Some excerpts (I've put some of my favourite parts in bold):

...My reason for emailing today is to express my dismay over the revelations of wrongdoing and corruption by Human Rights Commissions both at the provincial and federal levels that Canadians have been witness to these past few months. I am disgusted and angered by what I have seen. This fiasco runs contrary to my values and spits in the face of all freedom loving Canadians.

We've seen dishonest and flagrantly illegal behavior on the part of Human Rights Commissions and their employees. That Richard Warman continues to be allowed to make Section 13 his own personal plaything destroys any notion of our country having a working justice system...

Please be advised this is the ONLY issue I'm voting on come the next election. My vote goes to the candidate/party that is doing the most to shut down these HRC boondoggles, or at the very least, repeal Section 13 of the human rights act. I am also willing to volunteer my time to support the candidate that best represents my values on this issue. I am a lifelong Conservative voter, but I'm willing to cross the floor on this issue...

To which Telegdi replied:

...like you, I am alarmed that these cases could potentially harm our principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and due process in law.

That is why I am supportive of my fellow Member of Parliament, Dr. Keith Martin's efforts with his Motion M-446.

...I agree with Dr. Martin that section, 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act is worded weakly and as such has enabled the commissions to move into an entirely different area of investigating, prosecuting and fining people who communicate anything that someone else takes offence to.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms defines us as Canadians and makes Canadians who came from all over the world equal before the law. We have the Charter to protect our human rights and civil liberties and the word and spirit of the Charter is a central guiding principle in drafting laws. That is why I support Dr. Martin's motion to repeal this section as it infringes on those rights that we as Canadians hold so dear.

There's a lot to be said for both letters. The long-time Conservative who wrote his e-mail certainly knew how to get Telegdi's attention. Telegdi has slowly but steadily increased his vote tally over the last several elections, but the offer of a vote -- and a campaign worker -- is a serious offer.

And Telegdi's response was spot on -- referring not only to the threat to free speech, but also to the CHRC's lack of due process.

I imagine that most of my readers are from the Conservative side of the aisle. But, as Keith Martin, the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada and so many others have demonstrated, this is a non-partisan issue. It's about our fundamental rights as Canadians. So with that in mind, I would invite you to send Telegdi a note of encouragement, even if you disagree with him on every other political issue. Click here to send him an e-mail.

We're building a rainbow coalition here, and it's coming along. Another Liberal joining our quorum is something to rejoice about -- there are still plenty of Liberal MPs who remember that their party's name comes from the latin word for freedom.

The human right to wear underwear to work

By Ezra Levant on May 25, 2008 4:46 PM | Permalink | |

I've been accused of being "negative" about human rights commissions.

So I'm tempted to say that I support this new ruling, from the human rights commission in the state of Kerala, in India:

Nearly 200 staff at a Hindu temple in southern India have won the right to wear underwear to work.

The human rights commission in Kerala state has ordered Sabarimala temple to withdraw a dress code that barred staff from wearing underwear.

Let it be known that I'm pro-underwear, especially at work. But, again, I've got to dissent. I just don't think it's the place of a government -- not in Canada, not in India -- to meddle in such petty disagreements. It's not a crime to ban underwear at work. If staff don't like it, they can get a job at a pro-underwear temple.

To me, property rights and contract law mean that you've got the right to be foolish, to be a dissenter, to do what nobody else in the country thinks you ought to be able to do, as long as you're not hurting anyone. I'd rather live in a country with an unabridgeable right to be a harmless nut than in a country with a legally entrenched "human right" to wear underwear to work.

CHRC Bigoted Comment of the Day: gays are "sexual deviants" who are a "cancer"

By Ezra Levant on May 25, 2008 8:25 AM | Permalink | |

Richard Warman is the former Canadian Human Rights Commission "anti-hate" investigator who is also its most frequent complainant under its anti-hate provisions. In any other quasi-judicial commission or tribunal, that would be an unacceptable conflict of interest. Warman started filing his complaints with the CHRC while he still worked there. His co-workers would handle his complaints. Not surprisingly, he hasn't lost a case yet -- and he has been awarded tens of thousands of dollars in tax-free cash for his pain and suffering.

Mark Steyn summed it up well yesterday: Warman voluntarily joins neo-Nazi groups, is a prolific bigot on them, and then collects tens of thousands of dollars for his pain and suffering of having to endure neo-Nazi bigotry. And then he repeats the whole money-making process again, and again -- and he always wins.

(Question: what would happen if Warman sued himself? When I saw a case called Warman v. Warman, I thought that he just might have done so!)

As you can see, it's a typically nasty conversational thread; this one is discussing whether a particular neo-Nazi is white enought to be an Aryan. Warman doesn't think he's white enough. Here's what he says (NS stands for National Socialism, also known as Nazism):

Theres a reason it's called "White" Nationalism and why the founders of NS excluded sexual deviants that are a like a Cancer to our movement...

So gays are a deviant cancer?

Is this gutter the level to which our Canadian Human Rights Commission has fallen?

Is this rats nest of bigotry the organization that the Conservative Justice Minister has so ardently defended in his 50-page legal argument?

Warman uses the phrase "our movement" -- he's telling Stormfront members that he's a white supremacist neo-Nazi, too. He's telling them that they can take it from him, real neo-Nazis don't tolerate anyone who's not purely white. And then he brings up homosexuality, apropos of nothing. He just wants to show what a good bigot he is.

He doesn't just denounce homosexuality; he does so in a vile way. They're a "cancer". This is from Warman, who claims to be a member of EGALE, the gay rights lobby. Then again, Warman purports to support the Canadian Jewish Congress -- they certainly have hitched their wagon to him. That hasn't stopped Warman from posting anti-Semitic comments, either.

Just reading these transcripts makes me feel dirty; what kind of person would spend hundreds of hours surfing bigoted websites, and participating in them, writing hundreds of posts in drag as a neo-Nazi? That's not just politically scandalous for the CHRC, and a clear violation of the CHRC's own section 13 anti-hate law, it's also psychologically weird. What kind of person would do such a thing for work and in then for pleasure -- in his own words, for "fun"?

I'm not interested in being Warman's psychologist -- I have neither the training nor the stomach for that. Sigmund Freud could have written an entire book about a member of EGALE going online as a gay-hating neo-Nazi woman (Pogue Mahone claimed to be female). The mind boggles.

What I'm interested in is legal and political accountability. Warman spewed forth this bigoted venom while at the CHRC, and now that he is employed with the Department of National Defence. I wonder what Warman would do if, in his capacity as a DND "director of special grievances", he discovered that a soldier had been calling gays deviants and a cancer.

Would he drum such a bigot out of the army? Or would he whisper "hey, I'm that girl Pogue Mahone from Stormfront -- nice to meet a fellow gay-bashing white nationalist"?

By the way, this particular Warman post is the one that I read out several times at yesterday's debate. I put it to the CHRC's Ian Fine that this was the character of his former employee, still his current biggest customer/complainer. Not surprisingly, Fine sat in silence.

Fire. Them. All.

Debating the CHRC's Ian Fine: "there can't be enough laws against hate"

By Ezra Levant on May 24, 2008 11:33 PM | Permalink | |

I attended the Canadian Association of Journalists conference in Edmonton today, to speak on a panel about human rights commissions. Also on the panel was Keith Martin, the Liberal MP who has written a private member's motion to abolish the section 13 thought crimes provision, and Ian Fine, senior counsel at the CHRC.

The panel was moderated by Saleem Khan, who did an excellent job of keeping things orderly. (I admit that I was the only problem in that regard.)

The debate was taped by the public affairs cable channel, CPAC, but it obviously will be televised at a later date -- not live, as I had thought it might be. I'll let you know when it airs.

Martin went first, and he did a good job of outlining the problems with section 13. He spoke about how the issue came to his attention -- a student in his riding wrote to him and made a persuasive argument for reform. And he wrote about the encouraging support he's received from both Liberal and Conservative colleagues, though he did lament that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has tried to bring a cone of silence over the Tory caucus on the matter.

I went next; I think I tried to jam too much into my opening ten minutes, and I think I was too focussed on micro-details, such as the details of Richard Warman's anonymous, bigoted posts, and the details of the Internet hacking case that has led to the RCMP investigation into the CHRC. It was the wrong approach because, for many of the people in the room, this was the first time they had a briefing on the subject of HRCs and censorship. I should have stuck more with a big picture introduction to the matter -- the forest, rather than trees, or even individual leaves, which are better done on a blog.

Fine went next. In the main, his remarks were a bland, prepared statement. But then he said two things that I just couldn't sit still for: he denied that the CHRC had hacked into a private citizen's Internet account, and he claimed that anyone in the country could file a human rights complaint over hate speech.

Both of those assertions are untrue, and I interrupted his speech to say so.

I brought up the case of Andrew Guille. Guille had filed a complaint with the CHRC against a leftist group that posted bigoted remarks on its website. But because Guille's brother and sister were disliked by CHRC staff, and because the leftist group was favoured by CHRC staff, the complaint was rejected. Here's the