February 2009 Archives

I've already explained why Warren Kinsella's $5-million defamation nuisance suit against me is laughable. You can see the lawsuit here and my brief analysis of it here.

In short, everything I've written about Kinsella has been true or fair comment. And a record-breaking $5-million figure shows a weird lack of self-knowledge, given how tattered his reputation is to begin with. But his suit isn't really a legal move, it's a political one: it's an attempt to harass me, and to scare off other reporters from asking questions, especially about Kinsella's role in Adscam -- a role that Justice John Gomery ruled was "highly inappropriate".

But forget about the details of the case for a moment. Because something startling happened today: Kinsella conceded the legal case, right there on his blog for the world to see (and for me to save to my hard drive, for he'll surely erase it.)

To state the obvious, a defamation lawsuit is where a plaintiff claims that his reputation has been damaged. The plaintiff sues for compensation for that lost reputation. The size of the lawsuit is commensurate with the size of the plaintiff's reputation to begin with, and the damage done to it by the words in question.

But here's what Kinsella wrote today about everything said about him lately -- my criticisms of him, his role in Adscam, his role in Catscam, his attempt to mau-mau TVO, his firing from the Canadian Jewish Congress, etc.:

It's actually getting me business. I hope they keep it coming.

Really?

So he wasn't hurt to the tune of $5-million? So it's been good for business? He actually hopes it continues?

How can someone file a $5-million lawsuit one week, claiming his reputation has been devastated by what was said about him, and that he needs $5-million to get back to where he was... and the very next week say that things have never been better -- precisely because of what has been said about him? And to actually say he hopes it continues!

Something tells me Kinsella didn't bounce that blog post off his lawyer before he wrote it. (And why he's publishing details of a privileged conversation with his lawyer to begin with, I don't know -- but now that he's waived that privilege, I'll have to ask him about it during discoveries.)

You don't need to be a psychologist to know what's going on.

Kinsella is so proud and so vain, after a disastrous month in the court of public opinion he felt it necessary to announce to the world that he's fine -- it's only a flesh wound! -- and that he's doing better than ever. Despite all the things being said about him (stinging things, but true and fair things), he wants people to think he's still the king of the world! He's still the ass-kicker of Canadian politics, to quote the title of one of his lovingly-written autobiographies.

I'm sure his business is coming along well -- I have no facts to the contary. And I'm sure that, when we get into document disclosure in his lawsuit, he'll be able to show his business is growing, despite his own mis-steps. It's just an odd thing to announce to the world, a week after saying he was damaged to the tune of $5 million.

Seriously: if I was a plaintiff in a defamation action, and I had just volunteered, in public, that I was completely unharmed (more than that -- that I hoped it would continue!), I can't imagine that my lawyer would proceed with the case.

What's going on here? A lot of words come to mind, but the main one is: erratic.  

Just like his blunders on Catscam and TVOscam and CJCscam, it was an own-goal, an unforced error. He thought it was clever. But his judgment is erratic.

I'm trying to figure out which thought is making me smile more: the total self-destruction of Kinsella's case in his nuisance suit against me, or the prospect that he will remain as Michael Ignatieff's war room boss, with his increasingly bizarre, emotional judgment calls.

Adscam almost killed the Liberal Party. In a classic rearrange-the-deckchairs-on-the-Titanic move, Paul Martin banned ten Quebec Liberals from the party "forever", to show his commitment to cracking down on corruption. Voters didn't buy it, and turfed the Liberals, and they've stayed turfed.

I guess back in 2005 Michael Ignatieff was still working in the U.S., his adopted homeland, and missed the whole thing.

Because he's inviting some of those banned Libranos back.

Now I think I understand Ignatieff's cavalier attitude towards Warren Kinsella. The Adscam judicial inquiry declared that Kinsella's role was "highly inappropriate" -- a judicial finding that Kinsella railed against, but curiously never appealed.

But why bother appealing it? Ignatieff has offered him a full political pardon -- and Beryl Wajsman, too.

How much longer before ol' Chuck Guite himself pops up as a star candidate?

The next election will likely be dominated by the economy. But Michael Ignatieff is doing his best to ensure it's about corruption and ethics, too. Amazing.

I haven't been following the student protest at New York University at all -- I mean, who cares? But then Greg Gutfeld featured this amazing video by one of the protest leaders. The running commentary is priceless:

Warren Kinsella's ejection from the Canadian Jewish Congress received the attention of Parliament yesterday. Here is a short speech on the subject by Lois Brown, MP:

 

Kinsella's instant reply: a veiled threat to sue Brown, if she says it again outside the confines of the House of Commons (which, under law, is immune to defamation suits).

Does Kinsella have any other moves left in his repertoire besides legal threats? I guess he does: he could try to mau-mau public broadcasters into refusing to ever, ever interview Brown again. but that would likely have about the same success Kinsella had with that tactic on TVO's Steve Paikin.

But even Kinsella's lawsuit threat (he sued me for $5-million, and it didn't have the terrifying effect he had hoped for; would he sue Brown for $50-million? Why not a cool billion?) is more pathetic than usual. Defamation suits against MPs, for comments made in the conduct of their business, are paid for by Parliament's Board of Internal Economy. In other words, MPs don't have to pay a dime for lawyers, and there isn't an insurance company pressing them to settle. An MP is about the toughest defamation defendant one could imagine.

I wouldn't wish a lawsuit on Brown, but it would be delicious to see Kinsella spend his time and money suing the impenetrable fortress that is Parliament's Legislative Counsel.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post genuinely expressing my hope that Kinsella starts coming back to normal, and leaves some of the rage behind him. I guess he's not ready to do that yet. Plenty of folks have said I was being inappropriately generous to such a bully. Perhaps they're right. But I ask you, dear reader, who do you think was hurt more by Kinsella's latest threat against Brown -- hurt politically, and hurt emotionally -- Brown, or Kinsella himself?  

On Monday, almost exactly one year after he joined it, Warren Kinsella was asked to leave his volunteer position on the legal affairs committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress. It’s not often that volunteers get fired, but it happens.

Kinsella joined the CJC a year ago, announcing it, not by coincidence, right when he was fired as a columnist with the National Post. His blog entry on the subject was titled “The universe balances out”, a version of Aesop’s fable of sour grapes. Kinsella asked us to believe that serving on a low-profile, volunteer committee of lawyers was as desirable to a political animal like him as having a prestigious political column in a national newspaper. Oh well – let the man lick his wounds; we’ve all had bumps in the road of life. You won’t believe me, dear reader, but even though Kinsella was threatening me with lawsuits even then, I still sent the man a short note of consolation, as he seemed so genuinely dolorous because of his ouster from the Post.

Kinsella quickly became a noisy advocate for the CJC’s position on political censorship, and engaged in a year-long smear against the Post (and others who disagreed with the CJC). How such a scorched-earth approach to advocacy served the interests of the CJC was unclear; then again, how any of Kinsella’s antics (like Catscam) helped the CJC’s cause was always an open question. (When I asked why Kinsella was serving as a CJC officer while giving advice and help to the anti-Semites at the Canadian Islamic Congress, Kinsella sued me for saying it!) The CJC should have turfed him then for consorting with the anti-Semitic enemy, but better late than never.

It will be interesting to see if Kinsella turns against the CJC in anger now, too.

Others will note Kinsella’s latest defeat with glee. And part of me is glad to see someone who tries so hard to bully and blackball others, have his own stratagems backfire on him. But, to be very frank, I’m not that gleeful – I actually feel sad for him. I’m not saying that condescendingly – it really is sad to see a man with so much energy and talent get so consumed with personal vendettas and petty squabbles that it starts to cost him in his professional and public life.

I’m not going soft on Kinsella – his lawsuit against me is absurd, and if taken at face value, he means to bankrupt me. He’s a bully, and a fountain of foul-mouthed defamation in his own right. But there comes a point when someone – even someone who swears he’ll destroy you – is so self-destructive, and so blind to that self-destruction, that you feel a pang of sorrow for them.

I was never close friends with Kinsella; I invited him to write in the Western Standard magazine once (of course, it was because he was disparaging Paul Martin), and I once caught his tone-deaf band playing in a fetid basement in Toronto. And we once spoke on a panel together at a conference; that was about it. But I felt a sort of collegiality with him because we were both engaged in the political life of the country, albeit from opposite points of view. There is a camaraderie that happens in such circles; to my surprise and delight, I have made several genuine and even deep friendships with Liberals I met on debate panels. I suppose it starts from a sense that you both love the democratic system, and for talking heads like Kinsella and me, that you enjoy some of the more theatrical aspects of campaigning. I think there’s a sense of humour necessary to being a pundit, even a serious one. And so, until he went haywire a year ago, I felt a small sense of fraternity with him.

There was even a brief moment – oh, say about a half hour – when I thought Kinsella and I might work together on a project. It was several years ago – 2004 if I remember – and we were both on the board of the Canada-Israel Committee. The subject of political intimidation came up – nicknamed “chill/vil”, for libel chill and public vilification. It was how radical Muslim groups like the Canadian Islamic Congress were trying to silence critics through things like defamation threats (and human rights complaints!)

Kinsella and I were both at that meeting, and I suggested a bi-partisan “rapid response” team of lawyers and spin-doctors to fight back against radical Islamic chill/vil. I remember mentioning Kinsella by name, and the feeling of slight naughtiness at the thought of us working on a political campaign together. Alas, nothing came of it – until, shockingly, Kinsella actually helped out the chill/vil side of the equation by meeting with the Canadian Islamic Congress.

But underneath his bluff and bravado is a real man with – though he might deny it – real feelings. I know he must be embarrassed and angry today at his ouster, just as he was a year ago. And though I won’t do it, I feel a strange urge to send him a note of consolation again.

Not because I wish him well in general – I hope his political candidate loses, and I hope that his vendettas against his enemies (including me!) fail, too. But I truly hope he gets back on a productive, calmer track in life, one that’s less about scorched earth, threats and bullying, and more about that thing that I thought we once had in common: a belief in the democratic process.

I think Kinsella – I used to call him Warren, but I’m not sure if you can call someone suing you for $5-million by his first name – has been blown off course by his own temper.  A year ago this month Kinsella wrote on his website that his wife had counseled him to drop his obsession with me. He hasn’t – he’s doubled down on it, made a fool of himself, and has now exposed himself and his family to the potential costs of a failed nuisance suit. He’s filed equally spurious lawsuits against other of his enemies, such as those at Free Dominion. Forget about the legal and financial jeopardy his nuisance suits have put him in, and forget about the public snickering at his hyper-litigiousness and thin skin; and forget about his dubious reputation as an apologist for political censorship: what about his family’s plea for him to get back to productive things, and let go of his obsessive antagonisms?

I guess what I’m saying is that Kinsella looks to me like he is spiraling down. I think that hit me when Steve Paikin wrote a personal account of Kinsella’s erratic threats against him. I know that Paikin and Kinsella had an amicable relationship – maybe not a friendship, but a happy rapport. Reading how Kinsella’s foolish attempt to bully Paikin has obviously ruined that friendship made me think: “this guy is self-destructing”. I thought that perhaps it was just me. But it’s not – it’s the Post, and the CJC, and TVO and too many others.

I hope Kinsella loses his nuisance suits. But where I thought I might feel schadenfreude, I feel sorrow. The news of his termination today doesn’t give me any joy. There is none in this public spectacle as he tumbles down, a flailing ball of anger and impotence.

Don’t call me weak for saying that I hope he gets back up again. Not so he can throw another punch at me, but so he can get on with being a serious person -- and listen to his family.

Look at him: David Ahenakew doesn't look like a national celebrity. Granted, he does appear younger and fitter than most 75-year-olds, but he's not particularly riveting to the eyes or enchanting to the ears. He's certainly not the sort of man whose name you would predict would get more than 20,000 hits on Google.

And that, my friends, is the power of having a talented agent doing your PR for you.

Ahenakew has had Canada's best PR man these past six years. Forgive my ethnic pride, but few people know how to promote celebrity talent like the Jews do. Ahenakew's super-agent has been the Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie "Burny" Farber  -- the same turbo-promoter who turned Ernst Zundel from a nobody kook in a hard-hat into an international celebrity; the same one who turned Jim Keegstra, a small-time loser in a small-time town, into a national star. 

What Don King is for up-and-coming boxers, Burny is for up-and-coming anti-Semites. He turns nobodies into somebodies, and he takes a healthy cut. His 15% isn't cash, but PR for himself and his fellow ethnic hustlers in the "human rights" industry. I once heard Burny tell a Calgary audience that he's in the "hate business". Indeed he is. And a business isn't a business unless you can find new products every few years.

As I've written before, David Ahenakew had the ear of pretty much no-one until Burny found him. Ahenakew's grandchildren had to listen to the old fool, and he was still invited to Aboriginal conferences as some sort of superannuated "elder", but people really didn't listen to him. He muttered conspiracy theories. We've probably all encountered the type -- nutty and harmless.

He was a fading star, like Richard Dreyfuss in the early 1980s. But Burny saw the potential in him.

When Ahenakew made some foolish anti-Semitic remarks to a reporter back in 2002, Burny moved fast. He was part of the chorus calling for Ahenakew to be prosecuted for the criminal code section about "hate" -- as if a normal human emotion could be criminalized.

After a trial, an appeal and a re-trial -- six years of prosecution -- Ahenakew was acquitted today.

So what has Burny achieved?

Ahenakew has not changed his mind -- he still hates Jews. Probably more than when he was charged with hating them six years ago.

Ahenakew's statements about Jews have not evanesced into the air, as they would have had he been properly ignored (or informally rebutted, instead of prosecuted by the state). His anti-Semitic views have been repeated countless thousands of times in newspapers, TV shows and, of course, the Internet. The ramblings of a fool have thus received more of an audience than the thoughtful prose of most best-selling authors in Canada.

And Ahenakew's conspiracy theory -- that the Jews control the world, and persecute their enemies -- is just a little bit more plausible, certainly in his own mind and that of his supporters.

Did Burny's cheerleading of the prosecution of Ahenakew abate anti-Semitism? Of course not. But I'm sure the powerful anti-Semites in Canada -- those at the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Arab Federation, both of whom have had friendly relations with Burny's Canadian Jewish Congress -- were thrilled that Burny was directing public attention towards such an obviously harmless nut like Ahenakew, instead of their truly nefarious Jew-hatred.

Burny's obsession with censorship backfired in every way that counts. But according to the Infomart media database, it did earn Farber 107 media mentions since Ahenakew was charged. 107! You'd think Saskatchewan was infested with neo-Nazis, not gophers. Ahenakew might not have been convicted, but Farber dined out on his account for six good years.

There shouldn't be any "hate" provisions in the criminal code. Hating someone isn't a crime. Committing a real crime is a crime -- such a murder, or even incitement to violence. Ahenakew didn't do any of that.

It is of little consolation to those who believe in freedom of speech that Ahenakew was acquitted -- six years of being put through the criminal courts is a form of punishment in itself. But at least Ahenakew, at the end of the day, was acquitted. Had he been charged under one of Canada's "human rights" kangaroo courts, he most surely would have been convicted -- not a single "hate speech" case heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ever resulted in an acquittal, and that foul law has been on the books for 32 years now.

Ahenakew had the benefit of a real judge, not a human rights busy-body pretending to be a judge; he had the benefit of real and timely disclosure, not the selective and heavily-edited disclosure abuses perpetrated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission; he had access to legal aid if he needed it, something not available under the CHRC (and 91% of the CHRC's hate speech targets are too poor to hire a lawyer); and, most importantly, Ahenakew had the right to be presumed innocent, and his prosecutors had to convince the judge "beyond a reasonable doubt", a protection not afforded to targets of the CHRC.

That's why the Burny Farbers of this world love the HRCs -- they are far more open to political abuse than the Criminal Code's hate speech provision. Lucky for Ahenakew, he didn't blog his comments -- or he surely would have been visited by the CHRC, which has jurisdiction over the Internet.

The acquittal of Ahenakew is pointless. The man has already been punished for his political crimes; his foul views have spread further than he ever could have imagined; and free speech, while technically the victor, still had to bow down to a court for six years.

How many more millions of taxpayers' dollars will be wasted on political trials like this?

How many more anti-Semitic nobodies will be turned into national stars like this?

How much longer will the strategy of Official Jews like Burny be to outsource the responsibility of political citizenship to courts, instead of doing the hard work of rebutting anti-Semitism themselves?

How many more assaults on freedom of expression -- even odious expression, which is protected by our constitution -- must Canada endure?

I don't know -- ask Burny. 

Welcome Samizdata and Instapundit readers!

A senior aide to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has filed a $5,000,000 defamation lawsuit against me for discussing his involvement with Adscam, the corruption scandal that brought down the Liberal Party.

The suit was filed by Warren Kinsella, a Liberal lobbyist and the head of Ignatieff’s war-room. It’s clearly a nuisance suit, designed with two goals in mind:

 1.     Cost me time, money and hassle; and

 2.     Scare other journalists away from writing about the Adscam connections in Ignatieff’s team. It’s called libel chill, and it’s a warning to other political reporters that if they ask the wrong questions about the Liberal Party, they’ll be hit with a lawsuit, too.

You can see the lawsuit here. (The original $50,000 lawsuit was filed in September. Last week it was amended to add Adscam, and increased to $5,000,000.)

It's going to fail spectacularly, and hurt the Liberal Party.

It’s just the latest erratic move by Kinsella, who has had an awful month as the Liberal war room boss. From having to issue a groveling apology for his anti-Chinese slur that Chinese restaurants serve cat meat, to his failed attempt to bully TVO into cancelling an on-air guest, it’s been a gong show over there.

Filing a $5-million lawsuit to try to silence questions about his Adscam involvement probably isn’t Kinsella’s smartest move. I’m not sure why someone who wants to stop people talking about Adscam would create a conversation-starter like a massive lawsuit. And then there’s the prickly matter of Kinsella subjecting himself (and his private documents) to unlimited cross-examination by my lawyer – I mean days or weeks, not the brief appearance he made before Justice John Gomery’s Inquiry.

I think that, like Kinsella’s awful judgment calls on Catscam and TVOscam, he is clouded by his own emotions. He’s not acting professionally – if he were advising a client other than himself, I’m sure he’d tell them just to ignore my little blog, rather than draw attention to it. But he’s giving himself advice – and, as the old adage goes, he’s got a fool for a client. He’s acting out of pride and vengeance. And it’s hurting Ignatieff.

One should always take a lawsuit seriously, but I can’t help chuckling at this one. It’s just so over-the-top, so legally baseless and so exaggerated it’s laughable.

First: the largest defamation judgment ever given by a Canadian court was less than a third as big, $1.6 million, to Casey Hill.

Hill was a top prosecutor in Toronto, with a sterling national and international reputation. He was defamed by the Church of Scientology, whose lawyer stood on the steps of a Toronto courthouse, in a lawyer’s gown, and accused Hill of illegal conduct – a stunning accusation that received massive coverage on TV and the newspapers. Literally hundreds of thousands of people heard the defamation. It was part of an ongoing vendetta by the Scientologists against Hill – they actually had a file on him marked “Enemy Canada”.

Compare Hill’s reputation to Kinsella’s. Kinsella is a professional mudslinger whose career highlight – by his own admission – was going on national TV to mock those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. He’s so foul-mouthed that he even calls his own punk band Sh*t From Hell (I can testify first-hand that is an accurate appellation). I suppose like Casey Hill, Kinsella has an international reputation – Kinsella made huge headlines in China for his cat meat remarks, and then again for his equally embarrassing “ironic apology” that blamed everyone else for getting so upset about it.

Kinsella thinks his reputation is worth more than the biggest defamation award in history, and that my blog has hurt him more than anyone has ever been defamed in Canadian history.

Does he not see how this suit makes him look? It’s a combination of bad judgment, thin-skin, and a brazen abuse of legal process.

And all for a blog entry in which I accurately quote Justice John Gomery’s judicial findings that Kinsella had conducted himself in a “highly inappropriate” manner.

The suit is legal suicide – especially after the Supreme Court’s revolutionary ruling on “fair comment” in the WIC Radio case.

We know Kinsella hates it when people mention his involvement in Adscam. He threatened to sue the National Post’s Andrew Coyne over it. He threatened to sue the Globe’s Normal Spector over it. He once called Justice Gomery’s inquiry a “pile of judicial garbage” – classy, coming from a lawyer. But for some reason Kinsella never did the one thing you’d expect someone to do who actually believed that Justice Gomery was wrong: he never appealed his findings. So they stand: Kinsella’s conduct was “highly inappropriate”. Kinsella had sent a memo telling public servants to channel advertising and polling money through Chuck Guite – who was later convicted of fraud.

Warren Kinsella ain’t Casey Hill. And I’m not a Scientologist making things up. Kinsella has a poor reputation – one that he has earned.

So why would Kinsella sue me for $5 million? As loyal readers know, Kinsella already sued me last year because I criticized his meeting with the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress.  That was laughable, too, because he did in fact meet with the CIC and gave them advice and assistance. How do I know about this? Because Kinsella boasted about it on his own website.

That lawsuit was bizarre, but it was only for $50,000 – clearly designed to be a nuisance suit, probably unlikely to make it to trial, just enough to cause me to have to spend time and money to lawyer up.

But by adding two more zeroes to his claim, Kinsella does a few things that will come back to bite him – and Ignatieff – in the tush.

First and most obviously, he attracts attention to something Ignatieff doesn’t want to talk about: Adscam, and the Liberal reputation for corruption. Ignatieff was living in the U.S. until 2006, so he probably doesn’t know that Kinsella actually publicly declared his belief in the character of Chuck Guite – the man at the centre of the Adscam scandal -- before Guite was convicted of defrauding Canadian taxpayers. How much of this did Ignatieff know when he asked Kinsella to join his campaign?

Second, by suing me for more than $50,000, Kinsella takes his action out of “simplified procedure”, and into regular rules of court – so he is now subject to examinations for discovery. That means he must answer potentially endless questions about his role in Adscam, under oath. And the answer “that’s confidential” just doesn’t hold up. All of his documents, notes, e-mails and other memos must be disclosed to me.

Third, Kinsella opens himself up to real cost consequences when he loses, which he will. Judges don’t like nuisance suits at the best of times – they’re not interested in being a prop for Kinsella’s war-room. A $5-million nuisance suit opens Kinsella up to paying much more of my own legal costs.

Kinsella and I have been trading political barbs for ten years. We have appeared opposite each other on radio and TV, even on Lloyd Robertson’s CTV election night desk in 2000. Political sparring is what we do – I always assumed it was in good humour.

But about a year ago, something snapped with Kinsella – he just couldn’t countenance my battle against the censorship of Canada’s human rights commissions. He particularly hated my criticisms of Richard Warman, the former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who has been the complainant in the majority of censorship hearings prosecuted by the CHRC. Kinsella lost his cool over the subject. Instead of acting like a professional pundit or party activist, he started fighting personally.

I have to admit, I’m still half-expecting him to say “just kidding!” at any moment, because what he’s doing is just so spectacularly bizarre and ineffective. Far from marginalizing me and other free speech advocates over the past year, he has brought attention to our campaign for free speech. And far from grinding me into submission, as he has done with other people he has targeted with libel chill in the past, he has galvanized my convictions. That, along with the generous support of my website’s readers, has allowed me to parry the two dozen human rights complaints, defamation suits and law society complaints filed by Kinsella, Warman and their allies.

I haven’t asked for any help with my legal funds in two months, but I regret that Kinsella’s new lawsuit does require me to incur more expenses – a statement of defence right away, likely some preliminary motions, and then the meticulous work of discoveries. Discoveries themselves could top $20,000 and a trial – which could take the better part of a week – could add $50,000 more.

I’ve got one of Toronto’s best lawyers working on this case – Chris Ashby, who won one of the largest defamation cases in the past decade. I’m sure Mr. Ashby will see me through to victory, as he did for Dr. Myers. I just need to pay his bills until the court orders Kinsella to pay them for me, as they ordered the CBC to do for Dr. Myers.

Would you please help me out?

I think it’s important to beat Kinsella’s suit for four reasons:

 1.     It’s the right thing to do, to stand up to bullies who would try to silence political debate through libel chill.

 2.     If Kinsella sues over his involvement with the Canadian Islamic Congress, and Adscam, then it’s an important opportunity to properly grill him on his conduct, for the public record.

 3.     If I don’t fight him, Ignatieff’s Liberal campaign will be one step closer to silencing other journalists’ questions out of fear, just like Kinsella has threatened bloggers into silence before.

 4.     Kinsella jumped into this fight because of his opposition to our campaign for freedom of expression, and his disagreements with me over everything from radical Islam to Adscam. He is using this lawsuit to pre-empt and foreclose on those substantive debates, by trying to gag me instead. That’s just not the Canadian way.

We’ve already beaten Kinsella in the court of public opinion. Now let’s beat him in the court of law. If you can help me, please do.

If you can chip in by PayPal, please click on the button below. If you’d prefer to send in a cheque by snail mail, that’s fine. Please make cheques payable to:

“Christopher Ashby in Trust”

Attn: Ezra Levant defence fund

Suite 1013

8 King Street East

Toronto ON M5C 1B5

 

Thank you very much. With your help, I promise to fight this battle all the way to the end.

 

"I am not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

 

 

  

 

I spoke tonight to a convention at the Canadian War Museum.

I had prepared my remarks in advance, but every delegate I spoke with before dinner asked me about the freedom of speech implications of my tangle with Canada's human rights commissions. It struck me then that museums are in the same peril that Canadian media are in, when it comes to government censorship of politically correct topics. In fact, over dinner, Jack Granatstein told me of a museum exhibit in the 1990s called "Out of Africa", where the curator was hounded out of her job -- and in fact the country -- by politically correct protests against the exhibit. It sounded like the censorious frenzy that met the Toronto production of Showboat.

So, in the end, I decided to spend half my time describing the threat to freedom of expression and free intellectual inquiry posed by Canada's human rights commissions -- and giving specific examples of how museums were at risk. It was troublingly easy to come up with plausible examples of museums running into trouble, ranging from an "insensitive" display at the War Museum about the Taliban, to an art museum that might display a cartoon of Mohammed. The room seemed genuinely concerned.

I did use some of my pre-written remarks about the "importance of politically incorrect history" -- the subject of my speech. But my own views on the kind of history that ought to be taught are less important than the larger point: that whatever our personal views are, we should have the legal right to discuss history without government censorship.

That said, here are a few excerpts from my prepared remarks that I delivered:

 

...It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell stories about Canada’s wars, and those who fought in them, and why they fought. And if you think it’s becoming difficult to talk about wars in a frank manner, that’s nothing compared to how difficult it is to wage wars today, in an environment of media hyper-sensitivity, where for most journalists, expressing a sense of patriotism is viewed as downright un-professional; where gotcha journalism is deployed against our own side; where military secrets are breached to earn the next day’s scoop; where any derogatory words about our enemy are regarded as bigoted – such as Gen. Hillier’s comments about the Taliban; and where eight years of anti-American – or, at least anti-George Bush – sentiment has blurred into a general anti-war ballast, which has weighed on Canada’s noble efforts in Afghanistan.

If it’s no longer culturally correct to verbally call for the death of Taliban opponents – terrorists specifically not covered by the Geneva Convention, which requires combatants to be part of a chain of command, wear a uniform, and bear their arms openly – then imagine how hard it is to actually kill them. Thank God that our historic wars for freedom happened before the age of extreme political correctness.

It’s not just political correctness, though; because political correctness is merely a mannerism, a style of speaking that uses euphemisms to avoid calling things the way they are. ...museums are supposed to be about looking at things the way they are. A museum that attempts to force history to fit into our current political fashions is revisionist at best – but really, it’s not an act of history at all. It’s an act of therapy.

Today, a single soldier’s death in Afghanistan, while tragic for that soldier and his family, precipitates a cycle of Jerry Springer-style coverage, with a generally anti-war media overcompensating for their regular disinterest in the war when it’s going well, by replacing it with maudlin displays of national grief, including the historically novel call for the flag to be flown at half mast for each such casualty.

Even once-neutral symbols, like the flag, are symbolic weapons in this fight to deracinate our military history. Even our national anthem has become a football in this fight. You might recall headlines last month that a New Brunswick school teacher shut down the daily singing of the anthem, which had been championed by two schoolgirls, who led the singing as an act of remembrance for their cousin, who died in Afghanistan. The teacher... had spoken out on many occasions as an opponent of the war in particular, and all wars in general. His unilateral decision to ban the anthem created a backlash, but one wonders how much longer before [that] view becomes the new normal.

Unlike in previous generations, the question is no longer does Canada – or indeed any Western ally – have the military might to win a war; that’s beyond dispute. The question is now can the popular culture sustain such a war in the face of even a handful of casualties? Our politicians know it; our generals know it. And our enemies certainly know it. We live in an era where terrorist groups like Hezbollah have media relations units, complete with bilingual business cards. That’s the battlefield now.

Which is all the more reason why we need to know why we’re fighting. Which means we need to know who we are, as a country and as a culture. What are the values we prize so highly that we would kill for them and die for them?

That means knowing why we have fought before.

Obviously museums are a key ideological battleground. Not just here, but in the U.S., too. In the run-up to the 1995 commemoration of the Enola Gay, the U.S. B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a national debate arose over the Smithsonian’s approach to the subject, which characterized the Japanese as “victims”, and the Americans as motivated by “vengeance”.

...In the end, the exhibit was cancelled; the museum’s director left; and a straightforward, minimalist display replaced it. Nonetheless it became the most popular special exhibit ever, with over 1-million visitors in the first year.

Why?

Because the America of 1945 wasn’t the America of 1995; the word “Jap” was in common parlance; ethnically exaggerated cartoons; approaches to domestic civil liberties were different. All of the collateral political fashions changed, even if the central historical facts didn’t. A museum isn’t the same as a war memorial; it tells both sides, not just one. But the Smithsonian seemed to be choosing sides – the other side.

Of course, museums are not the only place where history is treated. In 1992, the CBC’s TV mini-series, the Valour and the Horror, gave what many veterans claimed was an inaccurate and biased condemnation of Canadian troops, including the allegation of significant, but unprosecuted war crimes...

Paul Gross’s film Paschendaele also had significant public funding. It was well received in some ways, for merely talking about a battle and a war that was arguably more important to Canada’s history than the Second World War, but receives less public attention. And while that effort was certainly less controversial, it was still flavoured with a decidedly 2008 sense of political fashion: that patriotism was for fools; that the war was pointless; and that the true victims were German-Canadians who were treated unfairly. I’m not so paranoid to think that the fact that the chief bigot in the movie was a Calgary man named Mr. Harper, is a political statement. But it was a heck of a coincidence.

The movie made volunteer soldiers look like dupes; even Paul Gross’s character, the so-called hero, committed an atrocity in the war, and later said he had been a bank-robber. I don’t think there would be much debate about the horrors of the war, especially the muck and mire of European trench warfare. But there was another part to that story; I won’t even call it another side, but another part: that it was a political coming of age for Canada; that it was an expression of unprecedented volunteerism, of national pride, of pride in the monarchy and things military. That was completely excised in the film.

History has winners and losers; good ideas and bad ones; successes and failures. One of the reasons why Canada is so great is because we have been, generally, on the side of the good ideas, the noble causes.

But the politically correct world view holds that everything is of equal value; there is no one truth, merely many truths; that if we think we’re right, or know better than another nation, it might just be ethnocentrism, or outright bigotry.

So all sides are equal.

That might be a fashion in 2009. But that's not history in 1917 Belgium, or 1945 Japan. So a movie that draws no moral distinction between Canada and Germany in the First World War – in fact, a movie in which all of the atrocities and bigotries are those perpetrated by the Canadians and British, not the Germans – is simply not how it was. An exhibit that treats the imperialist military ambitions of Japan as victims of an American counterstrike is simply not accurate.

But put aside mere accuracy.

For if all sides were equal, why did we fight a war? It doesn’t make any moral sense. If we weren’t in the right, as Gross implies, then Canadians weren't fighting in a war -- we were not much more than murderers.

But that’s a form of ethno-centrism, too, in a way. Instead of being Canadian chauvinists, we’re being chauvinists of the fashions of 2009, judging everything through the delicate and fickle fads of today.

I don’t dispute that many of our habits today are superior than those of the past – our approach to minorities, and human rights, and civil liberties. But to be so dainty when looking at the past is to have a sort of imperialism of the present. It just doesn’t work. You can condemn, for example, the signatories of the U.S. Declaration of Independence for owning slaves; but if that were to become the chief focus of any discussion, it would inappropriately obscure the true nature and accomplishments of those men – and the fact that the seeds they planted would one day uproot slavery.

...there is a place for cheerleading, and it’s more for monuments than for museums. But in Canada, we did get the big things right, maybe more than anywhere else in the world. And, I put it to you, that’s why so many people come here: the things we take for granted, especially our chattering classes, the things we have grown accustomed to so much that we don’t even notice them, are the things that are still miraculous achievements in the eyes of most people in the world. It’s why people come here from the world’s less-blessed countries. It’s why we have net immigration.

Those old values – the values that Canada loudly lived during our formative years and especially our formative wars – may be out of style, but they still define our country. They’re chauvinistic values – pride, patriotism, moral confidence, defiance of enemies, strong self-knowledge – when compared to the relativistic mush of multiculturalism. Ironically, it is exactly those old values that have made our country to appealing to people from different corners of the world....

The rest of the speech was extemporaneous. It led to a great discussion with museum managers from around the country. What a fascinating group of people! I truly wish I could have stayed for the whole conference.

And I look forward to a speedy return to Ottawa, so I can spend more time exploring our first rate War Museum itself.

Deborah Gyapong has the scoop: Real Menard, the Bloc Quebecois MP from the riding of Hochelaga, has endorsed the Conservative motion at the Parliamentary Justice Committee to review the Canadian Human Rights Commission's conduct. This is encouraging, as it is evidence (as if any was needed) that freedom of expression is important to MPs from both sides of the aisle.

Menard was one of the first MPs to "come out" as gay. I mention this because it is part of an encouraging consensus I observe amongst Canadian gay politicians to value freedom of expression over the fake "human right" not to be offended. I attribute that, as I mentioned the other day when Xtra magazine again denounced the CHRC's censorship provisions, to the fact that gays still remember when their views were regarded as dissidence, and were subject to government censorship.

In the last Parliament, a similar Conservative motion was put to the committee, but no action was taken, as the committee was shut down over partisan bickering. This Parliament's committee seems to be more functional. I look forward to more encouraging news from it.

Why not drop a quick e-mail to Menard to encourage him to strengthen freedom of expression. I'm sure that most of my readers are hostile to the philosophy of the Bloc Quebecois; but I put it to you that makes Menard's alliance on this issue even more valuable, not less. He demonstrates that freedom is valued by people from the left to the right, separatist or federalist, gay or straight.

Dear friends,

It was almost exactly three years ago that the Western Standard magazine, and I as its publisher, were the targets of a complaint before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, filed by a radical Muslim imam from Calgary, and another identical complaint filed by his Edmonton allies. My crime? We had reprinted several of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, to illustrate a news story about the subject. I know that sounds nuts: showing artifacts of the news, in a news magazine, is normal in Canada; what was abnormal was the Saudi-style fatwa that was unleashed against us. Fifteen government bureaucrats and lawyers investigated me for 900 days, leaving me with $100,000 in legal bills -- and the taxpayers of Alberta out five times that -- before the charges were dropped.

It was an abuse of process. It was a corruption of the notion of "human rights" -- it destroyed real civil rights, like freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. And it violated norms of natural justice and due process.

With legions of others, I have been raising a ruckus about this attack on our fundamental freedoms, especially over the past year. I've focused most of my energies at the federal level, where I perceived the Canadian Human Rights Commission to be a particularly egregious abuser, and where I thought that the Conservative government would be amenable to changing the law.

It is therefore with some surprise, and great delight, that I draw your attention to a huge scoop published today by the Calgary Sun's incomparable Rick Bell. Bell interviewed Lindsay Blackett, the freshman cabinet minister in the Alberta government who is in charge of that province's human rights commission -- the one that went after me, and issued an abominable sentence to Rev. Stephen Boission, too.

I'll be honest: I didn't hold out much hope for Blackett. Shame on me for my pessimism! I had confused public silence with private inactivity. It seems, though, that Blackett was doing his due diligence before wading into the debate in public. And he has waded in, indeed!

His words are stirring; and if he follows up in like-minded deeds, he truly will be a hero for everyone who loves freedom -- freedom of speech and religion, freedom to dissent from conventional wisdom, freedom to be yourself, no matter what political correctness demands. Freedom to breathe!

I simply don't want to leave a single word out, so here is Bell's column. I've bolded my favourite parts, including the great headline:

Alberta minister wants our human rights commission to get back to fighting for real freedoms ... hope he doesn't hurt anyone's feelings

Freedom of speech? What a concept. Glad it's coming back.

Lindsay Blackett is the minister responsible for Alberta's human rights commission.

He wants the commission to stop playing censor.

He wants to change the law so the commission will no longer investigate complaints from those offended by the opinions of others.

He wants the commission to go back to protecting people against discrimination in jobs, housing and access to facilities and not clamping down on those who make statements another person or persons don't like.

The minister, who is a Calgary MLA and a refreshing voice in the provincial Tory inner circle, says the original protections involve about 96% of the complaints currently made, though those whining about free speech hurting them sure suck up a lot of ink.

"People have the right to say what they believe and Albertans strongly believe in that right," says Lindsay.

"We've got to try and find what was the purpose of the human rights commission to start with back in 1972."

"For me, it's back to the future and the simplicity of what the human rights commissions is supposed to be. It was originally just intended to provide protection against discrimination on grounds of race, colour, creed, religion and so on with respect to employment, accommodation and access to services. That's it."

"It wasn't about hurt feelings. The reason a lot of human rights commissions are disrespected across the country is because they've forgotten that.

"We want the commission to be a quasi-judicial body that has some teeth, that has some credibility but doesn't operate like a kangaroo court."

Until 1996, Albertans, quite rightly, could not publish a notice or sign discriminating against a person or group.

You know, a sign reading: No This Group Or That Group Allowed.

In 1996, in a move echoed across Canada and instigated by those who do not respect human rights, statements and publications were added to the no-go list in this province. You suddenly couldn't say certain things or write certain things "likely to expose a person or class of persons to hatred or contempt."

You could drive a truck through that clause. It is political correctness on steroids. And everyone with an axe to grind was handed a sharpener. So here we are.

It doesn't take long for Lindsay to go into greater details about his feelings on free speech. The man is clearly passionate and he doesn't hold back, a refreshing quality in a politician.

He says he's talked to a lot of folks, from judges and law professors and human-rights advocates to former premier Peter Lougheed, who brought in this province's human rights commission back in 1972.

He has kind words for the Sheldon Chumir Foundation, a group recently recommending the nixing of those portions of current provincial law gagging freedom of speech.

"People shouldn't feel they can't come to Canada, like a university professor who talks about a subject matter and then there are reprisals," says the cabinet minister.

"They should have the ability to say what they say and somebody should have their ability to have the counter argument. That is what a free and open society does. Let's get away from trying to mediate everybody's feelings."

Lindsay talks about being turned down by a girl at a school dance with all his pals watching.

"You feel about two inches tall. I guess maybe I should have taken her to the Human Rights Commission because I had hurt feelings. Where does it end?"

His plans have not been taken to Tory MLAs for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, but he is preparing and sounds confident.

"We haven't talked about it at caucus or cabinet yet, but I've already gone through a few steps. Generally there's support, the support to make a change and do something and not just sit back and say because it's a tough subject we should stay away from it.

"I don't think provisions for more freedom of speech are a problem. I think people on both sides of the political spectrum appreciate it."

We can hope.

Lindsay adds he believes the Criminal Code of Canada could be toughened up to deal with actual hate crimes.

From the commission, he wants the procedure for legit complaints streamlined.

The right to be protecting against discrimination because of sexual orientation is already read into the law following a Supreme Court ruling in the '90s.

Since the right is protected, Lindsay says he will have to consider putting sexual orientation into the law in plain words when legislation gets a rewrite.

Lindsay does not name a specific time for any amendments, but you sense it will be sooner than later, as in sometime this year.

As with any fight for freedom, it couldn't come soon enough.

Good lord that's encouraging. He knows what's wrong; he's unafraid to call a kangaroo court -- his kangaroo court! -- like he sees it. He's unafraid to get the HRC out of the censorship business. And he's smart enough to see that it's a political winner.

(Psst: don't tell Warren Kinsella about Blackett's opposition to HRCs. He'll accuse the minister of being a closet neo-Nazi!)

Friends, take a moment to write a note of encouragement to Blackett. If he follows through on his public statements -- and it would be tough not to, now -- he will be a hero, not just to Albertans, but to everyone who cherishes our Western heritage of freedom. It just might be a shot against censorship heard around the world, from B.C. and Ontario to England and Holland.

This is the best news on the freedom of speech front in a year!

 

 

 

Last week was my first visit back to the Ottawa since the election, and it was a great "sense check" on my hunch that there remains momentum for reform of Canada's human rights commissions. I had worried that the attempted putsch by the opposition coalition, and the important focus of the economy, had meant that reining in abusive and corrupt human rights commissions had fallen off the political radar of the government. I'm very pleased to report that all of the MPs and senior staff with whom I met were very alive to the issue, and were in fact working on keeping momentum going.

As I've written before, there is now a motion before the Justice Committee for reviewing the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and its censorship powers; there is also an internal Justice Department review; and there are plenty of MPs and senior staff not directly involved in that portfolio who continue to support reform. I was pleased to meet with a number of "freshmen" MPs -- ones who were just elected in October, and are still finding their feet -- and I was pleased with their command of the facts of this issue. We know that support for reform is wide -- 99% of delegates at the Conservative Party's convention in November supported repealing section 13, the censorship provision.

All of those I spoke with also saw the issue as a political winner -- not only with the Conservative party's base (both the libertarian and socially conservative wings) but also with other groups who have not traditionally be sympathetic to the party, but who love freedom of expression: artists and journalists, to name two groups. I have to agree -- other than hacks who collect a paycheque or a fat contract from HRCs, there really aren't a lot of people in Canada willing to stand up for censorship. It's so un-Canadian, people really have to be paid to support it.

That seems an appropriate segue to note two strong columns against HRCs' censorship powers. The first is from the Montreal Gazette, entitled "Another assault on press freedom". See -- how can you lose politically by being for press freedom? Here are some excerpts:

...[HRCs] certainly seem to have notions about free speech and a free press that are profoundly at odds with the traditions of Western democracy.

One of the worst of the lot is the Ontario Human Rights Commission, infamous for trying - and failing - to drag Maclean's magazine and writer Mark Steyn before its tribunal because some Muslims and a few law students claimed that an article Steyn wrote was offensive.

Last week this commission managed to outdo even that shabby misadventure, with a preposterous suggestion that every publication in the country, including "media services" websites, be required by law to belong to a national press council that could adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination. Chillingly, the council would have the power to order offending media to publish its findings, along with counterarguments from complainants. And in a bit of verbal legerdemain that would make Big Brother wince, the commission claimed that this would not constitute censorship.

...If someone wants to start a rabidly partisan, scurrilous scandal sheet, that's fine with us, too. State-compelled norms of behaviour are censorship, not idealism.

The underlying problem here might be that liberty has once again run into one of its most formidable foes - the bureaucratic mind. Such minds recoil at the unruliness of the media - among other things - and won't rest until all participants in public discourse are fully regulated by government. They do all this "for the common good," of course.

But when they succeed, we can all kiss our precious freedoms goodbye.

And here's an Op-Ed in the Calgary Herald, written by Dan Shapiro of the liberal (in the best sense of that word) Sheldon Chumir Foundation, focusing on Alberta's provincial equivalent to section 13. Some excerpts:

It is time to amend Section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act, which prohibits writing or saying anything that is "likely to expose" a person to "hatred or contempt."

Why? Because Section 3 casts far too wide a net and risks chilling legitimate expression on topics of importance to public discussion, such as gay marriage or Islamic terrorism.

...Freedom of expression should be given the widest legal scope possible because the effects of allowing human rights bureaucrats to determine what we are allowed to think and say are too ghastly to contemplate. Think Soviet Russia. Of course, Alberta today is nowhere near totalitarianism, but history has taught us that freedoms are fragile and vigilance has to be eternal.

The Chumir Foundation would amend the section, not abolish it. But the fact that they agree that it's a Soviet-style problem is all that matters to me right now -- we've got to dynamite the Alberta HRC out of its inertia, and crack it open to legislative reforms. I'm for pulling the weed out by its roots; others are for trimming it. That's a debate for later -- for now, we can all agree that changes are needed.

I love reading commentaries like these, especially in the newspapers of record in great cities like Montreal and Calgary. It happens so frequently these days, that I don't even always note it on my blog. What a difference from a year ago, when this national campaign for freedom of speech just began, and one had to scour the papers for any sign of progress. Now the progress comes daily -- not just in the media, but as my trip to Ottawa confirmed for me, in the halls of government, too.

I just spoke at the Canadian Jewish Law Students Association annual conference in Ottawa. The theme was human rights, so I'm delighted that I was invited to give my perspective, as someone who had been put through the wringer of a human rights commission.

I compared the counterfeit Canadian "human rights commissions" with the Orwellian "human rights council" at the United Nations, and pointed out that neither actually lived up to their name -- both were turned into tools of political abuse; both actually violated human rights.

I was pleased with how engaged the students were -- we had to tack on an extra half hour for questions and answers. The group was divided between those who understood the new threat posed by HRCs, and those who still clung to the naive hope that maybe criminalizing "hate" would somehow spare the Jews the hatred that is increasingly being directed at them around the world and here in Canada.

Uh, if all it took was a law to end hate, we would have passed the "Love Each Other Act" a long time ago. There is no magic spell like that. And laws, like section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, that seek to criminalize "hatred and contempt" actually breed more hatred and contempt, for they compound the feelings of grievance felt by those who are targeted by the law, because the implementation of the law is by necessity so politically biased.

There was a Tutsi law student from McGill (not Jewish, I assume!) in attendance, and he suggested that if hate speech laws had been in place in Rwanda when he was a child, the anti-Tutsi bigotry (that he encountered as an eight-year-old) wouldn't have manifested itself later in massacres.

Again, naive thinking -- even moreso. Because it was the undemocratic, illiberal Hutu government (if I recall his assessment) that butchered the Tutsis, I'm not quite sure how an anti-hate-speech law, in the hands of that same Hutu government, would have spared the Tutsis. As I said to him: such a vague and political law, in the hands of an anti-Tutsi government, would probably have been used as just another tool to attack any Tutsis that dared speak up against their own destruction.

I mean, if a government cared so little for real human rights -- right to life, right to self-defence, mobility rights, property rights, etc. -- why would it suddenly stop to care so deeply for fake human rights, like the right not to have your feelings hurt?

He didn't have an answer, and nor did the other dreamers in the crowd, who are clearly looking for some silver bullet to stop the anti-Semitic hate in the world. They didn't take kindly to being reminded that Weimar Germany had anti-hate speech laws, laws that not only were impotent to stop Adolf Hitler, but that were actually used by Hitler once he himself took over.

Sorry folks: there is no easy way to combat the human emotion of hate, other than through hard political and personal work. It's foolish to entrust that work, to outsource it, to a corrupt, political, wasteful government agency like a human rights commission.

There were a number of Jewish students who squawked at my brutal assessment of HRCs; but I didn't feel that any of them had a strong counter-argument. I challenged those who called for censorship to be mighty sure that the gag laws they stand for are never used against them -- an obsolete challenge already, given the abuse of such laws by the Canadian Islamic Congress, et al. Any Jew who would double down on censorship laws in the face of that ongoing abuse is clearly in denial: our enemies are using censorship to silence us, and only a fool would strengthen those tools. Jews -- perpetual dissidents, perpetual minorities -- should be the last people who would want to criminalize anomalous views.

Fortunately, a good number of the students were on the side of liberty, judging by the number of students who approached me before and after my speech. I think they see that the threat of "hate" in Canada today does not come from white neo-Nazi nobodies on the Internet -- Richard Warman's fetish at the CHRC -- but rather from radical Islam on the streets, which Warman, the CHRC and other HRCs studiously ignore, out of political correctness and outright fear.

Warman addressed the CJLSA last year; I took a few moments to document for the students some of the neo-Nazi organizations Warman has joined over the years, and some of the filthy anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-Black comments he had written on their websites. Something tells me Warman didn't disclose that to the students when he told them how heroic he was.

A couple of months ago, Warman and I were invited to debate each other, in Ottawa, at the annual meeting of the media lawyers association. I accepted immediately; Warman declined. Of course he declined, the same way Warren Kinsella declines to debate me (and in fact tries to stop journalists from even talking with his political opponents). Because that's how censors operate. They are either unable or unwilling to justify their arguments and make their cases, and they certainly don't like to take criticism. I loved the back and forth with the students today -- and they seemed to like it enough to keep it going for an unscheduled extra half hour.

I think if Kinsella or Warman had taken the tough questions I did, they would have probably sued some of the students for defamation, or filed human rights complaints against the kids. That's really all those two know how to do. How pitiful. I sense that young Jewish law students today are far more open to the ideas of liberty and the importance of free speech than they might have been five years ago. We're winning their "hearts and minds" -- even my invitation (my second in three years) is a sign of that sea change amongst what was once a uniformly liberal group.

It was a great conference.

I'll be back in Ottawa mid-next week, to give another speech, this one open to the public (there is a registration fee). I'm the dinner speaker at a conference at the War Museum. I'm really excited about my topic: "The Importance of Politically Incorrect History". If you're in town on Wednesday night, come by! 

Warren Kinsella, a senior aide to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, attempted to interfere with an editorial decision made by a public broadcaster today.

TV Ontario invited Kathy Shaidle, who blogs at Five Feet of Fury, to debate the "atheist bus" campaign. Kinsella, who was hand-picked by Ignatieff to head up the Liberal war-room, immediately went ballistic, contacting the show's host, Steve Paikin, and demanding that Shaidle be un-invited.

Then Kinsella continued his hysterics, e-mailing provincial MPPs and staff, screeching that Shaidle must be persona non grata. He tried to get an online "campaign" going to stop her.

To their credit, the Liberal government of Ontario ignored Kinsella.

Kinsella had objected to some of Kathy's spicier comments, especially about multiculturalism. I think Kathy would probably agree that sometimes her choice of words is rude -- I think that's often her deliberate choice. It's her style, and people can take it or leave it. But whether TVO, or the CBC, or any other news organization, public or private, chooses to interview her is their own independent editorial decision. For the senior advisor to the Leader of the Opposition to demand that a news outlet declare anyone a non-person is outrageous. It's un-Canadian for politicians to tell us what we can or can't hear.

Is this a sign of how Ignatieff and the Liberal war room will operate during the campaign? Will they try to bully and harangue reporters who dare to report news that Ignatieff doesn't like?

Will they e-mail producers and editors lists of who are approved people to speak with, and who are on blacklists?

Will they attempt to use levers of government power -- as Kinsella did here by contacting TVO's responsible MPP in the Ontario government -- to force journalists to comply with Ignatieff's demands, if the reporters and producers, like Paikin and his producer Dan Dunsky, are too non-partisan to take their marching orders from any political party?

These are not hypothetical questions. After the APEC scandal, where Jean Chretien's PMO was found to have ordered the RCMP to pepper spray peaceful protesters at the University of British Columbia, Liberal political staffers tried to cover up the PMO's foul moves by putting political pressure on Terry Milewski, the CBC's reporter on the file. They were relentless, both politically and legally, especially as Milewski got closer and closer to the truth about Liberal interference with police decisions.

The CBC, to their eternal discredit, caved, taking Milewski off the story.

That was a dark chapter for the CBC and for press freedom in Canada. It's deeply troubling that, right when the Ontario Human Rights Commission is proposing a government agency to monitor journalists and to "correct" them when they're politically incorrect, Ignatieff's campaign jumps on the idea and tries to take it for a spin.

Did Michael Ignatieff approve of this heavy-handed move by his senior aide? Or was he suprised and embarrassed, again?

At least when Chretien's PMO muscled the CBC, they weren't so stupid as to do so via a public campaign of intimidation. Instead, it was a more surgical, quiet attack on the CBC behind the scenes. Kinsella, by contrast, announced his every move -- including his e-mails to TVO's political bosses -- for the world to see. That's about as stupid as, oh, say, when Kinsella worked at the Public Works ministry, and he put in writing his demand to the civil service to funnel all advertising and polling contracts through Chuck Guite. Not subtle, this one.

A thought experiment: What would be the reaction if the head of the Conservative war room, Jason Kenney, had done the same thing? What if Kenney had written to the CBC, demanding that they no longer interview someone who had uttered bigoted remarks (oh, say, someone who had said that Chinese people eat cat meat, and serve it in Canadian restaurants)? And, if the CBC's producers and reporters had studiously ignored him, what if Kenney would have then contacted the federal minister in charge of the CBC, and demanded that they blackball that same Liberal bigot?

Of course such a scenario would rightly be a political scandal.

Which brings me back to a theme I've been on for a while: why is the professor allowing the frat boy to embarrass the Liberal party on a weekly basis?

It's one thing for Kinsella to go off on his nutty tangents on his own -- to smear Chinese Canadians, to attempt to bully public broadcasters, etc. That shows his own bad judgment and his own lack of respect for intellectual diversity and freedom of speech.

But he's doing it in Ignatieff's name. He's doing it in the Liberal Party's name. Because -- as he so gleefully announced to the world -- he was hand-picked by Ignatieff to head up the war room.

You can't be both an independent pundit and a partisan hack without people confusing the two. When I worked for the Tory war room last fall, I stopped blogging. It wasn't that I was worried about embarrassing the party with a gaffe, though that was a possibility. It's that blogging on my own favourite issues would confuse my readers: was I speaking for myself or for the party? It's a pretty obvious problem.

But not obvious enough for either Kinsella to control himself, or for Ignatieff to control him, or for any other grown-ups in the Liberal Party to do something about it.

Week after week, Kinsella's increasingly erratic and extreme antics keep grabbing the news. Sometimes it's big news -- like the massive media coverage of Catscam. Sometimes it's smaller news, but news that sticks to the Liberals, like this whiff of media interference. What will it be next week?

I am sympathetic to the Tories, so I suppose I should cheer this lack of professionalism in the Liberal ranks. But it's still deeply troubling to me as a Canadian that any political party that aspires to be government would countenance the kind of journalistic censorship exhibited today by Kinsella.

POSTSCRIPT: There is a touch of comedy to this. Kinsella went apoplectic all day, whipping up the masses against TVO's journalistic independence. He exhorted his multitudes of readers (he once claimed to have a quarter million hits a day!) to demand Kathy's ouster. As of midnight tonight precisely twelve people have commented on TVO's web page for the episode -- six for her ouster, six against. Methinks the Liberal war room is a touch rusty.  

I've noted many time, with admiration, that Egale, Canada's largest gay lobby group, has opposed section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Here's Egale's chief, arguing against censorship, even against anti-gay "haters".

Egale even went further; in the abominable case of Lund v. Boissoin, where a busy-body activist complained against a Christian preacher, and the Alberta human rights commission sentenced Rev. Boissoin to a lifetime ban against him preaching about sexuality, Lund had originally requested that Boissoin be fined, and that the fine by paid to Egale.

When Egale heard about this, they advised Alberta's HRC that they were utterly against such censorship, and would not accept the blood money. (Lund then chivalrously requested it for himself, and the commission happily agreed.)

In its latest issue, Xtra, the Canadian gay magazine, has "come out" against human rights censorship yet again. Here's the column. Some excerpts:

...the very nature of the right to free speech is that they get to say it. Then, the rest of us get to argue with them, denounce their views, call it drivel — basically, joust with words.

But, instead, now folks go racing to human rights commissions and say, "I'm offended."

...we may all have a right to free speech, but no one has a right to be published in the newspaper. A free press means that the folks who own and publish and edit the press get to back those decisions.

...The hate speech provisions create an incentive to bring a complaint, so that you can actually then attract attention to your claim that something is offensive.

Sorry, but this is crazy. Human rights commissions should not be censors. They should not be deciding just what words are too offensive for the Canadian public to hear. Imagine how gay presses might have fared over the years with these kind of laws, since lots of Canadians think that the stuff that gay people say is, well, totally offensive.

Allow me to draw a comparison between Canada's gay activists and Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is far more hawkish in the war on terror, and in standing up to Vladimir Putin's passive aggression, than Western Europe is. That's because everyone in Eastern Europe can still remember when they lived under Soviet repression. They still value their freedoms, and remember how much they endured without them.

Western Europe (Old Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld accurately called it) has lived in freedom since the Second World War. The fight for freedom is the stuff of dusty history books, and black and white film archives.

Do you see the comparison? It wasn't too long ago that Canadian gays were themselves the targets of censorship, and other violations of civil liberties. Even I'm old enough to remember when Little Sisters book store had their, uh, materials seized by Canada customs. And it wasn't so long before that that homosexuality was actually a crime in the criminal code.

My point is that for many Canadian gays, especially those for whom being gay is a political statement, memories of censorship -- especially at the hands of the government -- is still fresh. For the bulk of Canadians, the idea of government censorship is completely alien.

I like moral support in the war against censorship from my conservative friends. But I must admit that I like it even more from left-wingers who, like Xtra's colunnist, think my views are "drivel". Because that's the point here: no-one needs political or legal support to say bland, inoffensive things that everyone agrees with. It's those things that cause divisions that are prone to censorship. For those on the other side of the political divide to support my freedom of speech, despite their own political tastes, is an act of principle that I admire.

Catscam, the kerfuffle over the Liberal Party's anti-Chinese slur, is entering its third week.

Here is Alice Wong, Conservative MP, talking about it in the house: 

 

And here is the Vancouver Sun report on her comments. An excerpt:

A Richmond Conservative MP called on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to apologize to China's ambassador for 'hurtful' comments by Ignatieff's aide Warren Kinsella.

Alice Wong said Monday that Kinsella's joke that Chinese restaurants serve “barbecue cat" is quickly becoming an international embarrassment for Canada.

"During these economic times, we cannot afford to needlessly offend a billion potential customers," she told the House of Commons. "We do not need to offend the world's most populous country.

"The Liberal leader should immediately write the Chinese ambassador to apologize and affirm that Canada respects China, and the Leader of the Opposition must finally act and fire his top political strategist, Mr. Warren Kinsella."

Kinsella meanwhile, continues to do what the Chinese language press -- both here in Canada and in China -- call an "ironic apology". He says he's sorry, but then he lashes out -- especially at Wong.

Here's the funny thing about that. It keeps the story alive, because Kinsella's reaction gives the story more fuel. But the story really isn't getting much play in the English language press (though I did talk with Corus radio's Dave Rutherford about it for 15 minutes today.) But it's getting big play in the Chinese language press. And Kinsella, who is thoroughly discredited in that media already, now thinks that flinging mud at a Chinese-Canadian MP -- a source of pride for Chinese-Canadians of any political stripe -- will somehow win the Liberal Party some points. Again, his torrent of insults against Wong isn't getting any pick-up in the mainstream media -- the only people still watching his antics are Chinese-Canadians who are already mad at him. It's just fascinating that the master war-roomer thinks that he's doing his party any favours this way. 

Mark Steyn stopped by the Ontario legislature on Monday for just 30 minutes, but his visit was probably the most headline-grabbing testimony before a government committee in memory.

Here's the Toronto Star:

Steyn, whose work is published around the world so he has emerged as something of an international cause celebre for freedom-of-speech, said it was "a drive-by verdict."

"That is the very defining act of a police state: an apparatchik announcing that a citizen is guilty of dissent from state orthodoxy," said the author, accompanied by a dozen supporters, including one clad in a "Viva Steyn" T-shirt.

"But here's the point: Maclean's and I have no fear of Barbara Hall, the commission or the tribunal. You're welcome to try and do your worst to us. We have deep pockets, we pushed back and we filled the newspapers with stories about all these wacky cases that Barbara Hall and others are so obsessed about. Like all tinpot bullies, the commission couldn't take the heat and backed down," he said.

"No one was disputing the truth of what I wrote, nobody was arguing that it was libellous or seditious or false, for all of which there would be appropriate legal remedy. In essence, the plaintiffs were arguing that they'd been offended. Well, offensiveness is in the eye of the offended," said Steyn.

"When you subordinate legal principles to ideological fashion, you place genuine liberties in peril and that's the state in Ontario today. If you don't believe in free speech for people you loathe, you don't believe in free speech at all."

the Toronto Sun:

Ontario's Human Rights Commission is made up of "ideological activists" and should be dismantled, author and columnist Mark Steyn told a Queen's Park legislative committee yesterday.

Steyn also referred to commission chairman Barbara Hall as a "commissar."

"I believe in the abolition of the commission, because I believe the commission is nothing but ideological activists," Steyn told the standing committee on government agencies.

"I have no objection to that; I've been accused of that, myself. But I do it on my own dime and I don't see why commissar Hall and her colleagues shouldn't also do it on their own dime."

and the Ottawa Citizen:

Ontario's human rights system is a "laughing stock" and should be abolished, author and firebrand columnist Mark Steyn told a government committee in Toronto yesterday.

"Free societies should not be in the business of criminalizing opinion," Mr. Steyn, a columnist for Maclean's, told members of Ontario's standing committee on government agencies.

"When you go down that road, all you do is lead to the situation that you have in, say, Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, you can't start a newspaper and print what you think, so if you object to the House of Saud, the only thing you can do is blow stuff up."

(I already cited the National Post.)

There's a lot more on the move; Brian Storseth of Parliament's Justice Committee is reintroducing a motion to review the CHRC's conduct and section 13. I understand that it looks set to pass -- though it's yoked to a Bloc motion to include "social condition" as a grounds of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Whatever; this committee isn't writing laws. The point is to have a public, Parliamentary investigation into the corruption and abuse of the CHRC -- starting, in my opinion, with their membership in neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront and Vanguard.

I'm excited that the momentum for reform is back, and that it's got a toe-hold both in the Ontario and national Parliaments.

In healthy democracies, the media is a watchdog over the government.

In the soft tyranny of Canada's human rights commissions, the government is the watchdog over the media.

More eye-opening reporting from Joseph Brean, the MSM's most prolific HRC-watcher:

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling for Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and "media services" Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination.

The council would have the power to order the publication of its decisions and "would help bring about more consistency across all jurisdictions in Canada," reads an OHRC report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Human rights commissions are obsolete; the battles for equality of the sexes and races were won decades ago; the number of HRC complaints in Ontario has actually fallen year over year, despite that province's population growth. Think about that: the most ethnically diverse province in Canada has a declining number of human rights complainers, according to their own annual reports. That's good news to normal people -- but to those who need to stimulate and manufacture grievances in order to maintain and grow their bureaucratic empires, that's very bad news indeed.

By putting the entire media -- including blogs! -- under HRC jurisdictions, there will be an endless source of bitching and complaining, all of which will need very lengthy and detailed investigations by the government -- punctuated by 5-star junkets.

Fire. Them. All.

Richard Moon, the Windsor law professor who was paid $52,500 by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to write a 42-page report on the CHRC's censorship powers, is very angry at me.

He was in Toronto testifying before a provincial committee looking at Ontario's human rights commission. But for some reason he felt the need to unburden himself about... little old me!

According to the National Post, Moon "lashed out at his admirers" (what a great line -- it's true, Moon has become an unlikely hero because of his surprise recommendation to scrap the section 13 censorship provision):

He accused them of launching a "smear campaign" against human rights commissions and "baseless personal attacks" against their staff.

"I urge the committee not to be taken in by these individuals. They don't care about the truth. They make stuff up," he said in a submission to an Ontario government committee reviewing the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

..."I'm very disappointed," said Lisa MacLeod [the MPP from] (Nepean-Carleton, Ont.). "I didn't call you in to make accusations and call people liars."

Prof. Moon targeted Ezra Levant in particular, whose blog is a clearinghouse for skepticism of human rights law, and who claimed the day before Prof. Moon's report was released that it had been "redacted by Jennifer Lynch," the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

"The claim was false," Prof. Moon told the all-party panel. "I was given complete independence, and when my report was released the following day and recommended the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the falsity of Levant's claim was obvious. He had just made it up. He thought he knew what I would say and he sought to discredit the report in advance by attacking me and the commission rather than the arguments I might make."

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I'll say a few things.

First, Moon's review specifically barred him from investigating the unethical conduct of the CHRC -- including, for example, their memberships in neo-Nazi organizations. He simply didn't look into it. Yet he pronounces that those accusations were "made up".

I think he makes a perfect HRC shill, don't you? Don't bother with an investigation -- just issue the conclusions. No ethical problems here!

Second, I think the real reason why Moon is sore at me is because I highlighted his enormous payment for his work, and that embarrassed him. More to the point, I sent him dozens of questions for his inquiry, every single one of which he studiously ignored. So I think I proved his review a sham. You can see my questions here, and his report here.

Third, he says it's false that his report was reviewed by Jennifer Lynch before it was released, and he claims to have had full independence. But his written contract shows that his protestations of independence just aren't true. As you can see here, he was in fact required to run his report by the CHRC, and he was required to accept their changes

Fourth, he says I falsely stated he would whitewash the report, saying I just "made that up". A prediction isn't really true or false when it's made -- it's only later proved right or wrong. And I was delighted that my prediction was wrong, to a degree -- Moon in fact recommended the repeal of section 13 censorship provisions, before spending dozens of pages explaining how more censorship provisions are needed.

But the truth is even more interesting. Moon didn't whitewash section 13 in his report -- but Jennifer Lynch has. The day Moon's report came out, the CHRC's press release about the subject didn't even mention his central recommendation of scrapping section 13, but rather immediately announced further reviews, "do-overs" -- to bury his report.

Part of me envies Moon -- being paid $52,500 to write a short report is a pretty sweet gig. It beats blogging. But I don't think I could sleep at night, if I had recommended selling out my countrymen's freedom for a pile of gold.

I love that he's angry. I don't think he's mad at me as much as he's mad at his conscience. 

UPDATE: Canwest News Service interviews Moon about me -- and cites my blog in rebuttal! 

I was on the Michael Coren Show today. They've got a studio in Calgary now, so it's easier for me to participate. The major theme of the show today was political correctness. I admit I lost my patience with it all, in this segment, YouTubed courtesy of SDA Matt:

 

I'm not sure if the words "ass" and "clown" were the best I could do, but at the time they seemed a better choice than any $100 word I could muster.

Until a few years ago, I would have thought that feminism had run its course. Women have now achieved everything in society that men can achieve, and are limited only by their own ambitions and choices. Time to pack up the revolution, and move on to another fight.

But that's changed in recent years, as the most fundamental basics of feminism -- equality before the law -- have been challenged by radical Islam, not just overseas but right here in Canada. The likes of Judy Rebick are too silent when it comes to honour killings like that of Toronto's Aqsa Parvez, or polygamous marriages like those solemnized by Toronto's Aly Hindy. We actually need real feminists again, but they're too busy showing how "tolerant" they are of misogynistic cultures to care.

I'd love your feedback.

The Canadian economy is in recession; MPs and cabinet ministers are being told to curtail wasteful expenses, like first-class travel.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is under massive scrutiny for its misbehaviour. Its own hand-picked consultant, Prof. Richard Moon, recommends that its censorship provisions be scrapped. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper tells Maclean's magazine in a year-end interview with him that Canada's HRCs are "abusive" and their conduct is "egregious".

So what does Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the CHRC do?

She hops on a plane to Vienna, for a bacchanalia, celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of another five-star, caviar-and-champagne United Nations meeting about "human rights". Maybe they'll meet next year to celebrate the first anniversary of this celebration. Why not? If chump taxpayers will pay for it, let's go!

Lynch's flight alone cost more than $7,000. This morning I went on Air Canada's website, and you can get a return flight from Ottawa to Vienna for $960, including taxes and fees (as if any trip was appropriate). But that's just for the little people. For the big people -- the international superstars, those who live above the law, and certainly above trifles like political accountability -- anything less than first class just won't do.

Fire. Them. All.

UPDATE: It looks like Lynch has been sharing the wealth -- with David Langtry, her deputy chief commissioner. Check out his expense report for three months, September to November, 2008. Langtry racked up nearly $40,000 in travel and hospitality in that quarter alone.

That included a whopping $10,000 trip to Kenya. Nice work. Join the human rights commission see the world -- in five-star style.

Then there's his $7,000 trip to Geneva and -- by far my favourite -- a $3,500 trip to Mexico. Oh yes, we've got a lot to learn about human rights from Mexico. Better take five days in the gorgeous sun to study that one very carefully.

But the most objectionable thing about Langtry's expenses is what I can only surmise is his weekly commute to Ottawa, at up to $2,000 a week in travel and expenses. I don't know where Langtry lives -- judging by those receipts, I'm guessing in London, England. And, judging by his hotel bill in Ottawa, I'm guessing he stays at the Chateau Laurier. Nothing but the finest!

You'd think that someone who had a full time job in Ottawa would deign to move to Ottawa. But why bother, when the spendthrift CHRC will turn you into a jet-setter, on the public dime. Recession? Not at the CHRC! Too bad he doesn't use all his frequent flyer points to pay for his Kenya and Geneva jaunts. But why should he? He's entitled to his entitlements, just like his role model, Jennifer Lynch is.

Fire. Them. All.

 

This is an incredible document.

It’s an embarrassment to the University of Calgary.

Frankly, it’s an embarrassment to the whole city.

More to the point, it’s an embarrassment to anyone supports the University of Calgary – especially alumni donors.

For it is in their name that this letter was sent.

It was sent last fall. And it’s being acted on now.

A political group of students on campus – they happen to be the pro-life group, but does it really matter? – wanted to have a peaceful demonstration. Demonstrations, displays, banners, posters – these things are a daily occurrence at U of C and other universities. But only this one is being banned by the university administration.

As I noted the other day, the U of C isn’t just using its own student rules to silence these kids; and it isn’t just threatening them with civil lawsuits. It has dispatched the Calgary Police Service to hand-deliver criminal summonses to them, at their homes.

I’m all for private property and the law of trespass. But to try to shoehorn registered students at the U of C into the category of “trespasser”, simply because they have a strong political point of view, is a transparent sham.

It’s an abuse of process.

It’s an abuse of the police.

And that’s why the university did it.

That letter isn’t a real legal letter. It’s written very carefully, very skillfully, with one goal in mind: to intimidate the young students (see picture, above) who wanted to have their pro-life display.

Imagine being a teenaged girl, and receiving a knock on your door. You probably still live at home; your parents are shocked when it’s the police asking for you. It’s a summons.

You’ve probably not dealt with the police ever before – except for maybe a speeding ticket. And now they’ve come to your home, to charge you with trespass.

It’s shock treatment – designed to cause the girls to give up, in fear and shame.

It’s not a real lawsuit. It’s a bogus charge. Shame on the police and prosecutors for going along with it. Shame on the university for scheming up such a plan.

The University of Calgary should pay massively for this abomination of everything liberal.

They should lose endowments. They should lose grants. They should lose donations from thousands of alumni.

Not just from pro-life alumni – though it should lose all of those. But from anyone who believes that a university is a place where different ideas can duke it out, and the best wins.

If it’s a pro-life club today, it’s a pro-choice club tomorrow. It’s anyone tomorrow; everyone should be offended.

What’s so fascinating about this letter is that it is so brazen, so unabashed. At other schools, like Queen’s University, their politically correct speech codes are given euphemisms. The censors there were called "facilitators". When I was a student at the University of Alberta Law School, they had something called the Committee for Equality and Respect. That’s because they had a sense of shame, and they knew that what they were doing was un-Canadian and anathema to the spirit of inquiry and debate that ought to colour a university. So they did what Orwell wrote about: they bent the language to hide their true intentions.

The U of C? They have no such compunction. They’re bullies, they’re censors, they’re abusers of process, and they don’t give a damn who knows about it. Look at that line from the letter:

Individual protesters should ponder whether they intend to commit illegal trespass on private property and whether they wish to expose themselves to the financial costs of legal actions and fines, and the personal cost of arrest, especially when there is another way to protest.

They’re not even subtle about it: the design of their approach is to inflict maximum stress and damage on these students. They call them protesters – as if having a political display on a campus is a “protest”. They say – before any court has heard the matter – that the students will be committing an illegal act. That’s called prior restraint, and it in fact is what’s illegal.

I am disgusted with the University of Calgary. This is clearly a political vendetta, as other groups are allowed to “protest” in an identical manner. But, again, the political stripe of the students isn’t the point; the point is the university’s heavy-handed assault on diversity of opinion, to the point of invoking police to enforce their political restrictions.

There is one last point in this letter that deserves our special execration. The letter claims that the pro-lifers were worried about violence. If they indeed said that, it is obvious that they were worried that they would be victims of violence – and that it was a request for the university, and perhaps the police, to uphold the law and protect them from violence. Instead, the U of C uses the pro-lifers’ own concern about being victimized as an excuse to kick them off campus. Instead of protecting students who are worried about violence, they’re picking on them. They’re blaming the victim.

Hello, 911, what's your emergency? What's that, ma'am? You're worried your husband is going to beat you? Well, we'll come right down there and evict you from your home. Hey -- you're the one who brought up the potential violence. Look, it's easier to evict you than to stop him from beating you, right? C'mon honey, what are you going to do -- hire a lawyer?

I really can’t believe that such a letter emanated from a place that calls itself an institution of higher learning. And, of course, they surely consider themselves the height of liberal thinking.

There is a sickness of censorship in Canada, and its depressing to see that it has such deep roots in academia. One of censorship's other foul manifestations is the human rights commission industry. But it seems to exist wherever you find politically correct, leftist, unaccountable government institutions. They're the ones bullying peaceful political dissent. This case is even more grotesque than the HRCs, because the police are involved, like they would be in a banana republic.

It’s unCanadian. The University of Calgary is unCanadian. And Canadians should punish it, punish it, punish it in the only way it cares about.

The U of C obviously doesn’t care about its reputation for academic freedom. You don’t issue letters like that if you care about what the newspapers say about you, or other scholars.

So there’s only one thing left: cut off donations from alumni.

Cut millions.

Cut millions and millions and millions until they publicly apologize, and until they discipline whichever educrat it was who thought that calling the police on a couple of schoolgirls was an appropriate response to dissenting political speech.

A week after Alberta's well-respected Sheldon Chumir Foundation recommended a wholesale overhaul of the province's human rights commission -- including the elimination of its censorship provisions -- the province announced the appointment of a new chief commissioner. He's a former judge, David Mason.

I have two different views on this. The first is satisfaction that at least there is now someone in the HRC who presumably knows (and hopefully cares) about such trifles as the rule of law, natural justice, disclosure of documents, abuse of process, nuisance suits, and all of the other petty corruptions that have plagued Alberta's HRCs under previous chief commissioners. So that's a positive. (I note, however, that Alberta's HRC is still staffed by radical activists, and the hearings are heard by people like Diane Colley-Urquhart, who is not a judge and not even a lawyer -- she's a nurse by training. I like nurses when I have a minor medical issue. But this nurse presumes to determine fundamental legal issues like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. She's also a hyper-partisan alderman. Frankly, I'd rather trust my constitutional freedoms to my garbageman than to her -- at least he's got some common sense and isn't looking for the political angle.)

But my primary response is that we don't need Alberta's HRC to work "better". We need it to be shut down. I don't want a more efficient HRC; I don't want a more professional HRC. I just don't want an HRC.

Alberta is one of the most tolerant places on Earth. Every corner of our society is pluralistic, from politics to business to the arts. We didn't need an HRC to make it that way -- it happened despite the HRC. In fact, in their last annual report, Alberta's HRC conceded that the number of complaints they investigated fell by 15% over the previous year -- this, despite Alberta's skyrocketing population growth, especially minorities.

Nobody's buying what the HRC is selling -- grievances and race-hustling.

There might have been an excuse for an HRC forty years ago -- though I doubt it. But we've already won those human rights battles. Time for the activists to move on to some more productive work, not to make permanent their complaining, to turn it into an industry.

It's clear that Alberta's Tories lack both the philosophical integrity or the political will to scrap the HRC. But will they reform it? Is that Mason's mandate?

In today's Calgary Herald, his first public utterance as the Chief Commissioner is deeply disappointing:

Mason said his first priority is to meet with officials from human rights commissions in Ontario and British Columbia to discuss how they revamped the tribunal process.

“I believe a solid start can be made and I look forward to the process,” Mason said.

Huh? He's looking to B.C. and Ontario as example of reform?

Other than the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- an HRC so rotten that it hires disgraced police officers thrown off the force for corruption -- the two worst HRCs are those in Ontario and B.C.

Ontario is run by Barbara Hall, the Marxist former mayor of Toronto thrown out unceremoniously by voters, only to be revived in her dream job: permanent politically correct scold, on the public's dime. Seriously -- that's the woman who issued a condemnation of Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn, declaring them to be racist, all without the bother of even holding a hearing into the matter.

This is the HRC from which Mason seeks advice? Hall thinks Ontarians are racist, and she has even come up with a form of "quota" for complaints. She thinks there's not enough racial acrimony, so she is demanding her staff go out and drum it up. She actually told the National Post that she wants complaints to "spike".

I know Alberta's HRC would want that -- bigger budgets, more self-important lawyers and bureaucrats, etc., etc. But why would anyone else want that?

And B.C.? There is no nuttier HRC in the country, bar none. Despite her unprofessional and undignfied slurs against Maclean's and Steyn, at least Hall rejected the complaints against them. Not so in B.C., where they had a five-day hearing that to call it a kangaroo court would be an insult to kangaroos. B.C. is the insane jurisdiction that is actually proceeding with an HRC complaint against comedian Guy Earle, because he hurt some hecklers' feelings. B.C. is the jurisdiction that ruled that McDonald's employees don't have to wash their hands, because there's "no evidence" that frequency of handwashing is linked to hygiene. (Seriously, read paragraph 240 of the ruling.)

I think I know what's happening. I think Mason has already been seized by the permanent staff at the HRC, and been fed the "official line". I think that, just like in the TV series "Yes, Minister", he's being spoonfed the official view, probably even by some of the more illiberal staff there, such as the Muslim supremacist Arman Chak.  

The Chumir Foundation proposed a lot of tinkering changes to the HRC -- all of which the HRC would hate, because it circumscribes their powers. Making those reforms would be like trimming a weed, not pulling it out by its roots.

But if Mason's first statement is anything to go by -- if B.C. and Ontario are his role models -- he's about to make things a lot worse, not better. 

The Herald gave the last word in their story to me:

“It’s a ‘make-work’ project for lawyers, bureaucrats and busybodies,” [Levant] said.

Mason's first day on the job is not encouraging.

After more than a week of inaction, Michael Ignatieff finally caved in to growing outrage over his senior aide’s anti-Chinese comments. On Tuesday, Ignatieff disciplined Warren Kinsella for his ethnic slur that Chinese Canadians eat cat meat and serve it in Chinese restaurants. He ordered Kinsella to issue an unconditional apology, which can be seen below. (The Chinese sign behind him reads “I’m sorry”.)

 

Kinsella had previously issued what he passed off as an apology, but actually consisted of a political rant against his critics, including Alice Wong, a Chinese-Canadian MP. That non-apology apology only fed the news cycle, transforming the story from Kinsella’s original slur to his refusal to apologize – and Ignatieff’s refusal to discipline him.

The story dominated Chinese Canadian newspapers and radio talk shows for over a week, and then went viral on the Internet, both in Canada and in China itself, where it appeared on some of the world’s highest-traffic news websites.

Will it stop the bleeding? Normally it would, but Kinsella just can’t help himself. Even today, he kept getting up from the canvas – lashing out at his Chinese critics on his blog – only to be pummeled again and again. He's breathing life into the story. The man’s ego just won’t let him stay quiet, and that's a problem for his party.

I went back on Google China’s website to see if things had died down over there. No chance. Take a look at this translation of Google China’s news pages – there are new stories about Kinsella’s slur every few hours. Just for example, take a news story dated February 4, from China.com – which has bigger traffic than, say, the Globe and Mail. Here’s the English version, using Google’s somewhat rickety translation software. Some excerpts:

…inexplicable defamation… ethnic joke is unacceptable… [in Kinsella’s previous non-apology] the first five paragraphs are condemning the Conservative Party… we can see is not a formal apology… Chinese can not accept the “ironic apology”… the Liberal Party did not make any remarks on the matter… [Kinsella, who is] a lawyer should not knowingly violate the law… racial discrimination…

You get the picture. And that was published after Kinsella’s second, forced apology today. I think things are going to keep ricocheting around China’s Internet for a while.

Especially since Canada’s Chinese language press is far from done with the matter. The big newspapers all had follow-up stories today, noting how Conservative MPs Jason Kenney, Pierre Poilievre and Alice Wong had all visited the restaurant slandered by Kinsella, to show their respect.

Here’s the Canadian newspaper Ming Pao (rough translation here). It’s fascinating reading (Jason Kenney’s name is transliterated as “Connie”; Kinsella is “Kim Sheila”):

…Kim Sheila… vilification… great insult and is discriminatory, Chinese can not accept this sort of speech… Yang Cheng restaurant in Ottawa has been operating locally for more than 40 years, production of meat is very well known… payment of the so-called double irony apology, that there is no sincerity.

I’m not going to bother translating and excerpting the four other Chinese daily newspapers that went heavy on the story today. You can see them for yourself here: Sing Tao, Today Daily News, New News and World Journal.

A number of readers have e-mailed me asking why this story is important, and whether or not my criticisms of Kinsella's conduct are in conflict with my belief in freedom of speech. Let me answer.

Kinsella's comments were an insult to the Chinese community in a way that stung them – it was an implication that Chinese are uncivilized, and trick their customers. That’s a particular implication that hurts. It would be like saying all Irish are drunks, or all Jews are stingy, or all Italians are mafia. If a senior aide to a party leader had said those things, it would have been huge news in those communities’ newspapers, too -- and back in Ireland, Israel and Italy.

But we all say stupid things from time to time. The test isn’t so much whether we can go through life not putting our foot in our mouth – especially those of us who talk for a living. The test is what we do when we screw up. How we handle it.

Do we take responsibility? Do we man up? Or do we hide our tracks and blame others? That’s been the surprise here – and, as you can see, it’s been a major focus of the Chinese press.

And this story is special because it involves the most self-righteous critic in Canada, Warren Kinsella. Kinsella is lightening quick to accuse his political rivals of bigotry when it suits his agenda. I know it sounds nuts, but Kinsella has even implied that I – a Zionist Jew – am a Nazi sympathizer. There’s no-one he won’t taint with accusations of racism. So to see him hoist on his own petard is a fascinating turn-around of events. I hope that Kinsella's hypocrisy when it comes to bigoted remarks will make him less eager to level a charge of racism against his opponents in the future, but I doubt it.

Watching Kinsella come to terms with what he said is fascinating, but it wouldn’t be of national (or international) importance if Kinsella weren’t attached to Michael Ignatieff. And in that sense, it’s been an education, too – can Ignatieff manage a team? How does he handle crises? Is he more afraid of Kinsella being inside his tent, or outside of it?

As I said when I first started writing about Catscam, I don’t believe that there should be any legal sanctions for saying things that are politically incorrect or rude – or even outright racist. I've railed against the human rights commissions going after a rude comedian. I’m not for an HRC telling Kinsella he can’t say what he said; I’m not for hate speech charges under the criminal code; I’m not for punishing the man by using the resources of the state to grind him down. Ironically, Kinsella is for those things.

As Canada’s gay lobby, Egale, says, there is a positive good to allowing hate speech – it permits us to identify who the bigots are, and it provides a “teachable moment”. That’s exactly what happened here. I’m glad that Kinsella was able to speak out and exercise his freedom of speech. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese Canadians now know all about him and his party, and can make decisions with all the facts.

I am surprised that Ignatieff hasn’t fired Kinsella over this – as far as we know, at least. I find it inconceivable that Kinsella will be able to behave himself for any extended period of time without smearing someone else. That’s pretty much his one campaign move – flinging dirt. Oh – and suing people he disagrees with. Kinsella has filed a $50,000 lawsuit against me already for pointing out his association with the unsavoury characters at the Canadian Islamic Congress (another eruption that came to light on Kinsella’s own blog). I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if he files a lawsuit against me for reporting his anti-Chinese slurs, and the media coverage of it.

But that’s his frat boy approach, his punk band approach, to politics. It’s not a fit with Ignatieff’s own professorial approach, and it’s not a fit with Canadian sensibilities. I don’t think it will work, and I’m surprised Ignatieff hasn’t realized that yet.

Perhaps he will realize it when the trial of Kinsella’s nuisance lawsuit against me goes to court – and Ignatieff is treated to another embarrassing week in the media at the hands of his master war-roomer.

A number of readers have asked me for my take on the recent federal budget. The short answer is: too much spending. But it's what's needed to win the next election.

And losing that election to the opposition would make this budget look positively Thatcherite compared to what Ignatieff would serve up -- especially if he allied with his coalition partners.

As I argue in the National Post, we actually don't need any government stimulus at all. Falling oil prices alone are an $80 billion annual stimulus to Canada's economy, and falling interest rates even moreso. More to the point, almost all of the proposed spending will kick in once Canada is out of the recession -- just five months from now.

This budget isn't about the economy. It's about politics -- specifically, about taking away the public rationale for the opposition coalition (mission accomplished); delaying an imminent vote of non-confidence (mission accomplished); and pre-empting and co-opting the Liberals' preferred campaign message, that tough times call for government stimulus (mission accomplished). There is only one group of people who are more upset with the spending in this budget than critical conservatives are -- and that group is the Ignatieff Liberals and their chorus in the media. Their desired narrative -- a cold, heartless Harper ignoring the plight of the downtrodden -- has no factual basis anymore. There's very little room to Harper's left, and Ignatieff surely won't try to take his party to Harper's right.

That's what this budget was about: shaping the battlefield for the next election, while doing as little damage to the economy as possible. Enough preamble; here's my Op-Ed. (Note: the sentences in blue were edited out of the published edition for space reasons, but I've put them back in here because they're interesting, and because the subsequent sentence doesn't quite flow without them.)

 

The recession is halfway over. That might sound surprising to those who are bracing for the return of the Great Depression, but it’s true: The consensus of private sector economists, the Bank of Canada and the Finance Department is that Canada’s economy entered a downturn in the last quarter of 2008 and we’ll be out of it in the third quarter of this year.

Despite media hysterics, this economic downturn is much milder than the two recessions of the mid-1980s or the one in the early-1990s. The consensus forecast is that unemployment will tick up a bit more this year, to 7.5%. That’s painful to those people who will lose their jobs, typically in industries that were declining even before the recession. But compare that to the roaring 1990s, when unemployment never dipped below 8%, or the last three recessions, when unemployment exceeded 11%. Ten years ago, this recession would have been called a boom. And it’s already correcting itself: The lower price of oil on its own will be an $80-billion stimulus to Canada’s economy this year. So by the time the spending in last week’s federal budget kicks in, the economy will already be growing again.

Unfortunately, this growing economy will be saddled with extra government debt. Even without additional spending, temporarily shrinking tax revenues and increasing payments such as Employment Insurance would have caused the federal ledger to tip into deficit. Throw in the stimulus contained in last week’s budget — $29-billion this year and $22-billion next year, plus an additional $9-billion in the next two years in tax cuts — and what would have been a modest deficit is now a big one. As a result, some conservative activists are grumbling.

That grumbling is a good thing. With all three opposition parties and much of the media to the left of the government, conservative dissenters provide at least some counterweight to those demanding even more spending. And, from a purely partisan perspective, conservative critics provide political cover to the government in the next election, reassuring centrist voters that Stephen Harper isn’t “extremist” in his austerity.

But when you dig through the budget’s details, there are a number of reasons that true conservatives need not be too disappointed.

The first is that the government’s stimulus package is much smaller than in other countries, especially the United States. This year’s government stimulus spending is 1.9% of GDP, compared to 2.9% in the U.S. Next year, Canada’s stimulus falls to 1.4% of GDP, while the U.S. plans to keep going full tilt, at 2.8% of GDP. And that’s on top of the enormous U.S. bank bailout, a crisis that has not afflicted Canada.

Another reason for optimism is that the Canadian budget is based on a “worst case scenario” — that the economy will peform 1.5% worse than economists now predict it will. That pessimism accounts for $15-billion of the deficits. So if things merely go as economists expect, the actual deficit will be significantly smaller. Even in a worst case scenario, Canada will still have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio amongst all the G7 countries when we’re done.

Another reason why the deficit is large is because of the $9-billion in tax cuts. Canada already has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. By 2012, ours will be lower still — and lower than that of every other G7 nation. And that’s just on the corporate side. Personal income taxes are going down too, and the GST cuts continue to pour $12-billion a year back into consumers’ pockets.

But perhaps the most important reason why conservatives shouldn’t be too depressed by this budget is that it doesn’t create any new, permanent government programs that will continue to drain the treasury for generations to come. There are no new “product lines,” such as a national daycare or pharmacare program that would be difficult to uproot. The bulk of the spending is in tangible one-off programs, such as rebuilding roads and bridges and low-cost housing.

True conservatives balk at things such as government subsidized housing or loan guarantees to the auto sector. But Canada’s right has already tried a purist conservative party — it was called the Reform party and it kept losing elections. Party members voted to inter it and build a broader electoral coalition, making the strategic choice to moderate policy in return for a chance at power.

At the end of the day, that is the context of Stephen Harper’s decision. With a minority Parliament, and opposition parties threatening an election in the near future, what budget would be the most likely to keep the Conservatives in office now, provide maximum advantage in the next election and do the best for the economy?

This budget fails the test of conservative ideological purity. But 10 years of the Reform party experiment has taught Conservatives that holding the Liberals at bay, while making modest incremental gains, is the right decision.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. And for those who would propose sterner medicine from Harper's minority government, I would ask: do you really think the electorate would stomach it? 

This story in the National Post is an embarrassment to all Calgarians and all alumni of the University of Calgary (of which I am one).

Over the past few weeks, Calgary police have been turning up at the homes of anti-abortion university students, charging them with trespassing on the very campus where they are enrolled in classes.

It's not as violent a response as the APEC fiasco at UBC, where peaceful students were pepper-sprayed, roughed up and strip searched by police for the sin of offending foreign dictators driving by in their limousines. But in a way it's more appalling: the U of C's police harrassment of its students is a planned, thoughtful, strategic assault on freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the very nature of universities. It's not a case of a bad judgment call in a high pressure situation. It's positively planned out.

How un-Canadian.

This is part of a disturbing trend of censorship on Canadian campuses. Just weeks ago, Queen's University announced roving squads of conversation "monitors" -- busybodies who would butt into private conversations to lecture students who said anything politically incorrect.

U of C goes straight for the cops.

In my travels, from time to time I find myself rebutting stereotypical perceptions of Calgary and Alberta. I point out that, in fact, our city has the highest rate of post-secondary education in the country; that we are very multicultural; that we are enlightened, and educated and open-minded, and I always have a half-dozen proof points.

But it's going to be tough to make the case now that the city's university sends cops after young women to bully them into ceasing their political discussions.

I'm glad to read that the Canadian Constitution Foundation has caught notice of the case; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association should intervene, too.

I think a pre-emptive lawsuit against U of C is in order (in addition to defending the students against the trespass charges). And -- far more effective -- a boycott on donations by alumni is in order, as well.

This is not a pro-life vs. pro-choice discussion. That's irrelevant. This heavy-handed bullying by the U of C would be appalling no matter which side of the debate was being squashed. I think that any pro-life alumni should be extra angry that the university is officially gagging one side of that debate. But any pro-choicer who believes in freedom of speech should be disgusted with their alma mater, too.

I know I am.

It always cracks me up to see the latest definition of "transgressive" art or social commentary -- because it's always so banal. Example: the contest on the TV show Kenny vs. Spenny, when two “edgy” comedians

had a contest to see who could offend the most people. Kenny hired a plane to drag a banner reading “Jesus sucks” across Toronto.

Yawn. What’s the worst that could happen to him – a few letters of dissent and a church bakesale in protest? Fly a banner saying “Mohammed sucks” or “Allah sucks” and I’ll give you points for being edgy – and you’ll spend the rest of your life under police protection. Theo van Gogh was murdered for less.

The latest in this endless parade of fake chutzpah is the "atheist bus" advertising campaign that’s been running in London, is coming to Toronto, and perhaps soon to Calgary. It's basically bus ads questioning the existence of God. Here's a story about it in the

Star. A picture of the actual ad is at left; it reads:

There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Of course, my favourite part of that ad is the word “probably”. It never hurts to hedge your bets, I guess, though there’s probably less downside risk to being a doubting believer than a doubting non-believer.

The ads are clearly a PETA-style media stunt, designed to get maximum “earned” news coverage with minimal paid advertising. Unlike PETA, however, there are no scantily clad women purring over baby seals. The atheist spokesman I saw on CTV looked like the second vice president of a college Dungeons and Dragons Club – not that there’s anything wrong with that. He hardly seemed the role model of a devil-may-care lifestyle.

As a media stunt, it’s working – people are talking about atheism, at least for a moment. But that’s hardly transgressive. It might have been “bad” a hundred years ago, or even forty years ago in Quebec. But today, that’s pretty bland stuff. Most Canadians are not atheist, but they’re certainly not very religious, not enough to get their knickers in a knot about some pretty bland ads.

But the ads’ message isn’t really atheist as much as it is hedonist. Atheism simply means denying God. It doesn’t mean renouncing a code of moral living, even a very strict or ascetic code. It doesn’t mean renouncing shame or embarrassment or self-control or personal responsibility. Those can exist without belief in God. In fact, that’s one of the central arguments atheists make: that they have their own rationale for behaving well, based on reason, not on faith. These ads really aren’t a plug for renouncing God. They’re a plug for renouncing self-control. Blurring the line between the two ideas probably isn’t in the philosophical interests of atheists.

Needless to say, freedom of speech and freedom of religion protects this mildly provocative stunt. I mean, seriously, in the wake of The DaVinci Code and Piss Christ, it takes a lot to be scandalous.

And that’s the point. These ads seem to be designed to prick at Christians. But it is not Christianity that is behind the theocratic movements in the world today. And, frankly, the religion most anathematic  to hedonism, particularly liberal sex, gay sex, alcohol, etc. is that of radical Islam.

You want transgressive? Try running a bus ad that says “Allah doesn’t exist” or “Mohammed doesn’t exist”.  The ad agency would reject it. The city council would reject it. The human rights commissions would get involved. There would probably be street protests, similar to the pro-Hamas hate marches we’ve seen in recent weeks, with masked hoodlums waving Hezbollah flags (literally, party of God).  Graffiti on the ads would be a certainty, and vandalism and other property damage would surely follow. There might even be the odd fatwa issued.

That’s the thing with the secular humanist liberal feminist left these days (and I include the bulk of the mainstream media in that). They’re very brave when it comes to taking on Christianity, or Scientology. But try doing a DaVinci Code denying the Koranic version of Mohammed’s life. Trying doing a music video like Madonna’s Like a Prayer, with a sexualized Mohammed, instead of a sexualized Jesus. Et cetera, ad nauseam.

Or – more importantly – try standing up to honour killings like Aqsa Parvez’s, or misogynistic polygamous marriages – in Toronto, I mean, not just in Bountiful, B.C. where there are far fewer.

Henry Morgentaler's humanist group, Judy Rebick's feminist crew, most of the gay rights lobby -- they're very brave when it comes to tackling meek Christians. When it comes to the true threat of a theocracy -- radical Islam -- they're cowering under their desks.

 

We could actually use a few good atheists these days, just to keep things in balance. But these ones are so proud of the Maginot Line they’ve built, they don’t even realize that they’re attacking a make-believe threat, while ignoring a perilous one. It’s not the liberal West that needs secular Enlightenment, it’s the Islamofascist East.

 

Toronto and London don’t need these ads – Teheran and Gaza do.

Michael Ignatieff has shown a surprising tone-deafness to the anti-Chinese insults made by his senior aide, Warren Kinsella. Ignatieff is still in denial mode -- not understanding that, although his fancy faculty lounge friends might chuckle along with Kinsella's "cat meat" comments, it deeply insulted Chinese Canadians. Even Kinsella grudgingly admitted he had to apologize. Ignatieff? Still nothing. You'd think that his multicultural outreach team would be phoning and e-mailing him incessantly. Then again, maybe he doesn't have a multicultural outreach team.

What should Ignatieff have done? He should have renounced and denounced Kinsella's bigoted remarks. And then he should have done something symbolic and classy -- and probably something eye-catching, suitable for the Internet. Something that could spread as quickly through the outraged blogosphere as Kinsella's original insult. But he did nothing -- other than let Kinsella dig deeper. 

Not so Jason Kenney, the Minister of Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Immigration, and Pierre Poilievre and Alice Wong, two other Conservative MPs. What did they do? They went for lunch today to the Yang Sheng restaurant, the one defamed by Kinsella. And Kenney gave Mr. Feng, the proprietor, a Certificate of Excellence. You can see a picture of Kenney giving the award to a beaming Mr. Feng. I bet it feels nice to be treated with some respect -- even some flattery -- after being dragged through Kinsella's muck for a week.

Good for Kenney and Poilievre (and Wong, not in the frame).

Their visit today was the right thing to do. I thought Ignatieff was more of a mensch than Kinsella, and that he would have done something like this. I bet Jean Chretien would have -- he knows that personal insults like Kinsella's are never forgotten -- but that personal acts of graciousness, like Kenney's, Poilievre's and Wong's -- are never forgotten either.

All of which makes me more certain that the Liberals aren't on their A game. Back in the 1990s, it was easy for the Liberals to win -- three majorities in a row! -- even though they received as little as 38% of the vote. The right was divided, and central Canada seemed to be buying the demonization of Preston Manning as a "scary" extremist.

How different things are now -- it's the left that's split three ways (four, including the Greens), and the right that's united; Canadians are more likely to think of Stephen Harper as boring than as "scary". And -- this is my point -- ethnic minorities that the Liberals took for granted in the 1990s are now streaming en masse to the Conservatives. And they're more electorally important than ever.

I truly believe that Catscam -- besides showing latent anti-Chinese sentiments within the Liberal ranks (I'm talking to you too, Robert Silver) -- will cost the Liberals at least 50,000 votes in the next election, in battleground ridings in Vancouver, Toronto and elsewhere.

Paul Wells sure got Kinsella's number right: an overrated blowhard who's still acting like an impolite frat boy at age fifty.

The worst day in the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s 32-year history was March 25, 2008. That was when one of the CHRC’s targets, Marc Lemire, turned the tables on the CHRC, and had a day to examine the CHRC’s own conduct. The CHRC knew it would be ugly, so they tried to have the hearing closed to the press. When that didn’t work, they tried to suppress the transcript of the hearing. That didn’t work either -- it leaked out.

With professional journalists and volunteer bloggers packing the hearing room, the world heard about the CHRC’s corruption – how they illegally obtained evidence from police, to use against their targets; how they joined neo-Nazi groups as full members; how the CHRC laughed at its own rules, and refused to give disclosure of hundreds of pages of documents to its targets, as required by law; how Richard Warman, former CHRC investigator and now serial human rights complainant, would simply traipse back into the CHRC offices and meddle with investigations into his own complaints; etc.

But, of course, the biggest revelation was that the CHRC had hacked into a private citizen’s Internet account, in order to hide their tracks while they logged onto a neo-Nazi website, using their CHRC neo-Nazi membership (codename “Jadewarr”). That bizarre fact was calmly proved by Alain Monfette, Bell Canada’s security officer. You can read Monfette’s sworn, uncontradicted testimony at pages 5645 and 5646 of the transcript the CHRC tried to suppress. It’s not just uncontradicted testimony – it wasn’t even cross-examined. The CHRC didn’t object at all – other than to the fact that reporters were allowed in to hear it.

Monfette testified that the CHRC accessed their neo-Nazi membership using the Internet account of one Nelly Hechme, who just happened to live within a block or two of the CHRC offices.

In the late spring, I was delighted to learn that this gross violation of Hechme’s rights was investigated by both the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner. Alas, the RCMP abandoned their investigation, claiming it was outside their jurisdiction, and now the Privacy Commissioner has abandoned the investigation, too. Heche sounds dejected:

Nelly Hechme said she had encountered "too many roadblocks" in trying to get answers about the apparent hijacking of her wireless connection.

"I am not one to fight hard; I merely wanted some answers and maybe a little justice but that doesn't seem to be the case," Hechme said from Ottawa.

"I feel like I'm basically being told to just accept it."

That’s exactly what she’s being told to do – just like the rest of the CHRC’s victims.

Here’s another news report of the Privacy Commissioner’s findings:

"We looked at it very carefully (and) we found no evidence that they ever accessed the individual's Internet connection during the course of their investigation," Valerie Lawton, a spokeswoman for privacy commissioner said from Ottawa.

Huh? No evidence? Alain Monfette of Bell Canada, the Internet Service Provider, gave sworn testimony before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

"We also found no evidence that the (rights) commission had any knowledge of the individual before the allegations came up at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing."

Now that, I believe. Of course they had no clue who Hechme was. They didn’t target her in particular – she was just some dupe who was hacked. It could have been anyone, the CHRC didn’t care.

Here’s the most amazing line in the story:

The decision by the privacy commissioner still leaves unanswered how Hechme's Internet account became snared in the rights-commission's investigation.

"As for how this could have happened, this wasn't our focus," Lawton said.

How Hechme was hacked wasn’t her focus? Then what, exactly was her focus?

The Privacy Commissioner’s report on the incident is very vague, but it is clear that they only spoke to the CHRC. The Privacy Commissioner didn’t speak with anyone else involved in the matter, and refused to review 200 pages of technical data from Lemire, who had subpoenaed Bell Canada in the first place.

But for sheer bureaucratic virtuosity, nothing comes close to the official excuse offered by the Privacy Commissioner, in their report:

Technological experts have indicated that, most likely, but without certainty, the association of the complainant’s IP address to the CHRC was simply a mismatch on the part of a third party, which could have occurred in a variety of ways not involving the CHRC. 

That is so precious.

“Technological experts”. Ah, yes. People who are experts in technology. Care to be more specific? Were they experts in Internet forensics? Or was it the Privacy Commissioner’s teenaged IT staffer? They don’t say. Perhaps it’s the CHRC’s own “experts”. But what did this expert say? (The Privacy Commissioner writes experts, plural, but I’m pretty sure they only talked with one “expert”, if at all. Hell, let’s call him a scientician.) What did the “expert” in “technology” tell them? That it was “most likely” a “mismatch… that could have occurred in a variety of ways not involving the CHRC”.

A mismatch? Coulda been anything, really? Wow. Those technological experts sure use a lot of jargon. Their scienticians don’t want to look at 200 pages of technical data. But apparently, now, on the Internet you run a risk – a variety of risks, actually – of being, uh, mismatched.

I’ve got to remember that one.

No, officer. I didn’t break into a stranger’s house. I just “mismatched” my address and his. Could have happened in a variety of ways. Nothing to see here.

Hechme’s no dummy. She got the message. As she told the Canadian Press:

For her part, Hechme has now resigned herself to the lack of real answers to what happened and sees little point in trying to pursue the matter further.

There were "too many signs" that pressing on wouldn't be worth it, she said.

"I don't see much use in dwelling (on it), I guess."

Of course, she’s right. She could appeal the Privacy Commissioner’s ruling. She could even sue the CHRC in civil court. But Hechme is just some young woman caught in the CHRC’s sloppy, illegal conduct – and she wasn’t even an official target. Dear reader, if it were you who had been hacked, would you spend your own money taking on these two collusive government agencies, with bottomless buckets of public money to stonewall you with? Or would you try to get on with your life, just shaking your head at the fact that the “human rights” industry is a prolific member of a U.S. based neo-Nazi group, and that you were just an innocent victim of their latest drive-by?

And at the end of the Privacy Commissioner’s report, there’s a final slap at Hechme:

While there is no evidence to support the allegations made in this instance, this Office cautions individuals to take appropriate measures to properly secure their Internet connections to avoid any unauthorized uses of their personal information

It’s Hechme’s fault. She didn’t “take appropriate measures” to protect herself from a hacking that Bell Canada swore happened, but that unnamed “experts” deny.

The only thing more shameful than this whitewash is Jennifer Lynch’s laughable press release about it. I’ll just focus on one paragraph:

“We are pleased with the Privacy Commission of Canada’s findings exonerating the CHRC of any wrongdoing in this case,” said CHRC Chief Commissioner Jennifer Lynch, Q.C. “The employees at the CHRC abide by the highest standards of professionalism and ethics in all aspects of their work.”

But that’s not true, is it? The Privacy Commissioner didn’t “exonerate[e] the CHRC of any wrongdoing”. They don’t have that mandate or scope. As the Privacy Commissioner made crystal clear, its investigation – however sloppy and incomplete – was narrowly focused on one single point:

… the Assistant Privacy Commissioner has concluded that there is no contravention of sections 4 to 8 of the Privacy Act and has determined that the complaint is not well-founded.

A few technical sections of a single act were assessed. There was no wholesale “exoneration” of the CHRC of “any wrongdoing”. A lawyer like Lynch knows that – it’s like the difference between being found “not guilty”, which criminal courts do, and being found “innocent”, which no court ever says. The Privacy Commissioner’s flawed report was limited to a few narrow sections of a single law, not to any broader legal rules, let alone ethics.

Let’s end on a humourous note – Lynch’s claim that “The employees at the CHRC abide by the highest standards of professionalism and ethics in all aspects of their work.”

That’s not true. An internal government audit gave the CHRC a failing grade in ethics, and noted that they don’t even have a written ethics code.

My favourite example of this lawless, ethical Lord of the Flies environment is the CHRC’s hiring of corrupt ex-cop Sandy Kozak to be one of their investigators. She was fired from the Carleton Place police for corruption, but snapped up by the CHRC.

Kozak is a problem. Joining neo-Nazi groups is a problem. Hacking Internet accounts is a problem. No ethics code is a problem.

But Jennifer Lynch presiding over that whole swamp, and cheerily claiming that it’s all the “highest standards” -- that’s the biggest problem of all. The one person who should clean it up instead insists there’s nothing to clean up.

Fire. Them. All.

h/t BCF

Catscam started out as a story limited to Canada’s Chinese language media. Then a keen-eyed David Akin picked up the story, and it went national, in mainstream newspapers from Nanaimo to Ottawa. Even the Globe and Mail picked it up. Warren Kinsella, senior aide to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, was forced to issue a grudging apology for having said that Chinese Canadians served cat meat at restaurants. (Ignatieff himself is still in denial about the story, refusing to acknowledge any moral responsibility for his aide’s bigoted remarks – but also distancing himself from Kinsella.)

Given Kinsella’s half-hearted apology and Ignatieff’s attempt to pretend nothing’s wrong, it should come as no surprise that Catscam has exploded in China. Here are a sampling of pages from Google China’s news search, translated into English. And here is a broader Chinese language Google search – 325 hits, many of them in the past few days.

It’s not just huge. It’s monster huge. Look at some of the titles that have picked up the story: China News; China.com; Sina.com; China Broadband, People.com.cn etc. Several even have that awful picture of Kinsella standing on a snowy street corner wearing a ball cap, looking old, angry and white.

It’s one thing to embarrass the Liberal Party here in Canada – who cares about that. But it’s another to embarrass Canada overseas, to cause an international incident.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of China.com or China News? Are they really that important? Uh, yeah. In a country with 300 million Internet users, the biggest names in news are going to rival CNN and Yahoo. And that’s just the online community. There are another 900 million Chinese, many of whom read paper editions of those news sources.

China.com’s website has a traffic ranking of 2,508, according to Alexa. That means of the billions of web pages in the world, only 2,507 are busier. For comparison, the Globe and Mail’s website is ranked 2,720. And China News’ website has a traffic ranking of 1,584.

And People.com.cn checks in at number 246.

Oh, and Sina.com.cn? That’s the 18^th busiest web page in the world.

All of those websites have carried news of Kinsella’s cat meat slur.

And then there are countless Chinese blogs and chat sites, like this one, buzzing about Catscam.

Other than Pamela Anderson, I think Warren Kinsella is now the most famous Canadian in the world.

Some of the reports vary slightly (though I’m only going by Google’s rough translation software), but they all seem to be variations of reports from Chinese-Canadian newspapers.

Take the story in China News. It mentioned Kinsella once – but it named Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada six times. Ignatieff might think he can duck this one. But China doesn’t think so.

What’s interesting is that China News didn’t just focus on Kinsella’s slur. It focused on his ham-fisted attempt to delete his slur. Of course they did – because that goes to his bad faith in the incident. He insulted Chinese people, and then when that blew up in his face, instead of taking responsibility manfully, he tried to hide what he had done. It made his subsequent apology look less than genuine, a fact that wasn’t lost on China News. Here are some excerpts:

…hurt the Chinese people… improper remarks deleted from the blog… Chinese vilification… attempt to conceal their improper remarks… expelled from the Liberal Party…

You get the picture, even with Google’s awkward translation.

Is this story over yet?

No. It’s circled back to Canada again. It’s not just international. Now it’s non-partisan.

Here is a letter sent out by the Chinese Canadian National Council, Toronto Chapter, which describes itself as “an organization of Chinese Canadians in the City of Toronto that promotes equity, social justice, inclusive civic participation, and respect for diversity.” That’s the kind of group that, in the past, would have been pretty open-minded to voting Liberal. Now? Fat chance. They’re appalled. And note that their letter has been copied to Ignatieff. Will he continue to deny any moral obligation to respond? And how about one of the other groups to whom the CCNC’s letter was sent – the Chinese Canadian Liberal Association? What do they have to say about Kinsella’s smear? Which is more important to them – their identity as Liberals, or their self-respect as Chinese Canadians?

P.S. Yesterday, when I listed the Canadian daily newspapers that covered Catscam, I missed the most important one: the Vancouer Sun. It's the newspaper of record in Canada's third-largest city -- a city that just happens to be 20% Chinese. Their headline? Ignatieff urged to fire top aide.

 

P.P.S. Kinsella created Catscam and Ignatieff's silence will prolong it. But you really do have to hand it to Liberal Robert Silver, who is still defending the cat meat insults over at the Globe. None of the Globe's commenters are buying it, of course. But Silver is sticking to his guns that the remark "was in no ways racist or even offensive -- at all."

 

Does Silver really mean that, or is he just putting party solidarity above common sense -- and tolerance for minorities? If Silver thinks accusing a Chinese restaurateur of serving cat meat is fine, I'd invite him to say so to his local Chinese Canadian chamber of commerce; or Chinese church; or Chinese newspaper editorial board; or even his waiter at a Chinese restaurant. Silver wouldn't dream of saying the same thing about, say, an Italian restaurant. Why does he think Chinese restaurants are fair game? I've got a hunch that Silver is the kind of guy who also tips less at a Chinese restaurant, too. No offense, right?