More letters

The Edmonton Journal ran a letter by me today in rebuttal to Janet Keeping's article about politeness. Here's my letter:

Re: "Freedom of expression isn't a licence to offend" by Janet Keeping, Ideas, July 29:

For 900 days, Canada's human rights commissions (HRCs) falsely accused me of racism, merely because I published a news story about the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. Fifteen Alberta government bureaucrats and lawyers prosecuted me, all on the taxpayers' dime. In the end, I was acquitted -- but left with $100,000 in legal fees.

Janet Keeping, president of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, thinks I'm the rude one, though, because I didn't go quietly. She thinks I insulted Canada's HRCs by describing them with words like "odious" and "execrable." She says that those and some of my other choice words are "unethical." Apparently the government's false accusation that I'm a racist -- for which they have yet to apologize --was ethically fine.

Keeping criticizes me for calling a particular HRC official a "damned liar." If I had called someone a liar who was not, in fact, lying, then it would just be name-calling. But, as I painstakingly documented in the National Post and Montreal Gazette last month, the person in question said a number of important things that were demonstrably false. For example, according to sworn testimony before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on March 28, 2008, several investigators with the federal HRC have acquired memberships in neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront. The official denied that. Calling her a liar isn't an insult, it's a demand for accountability.

I am a victim of Canada's out of control HRCs. It's strange to me that Keeping, who is normally a thoughtful person on matters of free speech, would blame me as the victim for not quietly accepting the government's abuse.

Ezra Levant, Calgary

It don't think it was as effective a reply as my letter that the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix ran, that the Journal didn't accept. For some reason, they just didn't want me to use the name "Jennifer Lynch" in my reply. I guess they're worried about an HRC complaint. Here's what ran in the S-P:

In Personal attacks have no place in ethical debate (SP, July 30), Janet Keeping writes that I was unethical to call Jennifer Lynch, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a "damned liar."

But Keeping left out something important: I have, in fact, caught Lynch in a damnable lie. On July 11, she told the National Post that her staff members have never published hateful comments on neo-Nazi websites. But that's not true, as Lynch knows.

At a March 25, 2008, hearing and elsewhere, her staff confessed under oath to making countless hateful remarks, including calling Jews "scum," gays a "cancer" on society and for white police to discriminate against blacks and be loyal to "their race."

Dean Steacy, who works for Lynch, even testified that he and six other CHRC employees have memberships in neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront. Just to be clear here: These are people who are supposed to be fighting against Nazis.

It might be unethical to call her a damned liar if she hadn't lied. It might be unethical to call her "execrable" if she were lying about a trifle, instead of covering up a systemic corruption of human rights.

Keeping also writes that it was unethical of me to note that, when I bumped into Lynch on Parliament Hill, she looked haggard. If I had seven Nazi members working for me, and had been investigated by the RCMP, the Privacy Commissioner and Parliament all in the last year, I'd look pretty haggard, too.

For me, exposing bigotry within our government is a higher ethical calling than staying silent so I don't hurt some politician's feelings.

Ezra Levant

Calgary

The Journal did run another letter alongside mine, so maybe that evens things out:

I am with Ezra Levant on the issue of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. They have him in the crosshairs and he will not be getting out any time soon.

Anyone who has the least interest in the right of free speech in Canada should be up in arms about the shameful way the this organization conducts it business. The CHRC is famous for hearing complaints which would never see the light of day through the normal justice system. The most galling thing about the whole process is that the complainant has their legal fess paid for by the Canadian taxpayer while the defendant must pay out of pocket for his defence.

James McNab, Edmonton

 I really don't think think this is a debate about politeness. I mean, I'm happy to have that debate, too, but it's not as important. Is it polite to call someone a liar? Probably not; but if they are a politician, like Jennifer Lynch is, and they really are lying, as I've meticulously documented, and the lies are important lies, then I think that politeness must take second place behind public accountability. I think it would be unethical to elevate mere politeness for politeness's sake ahead of responsible government. Those who think that one can expose the lies -- and corruption and abuse and neo-Nazi activities(!) -- of a 200-person, $25-million/year government agency without marshalling the full force of the English language are either naive and inexperienced, or -- as Jennifer Lynch is doing -- simply trying to change the subject from the Canadian Human Rights Commission's bad behaviour.

When Canada's censorship laws are finally repealed, and the abusive, corrupt staff at the CHRC and other HRCs are disciplined for their outrageous (and, in some cases, illegal) behaviour, we can then have a debate as to whether or not it is fair game to call their chief politician and spin doctor "haggard". Until we have shut down the real and pressing menace to our civil liberties, I'm not too interested about whether or not I'm using the wrong fork for my salad, or other exquisite courtesies.

P.S. I see that Peter Worthington's great column on the CHRC's Nazi shenanigans has made it into the pages of the Whitehorse Star. What do they think of the self-censorship of overpoliteness at the Star? I think their motto gives us a hint: illegitimus non carborundum.