Levant to CHRC: "You should all be fired"

As I mentioned in this blog post, I have been targeted again with a human rights complaint, this time before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The complaint,which you can see here, was filed by Rob "Fred Phelps" Wells, an anti-Catholic bigot in Edmonton who has made a habit of harrassing school children and little old ladies outside St. Joseph's Basilica. The fact that Wells is a CHRC complainant (he also filed complaints against Catholic Insight magazine and Rev. Stephen Boission) and not a target of a CHRC investigation shows the moral inversion at work at the CHRC. Then again, the CHRC is one of Canada's largest hate groups on the Internet, with its staff posting literally hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-Black comments with impunity.

As per the notice from the CHRC, I filed my reply today. You can see it here in .pdf format. And here is the full text:

August 28, 2008

Natalie Dagenais

Canadian “Human Rights” Commission

344 Slater Street

Ottawa, ON K1A 1E1

Dear Natalie,

Re: Rob Wells v. Ezra Levant

I received your letter dated August 8, 2008. At first I wasn’t sure it was yours, because you didn’t write your name on it, and your signature was illegible.

I can understand your shyness. It has become an embarrassment to publicly admit to being a “human rights investigator” in Canada, because Canadians have caught on to what you really do: you don’t actually protect human rights, you violate them. At least you didn’t sign it as “Jadewarr”, or any of the other false names that your office uses when surfing the Internet in the guise of a neo-Nazi, spewing anti-Semitic and racist venom.

In Alberta, Shirlene McGovern, the human rights investigator who pursued an Islamic fatwa against me for publishing some cartoons, received such a backlash from the public that she actually quit my case. It is my hope that you have a revelation as to the odious nature of your work.

Come to think of it, if I worked for the CHRC, I’d use an alias, too.

As to the substance of your letter, I object to your Assessment Report because it is hypocritical, it demonstrates the corruption of the CHRC, and it is unfounded in law.

Hypocritical

It is hypocritical because the bullies at the CHRC have already found that the exact words at the center of this complaint are contrary to the section 13 “hate speech” provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. In CHRC investigation number 2005-2462, you decided that a Christian pastor, Rev. Stephen Boissoin, had contravened the law by publishing the exact same words in an Alberta newspaper.

I republished the same words as Rev. Boissoin and yet you have recommended that the CHRC not proceed against me.

There is only one reason for this: the CHRC is anti-Christian, and thus you excuse in me what you condemned in Rev. Boissoin.

This is not the first indication of a deep-seated bigotry at the CHRC. You have mercilessly persecuted other Christians in Canada for merely expressing their faith, such as Fr. Alphonse de Valk of Catholic Insight magazine and Ron Gray and the Christian Heritage Party to name just two others.

I note that the CHRC has never once prosecuted a “hate speech” complaint against any non-Christian, though there is plenty of non-Christian bigotry in Canada. No Muslim extremist, no Tamil extremist, no Sikh extremist has ever been prosecuted, though those communities are wracked with internecine hates between radical and moderate camps, that sometimes spill over into violence. But you’d rather pick on a seventy-something Catholic priest for publishing a newsletter.

That’s why you’re letting me go – I’m not a weak, penniless Christian clergyman.

That’s hypocrisy, but it’s not surprising coming from an organization so sick that its staff perpetrate racist slurs through their own vile posts on the Internet. It is now public knowledge that staff at the CHRC, like Dean Steacy and Richard Warman, joined neo-Nazi groups and surfed the net in full racist drag. The fact that everyone from the Chief Commissioner on down hasn’t been fired for this scandal is amazing to me.

Corruption

One of the tenets of Canadian law – a real human right, not one of your counterfeit human rights such as the “right not to be offended” – is equal justice under law. That means that rich or poor, powerful or powerless, everybody is treated the same way before the law. It’s a legal tradition that dates all the way back to the Magna Carta signed by King John. I know he’s a dead white man, and Christian to boot, so the CHRC would regard him as the enemy. But Canada still follows those rules.

But not over at the CHRC. Your own staff commits heinous acts of online bigotry, publishing the worst filth imaginable. Richard Warman – your former staffer, currently your most active complainant, and the CHRC’s star witness whose expenses are paid for with tax dollars to this day – went online to write that gays are “sexual deviants” who are a “cancer” in society. He called for the creation of an Apartheid city in Canada to be called “Whiteville”. He called federal cabinet ministers, such as former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, “scum” because they’re Jewish. He made literally hundreds of similar posts. Yet every complaint to the CHRC about Warman’s own hatemongering has been rejected.

That’s a form of corruption – just like it’s corrupt that the CHRC refuses to comply with its statutory obligations to disclose records to respondents; it’s corrupt that the CHRC refuses to comply with access to information laws, despite an order by the Information Commissioner; it’s corrupt that your own little squad illegally solicits and receives police evidence obtained in criminal search warrants; it is corrupt that you release inaccurate transcripts of CHRT hearings, with embarrassing facts about the CHRC left out.

A few years ago, the CHRC underwent a confidential internal government audit. You received a failing grade when it came to ethics. You don’t even have a written ethics policy – let alone anyone to enforce that ethical code. The only question is why it took so long for the CHRC to fall under an RCMP investigation.

The Commission is rotten to the core. And you and your commissioners don’t give a damn about it. The CHRC even hired a crooked cop, Sandy Kozak, who was drummed out of a police force for corruption. She was too dirty for them, but just right for you. That’s the standard of ethics at the CHRC.

Incorrect law

My contempt for the CHRC and its political masters is deep. The thought that your crooked ex-cop colleague, Sandy Kozak, was the investigator examining the saintly Fr. de Valk, is a grotesque moral inversion.

But when it comes to your “reasoning” for acquitting me but convicting Rev. Boissoin, it is laughable.

In paragraph 31 of your letter, you try to distinguish my acquittal with Rev. Boissoin’s conviction by saying the context is different – and that for the CHRC to find material illegal, it must appear in vile forums, like neo-Nazi websites. I know you’re pretty familiar with those neo-Nazi websites, as half of your office has membership privileges. But Rev. Boissoin’s publication didn’t appear in any of your favourite neo-Nazi sites. It appeared on the pages of the Red Deer Advocate, a moderate and mainstream newspaper.

In paragraph 33, you state that my republication of Rev. Boissoin’s words were “more likely” to generate a debate, than to promote “hatred”. Again, that’s a fabrication: Rev. Boissoin’s column generated an enormous debate, both in the pages of the Red Deer Advocate and elsewhere. The debate is still going on, six years later.

But putting aside this factual falsehood, you falsely imply that hate speech jurisprudence grants an exemption for publications that create a debate. You just made that up, as a fig leaf to cover up your double-standard against Rev. Boissoin.

In paragraphs 14 and 33 of your letter, you distinguish my publication from Rev. Boissoin’s by asserting that mine had a “social purpose”. So did Rev. Boissoin’s – he was a Christian pastor promoting his social views in a public forum. Again the conclusion is hypocritical. But the point here is that you’re just making up an excuse. You’ve confected it out of thin air. Truth, fair comment and the defence of “reasonable journalism” have not been treated by the CHRC as defences to section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Why did you do it?

Why would you write such a letter? You did it because the Commission doesn’t want to proceed against me. You’d rather pick on poor Christians like Rev. Boissoin. Because you know that, unlike him, I’m going to expose you and the CHRC to be the inconsistent human rights violators that you are.

I object to your reasoning because it’s false. I deliberately republished a column that I knew had been condemned as “hate speech” by the Alberta human rights commission. You have made up excuses to let me go that no other target of the CHRC has been able to use as a defence for themselves. You are making a special exception for me, for political reasons. That is inappropriate and cowardly.

However, the truly odious parties here are the CHRC commissioners themselves, who condone and enable your actions and – in Jennifer Lynch’s case – publicly excuse your actions. You should all be fired.

Signed,

Ezra Levant

P.S. Stop sending your correspondence to my father.

I haven't spent a lot of money fighting against this complaint, and frankly I expect the CHRC will be too cowardly to proceed against me. If that's the case, my expenses to date on this one are probably less than $2,000 -- I simply had my lawyer, Tom Ross, review the letter from the CHRC and review and revise my reply. If you want to chip in, I'd be grateful. You can click the PayPal button below, or send a cheque by snail mail to Tom, payable to "McLennan Ross in Trust", and indicate that it's for my human rights complaints. Tom's address is:

McLennan Ross

Thank you.

By the way, dear reader -- and to my less dear daily visitors from the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- if you're wondering if I'm getting tired of fighting against these fascists, and if you're still wondering after the above letter, the answer is: hell no.