Russ Hiebert, MP: CHRC & Jennifer Lynch are "ethically challenged"

Russ Hiebert is the Conservative Member of Parliament from White Rock. That speaks to his discpline right there. If you lived in gorgeous White Rock, would you really want to go to Ottawa every week?

Hiebert summoned Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to his Parliamentary Committee to answer for her abusive and corrupt tactics. Naturally, Lynch refused to attend. She chose to go to yet another 5-star gala industry event, on the taxpayers dime, this one a conference in beautiful Montreal.

(When I get her expense claim for that one, I'll let you know. My prediction: she'll ding us for four figures, for something just 90 minutes down the road from Ottawa.)

What a coward. She'll issue edicts to elected Members of Parliament, telling them that truth should no longer be a defence to Criminal Code provisions against hate propaganda. But when they have some questions for her about her actual job and how she's actually doing it, she's too busy drinking taxpayers' champagne to attend.

Next time, Hiebert should send her a formal subpoena, and charge her with contempt of Parliament if she skips town again. That was insubordination, and frankly I'm surprised that Prime Minister Harper's Chief of Staff, Guy Giorno, allows such behaviour on the part of a bureaucrat who has caused this government nothing but trouble.

You can see why the coward Lynch didn't attend Parliament that day. I mean, if she refuses to debate little old me, you can imagine why she didn't want to debate Hiebert:

Besides revealing that she's keeping an enemies list (and Hiebert is surely on it), she said:

She criticized Conservative MP Russ Hiebert for relying on "one source that is full of misinformation," in his study of the CHRC in a parliamentary subcommittee.

Now, you'd think that if Hiebert's arguments were so weak, Lynch would have attended the Parliamentary committee and exposed Hiebert as a dupe. But it's just her same, lame excuse for refusing to debate -- she engages in ad hominem attacks on her opponents. It's one thing when she does so to private citizens like me -- I'm just a blogger.

But, seriously: to call Member of Parliament fools and dupes, simply because they disagree with her abusive tactics?

And, far more important than her insults, note what she does not say: she does not list a single inaccuracy in Hiebert's comments. It's the same with her criticism of my book: she has yet to name a single false fact -- not even a typo. You'd think she'd rush to expose me, if I had a single error.

Like I say, she's a coward.

Well, Hiebert fired back today, with a magnificent piece in the National Post. It's too good to merely excerpt; let me reprint it in full. The headline itself is gorgeous: The CHRC is ethically challenged.

Recently, Canadian Human Rights Commission chief Jennifer Lynch criticized me for relying on "one source that is full of misinformation," in my parliamentary study of the CHRC ( "Canadians 'misinformed' on hate speech," June 22). It may surprise Ms. Lynch to learn that the source of my "misinformation" is her own commission and its companion body, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Every question I raised in committee about the lack of due process and an ethics code for commission employees, and the absence of rules of evidence, came from commission and tribunal documents, many of which are currently available on the commission's own website ( www.chrc-ccdp.ca).The transcripts of tribunal hearings provide telling evidence of the wayward approach the commission's investigators take in prosecuting their cases. Recent hearings, such as the Marc Lemire case, have revealed that current CHRC investigator Dean Steacy and former CHRC investigator Richard Warman regularly posted neo-Nazi diatribes under assumed names on white supremacist web-sites. Further, uncontradicted expert evidence presented before the hearing demonstrated that investigator Steacy illegitimately used an unsuspecting private citizen's wireless Internet service to post his offensive comments.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the commission asked the tribunal to exclude the media from the hearing that day. Fortunately, for the sake of accountability, a secret hearing was rejected and we know more about the CHRC's inner workings.

However, other hearings have been held in secret, as Ms. Lynch has admitted, supposedly for the "safety" of a witness but contrary to the ancient right of being able to face one's accuser in court. Indeed, in the ongoing case of beachesboy@aol.com vs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com, the commission hasn't even revealed the identity of the complainant. Interestingly, the commission's website does name the complainant for 12 of the 14 hate speech cases that have come before the tribunal in the last eight years: Richard Warman. Ms. Lynch's deputy appeared before my committee in Parliament recently and admitted that the commission does not have to follow rules of evidence or legal procedure, but merely has "operating procedures" that identify the timelines for addressing complaints. To put that in plain English: defendants have no guarantee of a fair hearing.

A 2003 internal government review of the CHRC found that the commission scored only 2.5 out of five on an ethics test. The review recommended the commission adopt an ethics code, which it has still not done. Given the questionable activities of its investigators, perhaps it is time for Ms. Lynch to revisit this recommendation.

I'll let the readers decide who is "misinformed."

Gorgeous!