Who at the CHRC was grilled by the RCMP, and who paid for their lawyer?

Joseph Brean of the National Post reports tonight that the RCMP have concluded their criminal investigation of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and have concluded that they don't feel they have enough to convict the CHRC or its staff of a crime, beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Ottawa Police had asked the RCMP to investigate, when Bell Canada testified that the CHRC hacked into the Internet account of a private citizen. You can see the sworn testimony of Bell Canada's officer, Alain Monfette, describing the exact details of the hacking in this transcript, at pages 5645 and 5646.

This was the Warman v. Lemire hearing that the CHRC desperately tried have a publication ban on the proceedings. No wonder.

Brean reports that the Privacy Commissioner's investigation continues. That will be more interesting; the Privacy Commissioner enforces different legislation, and the burden of proof is not "beyond a reasonable doubt", like tha of the criminal courts.

Here's my quote in Brean's story:

Ezra Levant, whose blog has become the centrepiece of the campaign against human rights hate speech law, said that, "while the conduct of the human rights commission may not have reached the level where the police thought it was criminal beyond a reasonable doubt, that is not an acceptable standard for our government."

"I think the behaviour of the CHRC is morally grotesque, but that's not a crime," he said. "I think it's politically scandalous, but that's not on the books either."

But my quote isn't the most interesting. Look at this sheer idiocy from Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress and a supporter of the CHRC, said this allegation has been a damaging "albatross" for the Commission for many months.

"It was just, in my view, not possible," he said. "And as a result many people were wrongly pointing a finger at the CHRC, accusing it of all kinds of nefarious work. This will, I think, allow some breathing room and allow discussion to evolve around the important issues, as opposed to stupid allegations that should never have been brought forward in the first place."

Mr. Farber said it might have been "ideal" if the CHRC had managed to prevent Mr. Lemire from eliciting the woman's name in the first place, but that the investigation was in the end a "healthy process" to demonstrate that the commission behaves within the confines of the law.

First, Burny says it wasn't possible -- "it" presumably being that the CHRC hacked into Nelly Hechme's Internet account. That's just historical revisionism -- Burny's become a denier. Bell Canada swore to the facts, and they remain uncontradicted by any other evidence. The only question is whether that hacking reached the level of a crime; the RCMP thinks it didn't.

Burny called them "stupid allegations". Nelly Hechme, the woman who was hacked by the CHRC, didn't think so. She's furious. Why doesn't Burny call her up and tell her she's stupid, directly? Maybe he can smear her as a neo-Nazi -- that's Burny's other debating tactic, other than calling people "stupid".

Hey, speaking of neo-Nazis, why hasn't Burny mentioned a word about that? Because the CHRC's neo-Nazi activities were the whole reason why they hacked into Hechme's account in the first place -- the CHRC was trying to cover their tracks as they signed on to a U.S. neo-Nazi website using one of their membership accounts, codename "Jadewarr".

The CHRC has published literally hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black comments on neo-Nazi websites, and Burny hasn't said a word -- oh, except to deny the whole thing. How lost does an Official Jew like Burny have to be when he thinks the problem here is Hechme's complaint about being hacked, not the neo-Nazi hackers? What the hell is wrong with him?

But it gets better. Look at Burny's ideal outcome: that Marc Lemire, one of Burny's nemeses and the CHRC's target, would have been "prevented" from finding out about the neo-Nazi publications. Of course that's Burny's daydream -- the CHRC's too -- because then they would have been spared the scandal of a government agency engaging in neo-Nazi propaganda, with Burny's blessing.

Burny doesn't care about Lemire's freedom of speech -- so why should he care about Lemire's legal right to disclosure of the illegal antics of his prosecutors?

But the last line is the best. Burny thinks this was some sort of victory, because the CHRC has been proven to be a non-criminal organization.

That's the great man's standard of public ethics -- the police couldn't lay charges, despite a six-month investigation, so obviously everything's fine! It sounds like Burny has been taking lessons in government ethics from his friend Warren "Adscam" Kinsella.

And that's really the question for Stephen Harper and Rob Nicholson, isn't it? Is it good enough that Jennifer Lynch and her crew are not criminals? (I'm not sure if that's even true -- Lynch's right hand woman, Sandy Kozak, is a former cop who was drummed out of a police force for corruption).

That may be the moral standard for Burny. But is that the moral standard for this government? Any cabinet minister who ran this kind of gong show would have been shuffled out. Why is Lynch -- a Joe Clark feminist -- being allowed to erode the government's reputation for integrity and good governance?

And neo-Nazi memberships? To this day? Unapologetically? In a government agency?

Under a Conservative government? Have we forgotten how easily the old Reform Party was (unfairly) tagged as sympathetic to white supremacists? True conservatives could be forgiven for thinking that Lynch is actually setting Harper and Nicholson up.

Fire. Them. All.

P.S. Just curious -- speaking as a taxpayer, now. Who did the RCMP interview at the CHRC? What documents did they review? And did taxpayers foot the bill for criminal lawyers to come in to defend the CHRC's Nazi operatives and Internet hackers?