Jennifer Lynch is a damned liar

We already know how little regard Jennifer Lynch has for the truth. She put it in her grostesque, unsolicited memo to Parliament last month when she suggested that truth be removed from the Criminal Code as a defence to the charge of hate propaganda.

What human being -- not what politician, not what lawyer, but what human being -- would propose that telling the truth should be a crime in Canada? What an execrable woman; what an embarrassment to Stephen Harper's Conservative government; what an embarrassment to anyone who actually cares about real human rights; what a shame for all Canadians.

But now we know that Lynch practises what she preaches. She places little value on the truth, either in the law or in her public communications as an officer of the government of Canada. In her latest letter to the National Post she proves yet again that she has no compunction about lying, lying to the public and lying to Parliament.

I'm so embarrassed that this woman sneaked through the government's screening process for appointees.

Lynch leads a pack of sociopaths

As I've argued before, Lynch leads a little band of sociopaths -- her censorship squad includes a corrupt ex-cop thrown off the police force for illegal conduct; it includes at least four, and as many as eight, members of neo-Nazi organizations; and its former investigator and current chief complainant, Richard Warman, is someone who calls Jews "scum" and gays a "cancer", all in the course of his "human rights" work.

Disgusting. But back to the lying.

Lying should be avoided for moral reasons: it corrodes a person. There are religious reasons not to lie, too. But under Lynch, the CHRC isn't merely post-Christian, it's anti-Christian: she has targeted numerous Christian leaders in her private inquisition, including Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Rev. Stephen Boissoin and the Christian Heritage Party, to name just three. Appealing to religious morality will not stop this woman.

If you're a liar, at least be smart about it

But what are the pragmatic reasons not to lie? If one has no compunction about lying, surely one ought to be smart about it. That is, a successful sociopath would not tell lies that are too easily checkable.

But that is precisely what Lynch did in yesterday's National Post newspaper. Here is her letter, an attempt to rebut Russ Hiebert's smackdown of her. I won't chase after every little lie, but let me tackle two.

Lying about illegal hacking

The first lie is her denial that CHRC staff hacked into a private citizen's Internet account to cover their tracks as they went online to access one of their neo-Nazi memberships. (Every time I write that sentence, I can't believe it's true, and not some conspiracy theory.)

Lynch writes:

Mr. Hiebert says there is uncontradicted expert evidence that a commission employee illegitimately used the Internet connection of a third party. Two independent investigations, one by the RCMP expert unit responsible for computer crimes, and one by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, found no evidence to support this allegation.  

But that's a lie.

The Privacy Commissioner did not investigate whether or not the CHRC hacked Nelly Hechme's Internet account. They merely investigated whether, while hacking Hechme's account, the CHRC kept any of her personal information. Here's the exact wording of the mandate of the Privacy Commissioner's investigation:

The purpose of the investigation was to examine whether the CHRC improperly collected, used, disclosed or retained personal information about the complainant during the course of its investigations, in contravention of sections 4 to 8 of the Privacy Act. 

Lynch says the Privacy Commissioner exonerated her from the charge of hacking. They did no such thing. (And, my favourite part, is that the Privacy Commissioner's investigation took the form of... chatting with CHRC staff. That's it -- Nelly Hechme herself was never interviewed by them, nor did they speak with Bell Canada's security officer, Alain Monfette, who testified under oath that the hacking did indeed take place. You can read Monfette’s sworn, uncontradicted testimony at pages 5645 and 5646 of the transcript. It’s not just uncontradicted testimony – it wasn’t even cross-examined. The CHRC didn’t object to it at all – other than to try to keep reporters out that day.)

Here's what Hechme told reporters after the Privcom joke:

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."

Sounds about par for the course.

Lynch also says the RCMP "found no evidence" of the hacking. This, also, is a lie. The Ottawa police had enough evidence that they passed it on the RCMP, who investigated it for months. In the end, for whatever reason, they did not file charges. That is true. But that is not what Lynch wrote. She wrote they found "no evidence". That is a lie.

The mother of all lies

But all of this pales in comparison to the mother of all lies told by Lynch, that:

Nor did commission investigators post hateful messages on the Internet.

She sort of sneaks that in there, doesn't she? Almost tries to blend it in with her other lies about false exonerations.

That's the biggest, most damning lie of all.

It's the lie that will, in the end, cost Lynch her job.

Because the Canadian public -- and even this risk-averse minority Conservative government -- cannot tolerate the truth about Lynch's activities: her staff are members of neo-Nazi organizations, and conduct themselves as if they are Nazis, including by writing hundreds, if not thousands, of bigoted comments on the Internet.

And that truth is starting to come out.

This March, the truth came out with a trumpet blast: the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal -- the rubber-stamp kangaroo court that has given the CHRC a 100% conviction rate -- issued a rare and damning opinion of Lynch's staff's Nazi memberships. The Tribunal said that the conduct of Richard Warman -- the former CHRC investigator who has since been the complainant in all but two censorship prosecutions by the CHRC, and whose expenses are paid for by the CHRC to this day -- were "disappointing", "disturbing" and inexcusable.

What conduct was that? Publishing bigoted hate speech online -- precisely what Lynch denies.

Here's the Tribunal, at paragraph 63:

I do not see any acceptable reason for Mr. Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard sites, since there appears to be ample easily obtained messages on these sites available without his involvement. Moreover, it is possible that his activity in this regard, could have precipitated further hate messages in response. His explanation for including other hate messages in his postings by mistake seems very weak to me.

Warman was a CHRC investigator, and he is the CHRC's essential partner in their ongoing prosecutions. Without Warman, there would have been only two censorship prosecutions in the past decade.

Now, pathological liars like Lynch look for technicalities, hairs to split, any mental reservation by which they can pretend the lies they tell are the truth. Lynch, for example, might think, "well, Warman is the center of our censorship prosecutions, and we pay his expenses, and he still has a hand in CHRC investigations even though he no longer works here, but he isn't technically a CHRC investigator, so his Nazi activities aren't on our head."

She could say that.

But it wouldn't save her from being a damned liar.

Because Warman's Nazi antics started before he left the CHRC in July of 2004. He was on staff while he spread his hate.

Warman's serial bigotry

Here is a list of a some comments made by Warman on Nazi websites like Vanguard and Stormfront. You can see the dates, and click through to .pdfs of the posts themselves. You can even go online on those websites, to this day, and read Warman's bigotry. Warman admits to authoring each and every one of those bigoted remarks, except the one bigoted comment about Sen. Cools, which he denies. (Here's my reply to that denial).

Some of Warman's comments are just mindless chatter. But some of them are the very definition of bigotry, from praise for Nazi leaders ("I still say Arcand is our man!") to call for anti-black policing ("exactly when will white cops understand that they should stand by THEIR race?!") to trashing Jewish youth groups ("if people spent the time building fellow WNs [White Nationalists] up rather than tearing them down we'd be dangerous. Unless your goal is to tear people down in which case go join Hillel or something.")

Each of the above (and more) comments were published by Warman when he was a CHRC employee. Of course, he's published so many more since then, under so many fake names, he admits he can't even remember all of his Nazi aliases. Note: he says he can't even remember all of his aliases, let alone all the Nazi posts he makes under those aliases.

Dean Steacy is a Nazi member too

It's not just Warman, of course. Many other CHRC staff to this day maintain membership in neo-Nazi organizations. According to sworn testimony by the CHRC, up to eight CHRC staff have access to these Nazi memberships. As Dean Steacy, CHRC censor, admitted under oath last year, it was Lord of the Flies over there -- there were no rules whatsoever on the use of Nazi memberships. See page 5827 of the transcript:

Ms. Kulaszka: Are there any guidelines for investigators about what kind of posts they can make using aliases?

Mr. Steacy: No.

Pretty straightforward. No wonder Lynch tried to have that hearing closed to the media.

Steacy declares his white pride

So what did Steacy himself do using his neo-Nazi membership? (Again, stop and think how insane it is that government employees at something called a human rights commission are joining neo-Nazi groups as part of their job. I guess even Nazis need stimulus programs.)

Here's a little exchange between Steacy, using his "Jadewarr" membership in neo-Nazi groups, and something called B.C. White Pride. Steacy:

1. praises their white supremacism;
2. offers to distribute white supremacist literature;
3. offers to send over copies of his own white supremacist literature; and
4. says the white supremacist literature he received was "great".

Let's take for granted -- God, I hope so -- that Steacy didn't actually put up any of those white supremacist posters. He was still communicating support and encouragement to those who were doing so.

But the real point of Steacy's foolishness of course, was the entrapment -- something that is illegal at real police forces.

Oh -- and that Jadewarr account was the one that Steacy, Warman and Giacomo Vigna used to hack Nelly Hechme's Internet account.

Jennifer Lynch is a damned liar.

Jennifer Lynch is a liar.

She lies about many things -- more all the time.

Politics tolerates a lot of lies.

But her lie denying her staff's bigoted comments on Nazi websites?

That's the lie that is going to get her fired.