Dean Steacy, lawless bureaucrat

Dean Steacy is a personification of everything that's wrong at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. (I guess, so is Sandy Kozak. And then there's Richard Warman, too.)

As I indicated in the previous post, Steacy freely confesses his unethical behaviour -- that he joins neo-Nazi organizations; that he uses a neo-Nazi persona to engage his legal targets online to extract information from them that he could not do directly; he receives materials, including computer hard drives from police raids where the search warrants in question do not authorize the CHRC to receive the seized information.

All this, on top of his bald statement that free speech "is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

But look at what Steacy wrote in reply to a section 13 thought crimes complaint filed by someone Steacy really hates -- a CHRC target, Marc Lemire.

Lemire has been investigated and prosecuted by the CHRC for years. To show the arbitrariness of the thought crimes charges against him, he filed a thought crimes complaint himself, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. The point was to prove -- as if it needed more proving -- that section 13 has become the personal fiefdom of CHRC favourites. They prosecute only who they want to prosecute. (And, in fact, all but one of their Internet prosecutions have been filed by one man, former CHRC employee Richard Warman.)

On page 5731 of the transcript of Steacy's testimony this spring, he is asked about his rejection letter, dismissing Lemire's complaint out of hand. Here's what he had said:

In regards to your complaints against the media organizations and their websites, it would appear that the information on the media websites was a fair and accurate report of events. Therefore, it does not appear that the information on the media websites constitutes the communication of hate messages under the Canadian Human Rights Act as it was merely posted to report the news. In this context, the media organizations which you have cited within your letter could be considered broadcasting undertakings and, therefore, would be exempted pursuant to section 13.2 of the CHRA…

Now compare that to Maclean's magazine's case.

Lemire's complaint against various mainstream media websites was rejected by Steacy because he said the material was a "fair and accurate report of events". But, as the Maclean's case, both in the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and in the CHRC's own analysis, that is not a defence against "hate speech" charges.

And Steacy simply declares that those media websites aren't websites -- because they're owned by "broadcasting undertakings", and so exempted from the law.

But Maclean's website -- owned by Rogers, a large broadcaster -- had a five-day trial for their website; and the fact that Rogers also happens to be a broadcaster was so irrelevant to the case at hand, that it wasn't even mentioned. Steacy simply "declared" that the websites in Lemire's complaints weren't covered by the law.

Here is a list of every single section 13 hate speech complaint that has gone to the tribunal. It's not a list of all the "hate" in Canada, of course. It's a list of all the hate that Steacy and his clique personally choose to prosecute.

Not a single Muslim jihadi on the list; not a single non-white person, in fact. The list of targets is so poor, only 9% can afford lawyers. It's the barrel of fish that Steacy, Warman and their master, Jennifer Lynch, deem appropriate to persecute. Big fish Maclean's was set free; little fish Fr. Alphonse de Valk was not. Marc Lemire was prosecuted; Marc Lemire's complaint was not. Et cetera.

The CHRC doesn't have a code of ethics. But a fish rots from the head down; Steacy and his wrecking crew that's destroying our civil liberties couldn't get away with it without the support or willful blindness of Chief Commissioner Lynch herself.

And Lynch, herself, couldn't get away with it without the tacit approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson.

What a disgrace.