Dean Steacy, perjurer

The trouble with lying, as every child knows, is that it's tough to keep your stories straight.

Dean Steacy is a liar. That's fine -- he works at a good place for liars, the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

There's no law against lying.

Unless it's under oath.

Which Steacy was on March 25, 2008, when he testified at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. See page 5864 of the transcript.

MS KULASZKA: Is it a strategy being used by the Commission to simultaneously pursue criminal charges against a respondent while at the same time a complaint is being pursued under section 13, because that has been done several times in many cases.

MR. STEACY: I'm not aware the Commission ever having pursued criminal charges against any individual while we were investigating a complaint.

MS KULASZKA: But Mr. Warman has.

MR. STEACY: But Mr. Warman's not an investigator with the Commission.

MS KULASZKA: But he was, he was an investigator with the Commission.

MR. STEACY: Well, what he did as an individual outside of the Commission is his business. He never did -- he never investigated any hate files when he was at the Commission.

Barbara Kulaszka was asking Dean Steacy about the CHRC's unethical -- and likely illegal -- habit of taking computer hard drives and other material seized in police raids, using criminal search warrants. Steacy didn't deny it -- it's how they roll over there.

Kulaszka asked the obvious: about a deliberate tactic to use brutal police powers -- that Parliament specifically did not give to the CHRC -- to get evidence against their targets that they didn't otherwise have.

I don't know why Steacy didn't just say "yes, and it's obviously working for us, with a 100% conviction rate". He bobbed and weaved a bit, putting it on Richard Warman's head. When Kulaszka pointed out that Warman worked at the CHRC, Steacy said that Warman didn't work on any "hate files".

But that's simply not true. Off the top of my head, I can think of one -- Warman's investigation into constituency mail-outs of then-MP, Jim Pankiw. You can read the story here.

It's not a big point. After all, when you avail yourself of booty from a police raid, what's a little lie under oath? Just another day in the ethical Wonderland of Jennifer Lynch's CHRC.