Results matching “HRC” from Ezra Levant

Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission is a lot of things -- a liar; an employer of corrupt staff; a wastrel of public monies; an anti-Alberta bigot.

But is she an anti-Semite?

Until now, the only evidence we had for her anti-Semitism is that, under her watch, nearly a dozen of her staff were members of neo-Nazi organizations, or had access to membership privileges, with her full knowledge and consent. CHRC staff wrotes hundreds of filthy, filthy anti-Semitic and other racist comments on neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront. And when this fact became public, Lynch proudly stood by her own Aryan Guard.

Disgusting.

But here's the news: in a speech delivered last week, Lynch says she is building bridges with the new Nazis: radical Islamists who believe that Jews should be murdered.

I speak of the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress.

Readers will know that the Canadian Islamic Congress once declared that it is legitimate for anyone to kill an adult Israeli -- that such terrorism is morally acceptable. Here's a video clip: 

 

That sort of hate speech, of course, goes unprosecuted by the CHRC -- in their 33-year existence, they have never pursued a radical Tamil, Sikh or Muslim, despite "hate speech" on the fringes of those communities. Not just hate speech, of course -- actual calls for murder.

The Canadian Islamic Congress is no stranger to the CHRC. In 2007, they filed multiple "hate speech" complaints against Maclean's magazine for publishing a book excerpt by Mark Steyn. One of those complaints was to the CHRC.

The CHRC didn't pursue that complaint (the Ontario HRC issued a condemnation of Maclean's without the bother of a hearing; and the BC Human Rights Tribunal had a five-day kangaroo court that let Maclean's off on a technicality).

But now we learn that the CIC's complaint to the CHRC was actually the beginning of a beautiful friendship. According to a speech given by Jennifer Lynch herself, the Jew-hating CIC is "of high moral authority". Seriously: here's an excerpt from her speech:

We have reached out to opinion leaders and people of high moral authority who can influence how the story is told and speak up when they recognize inaccuracies.

The importance of these relationships became very clear. For many legitimate reasons, the Commission’s focus had not been on outreach in the past decade so we had to play “catch-up” to renew existing relationships and initiate new ones.
 
In our case this included:

• the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies;
• stakeholders related to the issue such as the Canadian Islamic Congress...

The CIC is so anti-Semitic that the cabinet of the government of Canada were forbidden to meet with them for reasons of political hygiene. But not only does Jennifer Lynch think they're fine to meet with -- they're actually a "high moral authority".

Seriously: the organization that excused the murder of Jews by terrorists is now an advisor to Lynch and her staff -- presumably including her dirty dozen Nazi members.

It was grotesque when Lynch turned a blind eye to the neo-Nazi activities of her own staff -- some of whom continue to work there, unpunished.

But now she's reaching out to notorious anti-Semites who call for the murder of Jews.

I entitled this blog post "Is the CHRC's Jennifer Lynch an anti-Semite?"

I wrote it as a question.

Now that I've thought about it, and looked at the facts, it's not a question in my mind anymore.

Jennifer Lynch is an anti-Semite.

That she is so brazen about her ties to anti-Semites, when the rest of the government is so proudly supportive of Israel and Jews, is a double disgrace.

Fire. Them. All. 

I was asked by an online magazine called The Mark to give advice to the Conservative Party.

My advice was to repeal section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Not only is it the right thing to do for the country, but it's a political winner. We know that the Conservative Party itself is united on the matter, and it would energize both the party's conservative and libertarian bases. But it could also post a dilemma for the opposition Liberals, who might be split on the matter between their truly liberal wing, and their more unfortunate authoritarian faction.

Here's the Op-Ed:

The Conservative government is getting the big issue of the day right: the economy. Canada leads the G7 nations in almost every measure; we were the last into the recession and the first out, and it was less deep here than in other countries. Not a single Canadian bank failed or had to be bailed out. Contrast that with the ongoing debt crisis in Europe and America's 10 per cent unemployment rate. It's not surprising that Canada's opposition parties and the media have chosen instead to focus on ephemera or spectacles, like the Jaffer-Guergis story.

The government is wise to concentrate on the issues that matter to Canadians and to tune out the chattering class in Ottawa. But there is a policy project they should adopt: reforming the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).

The CHRC is the largest of Canada's 14 human rights commissions, and it has been the most aggressive censor. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act gives the CHRC the power to prosecute anyone who publishes anything on the internet that is "likely to expose a person ... to hatred or contempt.” It's an incredibly vague offense, which is why for 32 years the CHRC had a 100 per cent conviction rate on all of their prosecutions, until the law was finally declared unconstitutional last fall. (The CHRC is appealing.)

The government should not wait for the question of political censorship to work its way through the courts. It should act now to repeal Section 13 and to make other badly needed reforms to the CHRC, including bringing in a civil liberties oversight committee to monitor abuses by CHRC staff, who have admitted under oath to publishing anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-gay material themselves in an effort to entrap citizens. A full-scale audit of the CHRC's policies by the auditor general is also in order, especially given the failing grade the CHRC received in a confidential internal government audit.

This is good policy: the CHRC has increasingly used its censorship powers as a political weapon, picking on religious Christians and conservative activists, even as it strenuously avoided prosecuting any politically correct "haters," such as radical Muslims. Simply put, censorship in the age of the internet isn't just ethically inappropriate, it's practically impossible – in other words, a perpetual source of work and expense for empire-building bureaucrats. It should be shut down.

From a political point of view, it's a winner for the government. Standing up for freedom of expression puts the government on the side of groups that traditionally have liberal sympathies, from artists and authors to civil libertarians. Even groups like Egale Canada, the gay rights lobby, have called for the repeal of Section 13, along with the likes of PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists. It would be a win for the government to have them as allies.

Other than those who earn their living from human rights commissions or file complaints there against their political enemies, there are no supporters of Section 13 in the whole political spectrum. I appeared before Parliament's Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on the subject last year, and I was impressed by the concern that all parties had about the abusive censorship of the CHRC. Based on my interactions with various Liberal and NDP MPs, I sense that the opposition would not take a party-line stance against such reforms. Even Ujjal Dosanjh, a left-wing Liberal, hinted to reporters after that meeting that he could be satisfied with repealing Section 13 and keeping the Criminal Code provisions against hate speech, which are not as easily abused.

Repealing Section 13 and deeply reforming the culture of the CHRC is a political winner. It would strengthen the government's civil libertarian bona fides. It would appeal to the party's base, which correctly senses that the CHRC is on an anti-conservative warpath. It would likely garner enough opposition votes to pass – and if an opposition leader insisted on opposing such reforms, it would likely cause splits in those opposition caucuses. (Michael Ignatieff has written against censorship in the past; he would be hard pressed to defend it today.)

Getting the economy right is important. But ending the 33-year record of abuse at the Canadian Human Rights Commission is important, too. It's the right policy decision. It will appeal to the party's base and impress civil libertarians outside the party. It will win support across the aisle – and pose problems for any opposition leader who tries to fight it.

 

I see from several of my favourite blogs a news story reporting that the Toronto Police now list "Nazis" as a potential victim group of "hate crimes".

And why not? Nazis can be hated, too. In fact, they are widely hated, and they should be. So it's not surprising that they are sometimes victims of crime.

But that's the problem with the phrase "hate crime". Hate itself is not a crime. And a crime is criminal whether or not it is motivated by hate.

Merging the two into a legal phrase is a trick, designed to blur the distinction. It is an attempt to criminalize the feeling of hate.

This corrosive legal idea was introduced into Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. Canada's Official Jews were the political midwives of the "hate speech" provisions in both the Criminal Code and various human rights laws.

As I've written before, these laws were obviously not enacted in response to any real criminal threat. Just twenty years after the Second World War, one out of five men on the street in Canada was a war veteran who had personally helped dispatch the Axis. The idea that our stable, liberal democracy might have erupted in pogroms or even revolution at the behest of a few eccentric racists is laughable.

No, the hate speech laws weren't in response to a legal need. They were in response to a political and psychological need. The Canadian Jewish Congress wanted to show the bruised Jewish community that they were alert and vigilant ethnic bosses -- perhaps to make up for their shameful political silence during the Holocaust itself.

And, for many of the individual Jews who agitated for these laws, it is clear to me, after reading hundreds of pages of archival material, that hate speech laws were a form of therapy. Jews, who were beaten literally and metaphorically during the Holocaust, could now do a little beating of their own. Call it a prototype for the movie Inglourious Basterds, a Jewish revenge fantasy.

That's what Canada's hate speech laws were built for: so Nazi-obsessed Official Jews could act out a muscular, state-sanctioned vengeance for the Holocaust, a Holocaust where the Jews had been physically and politically weak. It was a do-over, to be played out here in Canada, safely.

Now the Official Jews could purge their guilty feelings of impotence on hapless eccentrics like Ernst Zundel who, with his German accent and irridentist views, was a perfect voodoo doll for the Jews to stick with little legal pins.

Seriously: could you find a more mottled crew of misfits than those who have been prosecuted under our hate laws over the years? I wish I could recall the name of the Official Jew who I once heard gush that when he visited Zundel in jail, he smelled of his own urine. I saw such a beatific satisfaction in his eyes, I wish I could have shown him a videotape of himself, rejoicing in the degradation of a political enemy. How un-Jewish.

But forgive the lengthy tangent. Let's talk about Canada's hate laws, and their extension now to Canadian Nazis. Bernie "Burny" Farber, the High Priest of Official Jewry, Grand Poohbah of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said:

“How does Nazi fit into that,” questioned Bernie Farber, of the Canadian Jewish Congress, when the category was pointed out by the Town Crier.

“A Nazi can never be a victim but only a victimizer,” he said.

First: is it really surprising to Burny that another group has weaseled its way into the political class called "victim"?

Seriously, did Burny and the CJC architects and defenders of hate speech laws really think that they could maintain a monopoly over who could use these hate laws?

Perhaps back in the 1960s and 1970s, when these things were still new, the CJC's shortsightedness could be understood, if not forgiven. But really, in 2010? After Jew-hating groups like the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada have availed themselves of the Jewish-created human rights commissions? Can Burny truly be surprised that others are trying out his trick?

It is nothing more than arrogance and solipsism that would make Burny think that a law could only be used by him. True enough, the Jews did set down plenty of jurisprudential sediment using these hate speech laws -- it was practically a Jewish monopoly until ten years ago. But in Canada we believe in rule of law -- in other words, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Official Jews can use hate laws to prosecute their political enemies, why can't Muslims?

And, indeed, why can't Nazis?

Did Burny really think that the Jews could ride on the back of the hate crimes tiger forever, without winding up in the tiger's mouth?

But that is not my quarrel here. Because the list that Nazis are now added to is not some human rights commission list; it's a police list, which presumably refers to the Criminal Code.

In other words, the Toronto Police are not putting Nazis on the list of political victims, but on the list of victims of crime. Perhaps they even have a basis for that -- again, it would not be surprising that self-identifying Nazis get the tar kicked out of them a lot.

Which is the real reason why Burny's comments are so repulsive.

All of the above is merely a recital of the problem with defining legally favoured groups: and that is, others will want in on that list, be they Muslim, Nazi or whatever.

That's not news.

What's news here is that Burny reveals just how illiberal he is when it comes to violence.

Because that's what we're talking about: crimes investigated by police, not speech investigated by HRCs.

Burny says that Nazis "can never be a victim".

Really?

Does Burny really think that a Nazi can never be the victim of a crime?

Does he really think that a Nazi ought to suffer a crime without the protection of the law?

Does he think that merely declaring oneself to be of a certain political view -- no matter how odious -- renders one an outlaw, outside the protection of police?

Is this just more of Burny's revenge fantasy?

To help you understand the illiberal nature of Burny's assertion, let us choose a less detestable victim of crime -- a prostitute.

No-one would ever say that a prostitute can never be a victim of rape. For even a prostitute has the protection of the law.

But Burny is saying one ought to be able to do anything to a Nazi -- that a Nazi can never be a victim of a hate crime. It's like saying a prostitute should be considered un-rapeable before the law.

Thank God that Burny is increasingly regarded as marginal, both within the Jewish community and in government. Because he clearly is still living in the 1960s, thinking that he can make changes to our laws that only harm his political enemies, and that his enemies themselves cannot use.

Could you imagine if Burny's legal theories were given force -- that the state could declare certain persons anathema, and that you could punish them in any way?

How long do you think such a puncture of the rule of law would take before it was Jews who were the ones you could molest with impunity?

And that, finally, is my point.

A real Jew, with a Jewish understanding of justice, would never state that a Nazi can't be treated as a victim of a crime.

A real Jew would rail against Nazis, detest them, defame them, debate them, disparage them -- but never deny them the basic human right to be free from criminal violence.

I never thought my esteem for Burny could fall any lower, but the man has hit rock bottom, and started digging.

 

Have you heard of Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression?

I bet you haven't.

Because in the great Canadian free speech debate of the past few years, they've been as silent as church mice.

According to their website,

We boldly champion the free expression rights of journalists and media workers around the world. In Canada, we monitor, defend and promote free expression and access to information. We encourage and support individuals and groups to be vigilant in the protection of their own and others' free expression rights. We are active participants and builders of the global free expression community.

Of course, it's just not true.

If you relied on the CJFE for your news about media freedom and censorship, you probably wouldn't have heard about a little kerfuffle back in the fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006, after a Danish newspaper published a dozen cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Things escalated to the point where in the single month of February, 2006, over 200 people were killed that in riots purportedly in response to those cartoons. It was the top story around the world.

Not for the CJFE -- they talked about everything and anything else, desperate to avoid giving offense to radical Islam.

In February of 2006, the magazine I published at the time, the Western Standard, reprinted some of the cartoons as a news story. We were slapped with two human rights complaints, another news story that continued for 900 days.

But the CJFE was still silent. They were hiding under their desks. Seriously: look at their 2006 news releases.

What cowards.

It wasn't until two and a half months later that they dipped their toe tentatively in the water by having a panel discussion -- featuring, amongst others, Haroon Siddiqui, one of only a handful of journalists in the whole country who actually support censorship and the power of human rights commissions to censor the media.

A panel discussion. No statement in defence of free speech. No "boldly championing" anything. No "defending and promoting" anything. Certainly no "support" or "active participation".

In other words, the CJFE is a bunch of cowards, and have been for years.

What an embarrassment they are, as compared to PEN Canada or the Canadian Association of Journalists.

If you look at the names of the directors of the CJFE, the source of their cowardice, wilfull blindness and hypocrisy is pretty clear: the bulk of them are the very editors and producers who themselves took part in the nearly-uniform censorship of the cartoons in the first place.

It would be quite some feat for the same "journalists" who executed the self-censorship to begin with, to then oppose that same censorship, wouldn't it be?

I don't know how up to date the list is, but the website includes plenty of high-ups at the CBC (which censored the cartoons) and even the editor of NOW magazine, which not only censored the cartoons, but has disgraced itself by being the only newspaper in the country whose official editorial position is in support of human rights commission censorship.

It borders on false advertising for such people to call themselves "Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression". They just aren't.

They've marginalized themselves. I mean, seriously -- have you ever heard them mentioned, anywhere, ever? They have made themselves obsolete.

I know I have ignored them.

But then I came across an item in the blog Free Canuckistan indicating that the sleeping lifeguards at the CJFE had awoken long enough to come to our rescue, some four years after we nearly drowned, by putting out some sort of report on the state of freedom of speech in Canada.

This would be quite something to see: after four years of pondering, what did they have to tell us?

You can see the report here (large file). Let's start with an astounding statement on page 5:

Any restriction on speech has to have a clear social benefit, and so we recognize the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for its decision in the Lemire case to deem the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Code to be unconstitutional.

So let's get this straight. Canada's self-described freedom-fighters accept censorship if it has "a clear social benefit"?

Is that the test now?

I have a question. Has there ever been a censor, in the history of mankind, who has not claimed "a clear social benefit" to his censorship?

Has there ever been a censor so stupid as to describe his motives as being bigoted or political or inappropriate, as opposed to necessary and salutary?

So the CJFE is willing to accept censorship if it is done in the name of a "social benefit"?

This is what we waited four years for?

Their report addresses human rights commissions again on page 9, and it's clear that they just don't have a clue.

The first thing that becomes obvious is that the CJFE thinks there is one "Human Rights Act" in Canada. They keep saying that; but in fact there are fourteen in the country, some of which include censorship, some of which don't. And those that do, do so in different ways -- section 13 of the federal law, for example, covers only telephone messages and the Internet. Some provincial laws cover magazines; some cover signs. I don't think the "journalists" at the CJFE even Googled this.

That's not a minor point, because if you haven't read the law, then you don't know how it's a threat.

So you just might write something like this, as the CJFE did on page 9:

The Human Rights Act deals with hate speech adjudicated by a tribunal of civilians based on a complaint that the speech is intended to lead to discrimination.

and later:

Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, on the other hand, is an anti-discrimination law, and suspected offences of speech are judged not on whether they are meant to incite violence but on whether they are meant to incite feelings of hatred or contempt that lead to discrimination

Uh, no. There is no mental element necessary for a conviction under the human rights act -- no guilty mind is necessary, as it is in the criminal law. Intentions have nothing to do with it -- and so good intentions are no defence. The target doesn't have to "mean to" do anything.

And the CJFE makes another mistake that someone who actually read the law wouldn't have made: they say the law requires that the evoked feelings must "lead to discrimination".

Again, no. And the fact that the CJFE doesn't get it is damned embarrassing. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and its provincial analogs, don't regulate real discrimination. They regulate feelings. That's it. Nothing has to come from those feelings, other than that they were felt.

No-one has to act on those feelings, and certainly not to discriminate. The CJFE just doesn't know what they're talking about.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present your self-described experts in freedom!

It just gets lamer. Still on page 9:

Under the Human Rights Act, a person or group that feels they are the aggrieved object of the published statement in non-criminal cases can seek relief before provincial or federal human rights commissions, which have the power to pass them on to a tribunal for adjudication.

Again, there's the weird implication that there is only one Human Rights Act, and that it applies both provincially and federally. Did these expert advocates really miss the fact that Mark Steyn was charged under three different laws in three different jurisdictions?

But again, there's a more important error: the CJFE thinks that only the "aggrieved" groups in question can file complaints. But that shows they're not paying attention. Every single section 13 complaint prosecuted before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the past eight or so years has been lodged by the same one person: a white male named Richard Warman. He's not Jewish, not black, not an immigrant, etc., etc., but he files complaints in the name of those "groups". He's not a victim -- yet he has been awarded tens of thousands of dollars by the tribunal for his pains.

Is the CJFE just making things up?

They sure are:

The tribunals are quasi-judicial, with as many as 15 civilian appointees hearing a case without a judge.

I'm going to give these "journalists" the benefit of the doubt and just assume they don't know how to write clearly. Surely they don't think that fifteen people actually hear "a case" together, do they?

Please tell me they don't think that "as many as 15" human rights commissioners judge a case. Please?

Turn to page 10 now, as the CJFE talks about Mark Steyn:

The case was dismissed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and the Ontario Human Rights Commission after Maclean’s submitted a brief of defence to each. But the British Columbia Human Rights Commission deemed the case worth adjudicating and held public tribunal hearings.

The CJFE says that Maclean's defended themselves before the Ontario and federal commissions. But the public record to date shows the opposite -- that the Ontario HRC rejected the complaint against Maclean's (but denounced Maclean's nonetheless) without receiving Maclean's defence, and that the CHRC did the same.

I'll stand corrected if the CJFE has done some actual research and found out new facts here. But given their laughable command of the facts so far, I think it's safe to assume they're just making this up, too.

Oh, and by the way -- there is no B.C. Human Rights Commission, despite the CJFE's claim that there is. It was abolished seven years ago. Now all cases go directly to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. But how would the CJFE know something like that!

Why does any of this matter?

I guess it doesn't. There are stupid journalists, just like there are stupid people in every trade.

But I'm not mad at the CJFE for being stupid. I'm mad at them for being cowards four years ago when the cartoons became the censorship issue of the decade. And I'm mad at them for this joke of a report now, that gives their OK for censorship of things, if someone can claim a "social benefit" to that censorship.

Stupid is fine. Stupid can be fixed. Stupid is not malicious. Stupid is not dishonest.

But cowardice goes to one's character. Appeasement goes right to the soul.

Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression are cowards.

After four years of silence, they have awoken to tell the government that censorship is fine as long as there is a "social benefit".

Let's all hope these buffoons go back to sleep for another four years.

Too much more help like this, and we're all doomed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's something seriously wrong with the Canadian Jewish Congress.

I put to you two recent facts that tell the story.

The first is their threatened lawsuit against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn. Mark describes it here; I'm less interested right now in the disagreement than with the means the CJC sought to resolve the disagreement: they threatened to sue Steyn and Maclean's over what was clearly a fair comment.

While not Jewish himself, I cannot think of a more dedicated advocate of the cause of Israel or Canadian Jewry than Mark Steyn. He sees clearly the threat of radical Islam, and knows that is the threat of our generation -- not the fetishization of the Nazi Holocaust 75 years ago, as the CJC does; but warning against the looming Holocaust that is the aim of radical Islam.

That takes courage -- courage that the CJC lacks.

Steyn doesn't just talk the talk. He fights the fight -- even submitting to a five-day show trial at the hands of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for precisely his campaign to expose the threat of radical Islam.

You'd think the CJC would regard him as a hero, or at least as an ally -- most Jews I know sure do. But while secular groups like the Civil Liberties Association intervened in support of Steyn, the CJC stayed silent. Well, that's not quite true, is it: they were amongst the only defenders of the censorship provisions of Canada's HRCs.

So that's how they treat our truest allies: abandon them in their time of need; threaten to sue them over hurt feelings.

Gotcha.

But how does the CJC treat a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite like Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj?

Oh, I don't throw that appellation around lightly. Besides calling for the legalization of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, and calling for negotiations with them even while they're banned, and flying to Lebanon himself proposing to meet with them, Wrzesnewskyj actually -- this is just too hard to believe -- called up the Globe and Mail, unsolicited, and demanded that Jason Kenney should come home from his "jaunt" to Auschwitz, when Kenney was there for a commemoration.

It's an odious man who thinks that; but it is a bizarrely brazen man who picks up the phone and calls up the paper to announce that.

That's Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

So how do you think the CJC treats him?

How do you think they treat him, compared to Mark Steyn?

The high priests at the CJC give Wrzesnewskyj their blessing.

They ask him to say a benediction for the father of the president of the CJC, Mark Freiman. And when Wrzesnewskyj reads out their scripted words, the CJC goes into full propaganda mode for him, publishing his remarks and e-mail blasting them out to every Jew in the country for whom they have an e-mail address.

So let's recap.

A Jew-lover like Mark Steyn: the CJC threatens to sue.

A Jew-hater like Borys Wrzesnewskyj who condemns the remembrance of the last Holocaust, and condemns the warnings of the next Holocaust: the CJC whitewashes and deodorizes. That kind of cleansing must have that old anti-Semite just laughing and laughing at them.

Good God, there's something deeply sick about the Canadian Jewish Congress when they no longer can tell our community's best friends from our worst enemies.

The other day, the National Post's John Ivison wrote about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's appalling view, as expressed under oath by "hate speech" investigator Dean Steacy, that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value".

Seriously, Steacy said that -- look it up for yourself in the transcript of the hearing, here, at page 4793.

Ivison asked the CHRC to explain themselves, and they told him:

(a commission spokesperson said this quote has been taken out of context and that if the question had been about freedom of expression, one of the freedoms guaranteed in the Charter, the answer would have been different).

That's a lie, of course. Here's my letter to the editor in today's Post pointing out that lie:

CHRC 'bullies' don't believe in free speech

Re: Laws Can't Assure We'll Never Be Offended, John Ivison, April 3.

John Ivison is right to focus on the stunning testimony of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's "hate speech" investigator, Dean Steacy, who declared that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

What's even more amazing is that when Mr. Ivison asked the CHRC about this shocking statement, the commission actually tried to defend it.

First the CHRC's spin doctors told Mr. Ivison that the quote was taken out of context. But it wasn't -- it was a one-sentence answer to a one-sentence question: "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?"

Then the CHRC tried to argue that our Charter of Rights only protects "freedom of expression," so it's OK that its censors don't give any value to "freedom of speech" because that's "different." But that's just stupid: speech is a kind of expression, the most common kind.

Despite what the CHRC says, freedom of speech is guaranteed under Canadian law: the 1960 Bill of Rights brought in by John Diefenbaker lists "freedom of speech" right in section 1. And the phrase "freedom of speech" has been used in no less than 243 rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canada's censorship laws are being enforced by bullies who don't give a damn about our freedoms and don't even know the law.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

 

That's Kathy Shaidle's catch-phrase when a Jew takes it upon himself to single-handedly undo the Hebrew people's most positive stereotype, namely that we're smart.

But why don't you judge for yourself?

Two young students at Carleton University, one Jewish and one not, were attacked the other night by Muslims wielding a machete and shouting at them for being "Zionists".

So we don't have a "hate speech" moment here. We don't have a fake "right not to be offended" moment. We have an assault with a weapon. It's in the Criminal Code, not some politically correct speech code.

And what does Len Rudner, an Official Jew at the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie "Burny" Farber's mini-me, have to say about it?

“Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument to the point where people feel that this kind of behaviour is acceptable."

What?

So we have an actual crime with an actual weapon. And Rudner is calling for not the enforcement of the criminal code, but more censorship?

But look at the mealy-mouthed coward. He can't even say that. He says "maybe" "we" "should consider" "the impact words can have" in "accelerating the argument".

WTF?

Maybe?

We?

Should consider?

We didn't do anything. Ten thugs did.

Words didn't have an impact. A machete did -- or almost did.

Accelerating the argument? A machete isn't an argument. It isn't speech, even offensive or "hateful" speech. It is a tool of violence.

And Rudner thinks that -- what? more human rights commissions prosecuting more Zionists like Mark Steyn and me? -- would make these thugs "feel" their behaviour was not "acceptable"?

We already have a Criminal Code that tells them this behaviour is not acceptable.

I'm a Jew, and I love being Jewish. But I remember listening to Rudner on CHQR radio in Calgary once, when he was declaring -- on behalf of all Jews -- that Canada's freedom of speech needs to be infringed.

It was the most condescending lecture I have ever heard -- on southern Alberta's biggest radio station.

And -- if you've ever heard Rudner speak -- you know it was delivered with his trademark Elmer Fudd lisp.

I have nothing against people with a speech impediment. Hell, Moses himself had one.

But when you are sending out a spokesman, fraudulently in the name of all Canadian Jews, to tell the massive listenership of CHQR that "the Jews" are against free speech, and "the Jews" are for censorship, why the hell would you choose the most annoying, irritating, grating spokesman around?

Maybe we could call down to central casting and get Fyvush Finkel to do the censorship circuit, perhaps while conspicuously counting some money. That ought to endear the Jews to the general public.

I swear, if I were not a Jew myself, Rudner's appearance on the radio that day could have turned me into an anti-Semite.

I can only imagine how many people listened to him and blamed the whole of the Jews for that one moron's comments.

And now he's at it again.

It's Rudner's human right to be stupid, and I'm all for his freedom of speech through which he advertises his stupidity.

But he does so falsely in my name, and in the name of the rest of our tribe.

Gentle reader, just so you know: Len Rudner and the other buffoons at the Canadian Jewish Congress don't speak for me.

They don't speak for any of the Jews I know.

They don't speak for the Jewish interest.

And they certainly don't speak for the Canadian interest.

I can't even detect what possible interest they're serving, by making utterances such as Rudner's today.

Rudner's boss, Burny, once mused that human rights commissions are the "dumping ground" for failed political hacks.

It's the one thing I can think of where I have ever agreed with Burny.

Well, if the HRCs are a dumping ground for politicians who can't hack it, the CJC is surely a dumping ground for Jewish men like Rudner and Farber who couldn't cut it as doctors or lawyers or accountants or start a business.

They're a shanda for the goyim.

Here's a story in today's National Post about Richard Warman's nuisance lawsuits against me -- part of the larger lawfare campaign waged against me by radical Muslim activists, their Canadian Human Rights Commission collaborators, and even some Official Jews like Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress:

Free-speech blogger Ezra Levant has accused anti-hate activist Richard Warman of exploiting court processes to publicly "scandalize" him with "wholly irrelevant" allegations, and to discourage his "public service journalism" against human rights commissions.

The claim is in an affidavit, obtained by the National Post, that is part of Mr. Levant's defence against a libel suit brought by Mr. Warman.

A judge is to rule later this month whether Mr. Levant can examine files gathered by Mr. Warman over his decade of activism against those who post hate messages on the Internet, which includes 16 cases at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

In an affidavit supporting his request for disclosure, Mr. Levant said Mr. Warman's "focus on my political views, and [his] express concern for the political reputation of non-parties to this lawsuit, such as Mr. Warman's former employer, the [Canadian Human Rights Commission], demonstrates my contention that his lawsuit is indeed a 'SLAPP' suit -- Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation -- designed to 'chill' public discussion of these issues."

Mr. Levant's writing, including the 2009 book Shakedown, has focused on the controversies of human rights law, especially Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits online messages that are "likely to expose" identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt."

"That a single citizen [Mr. Warman] is the largest sole user of a legal procedure for 10 years is newsworthy in itself. It also makes it impossible to scrutinize the CHRC's conduct without scrutinizing Mr. Warman's conduct, as they are largely one and the same on this issue," the affidavit reads.

In a recent court appearance, Mr. Warman's lawyer Brian Shiller called the request for disclosure a "fishing expedition" that would unfairly expose personal information, and Mr. Warman states in an affidavit that Mr. Levant is seeking "mountains of documents that clearly have no arguable relevancy to the matters in question."

Mr. Levant's affidavit states that he has no interest in personal information, and that Mr. Warman "has disclosed only a limited number of records relating to his own statement of claim, and almost no records relating to other matters pleaded in my statement of defence."

Those other matters relate to Mr. Warman's use of false personas as part of his hate-speech investigations. Mr. Levant said his own "public-interest journalism about this controversial conduct" is "a central issue" of the case.

Mr. Levant calls this libel suit against him and other bloggers "highly political," and describes federal Liberal party strategist Warren Kinsella as Mr. Warman's "spokesperson," which Mr. Warman denies.

...In his emailed response to questions, Mr. Warman also alleged that the accusation at the core of this libel suit -- that he was the author of a racist and sexist message posted on the far-right freedomsite.org-- was "invented" by that site's owner, Marc Lemire, as part of an effort to "derail" the hate speech case against him. That case, brought by Mr. Warman in 2003, concluded last year when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal judged Section 13 to be an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of expression. An appeal is soon to be heard in federal court.

 

 

Today's Calgary Herald has an interesting editorial about the campaign of lawfare being waged against me by radical Muslims and their collaborators at Canada's human rights commissions.

As supporters will know, Syed Soharwardy, of the Islamic Supreme Council of Calgary and Khurrum Awan of the Canadian Islamic Congress have been joined in their campaign by current and former HRC staff Giacomo Vigna and Richard Warman, and Warman's spokesman Warren Kinsella. Those five people -- Soharwardy, Awan, Vigna, Warman and Kinsella -- have, amongst them, filed 28 of the 31 nuisance suits and complaints against me.

Here's the Herald on Warman's excesses:

Using pseudonyms, he posted encouraging remarks on neo-Nazi sites such as "Keep up the good work Commander Schoep!" in order, he says, to flush out and identify neo-Nazi sympathizers.

In the U.S. this is called entrapment.

...Warman, in fact, has been the sole complainant since 2002 to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is the Internet anti-hate section that prohibits statements that are "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

Because of his zeal, many accuse Warman of overstepping the bounds of liberty, calling him a modern-day witch hunter whose actions merely helped to inflame and spread the very hatred he sought to stamp out. One of his critics is Ezra Levant, the Calgary lawyer and conservative blogger whose outspoken comments about Warman and other "censors and bullies" at the commission have resulted in a libel action by Warman.

...it also exposed the commission's lack of due process, where fundamental rules of evidence do not apply, and where Warman, a former commission member, was afforded access to files and staff unavailable to defendants. Complainants, it should be noted, also have expenses paid by the commission, defenders do not.

Warman's actions ultimately led to a human rights tribunal ruling that Section 13 is an unconstitutional violation of the freedom of expression provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights. That ruling is currently under appeal. Warman's vendettas also prompted a review by University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon who rightfully argued in 2008 that Section 13 should be repealed so that online hate speech is a purely criminal matter.

We are glad to see that Warman is suing Levant, not out of disagreement with the combative Calgary lawyer, but for the simple reason that Warman will finally have to spend his own money in a real court, rather than availing himself of commission time and resources at taxpayer expense.

We loath neo-Nazi sentiments, but the whole affair reminds us of Matthew Hopkins, who appointed himself England's "Witchfinder General" in the mid-1600s. He hunted down an estimated 200 witches, turning them over to authorities at the price of one pound per witch.

And here's an item from last month by the Ottawa Citizen's Robert Sibley:

Call it jihad through the courts. Once again Ezra Levant is under attack from Muslims who don’t like the fact that he doesn’t like Muslim extremists.

Two years ago, as most every sentient Canadian knows, Levant, the former publisher of one of the few non-Leftist magazines in this country, The Western Standard, and Mark Steyn, a columnist for Maclean’s magazine (and just about every other publication in the free world, it seems), were the targets of various human rights complaints.

...Awan gloated at the thought that his complaints had cost Maclean’s a great deal of money. Indeed, that seems to be the real purpose of the complaints.

Felton quoted Awan as saying: “‘We do not plan to appeal the decision because we attained out strategic objective — to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.’ Awan said Maclean’s spent $500,000 alone on the B.C. case, but that does not take into account the case in Ontario. The total legal cost to Maclean’s is somewhere around $2 million.” (No mention of all the taxpayers’ money the human rights commissions wasted in allowing the complaints in the first place.)

In other words, Awan and his Muslim friends weren’t really concerned about rights or justice or wanting to be treated the same as other Canadians. Nope, it was all about making it too expensive for anyone to dare criticize Islam. It was all about using (abusing?) the legal system to silence Canadians who question the Islamic worldview.

I’d call that jihad chill, or, perhaps, soft terrorism. Isn’t it a kind of terrorism when the law itself becomes the means for frightening people into silence, and, thereby, stripping them of rights to free speech and freedom of religion, which, of course, including the right to criticize religion. (Can you imagine the hullabaloo if the Catholic Church started indulging in lawsuits against those who blaspheme the Son of God?)

Now, two years later, Awan is trying the same tactic against Levant, suing the Calgary-based writer for defamation.

…Awan might be in for a bit of a surprise, presuming the Canada’s law courts aren’t as easily manipulated as the human rights commissions.

Question: do you think Warman, Awan and the others will sue the Calgary Herald and the Ottawa Citizen for criticizing them? I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

FEB. 10TH UPDATE: the trial in Vigna v. Levant has been adjourned until March 15th.

I haven't posted for a few weeks on the state of the nuisance lawsuits against me, and now's a good time for an update.

Warman v. Levant et al.

In 2008, Richard Warman sued me and several other bloggers for defamation, in Toronto. On Monday my lawyers went to court in Toronto to compel Warman to disclose hundreds (possibly thousands) of items from his computer hard drive that we believe are relevant to the suit. The matter has been postponed for a number of weeks, but will likely be resolved this Spring.

Vigna v. Levant

In 2008, Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer Giacomo Vigna filed a defamation suit against me, too, in Ottawa. Some brief preliminary matters were dealt with today, and the trial itself begins tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. at the Ottawa court house on Elgin Street. Feel free to come by if you're interested; the clerk at the front desk will have the room number. The trial will likely take up the rest of this week and start up again next Tuesday.

FEB. 10TH UPDATE: This morning the trial was adjourned until March 15th.

Law Society complaints

I have lost count of the exact number of Law Society complaints filed against my blog -- I think it's 23. All but the last three have been disposed of -- all dismissed, with no finding of guilt and no conviction.

Now, it might sound odd that a lawyer has to answer for blogging -- a non-lawyerly activity -- but lawyers are bound to live up to professional standards no matter what they're doing. I'm pleased to report that, when I specifically asked the Law Society if there was a single word in the nearly 2-million words I've written on my blog that they wanted me to take down, the answer was "no". See, the thing about legal ethics is that they're not just negative -- don't do this or that. They're positive, too: lawyers have an active obligation to work to reform the legal system for the better. If I weren't a lawyer, it would be okay to walk away from the injustices within Canada's human rights commissions. But as long as I'm a member in good standing of the Law Society, I am actually compelled to criticize them -- it's not a matter of choice. That's the balance: being a vigorous critic of our human rights commissions, but doing it in a professional manner. To my deep satisfaction, the complaints that I upset that balance have been dismissed.

All of Warren Kinsella's complaints have been thrown out, as well as all of Warman's complaints, and Vigna's first batch of complaints -- totalling over 1,000 pages -- have been thrown out, too. Vigna has since filed another complaint, but it is a repeat of an earlier complaint and so I expect it will be thrown out, as well.

Lawfare

Let's add that all up. Three human rights commission complaints against me (two in Alberta for publishing cartoons, and one at the CHRC for blogging).

Approximately 23 Law Society complaints (plus three outstanding).

And five defamation actions.

That's 31 complaints or lawsuits all together --  all by people associated with Canada's human rights commissions, and almost all focused on my criticisms of the HRCs. I guess they're fighting me in the courts of law, because they've been so spectactularly unsuccessful in the court of public opinion.

I'm 23 for 23. Still, it's a hassle.

Remember the true freedom fighters

But if I ever feel like complaining, all I need to do is think of the "hassle" that our grandparents went to, to defend our freedoms seventy years ago, or the price our brave Canadian Forces pay every day to promote political and religious freedom in places like Afghanistan today.

I was in Edmonton a couple of months ago giving a speech at a fundraising event for CF amputees organized by the great Matt Altheim. The other speakers were Laurie Hawn, the MP who served for years in the RCAF, and Master Corporal (Ret.) Paul Franklin, who lost his legs in an IED attack in Afghanistan. Here's some video highlights:

 

It's a little much to talk about "fighting" for freedom when the most I've fought off is a few nuisance suits, and the closest I've come to a "crossfire" is a TV show, and the only "war room" I've been to is in a campaign office. You just can't use those words in the presence of such real heroes who have made true physical sacrifices for our freedom.

Wish me luck. But more importantly, wish for freedom for all of us -- that most valuable thing that every generation much cherish or lose. 

It was September 10, 2008, just three days after the federal election writ was dropped.

 

Political staff in Ottawa were taking leaves of absence to campaign. MPs were in their ridings. Nobody in Ottawa was paying attention to anything other than the election.

 

If you're the pro-U.N., anti-Israel staff of the government NGO called Rights and Democracy (R&D) what do you do to capitalize on that lack of adult supervision?

 

You quickly cut a cheque for $144,000 to the United Nations.

 

You just go and do it.

 

And here's the cover letter for the cheque, showing that they did.

 

R&D was set up during the cold war by Brian Mulroney’s government to help promote freedom around the world. It was supposed to be the kind of organization that would do things like smuggle in photocopiers to the Polish democracy group, Solidarity. You know: help the good guys, the little guys.

 

Twenty years later, it’s cutting cheques to the United Nations.

 

And not just any part of the U.N, but the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights. That’s the bureaucracy that serves the bigoted U.N. Human Rights Council, the dysfunctional committee where the likes of Iran and China hurl invective at the U.S. and Israel, to the gleeful applause of dozens of third world tyrants.

 

It’s like the Thunderdome in Mad Max, but with worse dentistry.

 

For R&D, a group mandated to support fledgling freedom movements around the world, to send $144,000 to the U.N. isn’t just a grotesque violation of their mandate and an unseemly waste of taxpayers money. It’s also a deliberate slap in the face to the Conservative government, which has placed an emphasis on bringing our foreign policy into line with our national values of freedom, democracy, fighting terrorism and standing by our allies.

 

Under the previous Liberal government, Canada traditionally voted with the herd at the U.N., even if that meant throwing a fellow democracy like Israel to the wolves. Under Harper, our voting pattern changed noticeably. At the U.N. Human Rights Council, Canada is often the lone dissenting vote now when the rabid Jew-haters are in high dudgeon.

 

So R&D’s largesse was not random. It was designed as a deliberate and flagrant contradiction to Canada’s foreign policy. Now, that’s fine if R&D raised its own money. But like other anti-Semitic NGOs, like KAIROS, R&D depends on the government forking over taxpayers’ money -- $11 million/year, in the case of R&D.

 

Sorry, I used the word NGO to describe R&D. It’s not really a Non-Governmental Organization when the government set it up and funds it, is it? It’s a GONGO – a Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization. So you’ve got Canadian bureaucrats giving money to U.N. bureaucrats.

 

And it wasn’t the first time.

 

Here's an internal R&D memo showing over $700,000 siphoned off to the U.N. over the past four years.

Outrageous.

 

But even more outrageous is what R&D does with money that it doesn’t send to the U.N. Take these three cheques totalling $30,000 that R&D hustled out the door without board approval.

 

None of them are for democracy building or freedom-fighting. True, some of the money went to Gaza, a theocratic, fascist failed statelet run by the Hamas terrorist organization. But the money didn’t go to help liberal Palestinians resist the terrorist gangs there, or to rebuild any semblance of civil society.

 

The money went to support anti-Israel propaganda campaigns.

 

Seriously. Read the cover letters that accompanied the money – your money.

 

It was to document Israeli “war crimes” during Israel’s war against Hamas.

 

So now you know why Michael Ignatieff has taken such a strong public stand in favour of R&D, and against Harper’s new appointments to the board of R&D, who are trying to reign in the rogue agency.

 

In 2006, Ignatieff called Israel a war criminal for its military actions against Hamas in Gaza.

 

In 2009, R&D send tens of thousands of dollars to anti-Israel groups to “prove” that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza.

 

Of course Ignatieff likes them.

 

Of course, the Liberal house Jew Irwin Cotler is silent on the subject – he’s proved many times that he can sit in silence while his party defames Israel.

 

But it gets worse.

 

Who is one of the groups that R&D has shoveled Canadian taxpayers’ money to?

 

Al Haq.

 

Who are they? They’re a radical anti-Israel group run by Shawan Jabarin.

 

And who’s he?

 

He’s a member of the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

 

Here’s the PFLP’s English-language propaganda page. You can see why Ignatieff and Cotler might support R&D’s decision to give Al Haq our tax money.

 

And here’s a detail of Jabarin’s signature on an R&D contract, indicating his receipt of $10,000 of Canadian taxpayers’ money.

 

 

 

Not all Liberals support R&D’s un-Canadian behavior. David Matas, a two-time Liberal candidate, is on R&D’s board. He joined with his Conservative colleagues in penning a damning Op-Ed in today’s National Post in which even more of R&D’s outrageous behavior is disclosed.

 

What should be done with R&D?

 

The majority of its board is doing the right thing: trying to rein in out-of-control, off-mandate spending – and not just to terrorist supporters.

 

But that’s clearly not enough. R&D managers continue to disobey the board, sometimes on trivial matters, sometimes on important matters. Many of them signed a “work to rule” letter, demanding that the board resign for daring to ask for financial controls.

 

I like that chutzpah -- trying to fire their bosses.

 

That final act, that mass challenge to the board, and indirectly to the Conservative government, is reminiscent of the illegal strike by U.S. air traffic controllers early in Ronald Reagan’s first term. It was a test of his seriousness: would he really allow air traffic in the U.S. to grind to a halt, or would he pay off a union in an illegal strike?

 

Reagan coolly ordered them back to work. And those that didn’t return were immediately fired, with U.S. military personnel filling in where needed. No-one doubted Reagan’s resolve again.

 

R&D is out of control, financially. And its mandate has been twisted. The Cold War is over, but the need for support for democracy has never been greater – in the Arab world, in Latin America, in China and even in Russia itself. Only a bigoted, rotten organization would focus its venom on Israel, and give its money to the U.N.'s perverted human rights apparatus.

 

The real answer is the Reagan answer: just shut the damned thing down. Let those anti-Israel bigots raise their own money, like KAIROS has to do now.

 

It comes down to this one question: who sets Canadian foreign policy, and directs the spending of Canadian taxes?

 

Stephen Harper thinks he does. R&D's rogue staff thinks they do. Only one of them can be right.

I've been fighting against Canada's censorious and corrupt human rights commissions for nearly four years now; it was in February of 2006 that the print edition of the Western Standard, may it rest in peace, reprinted the Danish cartoons of Mohammed to illustrate a news story. The "human rights" nuisance suits against the magazine, and me as its publisher, began immediately after that. But it wasn't until December of 2007, when Maclean's magazine got swiped by the jihadists at the Canadian Islamic Congress, and January of 2008, with my own interrogation at the hands of Alberta's HRC, that I came to understand the full scope of the problem that these HRCs represent to Canada and our ancient freedoms.

It's been two fascinating years since then. There have been a few stressful times in those years, when the nuisance lawsuits were piling up, but those occasional moments of concern are too few to mention when compared to the constant satisfaction of being part of a global team of freedom fighters -- a grassroots "army of Davids" fighting against the HRC goliath. Not only have I made many friends (and, to my great relief, received financial support to fight the nuisance suits), but I think we've managed to go on the offensive and rekindle a national discussion about freedom of speech.

I remember, back in January of 2008, when I had to scour the news every day just to find some scrap to write about; today there are a dozen bloggers and a half dozen MSM journalists on the beat, full-time. HRCs across the country are now being covered by reporters who used to ignore them -- and who now mine them for the rich stories that you would expect from a kangaroo court. Seriously: when was the last time you saw a news story about an HRC that wasn't goofy, stupid, politically correct or just plain outrageous? They really are a gift to journalism, especially opinion writers, radio talk show hosts and editorial cartoonists. Too bad that gift comes at such a high cost, both in taxes and lost liberties.

Here comes 2010, and our battle for freedom continues -- it always will. I came across this item that I published in the National Post two years ago, on December 18, 2007. I think it holds up pretty well. What's different is that back then, I was writing, as an observer, about censors like Richard Warman and the Canadian Islamic Congress. Now I'm actively battling against them in the courts of law. As I think you can tell, I've loved the fight -- and I love it even more that we're winning!

That's the one thing that I got wrong: I was too pessimistic. Not only did Maclean's magazine beat the HRC rap, but that trial in B.C. did enormous damage to the credibility of all HRCs, in a courthouse packed with angry reporters. And the case of the Christian pastor, of course, was overturned just a few weeks ago by a real court in Alberta. So that's proof that things can get better if we are tenacious. We forget that sometimes, as we battle day by day, inch by inch. But when you stop to look back over two years, you realize how far we have come. Courage!

Here's the Post item from December 2007, that was for me the beginning of many wonderful things:

Censorship in the name of 'human rights'

The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) is taking Maclean's magazine to a human rights commission. Its crime? Refusing the CIC's absurd demand that Maclean's print a five-page letter to the editor in response to an article the CIC didn't like.

It may shock those who do not follow human rights law in Canada, but Maclean's will probably lose.

Forcing editors to publish rambling letters is not a human right in Canada. But that's not how the CIC worded their complaint, filed with the B.C., Ontario and federal human rights commissions. Maclean's is "flagrantly Islamophobic" and "subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt" according to a CIC statement. "I felt personally victimized," said Khurrum Awan at the CIC's recent press conference. All this because Maclean's dared to run a column discussing the demographic rise of Islam in the West.

It's a new strategy for the CIC, which in the past has tried unsuccessfully to sue news media it disagreed with -- including the National Post -- using Canada's defamation laws. But Canada's civil courts aren't the best tool for that sort of bullying. In a defamation lawsuit, the CIC would have to hire its own lawyers, follow the rules of court and prove that it suffered real damages -- and the newspapers would have truth and fair comment as defences. Launching a nuisance suit against Maclean's would result in an embarrassing loss for the CIC, a court order to pay the magazine's legal fees and it would deepen the CIC's reputation as a group of radicals who don't understand Canadian values. (Three years ago, Mohamed Elmasry, the CIC's Egyptian-born president, declared that every adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for terrorists).

So civil lawsuits won't work. Criminal charges are a non-starter, too: Canada's hate-speech laws are reserved for extreme acts of incitement, and charges can only be laid with the approval of the justice minister. And in criminal court, the accused must be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. No chance there.

That's why human rights commissions are the perfect instrument for the CIC. The CIC doesn't even have to hire a lawyer: Once the complaint has been accepted by the commissions, taxpayers' dollars and government lawyers are used to pursue the matter. Maclean's, on the other hand, will have to hire its own lawyers with its own money. Rules of court don't apply. Normal rules of evidence don't apply. The commissions are not neutral; they're filled with activists, many of whom aren't even lawyers and do not understand the free-speech safeguards contained in our constitution.

And the punishments that these commissions can order are bizarre. Besides fines to the government and payments to complainants, defendants can be forced to "apologize" for having unacceptable political or religious opinions.

An apology might not sound onerous, yet it is far more troubling than a fine. Ordering a person -- or a magazine -- to say or publish words that they don't believe is an Orwellian act of thought control. The editor of Maclean's, Ken Whyte, maintains his magazine is fair. But human rights commissions have the power to order him to publish a confession that he's a bigot -- or, as in one Ontario case, even order someone to study Islam. Even convicted murderers cannot be "ordered" to apologize.

Human rights commissions are a relatively new creation, formed in the 1960s and 1970s for political reasons, not legal reasons. The main issues that these commissions were created to address -- such as racial discrimination in rental housing and employment -- were already covered by established landlord and tenant law, as well as labour and employment law. The commissions were supposed to be an informal, sympathetic forum for vulnerable people who needed extra help; and commissions were limited to dispensing a few thousand dollars. It was like small claims court for minorities; a shield to help them against the sword of discrimination.

Few human rights complaints still fall into those categories. A quick canvass of Alberta's cases over the past few years, for example, reveals not a single complaint from someone denied rental housing based on race. The most common cases seem to be employees quitting over squabbles with other staff -- a female backhoe operator claimed her rights as a woman were violated for being called "honey" and other locker-room talk on a construction site; a male hair stylist claimed his rights were violated because the girls at salon school called him a "loser." Another common complaint is sick or injured people being dismissed for not being able to do their jobs anymore, claiming that they have a "human right" not to be fired. In 2004, Albert's Family Restaurant in Red Deer was ordered to pay $4,900 to a kitchen manager who was fired because she had contagious Hepatitis C-- illegal discrimination based on disability, said the commission.

Most cases are not about real rights, and the rulings are wildly inconsistent. The commissions have become a whimsical tax-man, where businesses are charged a few thousand dollars for making the mistake of hiring thin-skinned employees. For most companies, it's not even worth paying a lawyer to contest the complaint, other than on principle.

But besides sorting out office politics, some of Canada's human rights codes cover "publications." Those powers were originally meant to cover things like signs saying No Jews Allowed or Whites Only (in human rights jargon, symbols that "indicate discrimination") or a swastika or burning KKK cross planted on someone's yard.

You don't need to be a lawyer to know that a magazine article is not what the founders of human rights commissions had in mind. As Alan Borovoy, the general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- and one of the architects of modern Canadian human rights law -- wrote last year, "during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech." Censoring debates was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions."

Borovoy's warning has gone unheeded. The opposite, actually -- it signalled to the CICs of the world that human rights commissions are the perfect instrument to pursue their agenda of censorship. At the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, one single activist -- a lawyer named Richard Warman, who used to work at the commission himself -- has filed 26 complaints, nearly 50% of all complaints under that commission's "hate messages" section. He's turned it into a part-time job, winning tens of thousands of dollars in "awards" from people he's complained about in the past few years. Warman is a liberal activist, who likes to complain against Web sites he calls racist or homophobic. He's had the common sense to stick to suing small, oddball bloggers who can't fight back. But surely the CIC has observed Warman's winning streak, and will use his precedents to go after Maclean's.

An even more terrifying precedent recently was set in Alberta. The case involved a letter to the editor written by a Christian pastor and published in the Red Deer Advocate newspaper. The letter was a zealous, even rude, expression of the pastor's belief that homosexuality was a sin, and that there was a homosexual political "agenda" that had to be stopped. But instead of joining the debate by writing a letter to the editor, a local teacher complained to the human rights commission.

The commission's one-woman panel--a divorce lawyer with no expertise in constitutional rights -- ruled that "the publication's exposure of homosexuals to hatred and contempt trumps the freedom of speech afforded in the Charter." That was it: Freedom of speech, and of the press, and religion, all of which are called "fundamental freedoms" in our Constitution, now come second to the newly discovered right of a thin-skinned bystander not to be offended.

In a rare move, the Alberta government sent a lawyer to intervene in the case -- against the pastor. The government lawyer argued that "if people were allowed to simply hide behind the rubric of political and religious opinion, they would defeat the entire purpose of the human rights legislation." Borovoy's well-intentioned laws aren't about making sure aboriginals can get taxi rides anymore.

The human rights panellist in question -- Lori Andreachuk, a former Tory riding association president -- wholeheartedly embraces this expansion of the definiton of "human rights." "It is, in my view, nonsensical to enact … human rights legislation, to protect the dignity and human rights of Albertans, only to have it overridden by the expression of opinion in all forms," she wrote. Though no harm was proved to have come from the pastor's letter, it "was likely to expose gay persons to more hatred in the community" -- precisely the same language used by the CIC in their complaint against Maclean's.

In a ruling that spanned some 80 pages, Andreachuk spared just two paragraphs to explain why she was overruling the Charter's guarantee of freedom of speech. In real courts, a demanding legal hurdle called the Oakes Test must be passed before that can be done. The reason for infringing a Charter right must be "pressing and substantial," the infringement couldn't be "arbitrary or irrational" and it must be as "minimal" as possible. None of that analysis was even attempted by Andreachuk -- that's boring legal stuff for real judges in real courts. The Oakes Test was named after David Oakes, a man charged with trafficking of hash oil, who beat the rap using the Charter. Accused drug dealers get the benefit of the Constitution, but not accused pastors.

There will be more human rights complaints like the CIC's, and more staggering rulings like the Alberta decision. It's odd: Mohamed Elmasry, an apologist for Islamo-fascism, using the same tools as an "anti-racist" leftist like Richard Warman. At first glance, they may seem like opposites, but they're actually identical: Both are illiberal censors who have found a quirk in our legal system, and are using it to undermine our Western traditions of freedom. Until last week, I would have thought that Maclean's magazine was too big a fish for them to swallow. I don't think that anymore.

Late last week, the Court of Queen's Bench overturned the Alberta Human Rights Commission's "hate speech" conviction of Rev. Stephen Boissoin.

Long-time readers of this blog, and readers of my book, will know the case of Rev. Boissoin well. He was a youth pastor who wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate in 2002 that was critical of the "gay agenda". You can read that letter in full here. He was sentenced to a lifetime speech ban, barring him from ever saying anything negative about gays again, in public or private, for the rest of his life. Oh -- and he had to write a false letter of apology, renouncing his faith on the matter.

So here we are, more than seven years later, and Rev. Boissoin has finally been acquitted. And that's if his tormentor, the anti-Christian bigot Darren Lund, doesn't choose to appeal this new ruling.

So lesson number one here is that the process is the punishment.

Rev. Boissoin had seven years of his life wasted -- seven years in which he bore the stigma of being called, by the state, an illegal "hater". And Rev. Boissoin had to bear the enormous legal costs -- first, of his kangaroo court trial, then of his appeal -- on his own. (I'm glad to have participated in three fundraising dinners for him this summer.) By contrast, his antagonist didn't have to spend a dime to drag Rev. Boissoin through the mud of the HRC. And note page 37 of the ruling: though Rev. Boissoin's conviction was demolished by the judge, page after page; though Rev. Boissoin was clearly mistreated and abused by the HRC; though the judge's contempt for the HRC's outrageous behaviour is palpable, Rev. Boissoin was denied his request for all his costs to be paid.

In other words: Darren Lund actually won.

So we know that there are two ways to beat an HRC. The first is to embarrass the hell out of them, like I did. That's the only reason they dropped their case against me.

The other way is to fight it all the way to a real court -- seven years -- spending money that you don't have, to finally get justice.

I've read the ruling. I don't propose to go through it line by line, though it's wonderful (I recommend this great exegesis by young Rebekah). It's great: it mocks the HRC's procedure; mocks their utter lack of legal smarts; mocks their disregard for trifles like evidence; mocks their arrogant attempt to be real police and real courts; mockes their bizarre and illegal punishments.

(My favourite is how the judge is kind enough to say that the HRC's ruling was written by a "panel". That panel was actually one little bigot, a divorce lawyer named Lori Andreachuk, who was finally booted off the HRC by a humiliated Ed Stelmach -- but given a soft landing with an appointment in a health board. What a disgrace she is.)

So the ruling by Justice Wilson is a slam dunk for Rev. Boissoin.

Except: so what?

These HRCs do not abide by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so why the hell should they abide by some Queen's Bench judge?

Many HRC "panellists" aren't lawyers at all, and many who are, like Andreachuk, have no expertise in civil liberties. Some commissioners don't even have post-secondary education, yet they're appointed to these kangaroo courts. It's not that they wouldn't give a damn about what Justice Wilson ruled, though many wouldn't; it's that many of them wouldn't even understand all that law-talkin' stuff.

A glance through any HRC's rulings shows that they do not follow precedent. There is no rhyme or reason to the rulings; much of it is made up on the spot, and much of it is clearly the personal biases of whatever hack political appointee happens to be sitting in the chair that day -- the rulings are clearly back-filled with legalese to justify the personal whims of the commissioners. A disproportionate number of HRC rulings are overturned by real courts -- but that's my point: you need to have a helluva lot of money to get through the gong show into the real court. By that time, the damage is done.

I will make one final observation: this ruling is a rejection of Premier Ed Stelmach. This case was the first one I've ever seen in which the Government of Alberta sent in their own lawyer. Of course, all HRC lawyers are part of the government, too, and paid for by taxpayers. But in this one case, Stelmach sent in his own lawyer, David Kamal, to argue that Rev. Boissoin should be convicted. It was Kamal's argument -- on behalf of Stelmach -- that Rev. Boissoin's freedom of speech should be trumped by Lund's counterfeit right not to be offended.

Dear reader, do you think Stelmach gives a damn that he lost in court?

I can assure you that he does not. He has, in fact, given Alberta's HRC a generous reward for its seven-year persecution of Rev. Boissoin: a 26% budget increase. Alberta might be running the largest deficit in our history; unemployment might be rising; the recession might be worse in our province than elsewhere in the country; but, dammit, he's going to reward the HRC for their bullying, no matter what the hell some judge says.

Yes, yes, I agree with my friend Mark Steyn (who is quoted by the judge on pp. 33-34, if I recall) and Colby Cosh when they point out that the real courts have rebuked the fake courts. But how does that help the 90% of the HRCs' victims who succumb and accept a plea bargain without even a hearing, and the 98% of the rest who are convicted but lack the funds to appeal?

I agree that the courts are better respecters of freedom of speech now than they have been in the past, and I have often said I wished that section 13 would be put to the Supreme Court again, for they would throw this law out for sure. But if it took Rev. Boissoin seven years just to get to the first court, how long would it take him to go all the way to the SCC? And how many people would have given up long before he did?

Yes, I'm happy with the ruling. But not a damned thing has changed on the ground. Canada's 14 HRCs, with their 1,000 employees and $200-million cumulative budgets slouch onwards. Not a single province, territory or federal government has changed the law -- other than Stelmach, who expanded the scope and budget of his censors.

Too many more victories like this and we're lost.

 

I had a great time last week at the Vancouver Jewish Book Festival. I've done a ton of events this past year in support of my book, Shakedown, but in a way my favourite ones were at Jewish venues. That's because I see it as my personal duty to disabuse Jews of the notion that censorship is in any way compatible with Jewish values. Fortunately, it has been an easy task. Most Jews -- like most other Canadians -- are largely unaware of the facts about censorship and Canada's human rights commissions, and are shocked to learn the truth about them. That shock transforms into genuine fear when they learn how radical foreigners like Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy are using the HRCs to prosecute their soft jihad of "lawfare" against Jews or other Zionists. Any support my Jewish audiences have for laws against "hate speech" is paper thin and not thought through; simply walking through the logical arguments against censorship and the HRCs quickly turns most people around.

Here's a sympathetic review of my Vancouver presentation from a blogger in attendance. And here are a few video clips posted to YouTube by another blogger there. (And blogger Rick Hiebert, of Western Standard fame, was there, too!)

The first clip has some of my usual riffs on the subject; but the second clip has content more tailored to the Jewish audience. As I said about censorship laws: "if it's kosher it's halal". In other words, if Canada's Jews think that a censorship law will remain their own private preserve to attack their own special list of political enemies, they're deluding themselves. Thin-skinned Jews set the precedent, and radical Muslims are following it. Severely normal Jews understand this. The Official Jews probably do, too, but are too proud to admit they've been wrong. Here are the vids:

 

 

This Wednesday night, Nov. 25th, I've been invited to speak at Vancouver's Jewish Book Festival, about my book, Shakedown.

They've titled my talk "Confrontation, Controversy and Censorship" which sounds about right! The event kicks off at 8 p.m. at the Jewish Centre on Oak & 41st Avenue. You can see the details on this page (scroll down to the bottom -- it looks like I'm closing the festival!) You can register on that page, or by calling (604) 257-5111.

I love speaking about freedom of speech at Jewish venues (although, of course, this event is open to anyone). It's important to me that Jews hear an alternative point of view to the pro-censorship tripe served up by the Official Jews. As I've noted before (such as here and here) censorship is the quintessentially un-Jewish idea, and indeed most Jewish public intellectuals in Canada have firmly come out in favour of free speech and against the human rights commissions. It's yet another example of how Canada's Official Jews have taken a public position that is contrary to the wishes of the population they claim to represent.

So congratulations to the Jewish Book Festival for inviting me, despite what must have been some snooty e-mails coming at them from Toronto I hope the event is a hit -- and I hope that, like my speeches at other Jewish forums, it convinces open-minded Jews to stop drinking from the censorship Kool-Aid.

P.S. Let me close with an article I wrote about censorship, anti-Semitism and Vancouver. It appeared in the Calgary Sun back in October, 2004. That was long before I was entangled in human rights commissions, and learned the depth to which they had become hijacked by radical Islam as part of the "soft jihad" against the West in general and Jews in particular. But even then I sensed that there were some kinds of hate speech that the HRCs turned a blind eye too -- the politically correct hate speech by people the HRCs are frankly too afraid to touch, afraid politically and afraid physically, too.

Canada's "hate squads" are very brave when going after basement Nazis who pose a threat to no-one. But they hide under their desks when it comes to real haters who actually incite violence. This is your story, Vancouver:

 

Years ago, Jim Keegstra was charged with and convicted of the crime of spreading hatred. It was a seemingly endless case, working its way up to the Supreme Court.

It cost millions of tax dollars, and more than that, was an energetic expression of the government's opposition to racial and religious discord. Libertarians were rightly upset that speech -- no matter how vile -- could be criminalized. But a precedent was set, along with a message.

Fast forward to the present: News out of Vancouver is the imam of the major mosque there, one Younus Kathrada, has been whipping up his congregants each week with anti-Semitic hatred that would make Keegstra sound positively like a Zionist.

Like Keegstra, Kathrada called Jews names -- "we are dealing with a people ... the brothers of the monkeys and the swine ... whose treachery is well known." Calling Jews brothers of monkeys and swine sounds like a schoolyard taunt more than high argument, but his point was clear. And just in case it wasn't, Kathrada made it clearer still: His sermons repeatedly called for the killing of Jews.

Poor old Keegstra. All he ever did was call the Jews power-hungry money-grubbers, and he was convicted of a crime. Kathrada whips up his congregants into a Jew-baiting frenzy -- and tells them to go and actually kill someone -- and he remains free.

There's some evidence that his Muslim acolytes actually followed his instructions, too. Rudwan Khalil Abubaker, who attended Kathrada's mosque, was in a fire-fight with Russian troops in Chechnya earlier this year. At least he took his violence outside of Vancouver.

The question remains: Why was Keegstra's offensive but non-violent anti-Semitism taken to the Supreme Court, but Kathrada's is tolerated with impunity?

Kathrada doesn't just call for the death of Jews. He slams Muslims who dare to believe in peaceful co-existence -- you know, Ottawa's dream of multiculturalism. Kathrada claims such Muslims aren't real Muslims, and no truce with Jews can ever be had.

Kathrada also uses his tax-exempt mosque to trumpet the cause of Hamas, a notorious terrorist group responsible for countless suicide bombings.

Why hasn't Kathrada been charged with a hate crime? Why haven't he and his mosque been charged under Canada's new anti-terrorism laws for promoting and aiding terrorist groups like Hamas? (To date, not a single charge has been laid under this law.)

The answer is obvious. It's easy to pick on a politically incorrect country bumpkin like Jim Keegstra. Some dumb white guy making dumb remarks about Jews -- go get 'em. There's not a well-funded, politically correct Dumb Guy Defence Committee ready to roll for his defence.

But ever since 9/11, liberals throughout the West have decided an anti-Arab backlash would be worse than Arab terrorism itself. So true risks like Kathrada are ignored, in the name of not making a fuss. The liberal thinking is that charging someone like Kathrada would only give a bad name to all Muslims.

Of course, it would do the opposite -- it would point out that not all Muslims are in league with such terror tactics, and that the few who are will be rooted out.

Not charging the handful of Muslims who are haters is like not charging the handful of Italians who are part of the Mafia -- it is a misguided act of political correctness. The majority of Muslims -- we hope -- do not support Kathrada. He should be made an example of, not have excuses made for him. Justice calls for it.

 

Well, look who took time off from work at the Department of Defence's own mini-human rights commission to come take in the Justice Committee hearings about the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- and his corruption of them. None other than Richard Warman, serial complainant, multiple neo-Nazi membership holder, and defamer of Jews, gays and blacks.

Here's a picture of him entering the room (the bald man on the left):

 

And here's a picture of him chatting it up with Bernie "Burny" Farber, his enabler at the Canadian Jewish Congress. Burny's fellow CJC book-burner Eric Vernon is at right. The Official Jews are doubling down on censorship -- and on their favourite online Nazi. How embarrassing:

 

 

Burny, the Official Jew, apparently has no problem consorting with someone who wrote on a neo-Nazi website that Jews like Irwin Cotler are "scum". The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal thought that was "disturbing and disappointing", but not Burny.

Warman's serial neo-Nazi comments, his corruption of investigations, and his monopolization of section 13 complaints is really the whole reason this thing is before Parliament. It was his over-reach in the Warman v. Lemire case that had the law ruled unconstitutional; it was his abusive conduct that has so clearly caught the attention of MPs like Joe Comartin; it is his bully tactics that have turned the CHRC into what Athanasios Hadjis of the Tribunal calls "aggressive" and "confrontational", instead of mediating and conciliatory.

This whole, multi-million dollar boondoggle is his.

Which raises the question: why hasn't Warman been called to testify?

Why hasn't he been asked about his neo-Nazi comments?

Why hasn't he been asked about his entrapment tactics?

Why hasn't he been asked about his corruption of cases -- like his instructions to Hannya Rizk, a fellow investigator, to violate procedures?

If I were an MP on the committee, why would I want to hear people talking about Warman -- for him or against him -- when I could talk to the man himself?

He's not far away.

If I were an MP on Parliament's Justice Committee, I would be deeply insulted by Jennifer Lynch's testimony. The bulk of it was about matters other than section 13; her comments on section 13 were self-serving cliches. And she said it all in an extremely condescending manner.

Brian Murphy, the Liberal MP, asked a thoughtful question to Lynch, about whether there are better ways to tackle "hate" in Canada. Instead of answering him, she simply re-read her bland pap from her opening statement -- but dragged it out to use up all of his time. Surely Murphy is sharp enough to see that stonewalling as a disrespectful rebuff, rather than a thoughtful reply.

Serge Menard of the Bloc Quebecois, frankly, is my favourite member of this committee, at least in terms of his surgical approach to questions and answers. I do not know where he stands on freedom of speech, nor where he will end up. But his questions -- both for Steyn and me earlier this month, and to Lynch today -- actually move the debate forward. Watching Lynch try to evade him was hilarious and embarrassing at the same time, circling back to her bland cliches, saying nothing, as slowly as possible, all with that rictus grin of hers. I doubt that Menard was impressed.

Lynch did, surely by accident, give Menard a clear answer on one point. She admitted that Richard Moon, her hand-picked, handsomely paid consultant, recommended that the definition of "hate" be limited to hate that incites violence. Hard to disagree with that -- it's already in the Criminal Code.

Joe Comartin was up next. He put a crystal clear question to Lynch: had she done an investigation or analysis into my accusations against Dean Steacy or Richard Warman?

Lynch's reply: she went back to re-reading her opening statement. How embarrassing.

After eating up a couple of minutes of Comartin's time, Lynch finally just called my and Steyn's accusations "misinformation". She claims that she had personally "looked into the matter", and reassured Comartin that he can have "pride" in their conduct.

Comartin interrupted her evasion, and asked again: "did you conduct a detailed investigation into those allegations?" Lynch says she has -- and that there has been no "breach of any law or ethic". Really? I look forward to seeing the result of those detailed investigations. I haven't filed an access to information request in a while -- this one sounds ripe. What are the odds that Lynch just made up that internal "detailed investigation"?

Lynch says that the RCMP has closed their files -- really? That's not what the police report says.

I'll post this blog entry now, and continue with a new one for the next questioner.

Brent Rathgeber from St. Albert was up next. He made a very clever point: Lynch had claimed that her staff hadn't sued me for libel because it would cost too much. But that barrier isn't there for anyone to file a complaint through section 13 -- the government sues people for free. And, noted Rathgeber, the defendant has to pay his own fees, even if he wins.

Lynch's answer was classic: no defendant needs to retain lawyers. Of course they don't. It would get in the way of a 100% conviction rate!

Rathgeber asks Lynch, outright, whether or not it was ethical that Lynch's staff hacked into a private citizen's Internet site. Lynch point-blank denied it -- despite the fact that Bell Canada's security officer said they did.

Lynch admitted that a CHRC investigator, Dean Steacy, did use a neo-Nazi membership to exchange e-mails, but that "the exchanges are very bland".

Really? You can see those exchanges here.

So, according to Lynch, praising a white supremacist group; encouraging a white supremacit group to continue their efforts; and offering to help the white supremacist group -- that's bland? That's ethical?

 

Marlene Jennings was up next -- mercifully saving Lynch from questions about Dean Steacy's neo-Nazi work. While Jennings is clearly supportive of the CHRC, she suggested that complaints be taken away from the "general public" and given to the CHRC. Such a trivial point of legal arcana has only one purpose, emanating from the intensely partisan Jennings: that it is an attempt to move the CHRC away from their most embarrassing personality, Richard Warman, who has personally filed all but two section 13 cases in the past decade.

My Internet cut out briefly when Marc Lemay asked his question; of course, it didn't much matter what he asked, because Lynch was just going to press play on her bland message track, no matter what was asked.

She did offer a lie, though: she claimed that the CHRC is obligated to investigate every case that comes to it. That's not true; patently absurd cases can be rejected at first glance. And, of course, the CHRC often rejects cases it finds politically distasteful, such as the case of the radical Muslim imam in Montreal, who called for the murder of gays, uncovered women and moderate Muslims. That was no investigated, contrary to Lynch's lies.

Stephen Woodworth was up last. And he was awesome to behold. I said Menard was my favourite; I might have to review that. He launched into a passionate defence of freedom of speech, and a passionate criticism of the CHRC's procedures. It was great.

Lynch, again, retreated to her brown fog. No specific reply to Woodworth's concerns about the fact that defendants under section 13 never get their costs back.

I'm frustrated by Lynch's answers. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to be an MP on the Committee, who had prepared for the meeting, asked a question, expected an answer from Lynch -- a servant of Parliament -- and then be given such an infuriatingly evasive answer.

Lynch probably feels pretty good about herself. She probably feels that she got off the hook, despite some pesky questions from Comartin, Rathgeber and Woodworth -- and some thoughtful fact-finding questions from Menard.

But I don't think she helped herself at all. She left MPs feeling like they were evaded and condescended to; like they were stonewalled. Her slow-motion comments, spoken as to kindergarten children, will do nothing but inflame their curiosity about what really goes on at her gong show.

Before I comment on Richard Moon's testimony, I note that Phillipe Dufresne of the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- famous for this embarrassing appearance on CTV -- didn't say a word. That's about right.

Moon started strong. He re-iterates what he was paid $52,500 to do last year: that section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. If he were to stop right now, he'd be a hero. I get the feeling, he's soon going to degenerate into moonbat territory, as he did this weekend.

But he continues. And so far, so good: he talks about the costs foisted on the defendants by merely forcing them through a lengthy investigation.

But then Moon drifts into fiction. He says that complainants, too, bear huge burdens. Not true: Richard Warman, the complainant in all but two cases in the past decade, has had his expenses (and even a modest daily honorarium) paid for by the CHRC.

And then Moon indulges himself -- but mercifully briefly. He says that he and the CHRC are good faith debaters, but not me or Mark Steyn. We are "misleading or false". He ends with a whine about "unfair attacks" on the CHRC, but, to his credit, 90% of his remarks were on point. Well done.

Bernie "Burny" Farber was appalling. It's not that his views were more condescending than Lynch's, or more false than Moon's. They weren't, particularly. It's that they were falsely made in the name of all Canadian Jews.

That was all Burny actually said: that he was there on behalf of the Jews. Which is simply not true.

He quickly handed the microphone over to Mark Freiman, the new president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Freiman personified the merger between Jews and state censorship: he himself was a CHRC prosecutor on a section 13 case. Disgusting: a Jew for book burning.

I did detect, however, some political fear in the CJC tag-team. Burny has never given such a brief speech in his life -- and it was completely self-congratulatory; he actually didn't speak to section 13. And Freiman, after bowing to his Golden Calf of censorship, then hinted that there were reforms that should be made.

Has someone given Burny a talking to? Has someone put him on a leash, and told Freiman to slowly back away from the CHRC/Warman train wreck?

 

 

Freiman claims that section 13 targets only "dangerous speech" and not merely offensive speech. But that is simply not true; a glance at the dozen or so examples that the CHRC prosecuted in the Warman v. Lemire case shows that all but one were found by the Tribunal to be merely "political".

Freiman's arguments are so tired, I feel like I'm watching some 1970s re-run, and I'm not just making fun of his mega-comb-over. He trots out the shouting fire in a burning theatre line; and claims that hate speech -- mere speech! -- was the reason that genocides happened from Rwanda to Cambodia.

It's not true. Mere words cannot kill people. Only violence (and incitement to violence) can. But that requires that other, real human rights -- like the right to be free of violence; the right to self-defence; the right to private property, etc. -- be torn down, first. Hate speech is harmless unless the machinery of violence is there, too. Adolf Hitler could not have prosecuted the Holocaust when he was elected in 1933; it wasn't until he destroyed Jews' real human rights in the Nuremberg Laws and later that Jews were physically vulnerable. But enough about this obsolete philosophical debate.

Brian Murphy read my book, Shakedown. And he read Freiman's review of my book (which I had meant to post, and I'll do so later). And he notes that Freiman in that review acknowledged that the CHRC had flaws needing reform.

He asks Freiman whether or not hate speech laws could stop genocide.

And Freiman answers: no. He's honest enough to know that hate speech laws couldn't stop a Holocaust.

Freiman said something quite sad: he said that the great leaps forward that minorities have made in the past fifty years are at risk, and that censorship laws are what's protecting that.

Does he really have such a low opinion of his fellow Canadians? Does he really think that, were it not for the CHRC, his neighbours would throw him into the ovens?

Perhaps Freiman is using the CHRC as some sort of personal psychological therapy. That's fine -- we've all got our demons, and Freiman likes to point out that he was born in a displaced persons camp in Europe after the Holocaust. The man has issues.

And that's when Burny pipes up: invoking the Holocaust, and showing pictures of swastikas on Jewish headstones. It was a showy, maudlin display -- Burny's specialty. The fact that it was intellectually vacant is par for the course. Vandalism, mischief and trespass are already covered by the Criminal Code. Section 13 doesn't apply to that. But don't bother Burny, he's having another one of his victimology moments.

Under interrogation by the Bloc's Lemay, Freiman backtracks from his earlier comments about reform. He says he doesn't believe any amendments are necessary -- just for the CHRC to be able to dismiss frivolous complaints if it saw fit.

But, as we know, the CHRC already refuses to investigate cases it doesn't find politically suitable. In its 32-year history, for example, there has never been a hate speech complaint pursued against any radical Muslim, radical Sikh or radical Tamil. Freiman's pretend solution already exists: CHRC discretion. But the CHRC abuses its discretion. That's the problem.

Surprise: the sober voice here is that of Richard Moon, who piped up to rebut Freiman.

Rathgeber asks Burny a pretty good question: how does section 13, a censorship provision that applies to the Internet, stop vandalism of a graveyard?

It's a tough question, so naturally Freiman jumps in and takes it from Burny.

He doesn't answer it, of course. Freiman says that section 13 is "extraordinarly helpful" in fighting "hate".

Does he even believe what he's saying?

Rathgeber replies: we have section 13 -- but it didn't stop this, did it?

Burny can't stay still. He interrupts his interruptor with a ramble about using section 13 to educate young people.

They've been going for nearly two hours on this; there wasn't much light being shone on things by Lynch at the beginning; having Freiman and Farber mumble and push the Holocaust panic button when they get into a pickle, has moved from embarrassing to boring.

Rathgeber does everyone a favour and puts a question to Moon.

Chairman Ed Fast extends the meeting by a few minutes, and gives everyone a final quick question:

Jennings ends with a statement, natch. She says that, contrary to what Rathgeber says, "demonization" is in fact very objective. Tell that to the folks who tried to have this case heard.

Comartin asks about the qualifications of Tribunal members. Freiman says it's a good idea -- as if "more qualified" censors would be better censors.

Russ Hiebert asks Moon a question, referring to Alan Borovoy's concerns about the violation of civil liberties and due process. Moon says that it "would make sense" to fund defendants, too. Moon also says the language of the law appears vague. He emphasizes the burden placed upon any defendants -- not just those who go the distance to a hearing, but anyone who is unlucky enough to even be investigated.

 

Jennifer Lynch's exceedingly uncooperative approach today will hurt her. If this had been a court, she'd have been deemed a hostile witness. She cranked out pre-fabricated cliches and spoke as slowly as possible in the face of embarrassing questions. Does she forget that she works for these people?

Philip Dufresne was at his best today -- he didn't say a word.

Bernie "Burny" Farber was not quite as eloquent as Dufresne, but he was clearly put on a leash. He left most of the talking to Mark Freiman. Freiman's hairdo was a little distracting for me -- sorry, I just have to say it, it's pretty weird when a Jew wears his hair like, well, like Hitler did. But putting that aside, his remarks seemed uninformed of the facts of the CHRC. It's like he was caught in a time-warp, talking about how section 13 would save us from hate, as if the Internet had not rendered it practically impossible, as if the ruling in Warman v. Lemire had not rendered it legally impossible, and as if no-one had seen the bad behaviour of the CHRC exposed over the past two years. His one suggestion -- to give the CHRC more discretion -- is laughable. Just how much more discretion could they have? They don't have an ethics code, they don't have an operations manual, they don't have an oversight or internal affairs committee. What more discretion does Freiman want to give them?

I must note Burny's embarrassing flourish, to show pictures of swastikas on graves. What relevance does that have to section 13? Section 13 is a censorship law that applies to the Internet; swastikas on graves is a Criminal Code matter. Why didn't Burny just show pictures from the liberation of the concentration camps? There is no logic or law to his stunt; it was just a pure pull on emotion: if you disagree with me, you hate Jews. What a buffoon. I'm sure that when someone honks at Burny on the highway, he thinks they're anti-Semites, too.

Richard Moon was a pleasant surprise. He didn't make a single reference to the falsehoods contained in his Saskatchewan speech. Rather, he stayed focused on his central recommendation: to abolish section 13, and he unpacked that a bit for the MPs who bothered to ask him.

On the opposition side, I was impressed with questions from Brian Murphy, Serge Menard and Joe Comartin. Each of them asked about internal corruption matters, Comartin so much that he forced Lynch into lying that she had made a "detailed investigation". Sorry, I call B.S. on that. I don't think Comartin was fooled, do you?

On the government side, I thought Brent Rathgeber showed a commendable feistiness on the issue; Stephen Woodworth gave an outstanding comment about how Canadians value freedom; and Russ Hiebert, who did such fine work in the spring, was back with very practical questions for Moon.

In short, I thought it was great.

I've never been more optimistic about the prospects for reform. Now, the only question in my mind is, how much reform is enough?

Remember Richard Moon? He's the obscure law professor who accepted a $52,500 payment from the Canadian Human Rights Commission to write a brief brochure for them about censorship. Nice work if you can get it. Given that much of Moon's brochure was just cutting and pasting lengthy quotations from other people, Jennifer Lynch paid him almost $2,000/page for what he wrote.

That's not quite J.K. Rowlings money or Dan Brown money, but it's probably more than Margaret Atwood makes.

Moon is one of the CHRC's only defenders in Canada, along with Pearl "hatermongererer" Eliadis and, well, that's about it. I find it remarkable that, in a country of thousands of professors and tens of thousands of lawyers, the only people who will defend the CHRC and its censorship are those who are paid big bucks to do so, like Moon, or those who have worked for the industry directly, like Eliadis, or those who are clients of it, like Bernie "Burny" Farber. Economists call these kind of people "rent-seekers". Ayn Rand called them "looters and moochers". I just call them human rights violators, since they all support a law that is unconstitutional and illiberal.

I see on the National Post's website that Moon is still dining out on his defence of the CHRC, this time in the form of a speech to the University of Saskatchewan. It should be noted, of course, that Moon agrees with me that section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, should be abolished. And here's where his Saskatoon speech (and, indeed everything he's uttered publicly since issuing his brochure) gets weird. In the past year, instead of elaborating on his belief that section 13 should be abolished, he has spent his energies in a feeble attempt to defend the CHRC, and to attempt to discredit my own criticisms of them.

It's a little odd, don't you think? For a sixty-something professor in the sunset of his career to spend so much energy taking on a thirty-something blogger is a little bit unseemly. But Moon blew through unseemly long ago, when he took $52,500 from the CHRC to write a brochure for them -- and agreed, in his contract, to let them see his work in progress, and revise it. That kind of conflict of interest would get him hauled before the University of Windsor's Ethic Board if he tried that stunt there.

I see that Moon, along with Burny, the new Canadian Jewish Congress president Mark Freiman (himself a former section 13 prosecutor) and Lynch and her deputy Philip Dufresne are scheduled to testify before the Justice Committee on Monday. If it's televised, I'll try to watch it and give you my thoughts.

But right now, I think it's safe to say that Moon's presentation will be along the lines of his Saskatoon speech. Which is why I think I ought to do a fact check on him right now, before he repeats the falsehoods therein to Parliament.

Falsehood: Moon claims the CHRC does not have a 100% conviction rate for censorship prosecutions. He weasels around this point a bit, but that's what he means.

Fact: Until the Warman v. Lemire case last month, no-one had beat a prosecution. You can see the list of all prosecutions here. You can read all of the judgments here. Let me save you some time: until Marc Lemire, nobody was ever acquitted. Moon counters by saying that people who weren't prosecuted weren't convicted. Is that some zen thing?

Falsehood: Moon claims that the convictions listed above are not really "convictions", because the censorship charge is not criminal in nature.

Fact: This is Moon trying to play word games, but he's wrong anyways. The reason why section 13 was declared unconstitutional last month in the Warman v. Lemire case was precisely because section 13 had become like a criminal charge. Moon's probably too busy rolling around in Lynch's hundred dollar bills to have read the ruling in that case, so let me point him to the money quote in paragraph 279 (there are other relevant paragraphs, too):

...when assessed against the characteristics of the penalty provisions enumerated in these decisions, it is evident that s. 13(1) has become more penal in nature.

Falsehood: Moon claims that "there is no evidence whatsoever" that CHRC staffer Dean Steacy made bigoted comments on neo-Nazi websites.

Fact: On page 5735 of this transcript, you can see Steacy's admission that he's a neo-Nazi member. And here is an example of the kind of thing that Steacy wrote using those neo-Nazi memberships. He praised white supremacists; gave them encouragement and even offered to help them.

Falsehood: Moon claims that Richard Warman, the serial complainant-of-fortune in almost all section 13 cases, didn't work on censorship investigations.

Fact: Oh yes he did. In fact, he even trained others in how to do it, like censorship investigator Hannya Rizk. See page 4438 and a half dozen other similar passages in this transcript:

Ms Kulaszka: ...who gave you that training?

Ms. Rizk: The training was given to me by Richard Warman.

Just to be clear, Warman's censorship investigation training for Rizk was training her on how to prosecute Marc Lemire -- the target in one of Warman's own censorship complaints. Warman was not just working on censorship complaints. He was training others on how to handle his own censorship complaints. At page 4512, Rizk admits that, in fact, other than Warman, no-one trained her on how to do censorship work.

There are so many gems in Rizk's testimony -- probably because she had by then left the rotting CHRC carcass, and was able to speak freely without fear of reprisals from Lynch and her mob. It really is a fascinating case study in corruption -- and Rizk was clearly embarrassed that she had gone along with it. I've written a whole blog post about it, here. 

Falsehood: Moon claims that Richard Warman's neo-Nazi comments were all published by him after he left the CHRC in March of 2004. Moon specifically says that Warman's comments that Jews are "scum", gays are a "cancer" and white police should be loyal to "their race" were made after he left the CHRC.

Fact: In his major interview with Warman, Charlie Gillis of Maclean's revealed that Warman was not laid off until July of 2004. And while Warman is no longer officially an employee, he has continued to have all of his expenses paid for by the CHRC, and even a modest honorarium -- the only citizen in Canada who is paid by the CHRC to file complaints. Even worse, he continued to have access to confidential CHRC files -- including his own complaints -- and, as the Rizk testimony shows, managed to corrupt that investigation.

Warman's Jews are "scum" comment was made in his final month at work (scroll down to page three); his white police should be loyal to "their race" comment was made a month before he left (scroll down to page 4). You can see the dates of those comments in the left side of the screen. His gays are a cancer comment was made in March of 2005 (scroll down to page 4), after he left, but using a neo-Nazi membership account he created while at the CHRC in September 2003. It was this last comment that caught the eye of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal this March, who ruled Warman's behaviour "disturbing and disappointing".

The fact is, Warman wrote literally hundreds of anti-Semitic rants, both while he worked at the CHRC, and after. Often he just quoted other Nazi comments favourably. Sometime he added his own bon mots. Like a gem he wrote in May of 2004, two months before he left the CHRC, praising Canadian Nazi Adrien Arcand (scroll down to page 2). Is this really the best defence Moon has for the CHRC -- admitting that Warman is a serial bigot online, but that "most" of that was done after he no longer had a permanent office at the CHRC? And what of the CHRC's remaining staff and managers, who knew of his continued neo-Nazi activities, yet continued to pay him and to prosecute his cases for him, using CHRC lawyers, for five years after he left the CHRC?

Falsehood: Moon claims that my citations of Warman's anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay comments are "taken out of context" by me.

Fact: Wow. Is there a context where calling a Jew "scum" is acceptable? The subject line of Warman's post is "Re: Irwin Cotier (Jewish) as Minister of Justice in Canada". Warman is referring to Irwin Cotler, of course. His comment started by repeating a lengthy anti-Semitic rant about Cotler written by someone else, and then adding this, himself: "We still have scum in government but we have to wait and see which scum goes where."

What context am I missing here? What context did the Tribunal miss when they condemned that comment in March? Perhaps when Moon is in Parliament on Monday, he can explain to Mr. Cotler in person the context in which he is appropriately called Jewish "scum". Maybe he can tell Burny, too. They can all have a good laugh together.

Falsehood: Moon says my charges of "corruption" are unfounded.

Fact: Tell that to the Carleton Place Municipal Police force, who fired their first-ever female cop, Sandy Kozak, and charged her with corruption. She made a plea bargain with them and left the force... to be hired by the CHRC. Too corrupt for the real cops, just right for the CHRC.

And then there's the Internet hacking scandal, in which the RCMP's months-long criminal investigation lists the CHRC as their only suspect, and calls the case "unsolved".

Nutty: Let me add one final point. It's not a case of falsehoods vs. facts; it's just a measure of how skewed Moon's judgment is. He actually defends the crazy case of the McDonald's employee who won the human right not to have to wash her hands -- plus $50,000 tax-free for her troubles. You can read my take on that case here.

Moon quotes the Tribunal ruling favourably, when they said: "I am at a loss to understand why McDonald's did not take more steps to try to accommodate [her]". Hilarious: from January 21, 2002 until November 8, 2004, McDonald's kept paying this woman, even though she stopped working (except for a few very brief "attempts" to wash her hands again). They sent her to every doctor imaginable (except a psychiatrist).

Are you with me, still? Here's a burger-flipper who refused to wash her hands. McDonald's said there was no job in the restaurant -- not even the manager -- that didn't require hand-washing. For nearly three full years they paid her to do nothing. A better woman would have found a new job; but why would she do that, if McDonald's would give her a three-year paid vacation? In the end, they let her go. But Moon says they didn't accommodate her.

Crack. Pot.

My favourite line from the Tribunal ruling is this one, at paragraph 240: "...there was no evidence about the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing frequency." That's not just dumb, that's gross. But it's good law, according to Moon.

Richard Moon is a middling professor at a low-profile law school. He hit the jackpot with his $52,500 brochure, and he was embarrassed that I publicized that dollar amount. Well, he should be.

But in his anger at me for embarrassing him, he has become a clown. I mean, seriously: was his Saskatchewan speech really appropriate for the occasion? A blog post, maybe; a debate panel, sure. But, invited to talk about human rights commissions, he spends a half hour ranting about me and Mark Steyn, and nitpicking my blog entries (and not accurately). Is that really what he wants to do in the winter of his life? How sad. But his falsehoods in defence of the CHRC are becoming even more embarrassing than his stratospheric invoices to the taxpayer. He's making it worse. Just reading his speech sounds like he's screaming.

On Monday, at his appearance before Parliament's Justice Committee, let's see if he repeats the lies in his speech -- especially about Steacy never having written anything bigoted, or Warman never having written anything bigoted while at the CHRC, or Warman never having worked on censorship files. I know he reads this blog obsessively, so he'll now know that his facts are wrong.

Do you think he'll lie to Parliament?

We'll find out on Monday.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission and its megalomanaic chief commissioner, Jennifer Lynch, have disgraced Canada on the international stage.

According to the annual report by Reporters sans Frontieres (that's French for Reporters without Borders) Canada has plunged from 13th place to 19th place in the world, in terms of press freedom. Here's a CP wire story on the subject.

Chris Waddell, a journalism professor quoted in that story, attributes part of that plunge to the increasing bullying of reporters by Canada's human rights commissions -- and Lynch's CHRC is mentioned in particular.

You can see the full list of rankings here.

My fellow Canadians, would you ever have believed that Canada's press freedom would rank lower than, say, the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania? We have an 800-year tradition of freedom; they just emerged from the shadow of Communism twenty years ago. And we are less free than them.

I also note that several of the fascist Axis countries of the Second World War -- Germany, Austria and Japan -- are ranked freer than us, too.

That's sickening. Waddell blames Lynch's CHRC. Reading the questionnaire that reporters fill out, that RSF uses for their rankings, shows he's right.

You can see that questionnaire here. Thankfully, many of the more awful questions are not applicable to Canada -- such as violence towards journalists. But the following questions, taken directly from the questionnaire, are all answered negatively because of the CHRC's abuses:

INDIRECT THREATS, PRESSURES AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION

During this period, were there cases of (Yes/No):

7. Surveillance of journalists by the state (were journalists’ phones tapped, were they

followed etc)?

8. Journalists employed by privately-owned media being forced to stop working because

of threats or political pressure?

9. Serious difficulty accessing public or official information (such as refusal by officials

to provide information, information being provided selectively, according to the

media’s editorial position)?

CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP

12. How many news media were censored, had issues seized, had their premises

ransacked or had their operating licence withdrawn by the state?

During this period, was there (Yes/No):

14. Widespread self-censorship in the privately-owned media? Give a score from 0 (none)

to 5 (strong self-censorship).

15. Important news that was suppressed or not covered because of political or business

pressure? Give examples.

ECONOMIC, LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE

During this period, was there or were there (Yes/No):

23. Unjustified or improper use of fines, summonses or legal action against journalists or

media outlets?

INTERNET AND NEW MEDIA

During this period, was there or were there (Yes/No):

30. Cases of access to news, cultural or political websites being blocked by filtering

mechanisms or being closed down by the authorities?

31. Cases of cyber-dissidents or bloggers being detained for more than a day? How many?

 

In case you need a reminder, here are the facts that apply to each question number:

7. Jennifer Lynch maintains an enemies list of her critics. And CHRC staff, such as neo-Nazi member Dean Steacy, covertly monitor sites of critical journalists.

8. Had Mark Steyn and Maclean's lost their cases, Steyn's oeuvre would have been permanently banned in Canada.

9. Lynch regularly breaks Canada's access to information laws, by falsely and illegally refusing to comply with basic requests, such as to disclose her expenses.

12. Human rights commissions have the power to search and seize documents (including computer hard drives) from premises, including media companies, without a search warrant. It was under that threat that I personally felt compelled to attend a government interrogation.

14. This is obvious: the near-unanimous self-censorship of Canadian newspapers and TV stations in the face of the cartoon fatwa was as much out of fear of human rights-style hassles (like the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted shakedown of Maclean's) as it was out of fear of violence.

15. See 14 above when it comes to radical Islam.

23. HRCs are a form of "lawfare" -- note that the CIC filed three identical complaints against Maclean's and Steyn in three jurisdictions, in a punitive abuse of the system. I myself have been subject to not only three human rights complaints, but four defamation suits (and another defamation threat by the CIC itself), and over 20 complaints to the law society (all of which have been dismissed).

30. The chief tool of Lynch and her mob, aside from the punishment of her abusive processes, is a lifetime ban on publications.

31. The very first Canadian to be hit with a cease and desist order under section 13 (back before the Internet, when it only applied to telephone answering machines) refused to comply, and was thus served nine months in jail. Seriously: for not unplugging his rude answering machine message, he served more time in jail than most Canadian rapists do.

Given that there are only 40 questions on the whole list, and Canada regularly breaches nine of them, I'm surprised that our rank has only fallen to 19th place.

Jennifer Lynch is an international disgrace. She and her illiberal band of censors are hurting our national reputation as a free country. She rather likes it that way, I'm sure -- she regularly confers with her counterparts in various third world human rights commissions. I'm sure she'd like to meet them half-way. (See here for her jubilant exchange with the thugs from Cameroon's human rights commission -- ranked 109th in press freedom.)

Of course, I really don't give a damn about international opinion of Canada. I don't care if some French NGO hates us or loves us. What I care about is my God-given freedom as a Canadian, and that Lynch has illegally taken it away. The fact that it takes a liberal French NGO to notice is merely adding insult to injury.

Now that the exquisitely politically correct progressives at RSF have condemned Lynch, is it too much to ask that our own Parliament actually do something about her?

Fire. Them. All.

P.S. I know the PMO staffer who selected Lynch; and I know the Conservative lobbyist who recommended her. Both are sheepish about their decision; I'm sure both regret it, and if they knew then what they know now, they'd never have greenlit this little fascist. What's so funny, though, is that both of these men tell me that Lynch lusted for the job precisely for the foreign junketeering -- she wanted to schmooze with human rights bureaucrats dictatorships around the world.

I'm sure my friends thought what she had in mind -- besides spending six figures a year in first-class travel -- was that Lynch's incessant conferences would bring godforsaken countries like Cameroon up a few notches in freedom. I don't think they ever thought it would mean Canada would be dragged down to their level.

They didn't know when they appointed her, but they know now. But so far, the government hasn't acted at the behest of the unanimous shaming of Lynch from Canadian commentators. It's probably too much to hope that they'd pay any more attention to foreigh critics of Lynch, either.

 

 

 

 

TUESDAY UPDATE: Unfortunately, I have to cancel my appearance at this conference. I highly recommend your own attendance, though -- it has a stellar line-up of speakers, and I know some great Canadians will be there, too. I will still attend my other fall events, including those in Montreal tomorrow and Thursday.

I'm honoured to have been invited to speak at the "International Legal Conference on Freedom of Speech and Religion" later this month in Washington, D.C. The conference, details of which can be seen here, is co-sponsored by an array of amazing pro-liberty groups.

(In a sane world, this is the kind of conference that a "human rights commission" bureaucrat would attend; instead, Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission jets around the world to meetings with Potemkin human rights fronts for Third World dictators, where they actually plot ways to infringe upon our liberties. How embarrassing for Canada.)

I'm looking forward to telling Canada's story down there. It's actually my second visit to Washington on this matter; the first time I testified before the bi-partisan Congressional human rights caucus. Though this is not an official government event, it will still be held at the Congressional Auditorium, which is quite prestigious.

All of the speakers look interesting, but some of them have me especially excited: Sen. Jim Demint is one of my favourites; Frank Gaffney is indispensable; one of my favourite bloggers, Atlas Shrugs (Pamela Geller) will be there; Brooke Goldstein of the Children's Rights Institute (formerly of the Middle East Forum) and my fellow Canadian, the former CSIS counterterrorism agent, David Harris.

If by chance you're in the D.C. area, please come by. There is no fee (but registration is required).

And if you're in Montreal, I hope to see you later this week!

I enjoyed my day in Ottawa yesterday. Lunch at the Parliamentary Dining Room is always a treat -- and a good way to bump into plenty of MPs and Senators. I dined with a handful of free speechnik staffers, which was fun.

I stopped by Question Period, which is always entertaining. (It's also very relaxing, since they take your BlackBerry away from you when you sit in the gallery. That always makes me feel like I'm on vacation!) Seriously, though, QP put me in a great mood because Brent Rathgeber, the MP from St. Albert, made a great statement about section 13, censorship and freedom. You can read that one-minute statement here.

That put a spring in my step as I headed down to the Railway Committee Room, a grand room right in the heart of Parliament's Centre Block. I was 45 minutes early, so I had a good chance to kibitz with friends as they trickled in, including great freedom bloggers like Roy Eappen.

I was pleased with the media turn-out for the event -- almost ten reporters in the room, and more who were watching the proceedings on TV.

I drafted my opening remarks (pasted below in English and French!) strategically: I spent almost no time focusing on the philosophical objections to a censorship law, and almost all my time on the corruption and abuse at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. My thinking was that, in ten minutes of opening remarks, it would be extremely unlikely that I would "convert" anyone from supporting censorship to supporting free speech (although Athanasios Hadjis's conversion shows that it is possible; but that took two years). Rather, if I focused on the corruption, abuse and criminality of the CHRC, that would be something that even those who support censorship in principle would be shocked by. Whether you're Conservative, Liberal, Bloc or NDP, you probably agree it's inappropriate for a government agency to be a den of neo-Nazi membership, Internet hacking, hiring of corrupt ex-cops, stealing police evidence, etc.

Frankly, I didn't want to simply go through the same old motions in the free speech vs. censorship debate -- I wanted to forcefully introduce radioactive facts into the discussion, and talk about that.

As it turns out, that same-old debate didn't happen.

Brian Murphy, the Liberal MP who went first, actually introduced himself before the meeting and told me he had read my book! (I was thrilled -- and I regret that I didn't connect with him to sign it!) I thought that his questions were fair -- I wouldn't call them supportive, but I wouldn't call them hostile -- and it was clear that he was genuinely concerned about the corruption allegations I made verbally and in my book. He wondered aloud if my book was the subject of defamation litigation; it actually is not -- not a single person has sued me or my publisher for anything in the book. (I mention that, because the facts are rock-solid. Even nuisance litigator Richard Warman has -- shockingly -- not sued for anything in the book. I must be losing my touch.)

Joe Comartin, the NDP MP, was not as well-briefed as Murphy was, and he was candid enough to admit it. I sensed in him a genuine concern about the scandalous report I made. He asked me for documentation (which I will send him and the whole committee this week), and asked if I would return, presumably once he had time to digest everything. I found that very encouraging: I managed to get his attention, which is half the battle in Ottawa. Comartin made some traditional arguments about censorship laws stopping violence; I think they're shopworn and weak arguments, and they're not sustained by history, and I tried to point that out. But even if Comartin and I disagree on the principle of censorship -- and I still hold out hope that I can persuade him of its folly, even on the practical level of trying to censor ideas in the era of the Internet -- I think that I can appeal to his sense of fairness and justice by showing him just how corrupt the CHRC is.

I really appreciated the thoughtful questions by Serge Menard of the Bloc Quebecois. It was clear that he and his colleague, Marc Lemay, were new to this file. That makes sense: the massive debate on this subject in Canada has been almost completely in the English language press. (I'd have to check to be sure, but I don't think that in the 32 year history of section 13, anyone from Quebec has been either a complainant or a victim.) It just isn't on the radar screen in French Quebec. But I sensed in them a genuine interest and curiosity, and I think that they took advantage of their questions to brief themselves quite quickly. I didn't sense the same philosophical opposition in Menard as I did in Comartin. But, like Comartin, Menard clearly cares about the administration of justice not being thrown into disrepute.

Ujjal Dosanjh was an interesting case. The Liberal MP from Vancouver -- a former NDP member and in fact a former Communist -- seemed to be the most defensive about section 13 in the room. That said, he told reporters afterwards that he was very much in favour of reform -- he just hadn't made up his mind about what kind of reforms he wants! Fair enough. I found him very bright and engaging, and despite his clearly partisan approach, I think he is intellectually honest on this file.

He pressed me about the criminal conviction of Jim Keegstra, the anti-Semitic teacher. I answered honestly: I don't think that Keegstra is a criminal, just a foolish man who ought to have been fired for teaching lies and propaganda in a classroom. Dosanjh grabbed this answer as some sort of political "win" -- proof of the radicalism of my ideas. After all, I didn't think Keegstra was a criminal!

That's true; but I think Dosanjh's desired effect was lost because I happen to be Jewish, and so the implication that I might not care about anti-Semitism just doesn't stick. More to the point, the committee is studying section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, not the criminal code. I would expect that any recommendations from the committee would deal only with the CHRA, and not the Criminal Code, so in that context, I'm not pressing for him to repeal the criminal provision, too, though that is my personal opinion. Politics is the art of the possible; as a pundit, blogger and author I can call for the repeal of both; but as someone who is actually trying to accomplish legal reform, repealing section 13 and having the CHRC's culture of corruption flushed out are what I'm aiming for. I'm happy to let Dosanjh call me "radical" for wanting to repeal the Criminal Code provision, precisely because that makes merely repealing section 13 "moderate" and "reasonable" by comparison. I didn't mind our debate at all.

The Conservative MPs were more reserved, because I think they generally agreed with Mark Steyn and me. I think they are still a little bit cautious about coming out forcefully for reform, because they are worried how it might play politically. But I think that they must have left that committee hearing feeling the same way I did: that the Bloc wasn't alive to the debate, but not committed to preserving section 13; there are elements within the Liberals and NDP who are ideologically resistant to repealing it, but not completely closed to the question; and that the corruption, abuse and criminality at the CHRC is something that every party is repulsed by. Perhaps that's the winning formula in this minority Parliament.

That said, let's also acknowledge that there is a strong libertarian element in the Liberal Party (and perhaps the others) that was not necessarily represented in that committee. Remember, it was Liberal Keith Martin who first put the private member's motion to repeal section 13; and other Liberals (like Sen. Grafstein) have been excellent on the file. And, as Steyn pointed out in his remarks, Michael Ignatieff himself has written and spoken strongly about freedom of speech.

I won't go on any longer right now. I found all of the questions to have been put in good faith; I found all of the MPs to be receptive to my concerns about the corruption, abuse and criminality at the CHRC; and I was grateful to the MPs who expressed a desire to learn more. Finally, even the more feisty MPs in the opposition telegraphed their openness to reforms -- even Dosanjh himself.

I have never been more optimistic.

P.S. Here is the text of my opening remarks as written, in English and then in French. (I ad libbed a bit in my actual delivery). I'll link to the actual Hansard transcript when it's up:

Last month, section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the censorship provision, was declared unconstitutional. Athanasios Hadjis, the vice-chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, ruled that section violated the Charter. He said the Canadian Human Rights Commission had become a bully, calling it, quote, “aggressive” and “confrontational”.

And in March, Edward Lustig, another tribunal member, ruled that the commission’s conduct was quote, “disturbing and disappointing”. He said he would follow Mr. Hadjis’s lead on the question of its constitutionality.

Mr. Hadjis is a past president of a large multicultural organization in Montreal and was appointed by Prime Minister Chretien. Mr. Lustig was appointed by Prime Minister Harper.

So that’s the state of affairs today: Conservative and Liberal members of the tribunal agree: the commission is out of control.  The tribunal will not enforce the illegal law. They’ve concluded that the commission is abusing our human rights, like freedom of speech.

So how did things go off the rails?

To understand what the commission does, we have to understand what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t help minorities. It doesn’t help immigrants, or gays. In fact, all but two of the commission’s censorship prosecutions in the past decade have been launched by the same individual, a privileged white male lawyer here in Ottawa, named Richard Warman. He was actually a commission employee, and he started filing censorship complaints while he worked there – and his co-workers would investigate his complaints. Needless to say, he won them all – and was awarded tens of thousands of dollars, tax free.

When Mr. Warman left the commission five years ago and went to work for the Department of National Defence, he continued to file complaints. Even though he no longer works at the commission, they still pay his expenses – travel, hotels, parking, meals, even an honorarium. The commission doesn’t pay anyone else in Canada to file complaints. Section 13 really is Richard Warman’s personal law. Without him, there would be no prosecutions.

That in itself raises issues like conflict of interest and abuse of office and malicious prosecution. But that’s not why Mr. Hadjis or Mr. Lustig rejected section 13. Like I mentioned, they called the commission, quote “disturbing, disappointing, aggressive and confrontational”.

I’ll give you examples of that conduct now. I think it will shock you. I myself couldn’t believe it at first. So I would be happy to provide documentary evidence for what I’m about to say – almost all of it comes from sworn testimony of commission staff themselves. Here goes:

Mr. Warman does something I don’t think Canadians expect a government employee to do. For nearly ten years, he’s been a member of a neo-Nazi group called Stormfront. And another neo-Nazi group called Vanguard. And another called the Canadian Heritage Alliance. He actually fills out membership forms. And then he goes online to their websites, and writes bigoted, hateful things. Like that gays are a “cancer” on society. Or white police should be loyal to “their race”. Or that Jews like Irwin Cotler are, quote, “scum”. Seriously: he did this as a commission employee.

He wrote hundreds of bigoted messages like that.

And he convinced other commission staff to do the same thing. At least seven staff have membership privileges in Nazi organizations. Last year, investigator Dean Steacy admitted under oath he was one of them, and he fingered his two assistants and Sandy Kozak and Giacomo Vigna; and their manager John Chamberlin, too.

Several years ago, Mr. Warman, Mr. Vigna and Mr. Steacy sat down at a computer together, and logged into a neo-Nazi website, using their membership. But to cover their tracks, they hacked into wireless Internet account of a private citizen named Nelly Hechme, so they couldn’t be traced back to the commission.

Bell Canada’s security officer testified to this fact, and the RCMP investigated it for months. The status of the investigation is officially “unsolved”, but the commission remains the only suspect.

I could go on: I could mention the lack of a written ethics code; that Ms. Kozak was hired after she was drummed out of a police force for corruption; that the commission illegally “borrows” material from police evidence lockers, without a warrant; that Mr. Steacy boasts this kind of behavior doesn’t break any rules, because there are no rules. And instead of cleaning up this mess, the chief of the commission, Jennifer Lynch, defends it – and attacks anyone who criticizes it.

Section 13 was thrown out not just because censorship is un-Canadian, and a violation of the Charter. It was thrown out because the commission itself has become a threat to our human rights, and both Liberal and Conservative tribunal members refuse to let that go on one minute longer. I hope this committee will be united in their revulsion to what I’ve just reported, too.

Thank you.

 

Le mois dernier, l’article 13 de la Loi canadienne sur les droits de la personne, la clause de censure, a été déclaré inconstitutionnel. Athanasios Hadjis, membre instructeur du Tribunal canadien des droits de la personne, a décidé que cet article enfreint la Charte. Il a jugé que la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne est devenue tyrannique, il l’a traité d’  « agressive » et « militante ».

 

Et au mois de mars, Edward Lustig, un autre membre du Tribunal, a décidé que le comportement de la Commission était « troublant et décevant ».  Il a dit qu’il suivrait M. Hadjis sur la question de sa constitutionnalité.

 

M. Hadjis est un ancien président d’une importante organisation multiculturelle à Montréal et a été nommé par le Premier ministre Chrétien. M. Lustig a été nommé par le Premier ministre Harper.

 

Voilà l'état des choses aujourd’hui : des membres Conservateurs et Libéraux du Tribunal sont d’accord : la Commission est hors contrôle. Le Tribunal n’appliquera pas cette loi illégale. Ils ont jugé que la Commission viole nos droits de la personne, comme celui de la liberté d'expression.

 

Mais comment cela se fait-il qu'on en soit arrivé là ?

 

Afin de comprendre ce que fait la Commission, on doit d’abord comprendre ce qu’elle ne fait pas. Elle n’aide pas les minorités. Elle n’aide pas les immigrants, ou les homosexuels. En fait, hormis deux cas, toutes les poursuites-bâillons au cours de la dernière décennie ont été intentées par un seul et même individu, un avocat blanc et privilégié dénommé Richard Warman. En réalité, il était encore un employé de la Commission quand il  a commencé à déposer des plaintes – et ses collègues enquêtaient sur ces mêmes plaintes. Il va sans dire qu’il les a toutes gagnées – tout en se faisant décerner des dizaines de milliers de dollars, un revenu non imposable.

 

Quand M. Warman a quitté la Commission il y a de cela cinq ans pour entreprendre un nouveau poste au Ministère de la Défense nationale, il a continué à déposer des plaintes.  Bien qu’il ne travaille plus à la Commission, cette dernière paie encore ses dépenses – voyages, hôtels, stationnements, repas et même des honoraires. Richard Warman est la seule personne au Canada qui est ainsi rémunérée par la Commission pour déposer des plaintes. L’article 13 est en réalité une loi personnelle de cet individu. Sans lui il n’y aurait pas de poursuites.

 

Ceci en soi soulève des questions de conflit d’intérêts, d’abus de position et de poursuites malicieuses. Mais ce n’est pas pour cela que M. Hadjis ou M. Lustig ont rejeté l’article 13. Comme déjà mentionné, ils ont qualifié la Commission de « troublante, décevante, agressive et militante ».

 

À présent, je vais vous donner des exemples de cette conduite. Je pense qu’elle va vous choquer. Moi-même j’avais peine à y croire au début. Donc, je serais heureux d’apporter des preuves documentaires à l’appui de ce que j’avance – presque tout nous parvient des témoignages du personnel de la Commission donnés sous serment. En voici ces quelques exemples :

 

M. Warman fait quelque chose dont les canadiens ne s’attendent pas de la part des employés à la solde du gouvernement fédéral. Depuis environ dix ans,  il est membre d’organisations néo-Nazis telles que Stormfront, Vanguard et Canadian Heritage Alliance. En réalité, il rempli des formulaires d’adhésions. Ensuite il va sur leurs sites Web avec l’intention de rédiger des messages racistes et haineux. Tels que, les homosexuels sont un « cancer » pour la société. Les agents de police devraient être loyaux envers « leur race ». Ou encore que les juifs comme Irwin Cotler sont les « rebuts » de la société. Sérieusement, il a dit tout cela en étant un employé de la Commission.

 

Il a ainsi rédigé des centaines et des centaines de messages haineux et racistes.

 

Et il a convaincu d’autres employés de la Commission d’en faire autant. Au moins sept employés de la Commission sont membres en bonne et due forme d’organisations néo-Nazis. L’an dernier, l’enquêteur Dean Steacy a admis sous serment qu’il était membre d’organisations néo-Nazis et il a du même coup pointé du doigt deux adjoints et Sandy Kozak et Giacomo Vigna; et aussi leur gestionnaire, John Chamberlain.

 

Il y a quelques années, M. Warman, M. Vigna et M. Steacy se sont assis ensemble devant un ordinateur de la Commission dans le but de se connecter en leur qualité de membres à un site Web néo-Nazi. Mais afin de couvrir leurs traces, ils ont piraté un compte de réseau sans fil d’une citoyenne ordinaire dénommée Nelly Hechme, parce qu’ils avaient peur d’être retracés et découverts.

 

Un agent de sécurité de Bell Canada a temoigné à cet effet et la GRC a mené une enquête pendant des mois. Le statut de cette enquête est officiellement «non résolu »; cependant, la Commission est le seul suspect.

 

Je pourrais continuer comme cela indéfiniment, je pourrais mentionner le manque d’un code d’éthique; que Mme Kozak a été engagée après avoir été renvoyée de la police pour une affaire de corruption; que la Commission “emprunte” des éléments de preuve matériels appartenant aux forces policières, et ceci sans autorisation légitime; que M. Steacy se vante que ce genre de comportement ne contrevient pas à des règles, parce qu’il n’y a pas de règles. Et au lieu de nettoyer ce fouillis, Jennifer Lynch, la présidente de la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne, le défend – et attaque toute personne qui ose le critiquer.

 

L’article 13 n’a pas été jugé inconstitutionnel par la Commission seulement parce que la censure n’est pas dans les mœurs des canadiens et qu’il viole la Charte. Il a été jugé inconstitutionnel parce la Commission elle-même est devenue une menace pour nos droits de la personne et les membres Libéraux et Conservateurs du Tribunal refusent que cela continue une minute de plus. J’espère que ce comité sera aussi uni dans son dégout pour ce que je viens de lui relater.

 

 

Merci. 

 

On Monday afternoon Mark Steyn and I will testify before the House of Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee in support of their review of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and its abusive censorship powers.

If you're in Ottawa, come by in person, to room 253-D in the Centre Block. It looks like I'm up first, from 3:30 till 4, and then Mark is up from 4 till 4:30.

I am advised by a friend in the Justice Department that Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the CHRC, was scheduled to appear on Monday, too, but when she heard that Steyn and I were appearing that day, she insisted that she be permitted to testify another day. If this were high school, I'd merely laugh at Lynch for her childishness. Given that Lynch is an adult, in a postion of authority in the government, her behaviour is worse than pitiful or disgraceful -- it's long past time she were relieved of her duties.

At least Lynch didn't try to bully the Justice Committee MPs like she tried to bully CTV a few months ago, when she insisted that CTV rescind their invitation to me to appear on a national public affairs program. What a classless, bitter, paranoid woman. But I don't take it personally; Lynch has seven employees who are members of neo-Nazi organizations; it's simply her survival instinct kicking in. Seriously: if you had seven neo-Nazi members working for you, would you want to appear in the same room as a Jew like me who actually cares about anti-Semitism? It could put her in a tough spot.

It will be interesting to see if Lynch actually appears at a later date. Remember that she skipped town the last time she was asked to come to Parliament to answer for her fiascos, sending in her clueless deputy to take flak for her. Like I say, classless -- and out of her depth. But enough about Lynch and her neo-Nazi staff.

I'll have more to say about Lynch and her corrupt crew on Monday. If you can't attend in person, you can watch the proceedings online, by clicking here.

I'll also post a transcript of my remarks (and Mark Steyn's) when they're published.

On September 2, the vice-chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, Athanasios Hadjis, declared the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act illegal. That was quite something, given that Hadjis himself has brutally enforced that section as recently as two years ago. But declare it illegal he did. Here's paragraph 295 of his lengthy ruling:

For all the above reasons, I find that s. 13(1) infringes on Mr. Lemire's freedom of expression guaranteed under s. 2(b) of the Charter, and that this infringement is not demonstrably justified under s. 1 of the Charter.

Hadjis is reflecting the growing bi-partisan consensus against both section 13 (the censorship provision) and the CHRC in general. Hadjis is a Liberal, appointed by Jean Chretien. He is supported by a Conservative appointee, Edward Lustig, who indicated in his ruling earlier this year that he would abide by Hadjis's findings here. (Lustig also called out serial CHRC complainant Richard Warman for his online anti-Semitism, calling it "disturbing and disappointing."

It's been 28 days since that ruling -- which means there are just two days left in which a party may make an appeal. I am not an expert in the CHRT's procedure, but I would imagine that such an appeal could be made by the CHRC, the Justice Department, Richard Warman or even Marc Lemire, the complainant.

It was one thing for the Justice Department to defend the law from an accusation that it was unconstitutional. That's pretty much standard operating procedure. But for Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister, to positively appeal such a loss, to revive such an illiberal law, is a whole different thing. It would be a positive act of censorship, no longer a passive act of defending the legality of a law on the books. It would make a lie of Nicholson's own public statement against section 13, namely his publicly voting against the section at a party policy convention last year.

Nor would it be acceptable for Nicholson to stand down but let his agency, the CHRC, appeal it -- for the same reasons.

That leaves Warman and Lemire.

Warman, despite attempts to publicly portray himself as a human rights martyr, has actually had his expenses paid for his CHRC complaints even since he left their employ. (This is in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars of tax-free award payments he's won before the CHRT.)

To be clear: the CHRC has paid for Warman's hotel, travel, meals, parking and incidentals -- and even a modest daily honorarium -- for him to file complaints against people. As far as I know, Warman's sweet deal is the only case in Canada -- no-one else is paid a bounty to drum up complaints for the CHRC.

This is relevant because the CHRC might try to finance Warman's appeal, using tax dollars, just as they have financed his complaints. And, if the CHRC is forbidden from paying Warman to litigate, it is doubtful that Warman would actually spend his own money. That's just not his style.

Which leaves us with Lemire. Would he appeal?

I can think of a reason not to: he won, and he's done now.

But I can think of a few reasons for him to indeed appeal. If he appeals -- and I haven't given sufficient thought to the grounds upon which he could appeal his own acquittal, but I imagine there are a few in a 107-page ruling -- he would force the matter into a real court, before real judges, who would surely confirm Hadjis's ruling. (Real courts with real judges tend to care about the Charter more than kangaroo courts do; and the Supreme Court of Canada has given strong indications in recent years of the importance to be given to free speech.)

A real court decision wouldn't just have a "declaration" that section 13 was illegal. It would likely strike the section out -- thus commanding the bullies at the CHRC to stop enforcing it. (They are actually continuing with it, despite the CHRT's ruling. They share Bernie "Burny" Farber's contempt for Hadjis the the tribunal; they respect him only when he agrees with them; when he disagrees, they ignore him and mock him as impotent. I think that says a lot about their character, don't you?)

So a victorious appeal by Lemire would shut down the CHRC for good. And it would also carry more persuasive weight in other HRC jurisdictions where censorship is currently being challenged before the courts, such as Alberta (where a court ruling on the Boissoin appeal is imminent).

I also think a Lemire appeal is a good idea because it will keep the CHRC's bad behaviour in the news for months or years to come. It will take up time and money from CHRC lawyers. And, though that is actually our tax money, at least it won't be used in harassing other Canadians. Jennifer Lynch has already whined that defending section 13 censorship monopolizes her time and energy. I think that's great. She's a horrific violator of personal freedom in Canada, which is why she ought to remain on the defensive, and not left to her own devices.

Finally, an appeal would be an interesting political IQ test for Canada's Official Jews. They suffered an enormous loss of credibility with Hadjis's ruling. Are they stupid enough to double down on an appeal? Again, if they are stupid enough to do so -- and with Mark Freiman as the new figurehead president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, himself a former section 13 prosecutor, they probably are stupid enough to do so -- it will have the same deleterious effects on them: burn up their time, efforts and money, and further discredit them in the public eye.

I don't want Rob Nicholson to appeal -- it would be immoral for him to do so.

I don't want him to allow his agency, the CHRC, to appeal -- it would be a cowardly attempt by him to avoid the political blame, if he let them do so.

I don't want the CHRC to continue to finance Warman to appeal the ruling (though I don't much mind if he appeals on his own -- but I'm pretty sure someone who bills the CHRC for every little expense won't do so on his own.)

But I would like the thing appealed so that it could be trashed with even greater gusto and authority by the real courts.

And frankly, I wouldn't mind if it went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, so that Beverley McLachlin, who wrote the dissent in the Taylor ruling 19 years ago, could have another whack at censorship in Canada, this time as the Chief Justice, writing for a unanimous court.

None of which should be necessary, of course: Stephen Harper's Conservative government should stop avoiding this disgrace, and should repeal section 13 immediately, instead of outsourcing their responsibilities to the courts.

Fire. Them. All.

P.S. Here's proof of how malicious the CHRC is -- and how disrespectful they are of Hadjis, Lustig and the CHRT. They are still prosecuting section 13 cases, even though the law has been declared illegal. They are literally using a law that is not functional, to censor Canadians in disregard of our Charter.

That's malicious prosecution territory; that's abuse of office territory; that's piercing the corporate veil and suing Lynch and her mob personally territory. I have no idea who has given them that legal advice, but if I were a section 13 victim still being hounded by Lynch, I'd sue her and every staffer involved personally for illegal conduct. Here's what I mean:

From: "DANIEL POULIN" <DANIEL.POULIN@CHRC-CCDP.CA>

Date: September 30, 2009 2:00:46 PM PDT (CA)

To: <nancy.lafontant@chrt-tcdp.gc.ca>, <registrar@chrt-tcdp.gc.ca>, <dougchristielaw@shaw.ca>

Cc: <abromberg@bnaibrith.ca>, <Marvin@dsklaw.com>, <habrams@pacificcoast.net>, <paul@paulfromm.com>, <radical@radicalpress.com>

Subject: Abrams and BBC v. Topham and Radical Press - Position of the Commission

Dear Tribunal and Parties,

We write further to the correspondence that has been exchanged by the parties in regards to the impact of the Warman v Lemire decision recently rendered by the Tribunal.  

It is the position of the Commission submits that the Tribunal should proceed on hearing the matter pending before it in the present case.  Consequently, the matter should neither be adjourned sine die or simply dismissed.

In Warman v. Lemire, the Tribunal found that the penalty provision in s. 54(1)(c) was not a reasonable limit on freedom of expression under the Charter.  In the instant case, the Commission will no longer be seeking a penalty under 54(1)(c) of the Act as was originally included in its Statement of Particulars.  The Commission therefore respectfully submits that the Tribunal ought to proceed with a hearing of the Complaint to determine if section 13 has been infringed, and if so, to exercise its discretion under s. 54(1)(a).   

Yours truly,

Daniel Poulin
Legal Counsel
Canadian Human Rights Commission

Richard Warman, the hate speech complainant who is personally responsible for all but two section 13 censorship prosecutions this decade, is now being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for hate speech himself.

I know. It sounds crazy. Just like it sounded crazy when it was revealed that Warman and the CHRC were members of neo-Nazi organizations.

Warman is a former CHRC investigator himself; and even after he left the CHRC they continued to pay his expenses to file and prosecute complaint after complaint. All this, despite the fact he's been under investigation for hate speech for three years.

At the same time as Warman was a complainant, he was a defendant.

At the same time as the CHRC was cutting him cheques to cover his expenses, they were probing his conduct.

At the same time as he held himself out to be an anti-hate crimes activist, his own hateful speech was being probed.

Are you dizzy yet?

Here is a copy of the CHRC's recent, four-page ruling confirming that they are proceeding with their investigation against Warman, despite his several objections.

As you can see, Warman tried to get the CHRC to back off by claiming, among other things, that his motivations were pure. But section 13 doesn't care what your intentions were -- or even if your comments were true. Warman knows that -- that's one of the reasons he loves that law, or did until now. And, hilariously, Warman whined to the CHRC that the complaint against him should be thrown out because it was embarrassing. Funny how that never occured to Warman when he was holding the section 13 stick in his own hands.

My favourite part, of course, is Warman's last-ditch attempt to have complaint against him thrown out because... he's suing me in civil court. As you can see throughout my website, I have documented countless examples of Warman's own hate speech. Warman has slapped me (and several others) with a nuisance suit to shut me up. (It hasn't worked. Here's my statement of defence, if you're interested.)

But now I see that abusive nuisance suit was used for another improper purpose: to try to get the CHRC to lay off Warman. In effect, he said, "don't examine these hate speech charges against me... because I'm suing this other guy Levant for reporting them". There's not a lot of logic there, but I suppose he gets marks for creativity. But after nearly three years of delays, the CHRC has now decided: they're going to proceed against Warman.

I can't believe I'm writing these words: the Canadian Human Rights Commission is proceeding with an investigation against Richard Warman for hate speech. The maximum disruptor is now about to be disrupted himself.

Question: will Bernie "Burny" Farber and the pro-censorship Canadian Jewish Congress intervene against Warman in this case, as they have intervened before? Or is Warman's bigotry the good kind of bigotry, according to the Official Jews? How does the CJC feel about giving a "human rights" award to someone who has been under investigation for hate speech for nearly three years? Is it OK by Burny to call Jews "scum" on a neo-Nazi website, if it's done by his friend?

Question: after this month's declaration by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that section 13 is unconstitutional, both Burny and Warman said they still think the law is valid. Now that Warman is in trouble, will they change their minds?

Question: note the date on this ruling, September 9th. That's a week after the tribunal declared section 13 was illegal. The CHRC is obviously still investigating section 13 cases, even though the law has been declared unconstitutional. How does Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister, feel about his agency continuing to prosecute a law that has been declared illegal?

Question: is the CHRC financing Warman's expenses to defend himself? Are they still financing other complaints by him?

Question: is there anyone left in this entire country -- other than those on some HRC payroll -- who doesn't think this entire corrupt system needs to be shut down and subject to a forensic inquiry and a deep audit, headed up by a judge?

Fire. Them. All.

P.S. In case you're wondering, I believe in free speech. Even though Richard Warman is not polite company, and has written some truly bigoted statements -- Jews are "scum"; gays are a "cancer"; white police should be loyal to "their race", et cetera, ad nauseam -- I don't think that should be illegal in Canada. And, though it's poetic justice that he is being investigated by the abusive regime he himself helped to create, I still don't support it.

And if he shows contempt for the CHRC or the tribunal, I don't think Richard Warman should go to jail.

His worst punishment is having to be himself -- a man who meticulously groomed his public image as a "human rights" activist but who is now being revealed, month after month, as a "disturbing", "disappointing" member of neo-Nazi organizations, to quote a tribunal ruling earlier this year.

Six months ago the tribunal called him out on his bigotry.

Three weeks ago the tribunal ruled his censorship campaign was illegal.

Now the CHRC is investigating him. He used to own those organizations. Now they're owning him.

Next up: Warman is going to lose his defamation suits, big-time.

But he's already lost his reputation.

I can't imagine the embarrassment and shame he feels every day.

I never thought I'd say it, but I truly feel pity for him.

Maclean's magazine has a persuasive call for the repeal of section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, here -- it's one of the clearlest analyses I've read of the decision in Warman v. Lemire, and it explains why the law is so rotten.

The tribunal decision in Warman v. Lemire focuses on the "aggressive" and "confrontational" nature of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. No kidding. What was supposed to be a conciliatory Oprah-style forum has turned into a case study of government brutality, corruption and abuse.

The worst excesses of the CHRC were committed by, or in the service of, Richard Warman. He's the serial litigant-of-fortune who is responsible for more section 13 complaints than anyone else -- in fact, all but two of the cases prosecuted this decade have him as the complainant. Funny: you wouldn't think that a privileged, white lawyer, working for the Canadian government, would face so much discrimination. Of course, he hasn't -- he isn't gay, or black, or Jewish. But he files complaints in the name of gays and blacks and Jews, and receives tens of thousands of dollars in reward money, extracted from his victims -- tax free.

(The fact that Warman himself has joined several neo-Nazi groups, and published hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay comments -- including while working for the CHRC! -- is even more perverse.)

The CHRC was bad enough before Warman started using it as his personal vehicle for vendettas and prosecutions. But he made the CHRC worse. He infected it with his own personal philosophy called "maximum disruption" -- where he called for the use of "(almost) any means necessary".

And sometimes Warman even counseled violence, as he did when one of his victims, David Icke, was speaking in Vancouver. Warman encouraged a group of street urchins to invade a book store where Icke was giving a speech, and pelt him with pies. They did -- destroying books in the process. You can see a ten-minute excerpt from a British documentary on the subject, here:

 

Those are the actions of a radical, amoral activist. Amoral is too lenient, actually; when Warman and his friends laugh about "humiliating" their opponent, it's not amoral. It's despicable. This is the culture that Warman injected into the veins of the CHRC -- and Jennifer Lynch hasn't done a damned thing about it, other than try to cover it up.

But there's a little thing called the Charter of Rights that forbids all that.

Section 2 of the Charter of Rights protects freedom of speech. Of course, many government laws violate that section -- the law against forgery, for example, could be seen as a limit on what we can write or draw. But section 1 of our Charter says that some limits on freedom are acceptable in a "free and democratic society". But the government has to prove that the infringement on our freedoms is "rationally connected" to the public policy goal; the goal is "pressing and substantial", and that the means used "minimally impaired" the freedoms in question. It's part of the Oakes Test. 

Under our Charter of Rights, as interpreted by our courts through the Oakes Test, a government must infringe upon us in a minimal way. Richard Warman believes in harassing his opponents in a maximum way.

It was Warman's abuse of the system that made the system illegal. In the end, Warman killed the goose that laid so many golden eggs for him.

I'd call it poetic justice, but Warman's many victims would surely agree that we're still far, far away from justice yet.

Here's a report in the Canadian Jewish News about the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's decision to declare the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act unconstitutional. That newspaper -- which depends financially on the Official Jews -- is showing increasing skepticism about the OJs' decision to double down on a losing hand of censorship. The censors have been losing in the court of public opinion for two years; now they're losing in the courts of law. But Bernie "Burny" Farber doesn't give a damn. He'll go down with the ship -- and take the tattered credibility of organized Canadian Jewry with him.

Some excerpts (I've put some parts in bold):

A human rights tribunal last week ruled that a section of the the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) that imposes quasi-criminal penalties is unconstitutional...

...Canadian Jewish Congress – an intervenor in the case, along with B’nai Brith Canada and Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center – called for an appeal.

...Congress CEO Bernie Farber said “what the decision has done is confuse everybody.”

...Ezra Levant, author of Shakedown, a critique of human rights commissions, called Hadjis’ decision “enormously significant.”

The issues were thoroughly debated by phalanxes of lawyers and took years to be resolved. “This is a major treatment of the law” decided by the vice-chair of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) tribunal. Though “not technically binding [on other tribunals], it is effectively binding,” Levant said.

Furthermore, the judgement shows how the temperament of the commission has changed since the Taylor decision. It has become “aggressive and bullying, entrapping people,” Levant said.

The case continued even after Lemire removed the postings in question and agreed to mediation – remedies that were contemplated in the Taylor case.

“They [the CHRC] refused,” Levant said. “They wanted to grind him down.”

Levant was even more blistering in his critique of Jewish community organizations, which he dubbed “the official Jews.”

Congress is making “a strategic error” in calling for an appeal, he said. “You have domino after domino falling” with pressure building in media editorials, legal opinions and even in the commission itself to end Section 13 cases.

“Human rights commissions have been denormalized. They’re laughingstocks,” he said.

Nevertheless, Jewish organizations continue to push for appeals, in effect calling for the censorship of expression. Jews are coming across “as whiners who want to shut you down, not debate you. Is this the image we want to project to 33 million Canadians, that we’re thin-skinned whiners?” Levant asked.

Burny says everyone's confused. But I'm not confused: the law has been declared unconstitional, by the vice-chair of the tribunal, Athanasios Hadjis. What's confusing about that?

We have at least one other sitting tribunal member (Edward Lustig) who wrote earlier this year that he would abide by Hadjis's ruling. And last week, in Calgary, Alberta's censorship law was appealed from a kangaroo court to a real court on constitutional ground. Is there anyone out there who truly thinks the barbaric abuse of the law in that case won't be overturned -- and that it won't mention Hadjis's ruling as persuasive, if not formally binding?

Everyone's running away from censorship -- including Hadjis himself, who just two years ago was a brutal enforcer of it.

But not the fools at the CJC. Not Burny. He's called censorship his "business" before, and he has too much invested in that lucrative business to let it slip away because of some trifle like the Charter of Rights.

If you wanted to create a perfect caricature of a villainous Jew for anti-Semites to point to, you couldn't do better than Burny and the CJC.

They despise our freedom of speech. They demand censorship of their political opponents. They disparage any jurist who disagrees with them. And they do all this in the name of "the Jews".

Controlling. Bullying. Censoring. Refusing to submit to the rule of law. Demanding Canada import foreign ideas of censorship. Excusing -- or even celebrating -- the corruption and abuses in the Canadian Human Rights Commission. If I weren't a Jew, I'm afraid Burny would turn me into an anti-Semite. Nobody likes a bully telling you he wants to take away your freedom. And that bully says he speaks for all Jews. If Burny didn't exist, Stormfront would have to make him up.

In January, the Council for Israel and Jewish Advocay, the CJC's chief funder, called Burny in for a special meeting, and ordered him to stop conducting his personal censorship vendetta in the name of the CJC. And, for a brief moment, he actually complied.

But it's been eight months, and the salutary effects of that disciplinary meeting have worn off. Burny's at it again -- using money from Jewish donors for his own cause, rather than in the interests of the community.

It's time that CIJA reins him in again, before he humiliates the community further. Censorship and human rights commissions are despised in Canada. Burny's job is to make Jews less hated, not more hated. He's making Jews more hated.

If Burny lacks the wits to slowly back away from Canada's imploding HRC, he should be fired and replaced by someone who cares more about the community than his own sense of vengeance.

The summer's over, and I'll be visiting six provinces and one U.S. state this fall, to talk about freedom of speech and political correctness. I'm particularly glad I'll be going to Montreal, which I didn't visit in the spring. Here is a list of some of the public events that are in my schedule. If you're nearby, please come by to say hello.

Friday, September 11, Edmonton

Edmonton East Conservative Association, Chateau Louis, 6 p.m. Ticket order form here.

Saturday, September 26, Halifax

ECP Centre Ignite our Culture conference, Trinity Anglican Church, 11 a.m. More info here.

Saturday, September 26, Toronto

Ontario Libertarian Party meeting, U of T, St. George Campus, 6:30 p.m. More info here.

Friday, October 2, Nashville, Tennessee

American Association of Physicians and Surgeons convention, Sheraton Downtown, 7:30 p.m. More info here.

Wednesday, October 21, Montreal

Beth Israel/Beth Aaron meeting, 7:30 p.m. More info to come.

Thursday, October 22, Montreal

Fraser Institute reception and dinner, Café Ferreira, 5:30 p.m. More info here.

Friday, October 30, Saskatoon

National Pro-life conference, Hilton Garden Inn, 6:30 p.m. More info here.

Wednesday, November 4, Toronto

Fraser Institute student seminar, 1491 Yonge Street, 2 p.m. More info here.

Fraser Institute reception and dinner, The Fifth Grill and Terrace, 6 p.m. More info here.

Friday, November 13, 2009, Calgary

Calgary West Rotary Club, lunch. More info to come.

Wednesday, November 25, Vancouver

Jewish Book Festival, 7:30 p.m. More info to come.

 

By the way, the paperback edition of Shakedown will be released on October 27th. Not only does it look spiffy but, like all paperbacks, it's more affordable than the hard cover. My hope is that a whole new group of people -- especially students -- will pick up a copy at the new price point. As you can see, we've put Christopher Hitchens' beautiful blurb right on the front.

I've added a few pages with my take on some of the developments since the first edition -- including Jennifer Lynch's McCarthy-style enemies list, and Athanasios Hadjis's surprising ruling declaring HRC censorship illegal.

Watch for it on bookshelves!

 

Yesterday, Pearl Eliadis, who has been at the trough of the human rights industry for an awfully long time, wrote a letter to the National Post declaring that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal did not, in fact, declare section 13, the censorship provision, unconstitutional. Here's Eliadis's letter:

Re: Tribunal Backs Off Hate Provision, Joseph Brean, Sept. 3.

Warman vs. Lemire does not, actually, declare Section 13 to be unconstitutional. What the decision says is that Section 13 is constitutional (following the Supreme Court's Taylor case), but that punitive payments, which go to the government instead of the victim, are inconsistent with the constitution. This is not a "technicality" -- it is the central issue.

Practically, this means that Section 13 cases that only seek cease and desist orders or personal damages to the victim, are still constitutional within the meaning of the ruling.

Given the remedial nature of human rights laws, the legality of the punitive remedy will have to be sorted out in appeal. It is worth mentioning, though, that there are cases from the tribunal going the other way. The constitutionality of punitive damages does not or should not affect the legality of the hate speech law itself.

This is where tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis has erred: Linking the constitutionality of punitive damages to the hate speech law provoked confusion and this is a reason in itself to appeal. The media headlines trumpeting the decision as a blow to hate speech laws are evidence of how badly the reasons were interpreted.

It is one thing for the media -- or anyone else -- to make an honest mistake about a long and complex decision. It is quite another to have a journalist like Joseph Brean, who was specifically told everything that is written above, to distort the central reasoning of the case and misconstrue what I said to him.

Pearl Eliadis, human rights lawyer, Montreal.

Nice try. Here's my short reply in today's Post:

Re: What The Tribunal Ruling Really Means, letter to the editor, Sept. 4.

As a former human rights commission employee, Pearl Eliadis can't bring herself to admit that censorship is a violation of Canadian values. It's understandable -- it must be embarrassing to know that you're part of an industry that has been illegally prosecuting Canadians for years.

In her letter yesterday, Ms. Eliadis is in full denial mode. She writes "Warman vs. Lemire does not, actually, declare Section 13 to be unconstitutional."

Really? Here's the full text of paragraph 295 of the tribunal's landmark ruling this week: "For all the above reasons, I find that s. 13(1) infringes on Mr. Lemire's freedom of expression guaranteed under s. 2(b) of the Charter, and that this infringement is not demonstrably justified under s. 1 of the Charter."

Perhaps Ms. Eliadis thinks she can censor that, too.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

I think I can do better, though. Eliadis signs her letter as a "human rights lawyer". That's about as accurate as calling the Canadian Human Rights Commission the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Both Eliadis and the CHRC are on a mission to destroy real human rights like freedom of speech and replace them with counterfeit human rights, like the fake right not to be offended.

In other words, I ought to sign my letter "human rights lawyer", too. I think it would be more accurate than when Eliadis does it -- and it would drive her crazy.

Here's my Op-Ed that ran in today's National Post on the subject. I haven't read them yet, but the column generated over 100 comments on the Post's website.

Yesterday, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal did something its never done in its 32-year history. It acquitted somebody of "hate speech" charges. Until now, the tribunal had a 100% conviction rate.

In a 107-page ruling, tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis didn't just throw out the case against Marc Lemire, he threw out the law, too, calling it an infringement of the free speech guarantees of the Charter of Rights.

Hadjis is no wild-eyed civil libertarian. In the recent past, he himself has convicted people under this same law. And, before Jean Chretien appointed him to the tribunal, Hadjis was the boss of one of Montreal's largest multicultural lobby groups, which thrived on ethnic identity politics. But even Hadjis has had enough of the human rights industry and their fetish for political correctness. He ruled that allowing Canadian citizens to express offensive ideas is preferable to living under a government that prosecutes people for expressing those ideas.

As of yesterday, it's no longer illegal to write politically incorrect things on the Internet. Now it's illegal to prosecute someone for it.

This will have an immediate impact on the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), which maintains a large censorship department and has other cases under investigation. If the CHRC were a real police force, and the tribunal were a real court, all existing censorship cases would be dropped, and anyone who was previously convicted would have their convictions voided. Dozens of lawsuits against the government for wrongful prosecution, and compensation for costs, wouldn't be far behind.

But the tribunal isn't a real court, and Hadjis acknowledged that he doesn't have the power to strike down the law, only to declare it unconstitutional and to refuse to apply it. The CHRC has ignored the tribunal before: In this same case, Lemire was routinely denied his procedural rights by the CHRC, including its outrageous tactic of waiting until the trial was over before disclosing all of its documents to him. Even worse, some bizarre CHRC conduct came to light, including confessions by their staff that they joined neo-Nazi organizations and published bigoted comments on the Internet to entrap their targets. A real court would have thrown the case out years ago, and a real police force would have disciplined such rogue conduct.

Still, it's a great day for Charter values like freedom of speech. But how long will it last? The human rights industry knew this was an important case, and over the past six years it spent millions of tax dollars fighting Lemire. The federal government had six lawyers on the case--four from the CHRC and two from the Justice Minister's office. And there were five lawyers intervening on behalf of Canada's tax-subsidized Jewish groups, the B'nai Brith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC).

Yesterday, the CJC issued a bizarre press release in which it states that, despite the tribunal's clear ruling, it believes the censorship law "remains constitutional." In the next few weeks, the CJC and the rest of the human rights litigation industry will clamour for the government to appeal this decision.

It was one thing for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to defend the constitutionality of a government law that was under attack -- that's standard operating procedure. But now that the law has been found to be illegal, it would be quite another thing for Nicholson to positively act to revive such an illiberal law. Nicholson must also put a leash on the disgraced CHRC, and order it not to appeal either. They've already done more than enough damage to Canada's civil liberties, at great expense to taxpayers.

In fact, just leaving Hadjis's ruling intact isn't enough--his ruling illustrates a deeper rot in the CHRC. Hadjis found that the CHRC has become much more aggressive and confrontational in recent years, and at the same time it started applying punitive sanctions -- such as issuing fines of tens of thousands of dollars. That toxic mix of abusive conduct with criminal-style punishments was specifically forbidden by the Supreme Court when it last reviewed the censorship laws in 1990.

It's that bullying corporate culture that Nicholson needs to address. Nicholson should start by ordering Jennifer Lynch, the CHRC's chief commissioner, to stop her expensive campaign of demonization against the commission's critics. And then he should call in a retired judge -- or the auditor-general -- to do a thorough biopsy to find out how Canada's human rights agency became such a threat to our human rights.

Two years ago, Athanasios Hadjis was a human rights hack, sitting on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal full of other hacks. He mindlessly rubber-stamped the censorship litigation oozing from the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its complainant of fortune, Stormfront member Richard Warman.

Here’s a section 13 censorship case, less than two years ago, where Hadjis happily condemned a young woman to a lifetime publication ban, ordered her to pay Warman $3,000 for his hurt feelings (tax free to him), and then fined her another $1,500. That’s a heavy punishment for a woman earning just above minimum wage, and too poor to hire a lawyer.

(It’s been a while since I practiced any criminal law. I’d be curious to know what kind of criminal conviction these days would yield a $4,500 fine and no time in custody. Would a first offence for an assault with a weapon get that heavy a penalty? If you’re a criminal lawyer who knows, tell me in the comments section.)

Hadjis didn’t mind his lifestyle one bit. He was part of the human rights industry – near the top of the food chain, actually – and it was easy work. No-one really cared about the people he sentenced for thought crimes. 90% of such victims were too poor to have lawyers there, and only murderers and rapists get legal aid – not people who write rude things on the Internet. The news media sure didn’t give a damn about the petty racists Hadjis bravely brought to, uh, justice.

What a difference a couple of years makes.

Today, Athanasios Hadjis issued a 40,000-word ruling – that’s almost as long as my book, Shakedown! – denouncing the Canadian Human Rights Commission, its aggressive style and its punitive powers. He rejected almost all of their “evidence” that Marc Lemire published “hate”, pointing out the curious fact that their five-year prosecution of him involved nothing that Lemire himself wrote, and nothing that was actually on Lemire’s website at the time the complaint was filed.

Hadjis called some of the comments that others wrote on Lemire’s website “offensive”, some of them “xenophobic” and some of them merely “pessimistic”. In other words, almost all were political views, not hate speech. What more proof is needed that the CHRC is a political vengeance machine, with Jennifer Lynch and Richard Warman deciding who is allowed to speak and who isn't?

I laughed out loud when I read that one of the things that the Canadian Human Rights Commission spent millions of dollars prosecuting was the comment that French Canadians were “cheese sniffers”. I’m not even kidding, the CHRC thinks that it should be against the law to call someone a cheese sniffer. Gentle reader, I swear I am not making that up – read the ruling yourself; just search for the word cheese. Or sniffer.

So two years after being a censor himself, Hadjis now calls censorship un-Canadian, un-constitutional and illegal. He says he will have nothing more to do with it, and he will refuse to implement it.

Wow.

Hadjis isn’t the first tribunal member to put down the Kool Aid and slowly walk away from the human rights cult. This March, Hadjis’s colleague, Edward Lustig, issued an equally stunning ruling, when he refused to punish the target of Warman’s last inquisition, and instead condemned Warman and his tactics as “disturbing” and “disappointing”.

Lustig was appointed by Stephen Harper. But Hadjis was appointed by Jean Chretien. And before Hadjis was a censor, he was the head of Montreal’s Greek lobby – a master practitioner of multicultural ethno-politics. His conversion from fascism to freedom has been a long journey indeed.

First Richard Moon, the professor who was paid $52,000 to whitewash the CHRC’s censorship, turned against them. Then Lustig. Now Hadjis. Pretty soon the last dozen supporters of censorship will be Jennifer Lynch, Richard Warman, and ten of Richard Warman’s anti-Semitic personas on the Internet.

Last December I wrote that Lynch was a “jet-setting lawbreaker”. It was not an exercise in hyperbole, but rather a legal analysis of her corrupt behavior: it was contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights, and contrary to the express ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada when they last considered censorship laws in 1990.

Lynch was a scofflaw, but she didn’t give a damn, because nobody was going to stop her.

As I wrote in December:

Section 13 -- the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act -- has been before the Supreme Court of Canada already. In 1990, John Ross Taylor, then 80 years old, appealed his section 13 conviction all the way to the SCC. The seven judges split, four saying the law was constitutional, three (including Beverly McLachlin, now the Chief Justice of the SCC) saying it was unconstitutional.

But the four who let section 13 slide were strict about its application. Here's what they wrote in their judgment (I've bolded a few key words):

In sum, the language employed in s. 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act extends only to that expression giving rise to the evil sought to be eradicated and provides a standard of conduct sufficiently precise to prevent the unacceptable chilling of expressive activity.  Moreover, as long as the Human Rights Tribunal continues to be well aware of the purpose of s. 13(1) and pays heed to the ardent and extreme nature of feeling described in the phrase "hatred or contempt", there is little danger that subjective opinion as to offensiveness will supplant the proper meaning of the section.

 

Take a look a that just for a moment.

 

Three judges said the law was illegal. Four said it was legal, but only if it remained focused on truly evil hatred, that was ardent and extreme. Subjective opinions about offensiveness weren't permitted -- and, said those four judges confidently, there was little danger of that happening.

 

Well, those four judges hadn't met Jennifer Lynch and her corrupt crew of political inquisitors.

 

Nineteen years ago, the Supreme Court said section 13 was constitutional, but only to be used against “evil” – seriously, they used that word. Today, the CHRC is prosecuting people for calling each other cheese-sniffers, and they’ve added the power to fine people $30,000. Hadjis made the point today that I made back in December: even under the Supreme Court’s old rules, the CHRC is acting illegally. Imagine if today’s much more pro-free speech court got its hands on the CHRC.

Which brings us to what happens next: will there be an appeal of Hajdis’s decision?

It was one thing for the Conservative government to defend the Canadian Human Rights Act from Lemire’s constitutional challenge. That’s pretty much the default state for any Justice Department: uphold their laws. But now that we know their laws were unconstitutional, to positively send in lawyers to appeal Hadjis’s ruling would be an elective, willful demonstration of support for illegal censorship. It would make the Conservatives “own” this illiberal beast in a way they haven’t before.

If you look at the bottom of the ruling, you’ll see the disgusting fact that there were eleven lawyers prosecuting the case: two from the Justice Minister’s office; four from the CHRC; and five from the tax-subsidized Official Jews – B’nai Brith, Canadian Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Who knows how many millions of dollars it took to investigate and prosecute this matter – and, again, Lemire had to fund his five-year defence on his own.

Will Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister, send his lawyers to appeal? If he does so, he risks a backlash within his own party’s base, on the eve of an election. But it is not acceptable for him to stand back, while his lackey, Jennifer Lynch, sends her CHRC lawyers in for the appeal. It’s essential that Nicholson – or the PMO, if Nicholson lacks the political judgment – orders Jennifer Lynch to stand down. (Frankly, it’s staggering that she hasn’t yet been ordered to just shut up and get on with her job as a bureaucrat. Seriously, as Peter O’Neil reported the other day, Lynch flew all the way to Dublin, Ireland, to beg for political help, admitting that her campaign to demonize her opponents, collect names on her enemies list and save her censorship powers “monopolizes our energy”. Why is she not fired yet?)

Oh – and it’s not enough for both Nicholson and Lynch to not appeal. Lynch has been paying Warman’s expenses in all of his complaints before the tribunal. She must be ordered not to pay his expenses to appeal. Let him pay his own costs for once, rather than soaking taxpayers for his private vendettas.

There are a lot more little items in the 107-page ruling that I might dig into in the next few days if I have time.

Today is definitely a day to celebrate. The celebration should be tinged with the reality that this battle is far from over though; the book-burners at the Canadian Jewish Congress have already announced that they will simply ignore Hadjis’s ruling, and act as if the law is still legal. I really don’t care that Bernie “Burny” Farber is a foolish buffoon; I just care that he’s doing it in the name of all Canadian Jewry, and that Nicholson might actually listen to such soft fascism, and think that we Jews are all thin-skinned, hypocritical whiners who can dish it out but can't take it, and want the state to bully our political enemies for us.

What a loser.

Burny was momentarily put on a leash earlier this year, when the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, the CJC’s funder, ordered him to shut up about censorship, and focus on issues that actually reflected the community’s political agenda, such as Iran, Hamas, Jewish schools, etc. Burny’s obedience lasted for a few weeks. It was awesome while it lasted, actually – I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Burny on CTV Newsnet actually saying that David Ahenakew’s acquittal for “hate propaganda” should not be appealed. But.you can’t ask an old book-burner to give up his pyromania for long, can you? If an election is indeed afoot, look for CIJA’s election guide to have censorship as one of the top “community” issues, as it did last year, when they made the mistake of letting Burny write it, without any grown-up supervision.

But let me close how I opened: with a reflection on how far things have come in two short years.

Two years ago, Athanasios Hadjis was sentencing girls to lifetime publication bans and huge fines. Now he’s calling that conduct illegal and unconstitutional.

Two years ago, Richard Warman had a private little racket going, where the CHRC funded his complaints, and he got to keep the tax-free cash awards. Now he’s publicly disgraced, condemned by the very tribunal that used to fill his bank account.

Two years ago, Warman’s neo-Nazi antics were known to only a few dozen people – his CHRC bosses, his victims, and the Official Jews, who knew about it and abided it. Now Warman’s Nazi activities – and those of half a dozen other CHRC staffers – are widely known. (The Official Jews still abide it.)

Two years ago, Jennifer Lynch was an absentee manager, jetting off to five-star galas in the third world, on taxpayer expense, learning third world-style approaches to human rights.

Today… oh well. We still have some work to do!

But seriously, kudos to everyone who has helped to shine a light of scrutiny and accountability on these corrupt, abusive HRCs. I credit the blogosphere, and talk radio, and some of the more open-minded reporters in the mainstream media, for turning “HRC” into a four-letter word. And, of course, there’s Marc Lemire himself who has labored in the face of a relentless, tax-funded inquisition for nearly six years, as the state prosecuted him with an illegal law, using abusive tactics. He – and everyone else ever charged under this illegal law – deserves compensation for the abuses they’ve suffered.

Sacking Jennifer Lynch would free up $300,000 or so for reparations. That’s probably a good place to start.

Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, flew to Dublin, Ireland to give a speech to the Canadian Bar Association, which is holding its annual meeting there. I can't find her speech on the CHRC's website, so I'll go for now by Peter O'Neill's report for CanWest news.

I first saw O'Neill's report on the Internet yesterday morning; it went up on the websites of most CanWest newspapers, but it looks like only the Ottawa Citizen actually printed it in their paper edition.

The report is about two things; Lynch's speech, and the CBA's terrorist-coddling ways (which I addressed in a post yesterday). All I'd add to the Khadr matter is this factoid:

• Number of times terrorist Omar Khadr is mentioned on the CBA's website: 232.
• Number of times Chinese-Canadian political dissident Huseyn Celil is mentioned on the CBA's website: 0.
• Number of times Saudi-tortured prisoner William Sampson is mentioned on the CBA's website: 0. Et cetera.

Back to Lynch. The first question, of course, is how much did her Irish adventure cost Canadian taxpayers? I went to Expedia and to Air Canada's website, and found return airfare from Ottawa to Dublin for about $1,100 including taxes. Is there anyone out there who doubts Lynch will bill taxpayers in excess of $5,000 for her junket? I'm being modest: the last time Lynch flew to Ireland on our dime, she sent us the bill for a cool $9,000.

There's a difference, though. In her last five-star trip to Ireland, the purpose was purportedly the carrying out of her mandate as assigned to her by Parliament. It showed that her majesty has expensive taste, little regard for taxpayers during this recession, and hasn't been paying spending enough time back home in her Ottawa office cleaning up corruption. But she could at least plausibly make the case that going to Ireland -- and the many other exotic junkets she's been on -- had something to do with doing her job.

Not this time.

According to O'Neill's report, Lynch went to Dublin not to promote human rights. She went there to save her own job, to further her shrill campaign of hatred and contempt against her political critics -- especially bloggers like me.

Here's the story; let's go through it:

Earlier Saturday, Jennifer Lynch, head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, urged Canada’s legal community to help her defend federal, provincial and territorial human rights commissions and tribunals which she said are under attack by conservative critics.

Lynch engages in name-calling: free speech advocates, and proponents of the rule of law, are apparently "conservative". Now, that's not name-calling where I come from, but at the ultra-liberal CBA, it's fighting words. At her Montreal rant against bloggers, Lynch used the phrase "far right", which she surely thought would invoke the spectre of anti-Semites. You know, notorious Jew-haters like Ezra Isaac Levant.

That Lynch regards "conservative" as an epithet should be instructive to the Prime Minister's Office. I think they missed Lynch's personal track record of anti-Alberta, anti-conservative bigotry when they appointed her. And perhaps some people in Dublin were roused by it. But, simply put, I think many of the CBA lawyers probably just chuckled. For, other than noisy me and noisy Mark Steyn, who are the bulk of the critics of out-of-control HRCs? Let's take a look at a few:

• Alan Borovoy, forty-year boss of the labour-left Canadian Civil Liberties Association;
• Egale, the powerful gay rights lobby;
• The Canadian Association of Journalists;
• PEN Canada, with its honourary patron, John Ralston Saul;
• Every liberal newspaper editorial board in Canada from the Montreal Gazette to the Toronto Star to Eye Weekly;
• Liberal MPs and Senators from Keith Martin to Jerry Grafstein;
• Janet Keeping of the Chumir Foundation for Ethics.

To name just a few off the top of my head.

Next, and I'm relying on O'Neill's wording, but I've heard Lynch say it many times: she never refers to "human rights" (let alone "civil rights"). She always talks about the importance of the "human rights system" or of the commissions and tribunals themselves. Not civil liberties; but bureaucrats.

The system is what's valuable to her. Of course it is. It's the system that pays her $300,000 a year, the system that sends her on junkets, that gives her a staff of 200, and that gives her 800 more well-paid allies in 13 other HRCs across the country. She's strong on defending the system -- she'll do anything to defend it from accountability or reform, even when her own staff are revealed to be members of neo-Nazi organizations. It's the system she cares about.

But I think that lawyers -- even lefty lawyers at the CBA -- actually care about real human rights. I think when they saw Lynch whine like a schoolboy about how tough it is to be in politics -- do you think it's easy to fly first class to Dublin!? -- they probably thought: how did a thin-skinned child ever become trusted to run a 200-person commission? And if she doesn't like the cut-and-thrust of debate, why doesn't she just shut up and do her job?

And those lawyers who thought a little more probably thought: HRCs? Aren't those the folks that have been in the news lately, trying to censor magazines and churches?

She told the CBA that opponents of rights bodies have successfully created a “chill” that makes it difficult for anyone to defend those bodies without also becoming a target.

A "chill". A "target". I know what those words mean. I was the target of three HRC complaints. To be targeted meant, in my case, to have fifteen government bureaucrats and lawyers bearing down on me for 900 days, to be forced to hire lawyers to defend myself, and to be falsely accused, in the name of the Queen, of being a racist. It meant being interrogated by government bureaucrats about my private political thoughts.

That's what being targeted means. And that punitive process was meant to chill anyone else who had big ideas about speaking freely in a way that "offended" the political correctness of Lynch and her fellow commissars: watch out, or they will come to get you, and even if you "win", you'll lose time and money. Just ask seventy-something Fr. Alphonse de Valk, the Toronto priest who was investigated by Lynch for two years, before she dumped him on the side of the road with a $20,000 legal bill, but not even an apology.

What Lynch really meant in Dublin and at her previous hate-filled rant in Montreal is that she doesn't believe she ought to be accountable. Mere scrutiny, for her, is chilling. Mere opposition and criticism is being targeted. But no-one has sued her; no-one has commanded her to appear to answer for her private political thoughts. At most, she was invited to answer questions by her bosses, at a Parliamentary committee, to merely answer questions about her staff's outrageous conduct -- but she refused to attend, and now attacks the MP who invited her, Russ Hiebert, as one of her 1,200 enemies on her official enemies list, compiled at taxpayers' expense.

The woman spends her days prosecuting people who have offensive opinions. It's not too surprising that she finds it offensive when people criticize her for it. She's not used to dissent. She's used to bullying people -- real bullying, with court orders and fines. She's not used to being told "no".

Lynch, saying some criticisms have been “troubling” and “at times scary,” also read out a graphic anonymous letter she received stating that she should be shot dead.

I'm sorry, I simply don't believe that.

This is a woman who has been caught in lie after lie after lie. In the National Post and Montreal Gazette, I dissected two of her most abominable lies -- lying about her employees' culpability in an Internet hacking case, and lying about her employees publishing bigoted comments on neo-Nazi websites.

The woman is a liar. And if she'll lie to protect her staff, don't you think she'd lie -- or at least stretch the truth -- to protect herself?

We know this: Lynch's staff -- at least seven of them -- lie in the regular course of their work. They go online, pretending to be neo-Nazis (I hope it's just pretending) in order to entrap other bigots. They lie as part of their jobs.

And they do more than lie: they call for truth to be destroyed. Lynch's unsolicited memo to Parliament in June actually demanded that truth be removed as a legal defence to criminal charges of hate propaganda (truth is already not a defence in Lynch's kangaroo court).

As Henry Kissinger said about the Palestinians: if someone is willing to kill you, they're probably willing to lie to you, too. If Lynch is willing to shred the Charter of Rights to get you; if she's willing to imprison you through a contempt of court application to get you; if she's willing to lie in public to get you; do you really think she'd hesitate to read out a fabricated letter at her pity party in Dublin?

Not that Lynch herself fabricated the letter. I don't think she's quite that hands-on. But that either one of her rogue staff wrote it, in one of their Nazi personas; and/or that Lynch is dramatizing and exaggerating a letter, to trump it up into a real criminal threat, instead of merely a rude insult sent in by one of the many people she's stepped on in her dark career.

But let me ask you a personal, practical question: if you received a genuine, credible death threat, what would you do? Would you go to the police? Or would you save it for a big splash at a CBA conference, to make your case that you're being picked on and that politics isn't fair? Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I don't know for sure the provenance of her "death threat". I do know that her staff routinely and methodically lie, including lying on the Internet about the CHRC. I do know that Lynch herself is a damned liar.

“I’m here to ask for your help,” Lynch told CBA members.

She urged them to write “letters to correct misinformation,” encourage other experts to participate in the debate and promote public education of the role of rights commissions and tribunals in the justice system.

Lynch wants other lawyers to debate for her. But she herself refuses to do so. She specifically refuses to engage me and my charges in debate on radio or TV. Remember this gong show, when she tried to have me kicked off of CTV?

Why does Lynch refuse to debate, and refuse to debate me in particular? She has accused me of spreading misinformation. Well, she's had five months since my book was released to pick it apart; I've been blogging about the CHRC pretty much every day for nineteen months. You'd think that, by now, she would be able to articulate what, exactly, I've got wrong. What fact is wrong? What allegation is untrue? Surely a smart QC like her, with a staff of 200 and a budget of $25-million could tear me to pieces, and publicize the tearing coast to coast, if I was wrong.

That just hasn't happened, because I'm not wrong. The CHRC is a corrupt, abusive organization. That's why members of the Canadian bar -- not just members of the liberal CBA -- have pretty much just slowly backed away as Lynch has imploded over the past year. You can count on one hand the number of lawyers who have leaped to her defence. Well, one finger actually -- Pearl Eliadis. But she works for HRCs, so that's not really surprising. Even Janet Keeping, who says my language is too stout when I call Lynch a liar, condemns the CHRC for their censorship.

I think Canadian lawyers have actually been pretty attentive to the whole HRC debacle -- even a number of judges have mentioned the case to me, with great interest. And while, like Keeping, they might have some stylistic differences with me personally, they know this isn't a personal battle. It's a battle for civil liberties for all Canadians. Mark Steyn and I became accidental champions for it, because we were personally smeared by out-of-control HRCs.

That's where Lynch has made a gross miscalculation. She thinks that by personally demonizing me and Steyn -- that by keeping a 1,200 name, Richard Nixon-style enemies list, by denouncing her enemies as "far right" and by whining about how tough it is to hold a public office, she'll win this argument. But she doesn't realize what she looks like -- she's like the drunk at a party who doesn't realize that she's talking way, way, to loud and everybody is starting to get a little bit creeped out. Seriously: you've got the boss of the CHRC flying to Dublin to speak to the CBA -- and all she talks about is how tough a gig it is, because she's got political critics? Does she not know what she sounds like? I bet they were very quiet during her speech, but whispered about it a lot afterwards.

She said rights bodies have been under attack since 2007 after the Canadian Islamic Congress filed complaints over an essay published in Maclean’s magazine by conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

Note again: her interest is not in civil liberties. It's that her gang, her company, her system is "under attack". No concern for free speech. Plenty of whining about her, her, her.

But even that's not true. The Canadian Islamic Congress is a bunch of anti-Semites. Syed Soharwardy, the imam who complained against me, is an anti-Semite and an anti-Christian bigot, to boot. The fact that they filed complaints did not start this whole public debate. It's that the HRCs pursued those anti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-freedom complaints with a vengeance that started this debate.

Syed Soharwardy and Mohamed Elmasry are the Muslim equivalent of white trash. They're stupid, hateful bigots who have imported Saudi values to Canada. But it took the HRCs to deploy the governments of Alberta, B.C., Ontario and Canada to the service of their bigotry. That's what's appalling here. They gleefully violated the separation of mosque and state, and destroyed our Western, liberal values along the way.

The complaints filed to the Canadian, Ontario and B.C. rights commissions were all eventually dismissed, though criticisms by those commissions against Steyn’s published views about Islam prompted accusations that his right to free speech was being violated.

Steyn, fellow conservative commentator Ezra Levant, various other bloggers, and politicians such as B.C. Conservative MP Russ Hiebert and retired former Tory cabinet minister Monte Solberg have all expressed harsh criticisms of rights commissions and tribunals.

Many of the critics have argued that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits the spreading of “hate messages” on the telephone and Internet, violates the right to free speech. Some have argued that hate crimes should be dealt with by police relying on the Criminal Code.

Lynch told the CBA that rights commissions are important components of the justice system, giving society’s “most vulnerable” minority groups access to a mechanism to deal with alleged rights violations.

Just a quick laugh on that last point. 12 out of the last 14 hate speech cases prosecuted in Canada were by the same complainant: a rich, white lawyer named Richard Warman, who is a member of no minority I can discern. He's a privileged bureaucrat, who actually worked for the CHRC itself when he started filing CHRC complaints (an abominable conflict of interest). He currently works for the Department of National Defence's own mini-HRC. And he continues to have his expenses paid by the CHRC, even though he no longer works there.

I'm not sure if he meets the test of "most vulnerable", so I'm not surprised that Lynch omitted that part from her call to action.

Critics are trying “to destroy our investigators’ and litigators’ reputations and credibility with untrue accusations,” Lynch said during her appeal for help from Canadian lawyers and academics.

Sandy Kozak is one of Lynch's investigators. She is a corrupt ex-cop, who was drummed out of the real police for illegal behaviour. You can read all about it here. It's not an untrue accusation. It's the truth. What's also the truth is that Kozak perfectly sums up the ethical issues at the CHRC: she's too corrupt for real police, but Lynch doesn't mind. I wonder what the CBA would think of that, if Lynch had disclosed the truth to them.

Dean Steacy is another one of Lynch's investigators. You can read about his racist actions here (scroll down).

It was Steacy's candid testimony in March of 2008 that really blew the lid off the anti-Semitic ring at the CHRC -- he was the one who named the seven HRC staff who have access to neo-Nazi memberships.

Stop for a moment here and put yourself in the shoes of one of the lawyers sitting there in Dublin, wondering who the hell this vindictive little woman is and what she's going on about. No; let's do better. Let's say you were in Dublin, and you actually believed every word that Lynch said. I mean, put aside her increasingly unhinged rhetoric, her boasting of her 1,200-person enemies lists, her ranting against the vast right-wing conspiracy of gay advocates and brown MPs and 60's civil libertarians. Let's say you actually bought was Lynch was selling, and you were so moved that you decided that, yes, you were going to answer her call and pitch in to the debate -- even if Lynch herself remains AWOL from any actual, you know, debating.

The first thing you'd do to rebut such lies and smears is to learn what they were, and what the truth was.

You'd do some digging.

You'd probably start with this whole neo-Nazi business, and the hacking thing, too.

You might look at Richard Warman's litigation-of-fortune.

You might even read some case law -- such as the recent ruling by the CHRTribunal about the "disturbing and disappointing" conduct of the CHRC.

If you dug deeply enough, you'd find the hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay comments written by CHRC staff. You'd find about troubling violations of the rule of law. You might even read Shakedown (thousands have) and say, "those are some pretty big accusations. Let me get to the bottom of it."

And then what?

I don't know how many people were in that room in Dublin. I didn't see Lynch on their official program, and the official conference blog didn't mention her. I'm guessing she had an early morning slot, and a few folks were a little bit late getting to the conference, between jet lag and some fresh Kilkenny.

If 200 people heard her, how many would be motivated to take up her cause, and become her truth squad? Ten?

And of those ten, do you really think that a single one of them, when conducting an independent, neutral survey of the facts, wouldn't be appalled by what he or she would find? Has Lynch even thought this through?

“For the moment the obligation to defend our existence monopolizes our energy.”

That is the most awesome line in Lynch's whole speech, and I'm glad O'Neill got it precisely enough to put it in quotes.

That's a firing offence in itself.

Here you have a woman tasked with the implementation of the entire Canadian Human Rights Act. She says that "hate speech" accounts for just 2% of her commission's activities. (I never believed it -- we know her hate squad is much larger than 4 people (which would be 2% of her total staff); seven of her hate squad are neo-Nazi members, and there's probably a half dozen who aren't. But she tells Parliament it's only 2% of her work.

But now she says her political campaign "monopolizes our energy".

She's consumed by it. Her personal vendetta against Steyn, me, and the 1,198 others on her enemies list has taken over her mind. Sorry: not just her mind and her energy, but "our energy". That's plural. She's talking about her tax-paid staff.

The purpose of the CHRC, according to Lynch herself, is now "monopolized" by the improper, abusive purpose of running Lynch's political campaign of hatred and contempt for her critics.

That's not what Parliament directed her to do.

That's not what taxpayers pay her to do.

That's not what the law requires her to do.

That's not what her public service ethics code (for there is no CHRC ethics code) demands that she do.

But it's what she's doing.

Jennifer Lynch has taken a $25-million organization and has deployed it to her own political vendetta. That's more money than the Tories or the Liberals spent in the last election. And she's using it for her own election campaign.

Paging Guy Giorno: you've got a rogue on your hands here.

She should have been fired for keeping neo-Nazis on staff.

She should have been fired for her vicious anti-Christian campaigns against clergy like Fr. de Valk.

She should have been fired for creating the public spectacle of lying to the country.

She should have been fired for refusing to attend Parliament, despite Russ Hiebert's request that she attend -- and then attacking Hiebert later, once Parliament had broken.

She wasn't. For some weird reason, this hateful, vengeful woman was allowed to continue -- and to create a massive, public sore for this government. Had she done all this in silence, it would be one thing. But she has done it flagrantly, publicly, and to the great detriment of the government.

Had Lynch been a cabinet minister -- and many cabinet ministers have smaller departments and budgets -- she would have been sacked for her insubordination, for corruption and for embarrassing the government.

Why is this hateful woman still cashing taxpayers cheques?

Why is this contemptuous woman flying around the world on her political campaign?

Fire. Them. All.

And then bring in the forensic auditors.

The B'nai Brith is diligently disproving a stereotype about Jews. Unfortunately, it's the stereotype that we're smart. 

Exhibit A: 
Here's their press release from last week about a nuisance human rights commission complaint, filed by an anti-Israel group. On its own, the press release would be sensible -- it points out that HRC complaints are often bald-faced attempts to legally bully political targets, a tool increasingly used by the unholy alliance of foreign jihadis and their domestic leftist allies. 

B'nai Brith calls the complaint "frivolous": 

...“It is obvious that this maneuver to involve the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is part of a new strategy being employed by those who wish to create a ‘legal chill.’ 


...“We have recently seen other cases here in Canada which exemplify this new strategy of intimidation through ‘legal chill’: there was an attempt to muzzle Maclean’s magazine, the Western Standard and Ezra Levant were dragged through tribunal hearings, and B’nai Brith Canada, for a period of five years, had to defend itself against a frivolous charge lodged with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission. In all of these cases, the charges were either withdrawn or the defendants won, but only after an enormous cost in terms of dollars and human resources. 

“Serious reform is necessary to ensure the viability of our Human Rights Tribunals and Commissions. Canadians who believe in standing up for human rights should really be concerned that these types of frivolous complaints keep wasting valuable resources that could otherwise be spent fighting genuine human rights violations.”

On its own, there's a lot to agree with there. 

But there's one small problem: the B'nai Brith only calls HRC censorship complaints "frivolous" when they're not the ones using them. 





Exhibit B: 
Last spring, B'nai Brith dispatched its Ottawa lobbyist, lawyer Michael Mostyn, to help prosecute Marc Lemire in the censorship complaint brought against him by serial complainant and Stormfrontbigot Richard Warman. B'nai Brith was -- and still is, to this very day -- an intervener against Lemire, along with other Official Jews who prefer to censor rather than debate their political opponents. Here's a copy of the transcript from that hearing; you can see that in addition to the B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center were also intervening against freedom of speech. 

You can read Mostyn's comments, starting at page 317 on the .pdf, page 5951 on the transcript's numbering system. His comments were brief, so I'll reproduce them in full here: 

Quote:

MR. MOSTEN: Okay, thank you very  22 much. It's Michael Mosten speaking for B'Nai Brith  23 and, as promised, I'll be very, very brief.  24 Mr. Steacy, you had previously spoken  25 about the complaint driven process and you had said  1 that there are various ways that you intake complaints  2 such as by telephone, other means.  3 So, if I can perhaps phrase it as,  4 small "c" complaints being an informal complaint,  5 something that might be received over a telephone  6 versus a big "C" complaint which would be something  7 going through a formal and approved process, do you  8 consider all of those complaint driven as you were  9 speaking previously?  10 MR. STEACY: Yes, I do.  11 MR. MOSTEN: Okay. Would you agree  12 that it's a common investigative technique to engage in  13 online conversations?  14 MR. STEACY: Yes, it is.  15 MR. MOSTEN: Is it an important and  16 essential investigative tool for you in your role in  17 the Commission to engage in online conversations?  18 MR. STEACY: It was.  19 MR. MOSTEN: Is it fair to say that  20 complaints come in various forms, there are multiple  21 postings on websites, there's all kinds of material  22 online and that these websites and message boards are  23 not blank slates before you would have in the past  24 taken a look at them?  25 MR. STEACY: I would agree with that.  1 MR. MOSTEN: And I put it to you, Mr.  2 Steacy, that to allege that any of these previous  3 Commission cases that there are any fabrication  4 involved with that is ludicrous.  5 Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, those  6 are my questions.

(Sorry for not cleaning up the formatting.) 



There are a few things to say right off the bat. 

First, Mostyn clearly didn't have a clue what he was doing there. He's B'nai Brith's lobbyist on Parliament Hill, and actually a former Conservative candidate. He's not a life-long censor like Bernie<ahref=http://ezralevant.com/2008/06/jews-and-censorship.html> "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress. His questions were uninformed and foolish, and I think he knew it, which is why he kept them mercifully brief. That's no excuse, of course. But it adds a degree of pitifulness to his appearance. 

Second, Mostyn was cross-examining Dean Steacy, and he asked a short series of questions, the foolishness of which I'll address in a moment. But what's far more important is what Mostyn did not ask Steacy. 

Second, Mostyn was cross-examining Dean Steacy, and he asked a short series of questions, the foolishness of which I'll address in a moment. But what's far more important is what Mostyn did not ask Steacy. 

Steacy is the censorship investigator at the Canadian Human Rights Commission who testifed, under oath, in this very case, that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value”. You can read that for yourself right here, at transcript page 4793. 


This was uninteresting to Mostyn and it obviously did not trouble him enough to motivate him to ask about this stunning renunciation of our Charter of Rights, Bill of Rights and other inheritances of freedom. 

But perhaps freedom of speech is outside Mostyn's mission statement. Surely anti-Semitism isn't, though. 

The day that Mostyn was at the hearing, Steacy testified that he (and six other CHRC staff) had memberships in neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront and Vanguard. Those CHRC staff weren't just passive observers, like anyone can be merely by surfing on over to those sites. They actually signed up as members, and sometimes -- like Steacy himself did -- engage in bigoted conversations. In Steacy's case, he actually wrote to a B.C. white supremacist group, congratulating them on their racism, encouraging them to continue, and offering to help. Mostyn, representing the B'nai Brith which claims to give a damn about anti-Semitism, was silent about that. 


Well, that's not quite true, is it? Mostyn wasn't silent about it. He positively praised it. He called Steacy's online bigotry "an important and essential investigative tool". It wasn't really even a question, but more of a statement -- aimed not to cross-examine Steacy, but aimed at the tribunal chairman, to tell him that B'nai Brith, speaking on behalf of Canada's Jews, approved of Steacy's bigotry. His shocking testimony should be tolerated, ignored, even supported. The B'nai Brith had officially declared that Steacy's piggish behaviour was kosher. 

So a government bureaucracy tasked with eliminating hate was instead promoting it. So bureaucrats who were supposed to be tamping down bigotry were instead engaged in it. And the B'nai Brith thought this was just fine. A press release condemning it? Are you kidding? The B'nai Brith gave it their seal of approval, their hechsher. 


The whole case of Warman v. Lemire is tainted with anti-Semitism. Warman himself has been denounced by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for his anti-Semitic comments online, including his comment that Jews in the government are "scum". Classy. You can see the tribunal's condemnation of Warman here. You won't see it on the B'nai Brith's or CJC's websites, though. They don't give a damn about Warman's vicious anti-Semitic comments. They were intervening in support of him -- and still are today, five months after the tribunal denounced Warman. 





Exhibit C: 
In last fall's federal election, the B'nai Brith issued this embarrassing election guide. Look at the very first cluster of recommendations: the B'nai Brith actually demands that the "Criminal Code should be amended to include Holocaust denial as a hate crime." 

To date, the concept of "hate crimes" has been bad enough -- grafting a political offence onto existing criminal offences. So someone who hits you is guilty of assault and battery; someone who hits you because you're gay or Jewish or black is guilty of assault and battery and "hate". It treats victims differently based on their "identity", and it starts to criminalize emotions -- for that is what "hate" is. 

But look at what the B'nai Brith is doing. They don't just want to graft "hate" onto existing crimes. They want hate itself to be a crime. Worse, actually: mere "denial" of a historical fact. One doesn't have to be a "hater" to question or deny the fact of the Holocaust. But B'nai Brith wants the mere disbelief (or even a public musing of disbelief) of that fact to be a crime. 

Is there any other fact -- scientific, historic or otherwise -- so sacrosanct that we would ever consider criminalizing disbelief in it? Would "denying" the Armenian genocide be a crime? Stalin's mass starvation of the Ukraine? Mao's murder of 50 million of his own countrymen? Would the denial of those historical facts be a "crime", too? How about other facts -- like that the world is round? Or how about theories that aren't quite facts, but that political correctness demands we treat like facts, such as man-made global warming? 

Seriously: have you ever heard of anything more anti-intellectual, anti-liberal, indeed anti-Jewish than to demand the criminalization of dissent, even stupid dissent? How embarrassing that this is being done in the name of Jews. 

Just a few lines down, B'nai Brith demands that "symbols used to advance a racist agenda" be "banned". What does banned mean? That there now ought to be pictures that are crimes to depict?

I watched Tom Cruise's movie Valkyrie the other day. It is chock full of swastika flags and other Nazi symbols. Should that movie be banned? How about Schindler's List? How about documentaries or textbooks about the Second World War? In the U.K., some politically correct officials have ruled that St. George's cross is a racist symbol. Hell, forget the St. George's part -- some argue that any cross itself is racist. What fools would demand the "banning" of symbols? The answer: fools who are so self-absorbed, so solipsistic, so unimaginative, so cloistered, so supremacist that they can't see five minutes ahead: that the very first "symbol" to be demanded "banned" for "advancing" a "racist agenda" would be the Star of David, that radical Palestinian activists would cite as the symbol of anti-Arab hate. 




Exhibit D: 
The Mona Lisa of stupidity is the B'nai Brith's first recommendation for "reform" of Canada's human rights commissions. It's from that same election document. Let me reproduce it here: 

Quote:

Reform of the human rights commission system is urgently required, including educating commission staff as to the threat the ideologies of Islamism and political Islam pose to human rights in Canada.

Got it? 
The Jews' enemies shouldn't be allowed to use HRCs. So "political Islam" should be officially deemed a "threat", and HRC staff should explicitly be barred from accepting complaints by political Muslims. But political Jews -- Zionists; philo-Semites; Official Jews -- should be allowed to continue to prosecute their enemies in the HRC system. Just like Michael Mostyn and the B'nai Brith are doing right now in the Lemire case, a case that is still before the tribunal. 





Exhibit E: 
The five-year, secret HRC complaint against B'nai Brith itself. This is the ne plus ultra in hypocrisy. The B'nai Brith was abused for five long years by an anonymous Muslim antagonist, and their sole response is that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to be so abusive -- only Jews should be. They don't object to abusive nuisance suits. They just object when other people get to do it. 

The B'nai Brith is not as obsessed with censorship as the Canadian Jewish Congress. That would be impossible: the new CJC president, Mark Freiman, is actually a former section 13 censorship prosecutor for the CHRC. But the B'nai Brith is a pretty close second. 

You'd think B'nai Brith would abandon its incoherent, illiberal policy on HRCs out of self-interest -- to appeal to the countless Canadian Jews who are turned off by the CJC's soft fascism, and to demonstrate intellectual coherence with the rest of the B'nai Brith's more conservative policies. Michael Mostyn's embarrassing behaviour at the Lemire hearing -- whether that was on his own volition, or on Frank Dimant's instruction -- shows the B'nai Brith has a lot to learn about the Jewish values of freedom and democratic debate. And the B'nai Brith's press release last week condemning "frivolous" HRC complaints by others, while the B'nai Brith continues their frivolous intervention in the ongoing Warman v. Lemire case, is just pure hypocrisy. 

Here's an interesting segment that aired on the Christian TV show 100 Huntley Street. In addition to my own case, it also highlights Fr. Alphonse de Valk of Catholic Insight magazine, who was bullied for years by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, before they finally dumped him on the side of the road with a $20,000 legal bill. (The most grotesque detail of his case was that his investigator was Sandy Kozak, an unethical ex-cop drummed out of a police force for corruption. You can read my scoop on Kozak's unethical past here. Incredibly the CHRC put that corrupt ex-cop on the case of investigating the grandfatherly Fr. de Valk. Jennifer Lynch should be fired for that in itself.)

I thought the final few minutes, that showed a Christian, pro-life lawyer talking about his own use of a human rights commission, was depressing. By using the same system that is being systematically used by the state as a wrecking ball against Christians, that lawyer is legitimizing the system, and imbuing it with moral authority that it does not have nor deserve. Based on the facts in the TV clip, he clearly had other remedies -- such as suing in a real court, under contract law.

My final observation would be the folly of Barbara Hall, the chief commissar of Ontario's HRC. She says there is no hierarchy of rights, and thus she feels free to subordinate freedom of speech to other counterfeit "rights", like the right not to be offended.

But of course, that's not accurate. We do have a hierarchy of rights. It says so in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Some rights are so important, they are given the name "fundamental freedoms" and are given their own, special section in the Charter, to set them apart from the rest. That includes freedom of speech, for example.

The bizarre psychobabble by Hall and her federal counterpart, Jennifer Lynch, about a "matrix" of rights, is pure, made-up gobbledegook, an attempt to justify their illegal censorship.

Here's the clip:

 

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.

 

Peter Worthington is an awesome man. I had the pleasure of spending a few days in his company a couple of years ago in Chicago, during Conrad Black's trial. As you might expect from such an effective journalist, he's also a great storyteller, and each morning before the court room opened, he held court in the waiting area, as all of the other journalists listened to his stories ranging from the early days of the Toronto Sun to his international scoops (he was once the only journalist on site to cover the outbreak of a minor war).

I like to read his columns to see how writing is done by a pro. So imagine my delight when he wrote about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's cover-ups, keying off of my column in the National Post that exposed their staff's memberships in neo-Nazi groups like Stormfront.

I'm a little late in mentioning it, but here it is. Some excerpts:

In a column in the National Post Ezra Levant, who has been battling Alberta human rights zealots, identified seven individuals who work for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) who also joined neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, or white hate groups.

It's not that these individuals are Nazi sympathizers or racists who've infiltrated the hallowed halls of human rights activists. They aren't. What they are, are provocateurs, using the Internet to join suspect hate groups in order to collect evidence against them.

In other words, it's a form of entrapment.

Intelligence agents joining (penetrating) a group to assess possible treason or subversion, is vastly different from enticing, provoking or encouraging a racist reaction by pretending to be more extreme than the extremists -- which is what CHRC provocateurs do.

...CHRC investigators likely see themselves as crusaders, exposing suspect or dangerous organizations and gathering evidence to protect society. Hardly.

Canadian democracy is not threatened by white supremacists or anti-Semites.

Democratic countries generally show repugnance toward extremism.

One gets the feeling the CRHC sets up targets to knock down, thereby justifying its existence. For more details on CRHC mischief, try going to the blog ezralevant.com, or other sites giving details about provocateurs pretending to be racists in hopes of catching racists. Try RichardWarman.com or Google Dean Steacy, and see for yourself.

Short of disbanding the CRHC, Section 13 of the Human Rights Act must be scotched. It "empowers the Commission to deal with complaints regarding the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet ... any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."

That's pretty broad, especially when the Criminal Code already allows for legal action in many cases where human rights vigilantes seem intent on waging vendettas.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should rein in the human rights bureaucracy that too often offends the very essence of due process and democracy.

He's not mincing any words, and he's just a flabbergasted as I am about the CHRC's bad behaviour, and how this government tolerates the enabler-in-chief, Jennifer Lynch. He's clearly done his research, too, referring to Dean Steacy, the CHRC investigator who declared under oath that he gives freedom of speech "no value", as it's an "American concept". Worthington also mentions the website www.RichardWarman.com, which contains a wealth of primary documents about Warman's campaign of "maximum disruption". That's tough stuff!

I'm late in mentioning Worthington's column, but let me point this out: in addition to running in the major Sun newspapers across Canada, that powerful article has appeared in the Northern News, the Peterborough Examiner, the Pembroke Daily Observer, the Sault Star, the St. Catharines Standard, Northumberland Today, the Barrie Examiner, the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, the Belleville Intelligencer, the Kingston Whig-Standard, the Brantford Expositor, the Owen Sound Sun-Times, the Brockville Recorder and Times and the delightfully named North Bay Nugget.

That's a lot of people in a lot of places reading about Jennifer Lynch's cover-up about the Nazi memberships of CHRC staff.

I'm guessing that Peter has earned himself a special place in Lynch's 1,200-page enemies list.

But I'm guessing that, over the course of his career, he's stared down much tougher bullies than her.

I have to say I was surprised by Janet Keeping's latest Op-Ed in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and in a few other newspapers. Keeping is the boss of the Sheldon Chumir Ethics Foundation, and she has been one of Alberta's leading advocates to repeal the "hate speech" provision of that province's human rights act -- the provision under which I was charged.

Keeping has been an excellent ally, in part due to her impeccable liberal credentials. She was even kind enough to invite me to speak at a conference last year in Halifax, on censorship and the media. We had a chance to chat a bit that day, and she impressed me deeply, especially when she said she always visits the museum in which the Magna Carta is displayed in London, England. I bet you Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, hasn't even read that document, and if she did, she'd regard it as some bigoted "dead white man's law".

The precise title of that Halifax conference was actually about the media's "right to offend". I don't think that I or any of the other presenters actually got around to dealing with "should" the media be obnoxious -- we were all talking about the media's right to be obnoxious -- that is, the immorality of the government being the arbiter of obnoxiousness. I think we were all focused on the present peril -- censorship -- so we didn't have a debate on rudeness and its remedies, a debate which is a luxury in a time of censorship.

As I have argued before, obnoxiousness (or offensiveness, to use a term preferred by HRCs) is something that the free market deals with almost instantly. First off, the marketplace of ideas is far less politically correct than government bureaucrats -- and certainly less so than the media. When the Western Standard published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed back in February of 2006, the media went into Michael Jackson mode. Our readers? Not so much. They loved it. Going from memory, we had over 1,200 new subscriptions, and only a few dozen cancellations, all of which happened before people actually received the magazine. In other words, those objectors thought the cartoons were so outrageous and so pornographic before they even read it -- that's what the media frenzy led them to believe -- so they quit the magazine pre-emptively.

People are interested in controversy. That's part of what makes news newsy. They're interested in the weather and tasty recipes too, of course. But they want to know about the clash of ideas. A degree of offensiveness -- that is, ideas that offend other ideas, other dogmas -- is one definition of news, and certainly it's the definition of politics. It's also the definition of "progressive" ideas -- ideas that naturally replace, challenge or offend the status quo. Liberal ideas like equality for minorities were naturally obnoxious, rude and offensive to the status quo -- that was the point, they wanted to change things.

The free market of ideas approved of our publication of the cartoons, overwhelmingly. And, if it didn't, we would have paid a quick and just price: the loss of subscribers and advertisers, perhaps the quitting of staff, and, as a result, my termination as publisher at the hands of our shareholders and directors. All of which would have happened without the intervention of the state (and a lot quicker than the 900-day proseuction by the Alberta HRC).

But back to Janet Keeping's article. She briefly mentions the HRC debate, but then says this:

...It's not ethically OK to be obnoxious.

...Rule No. 1: It is nearly always wrong to personally attack those who hold opinions different from yours. When done deliberately, attacking your opponents instead of their views is dishonest because it purports to be about one thing -- the public policy in question -- but is actually about something else, the destruction of your opponents' credibility or integrity. It can also be self-defeating. When seen for what it is -- basically, character assassination -- it can undermine whatever validity there is in your policy position.

Regardless, the strategy is often employed, most notoriously at present, by Ezra Levant, lawyer, writer and blogger on human rights commission issues, in his campaign against Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Here is a small sampling of the things Levant has written recently about her: "Jennifer Lynch is a damned liar" and "an execrable woman," he has said. "What an odious woman. When she accosted me ... I didn't recognize her ... She is much more haggard and old than her ancient publicity picture."

This kind of personal attack, while not illegal unless false and thus defamatory (which some of this stuff might be), violates the ethics of debate because it targets a person, not the policy under scrutiny -- whether the Canadian Human Rights Commission should have the power to regulate speech. And while Levant's comments, taken cumulatively, may be intimidating, they have literally nothing to do with the law reform issue at hand.

...And it is no answer to claim that some human rights commission officials carry out their duties in an oppressive, even harassing, manner. If true, this should be remedied, but not through reverse bullying: Just as our mothers told us, two wrongs really don't make a right.

I was surprised by this letter. Here is a brief response I had in the Star-Phoenix today:

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 first thing that surprised me about Keeping's letter was its false moral equivalence. She equates me using critical words on my blog to the corrupt and abusive prosecutions engaged in, in violation of our Constitutional rights and the rule of law, by Jennifer Lynch.

No; actually she doesn't even equate them, for if she equated them, she'd give equal criticism to Lynch's abuses. She criticizes only my words, and actually calls them bullying and intimidating -- but remains silent on Lynch's false prosecutions, entrapment, and the neo-Nazi memberships of seven of Lynch's employees.

My noisy objections as a victim are more offensive to Keeping than Lynch's violations of civil liberties, using the machinery of the state.

That's just weird and it's not very liberal. I think sometimes people are tempted to take a shot at me -- to blame the victim -- because I don't really fit the profile of what the left thinks a victim should look like or act like. I haven't decided to roll over and take a beating. I'm fighting back -- speaking truth to power, as a lefty would say. Keeping doesn't like the fact that I used obscure words like "odious" and "execrable", I guess.

It's also weird to say that critical words are "intimidating". Huh? I know what intimidating means. It sounds like this: "if you keep publishing those cartoons, I'm going to prosecute you" or "I have a staff of 200 bureaucrats who will hunt you down using unethical behaviour, will prosecute you, and even if you win, you'll be financially destroyed".

That's what intimidation sounds like. Mere disagreement and criticism isn't intimidating, at least to people who have graduated from grade school.

But there's a much bigger point here. Jennifer Lynch is a politician. She's a very visible public personality, who has voluntarily decided to enter the public fray even moreso than her position would normally entail. She has engaged pollsters like EKOS and spin doctors like Hill and Knowlton to help craft her public campaign. She has created public spectacles, like her backfiring retainer of Prof. Richard Moon, and her latest unsolicited memo to Parliament. She has courted controversy, and done a media tour. She is not a private person; and she is not merely a bureaucrat. She is a crusading censor, who actually demands that Canada remove truth as a legal defence to the criminal prosecution of hate speech.

But yet, when someone merely criticizes her, she whines "intimidation" and "bullying".

Yeah, right.

But it's worse still. Keeping particularly doesn't like my use of the phrase "damned liar" to describe Lynch. Now, I agree, if I was merely using "damned liar" as an insult without any basis, it would be questionable, though the damage would be chiefly to my own credibility. But I called Lynch a damned liar after painstaking, meticulous research, including reading many pages of Canadian Human Rights Tribunal transcripts (including a transcript, for example, that the CHRC tried to suppress, and then tried to redact). Oh, and the CHRC tried to close that hearing to the media, too.

I called Jennifer Lynch a damned liar because she is a damned liar: she publicly denied that the CHRC staff join neo-Nazi groups and publish hundreds of bigoted comments online. But they do, and they admit to it. Only Lynch is still lying, to cover it up.

(She has also told other lies, including that the police have exonerated her staff's hacking of a private citizen's Internet account. They haven't -- they call the case "unsolved", though the CHRC are their only suspects.)

I called Lynch a damned liar because she is a damned liar. And she's lying about her outrageous conduct, done in the name of the government and the Queen.

Keeping is silent about those details -- fair enough, she hasn't bothered to educate herself about the foul deeds of the CHRC. But that's almost worse: if Keeping doesn't know the facts about the CHRC's Nazi conduct and Lynch's cover-up of them, why does she call my labeling of Lynch a liar to be unethical?

Is it really unethical to call out a politician who is lying? Is Keeping's lust for politeness so predominant that she believes we should subordinate other values like political accountability?

Really? Does Keeping think no-one should call Stephen Harper a liar? Or Ed Stelmach? Or George W. Bush? Or Richard M. Nixon? Is that unethical, too? If not, then why should Lynch get a pass?

I don't think Keeping is serious. What I think happened is what I know Lynch is doing to anyone who will listen to her. She's done trying to argue this thing on the facts -- she knows she's losing, she's been found out, using her own CHRC documents. She's done trying to argue this thing on principle -- she knows censorship is un-Canadian, and she comes across as a North Korean or Soviet buffoon.

Those aren't working for Lynch. So she's whining like a schoolboy.

Could you imagine a great woman leader like Margaret Thatcher, or Golda Meir, or Indira Gandhi, whining that the boys were being too mean to her -- because they called her a "liar"? I mean, seriously: is this woman ready for prime time, or should she go back to being Joe Clark's aide?

What an embarrassment to feminists: when the going gets tough, Lynch calls up the media -- and even her critics -- and just whines about how hard it is to cut it in the big time.

To my surprise, Keeping bought it. Out of sympathy for Lynch -- a tired, old, haggard socialist who just can't cut it in the big leagues -- Keeping replaced logic and principle with pity.

Weird.

Oh, by the way: Lynch does look haggard. I was shocked when I saw her on Parliament Hill. I knew what her PR photo looked like, and the woman who presented to me was not the same as in that photo. Either she was using a very old photo or she has aged a hell of a lot in the two years.

Now, for anyone else in public life, or anyone who has ever run in a campaign, their personal appearance, including their energy level, confidence, grace under pressure, etc. -- is highly newsworthy and relevant. If a "leader" can't hack it, and starts to fall apart under stress, maybe she ought to stay out of the big leagues. If a leader won't take responsibility for her own staff, and engages in cover-ups, and then just abject begging for mercy, does that person truly have a place in a position that requires a strong personal constitution, a strong sense of right and wrong, and a strong sense of accountability to the public?

As I wrote in the Star-Phoenix, Keeping asks me to put politeness ahead of holding Lynch to public account.

No thanks.

Lynch didn't create all the problems at the CHRC. But when she discovered them, her reflex wasn't to root it out and fix things, but to cover it up. Her reflex in the face of public criticism hasn't been self-reflection and self-assessment, but lashing out and creating her 1,200-item enemies list. And her reflex in the face of losing the argument is to, well, do the grown-up equivalent of crying: saying it's just not fair to have to answer "bullies" who "intimidate" her by calling her a liar, even when she is a damned liar.

The damned liar should be fired -- and Keeping does Lynch, all professional women, and civil liberties, no favours by lowering the ethical bar on Lynch out of pity.

It's Jennifer Lynch who is deeply unethical, who presides over a coven of Internet Nazis and Internet hackers, and who is a human rights destroyer who doesn't even believe free speech is a Canadian concept. For Janet Keeping to make excuses for Lynch is out of character for Keeping, who knows and loves civil liberties, and should know better than enabling Canada's chief infringer of those liberties.

Thank you to the many readers who have offered their moral support in the prospective civil lawsuit against me by Khurrum Awan, the youth president of the Jew-hating Canadian Islamic Congress. If you haven't seen it, you can read the formal libel notice, and my detailed analysis of it, at this blog entry here.

Thanks also to my fellow bloggers (and Twitterers and Facebook friends) who have helped spread the word about this "soft jihad" against me -- a malicious use of our western laws to censor my criticism of radical Islam in the West. I apologize if I've missed someone, but thanks to Kathy Shaidle, Blazing Catfur, Mark Steyn, Jay Currie, Wendy Sullivan, Jesse Ferreras, Walker Morrow, Howard Mackinnon, Allan Janssen, and Pamela Geller.

Let me state the obvious: you have now been added to the official enemies list compiled, using government resources, by Jennifer Lynch, chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. It's an honour to be blacklisted by such a bully.

Pamela posted this fun picture from last summer's conference in New York about "libel tourism" -- another way of saying "lawfare", usually by foreign-based or foreign-funded Islamic fascists. That's what the Canadian Islamic Congress did to Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn, and that's what they're doing to me.

That was a great conference; and it just happened to fall the day after I was served with a nuisance lawsuit by lawfare bully Richard Warman.

So -- apart from the pleasant company -- why was I smiling?

For same reason why I welcome Khurrum Awan's threatened suit: because, like Warman's two nuisance suits, and the three nuisance human rights complaints filed against me, Awan's threatened suit gives me a forum and a process and a "news peg" through which to bring the battle for freedom into the heart of one of the most malicious organizations in Canada: the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Until yesterday, I was just a pundit, criticizing them from time to time. Now I've got standing: I'm a prospective defendant in a legal action. That doesn't just give me political and media authority to criticize them, it gives me tremendous legal tools to go after them, too. I mean, just stop for a moment to consider all of their internal documents I'll have access to in discoveries. Media pundits don't have access to hundreds of internal e-mails or memos. Defendants in defamation lawsuits do. It's going to be a feast -- and it's all going to be done in the bright lights of a court of law, and not a kangaroo court of the type preferred by Awan or Warman.

When I was hit with two nuisance complaints before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, it was indeed a nuisance -- 900 days of prosecution by 15 government bureaucrats and lawyers. But had I not been drawn into such a battle, I would never have learned just how corrupt and abusive Canada's HRCs have become. I would not have read 100 HRC rulings; I would not have read 10,000 pages of HRC transcripts; I would not have learned about their corruption and abuse.

And I would not have fought back.

I would not have written close to 1,000 blog entries on the subject of HRCs, had 500 radio and TV interviews, written dozens of newspaper articles and written a best-selling book on the subject. I would not have had 700,000 people around the world watch my YouTube video of an HRC censor interrogate me, North Korea-style. In other words, the HRCs threw the first punch at me, a sucker punch -- but now they're the ones with the bloody nose.

What's the likelihood, for example, that the half-million readers of the National Post and Montreal Gazette would have learned that the Canadian Human Rights Commission employs seven members of Nazi organizations?

Do not misunderstand me: I'm not claiming that this was in any way a solitary effort. As I describe in detail in Shakedown (in this chapter excerpted by Reason Magazine), it was very much a collaborative effort, involving dozens of people, all amateur volunteers. But I don't think that any of us would have been as engaged by the HRCs had they not forcibly engaged Mark Steyn and me with human rights complaints, and later other bloggers through nuisance suits. I don't think that Richard Warman's streak of neo-Nazi outbursts would have been denounced as "disappointing and disturbing" by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal were it not for the massive publicity that he brought upon himself by suing me, Kate, Kathy, Connie, Mark and the Post.

And now Khurrum Awan is signing up for a little bit of that.

As Kathy writes, it takes a special kind of masochist to go through the drubbing that Mark Steyn inflicted on him, and then sign up for another round: "Thank you, sir -- may I have another...? "

They say there are two ways to really get to know someone: marry them, or go into business with them. I think there's a third: get into a lawsuit against them. I think I know more about the CHRC's malicious conduct than Jennifer Lynch does, simply because I don't think she's ever bothered to read the transcripts and rulings of every one of her censorship cases. I think I know more about Richard Warman than his employer, the Department of Defence's Special Grievances Directorate does, because I don't think they've sat down and read through all of his anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-black diatribes on Nazi websites.

I know a bit about Awan now; but by the time we're through, I think I'm going to know an awful lot more about him -- and about the bigoted Canadian Islamic Congress for which he acted as their youth president.

I'm going to learn about it -- and so will you. So will the country, through hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, radio interviews and, eventually, a trial.

This probably isn't what I'd choose to do with my spare time, if I were left to my own devices. Khurrum Awan just isn't that interesting to me. But it's not really up to me, is it? He's the one doing the suing. But once he formally engages me -- once he locks us into a formal process -- well then, I'm going to find him very, very interesting.

Defamation's a funny kind of lawsuit, because it's all about the reputation of the plaintiff. Every thing they've said and done goes to the value of their reputation. Every lie they've told, every dishonourable thing they've done -- that's all relevant, because it goes to damages. None of us is a saint; none of us would lightly submit to a public inspection of everything we've said and done. For Khurrum Awan -- someone who has spent years with an overtly anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist organization like the CIC, under the leadership of an out-and-out anti-Semite like Mohamed Elmasry? Well, I'd say young Khurrum's libel notice is the longest suicide note I've ever read.

Question: if he proceeds with his suit, two years from now do you think Awan's and the CIC's reputation will be stronger or weaker? After going through document discovery and cross-examination, do you think Awan and the CIC will be more or less reputable in the public eye?

I don't know for sure -- I haven't yet seen their internal documents. But I'm guessing that if they're anything like Jennifer Lynch's dirty laundry, the CIC will become even more denormalized and marginalized than they are now.

If that's the outcome -- and if I can deploy my own stubbornness, noisiness and prolixity to that goal -- why then, dear reader, being sued by Awan is perhaps the most effective way I can fight against the spread of radical Islam in Canada.

And that's something I welcome.

To battle stations!

P.S. Thanks very much to everyone who has chipped in to my legal defence fund. Seriously, that's the only thing I'm worried about here, running out of money for lawyers. I've got plenty of fight in me -- I'm the most stubborn person I know. If you can help shore up my legal defence fund, I promise to fight until I'm done. Not until they're done, but until I'm done. Jennifer Lynch knows what I mean.

Please click on the PayPal button below. If you’d prefer to send in a cheque by snail mail, please make cheques payable to my lawyer:

“Christopher Ashby in Trust”

Attn: Ezra Levant defence fund

Suite 1013, 8 King Street East

Toronto, Ontario, 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."

Khurrum Awan, the youth president of the Jew-hating Canadian Islamic Congress, has threatened me with a lawsuit. You can see the rambling, typo-ridden libel notice here. (Seriously, Khurrum: spell check. It’s free.)

Awan is an experienced practitioner in the soft jihad of “lawfare”, the abusive practice where lawsuits are filed against critics of radical Islam just to harass them and silence them, Erin Brockovich-style. He’s done it before: Awan fronted the CIC’s three identical “human rights” complaints against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s best-selling book America Alone. Awan wasn’t the actual complainant in those cases – the CIC’s president, Mohamed Elmasry, was. But Awan was the public spokesman for those nuisance suits.

What does the Canadian Islamic Congress believe in?

Why did Elmasry need a sock puppet? Well, for starters, here’s a video clip of Elmasry proudly justifying terrorist murders of Israeli civilians:

 

That’s pretty much par for the course over at the CIC. A couple of years ago, they distributed Nazi-style anti-Semitic cartoons door-to-door as part of their election efforts. Personally, my favourite Elmasry moment is whenever he denounces the Canadian media as being run by “the zhoos” – a line he repeated again and again without a flicker of embarrassment at a convention of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

That’s the Canadian Islamic Congress. They’re a great fit for Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They’re just not really ready for prime time in a liberal democracy. And now their youth president, Khurrum Awan, wants a full public trial – in a real court, not a kangaroo court – about, amongst other things, whether or not they’re anti-Semites.

I’ll take those odds. With Elmasry as his mentor, I’m guessing Awan is just a wee bit tone deaf on the whole bigotry thing.

It’s nuttier than a Snickers bar over at the CIC, but that hasn’t bothered Awan one bit. The CIC championed the cause of terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah, and opposed the listing of them as terrorists under Canadian law. They actually defended the Butcher of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. And then there’s the hired help: the CIC publishes screeds from anti-Semites like Greg Felton, whose views are as diverse as supporting Iran’s nuclear program to praising Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning the Holocaust.

That’s Awan’s crew: Jew-haters, terrorist-lovers, censors and nuisance litigants. So it’s no surprise, dear friends, that he has decided to come for me.

A political document, not a legal document

Let’s walk through Awan’s libel notice page by page.

The first thing to note is that the letter is signed by Brian Shiller – who just happens to be the same lawyer representing Richard Warman, the serial complainant and litigant-of-fortune behind nearly 90% of all section 13 censorship prosecutions in Canada. Yes, that’s the same Richard Warman whose conduct was denounced as “disappointing” and “disturbing” by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, because Warman published anti-Semitic bigotry on the Internet. Warman joined a neo-Nazi organization, and published on their website that Jewish politicians were “scum”.

Classy.

Warman is suing me, the National Post and bloggers Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan and Connie and Mark Fournier.

Come to think of it, if Warman and Awan are ever waiting in Shiller’s office at the same time, I think they could pass the time quite pleasantly with a discussion about those zhoos, don’t you?

The zhoos: scum or media manipulators? Discuss.

And, of course, Shiller’s other client is Warren Kinsella, who has also filed a nuisance suit against me. One of Kinsella’s complaints is that I repeated his own boast that he had given help and advice to… Khurrum Awan!

In other words, these guys aren’t even hiding the fact that they’re part of a concerted effort to censor me, Mark Steyn and other critics of radical Islam and Canada’s abusive human rights commissions.

I think Awan actually drafted the libel notice, not Shiller

The libel notice is rambling, full of typos and comprised mainly of political arguments, not arguments that have any place in a defamation lawsuit. I think Awan prepared it, and Shiller didn’t even read it carefully before faxing it over.

Take a look at page 4 of the letter (page 5 of the .pdf): point 3 slips from the third person (“Mr. Awan”) into the first person (“me”). It’s pretty clear Awan wrote the letter and Shiller just signed it. Here’s a snapshot of that section:

That’s the thing about nuisance suits: they’re not substantively serious; they’re just designed to harass.

Perjury

Right on the first page of the libel notice is a pretty serious charge: Awan says I accuse him of committing perjury. That’s a grave thing to say about anyone, especially a law student or lawyer (I’m not sure which one Awan is now).

But there’s one problem with that: I have never accused him of perjury. The opposite, actually – I have, several times, noted that he was a serial liar to the public and through the media, but when he finally took an oath and testified in the B.C. show trial of Mark Steyn, Awan reverted to the truth. I specifically said he did not commit perjury. Here’s one example of what I wrote, live from the court house last year:

Julian Porter himself was at the meeting where Khurrum Awan and his junior Al Sharptons tried to shake down Ken Whyte and Maclean’s for cash and a cover story.

Porter asked Awan point blank if the CIC’s proposed “counter-article” was to be “mutually acceptable” to Whyte or of the CIC’s own choosing.

After obfuscating for a few rounds, Awan acknowledged that he never in fact offered a “mutually acceptable” article -- that was simply an after-the-fact lie, a little bit of taqqiya that Awan et al. has told the press.

Awan admitted that he made no such offer of a mutually acceptable author. It was to be the CIC’s own choice. 

Awan and the other sock puppets had been lying for a year to the general public – pretending that they had made a “reasonable” offer to Maclean’s (as if there’s any reasonable way to demand a five-page rebuttal from a national magazine.) But under oath, Awan admitted that his public comments were false – he didn’t suggest that the rebuttal be written by an author mutually agreeable to him and Maclean’s. He demanded that Maclean’s submit to his choice.

I didn’t accuse Awan of perjury. I did the opposite – I recognized that when he was finally under oath, he finally told the truth for the first time.

Odds and ends

Awan’s libel notice isn’t a serious legal document. Instead, it’s reminiscent of the rambling, out-of-context “brief” that Awan prepared for use against Steyn at the HRCs. That wasn’t a real legal document, either – but then again, HRCs aren’t real courts.

I don’t propose to rebut the entire thing now; there are some amazing flaws in it that I would prefer to respond to after the Statement of Claim is filed. But let me address a few points:

Shakedown

Khurrum Awan admitted under oath he had tried to get Maclean’s to pay $10,000 in penance for running Mark Steyn’s book excerpt. I call that a shakedown, Al Sharpton-style.

Awan? He has it both ways; he claims the money would be for a charity, not for himself (again, I charge I never made). And then he denies it was a shakedown at all.

I think Awan is too used to writing logically incoherent letters to the editor. It will be fascinating to hear what a real judge thinks of Awan’s little scheme to liberate $10,000 from Maclean’s. Shakedown? Hell yes it was. And I’ll always be proud of Maclean’s that they didn’t pay.

Damn fool

Awan says that calling him a damn fool is defamatory. Well, unlike Awan’s favourite forums – human rights commissions – in real courts, truth is a defence to defamation. Whether or not Awan is a damn fool (or damned fool, to be more grammatically correct) isn’t really a matter of fact, though – it’s probably a matter of opinion. And, yes, it is my opinion that Awan is a damned fool.

If Awan asks a court to have a hearing into whether or not he’s a damned fool, I think he pretty much answers that question himself, don’t you think?

Awan sabotaged – by a Jew again?

A hilarious moment in Mark Steyn’s show trial was when Awan was confronted about an inaccuracy in one of his letters to the editor. In an Elmasry-like act of blamestorming, he blamed Jonathan Kay, the editorial page editor of the National Post, accusing Kay of changing what Awan really meant. Here’s my blog from that moment in the trial:

What a gorgeous new lie young Khurrum Awan has offered. He claims that his letter to the editor to the National Post (in response to my own article!) might have been edited by Jonathan Kay, to insert the lie that Porter has caught him in.

Awan is hoping that the Kangaroos will believe that Jonathan Kay added the words "mutually acceptable" to his letter to the editor.

Yeah, that's the ticket, Khurrum. You weren't lying in a dozen identical letters and Op-Eds. Jonathan Kay (I hear he's a zhoo!) and a dozen other editor across the country made identical edits to Awan's letter.

They should be the one answering to big, bad Julian Porter! He's mean!

That’s the same excuse Awan trots out again in 2009, claiming that one of his embarrassing letters to the editor was changed by someone at the Toronto Star, and that I should have known better before criticizing it! What a fascinating place Awan’s mind must be, full of kaleidoscopes and cacophonous music. What a lucky, lucky man to have such a fertile imagination.

Revisionism: was Awan co-counsel?

At Steyn’s show trial, I found it bizarre that Awan was both co-counsel for Elmasry, as well as a witness for Elmasry. That’s just weird – and it’s something that no real court would allow.

It was pretty evident that Awan was co-counsel: he was sitting at the table reserved for counsel. He assisted lead counsel, Faisal Joseph. He had helped to prepare the case; he scurried around, as junior counsel does, chasing documents.

But now he’s denying the whole thing

Again, it’s not really a strong legal point. But it does go to Awan’s bizarre relationship with reality. There were fifty reporters in the room that day, including one from the New York Times. Were we all blind – were we all lying? Or – is it possible – that Khurrum Awan, serial liar, is lying again?

I’m getting bored of Awan’s whining victimology

Look, it’s painful reading Awan’s letter. It’s not a real defamation notice – it’s a way-too-long letter to the editor, dressed up as a legal document. That’s sort of what Warren Kinsella does, too – he puts out press releases, but calls them libel suits. I guess it’s for guys who want to add a little bit of menace to their PR, but both end up coming across as bullies and blowhards.

Awan’s letter is an attempt, a year later, to change the embarrassing history of his big public campaign against Maclean’s. He was eaten alive by every journalist in the country, and was made a laughingstock in the blogosphere. Even his fellow sock puppets had the sense to abandon his suicide run. Not Awan: he’s still proudly out there calling for more censorship powers for the government. If I were a Canadian Muslim, I’d be pretty embarrassed that Awan was claiming to speak for me.

It’s boring to read such whining. Awan was whiny in response to Maclean’s magazine; he was whiny on the stand at the BCHRT. He’s whiny in his endless Op-Eds. And he’s whiny in this rambling libel notice. I guess it’s his right to whine; but he’ll soon find out that defamation law does not turn on whining, or even on hurt feelings. It does not turn on mockery or on hyper-sensitivity of plaintiff. It does not turn on politics or on victimology. It’s about true facts and fair comments – or, as our Supreme Court ruled last year: “We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones.” I’m glad Canadians have such liberty, though I don’t think it’s even outrageous or ridiculous to opine that Awan’s conduct is that of a “damn fool”, a liar, and someone who would do well to just shut up, try to practice law, and keep his head down for a very, very long time.

So what’s next?

If he’s serious, Awan will serve me with a Statement of Claim within a few weeks. That will formally start the process, and I will have to reply with a Statement of Defence. That’s where the costs come in.

My lawyers are getting pretty good at cranking out defences to these nuisance suits, but it still takes time to go through them, line by line, to make sure they’re properly rebutted. I estimate that the cost of filing a defence will be $6,000. After that, it depends on Awan’s conduct – for example, will he try to avoid disclosing relevant documents? Depending on what procedure he chooses, we could have examinations for discovery – depositions, as they’re called in the U.S. Those could cost $10,000. It’s too premature to do the math beyond that.

Frankly, I think that Awan’s case is as weak as the other nuisance suits that have been flung at me. But that’s not the point – the point is that they all cost money and hassle, which is why they’re being filed against me in the first place. They’re trying to demoralize me – to stop me from fighting for freedom of speech and due process. Awan in particular is mad that his great PR campaign has backfired, and that while he is now viewed as a thin-skinned censor, he only made Mark Steyn more famous and better loved. And Awan is angry that I’ve undermined his favourite weapon of lawfare: HRCs. He loves them – he abuses them – and he wants to continue. That’s tougher now, given his public humiliation at the hands of a hundred bloggers (including me).

Can you please help me?

In addition to Awan’s threat, I have four ongoing civil suits against me, as I’ve mentioned above. Some months there is very little legal work, but others are quite busy. My lawyers' bills range between $2,000 a month to $6,000 a month. If Awan follows through with a suit, it will be a $6,000 month.

If you believe in fighting against the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress; if you believe in standing up to Mohamed Elmasry’s junior president; if you believe that Awan’s complaints against Maclean’s and Mark Steyn were outrageous and punitive, and that he should be stopped; if you think he is indeed a liar and a buffoon – and a damn fool – then please help me out.

I enjoy the fight very much, because I believe I’m on the side of liberty and our western values here. I believe that Awan and company are undermining our way of life, especially our freedom to criticize radical Islam. He’s trying to silence me – which makes sense from his point of view, in a crude political calculation. But it’s not just, and it's not Canadian.

I promise I’ll fight back. Can you help me with the one thing I can’t do on my own, which is cover all my legal bills?

My family has been very supportive of me – my saintly wife understands that freedom of speech is something that must be defended, and she shares my concern about radical, political Islam – all the moreso given that we have two daughters now. If you can help bear the financial burden for our family, I’ll do the rest.

Yours most gratefully,

Ezra Levant

P.S. 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 great. Please make cheques payable to my lawyer on this case:

“Christopher Ashby in Trust”

Attn: Ezra Levant defence fund

Suite 1013, 8 King Street East

Toronto, Ontario, 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."

Here's a clip from a debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate. After a preamble about the economy, Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina uses Canada as an example of what the U.S. should avoid.

Not Iran. Not North Korea. But Canada.

How embarrassing that our human rights commissions have become an international icon of censorship. Here's the clip: 

Is Jennifer Lynch a Nazi sympathizer?

I don't know. But she certainly has gone to great lengths to defend the Nazi members who work for her at the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

After my detailed description of those Nazi members in the National Post this week -- wherein I list their names, and cite examples of the bigotry that those Nazi members have published online -- Lynch replied with this laughable letter:

Both the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner have conducted a thorough investigation into the alleged "hacking of a private citizen's account" and have both determined that no further proceedings are warranted. The Canadian Human Rights Commission considers this matter closed.

In investigating hate messages complaints, the commission has logged on to websites to view their contents and to obtain evidence. In some investigations, postings were made, but this has never included the posting of hateful or derogatory messages, nor would the commission condone such a practice if it occurred. The suggestion that the commission's investigation of neo-Nazi websites equates to "active" membership in neo-Nazi organizations is simply irresponsible.

I regret that this important discussion has degenerated into unwarranted personal attacks on the employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission carrying out their legislated mandate.

Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissioner, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa.

There are a lot of outright lies there, which is why I suppose Lynch is engaging in this debate through the pages of a newspaper, rather than attending at a Parliamentary Committee, as MP Russ Hiebert asked her to do. It's one thing to lie to the public; it's quite another for Lynch to lie to Parliament. It's still unethical, but it won't likely get her charged with an offence.

Let's look at just a few of those lies, line by line:

Both the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner have conducted a thorough investigation into the alleged "hacking of a private citizen's account" and have both determined that no further proceedings are warranted. The Canadian Human Rights Commission considers this matter closed.

That's a lie.

The Privacy Commissioner did not conduct a thorough investigation at all -- they didn't even interview the hacking victim. But in any event, they did not investigate the hacking -- that's outside their jurisdiction. They merely investigated whether or not the CHRC captured and kept private information about Nelly Hechme, the hacking victim. Of course the CHRC didn't -- they were merely using her Internet site to hide their tracks as they signed into their Nazi memberships online. They didn't care about Hechme, other than to get her Internet access.

The RCMP, by their own acknowledgement, did not complete their investigations. They were stymied, their official reoprt says, because they lacked the ability to pursue the case to the U.S. server in question.

In investigating hate messages complaints, the commission has logged on to websites to view their contents and to obtain evidence.

Lynch is using the phrase "logged on" to deliberately confuse readers. You don't need to "log on" to Stormfront to "investigate" its anti-Semitism. There is no logging-on necessary to read it. Just click here, and you'll be reading away.

What Lynch's staff did was join Stormfront as members. So when they go to the site, they log in with their membership names and passwords. They do that for one reason alone: so they can participate in the site, not merely be passive observers. Her use of the phrase "log on" is designed to blur the fact that they were in fact logging in as signed-up Nazi members.

It was as active participants that they wrote their hundreds of bigoted remarks.

In some investigations, postings were made, but this has never included the posting of hateful or derogatory messages, nor would the commission condone such a practice if it occurred.

This is simply a falsehood. A lie. Calling Jews "scum", calling gays a "cancer", etc. are derogatory, and they were made with the knowledge and complicity of the CHRC hierarchy. To this day Lynch herself condones it.

I don't know if one can call such a woman a Nazi sympathizer, but she is certainly a defender of her seven in-house Nazis.

The suggestion that the commission's investigation of neo-Nazi websites equates to "active" membership in neo-Nazi organizations is simply irresponsible.

She's right: an investigation of Stormfront does not equate with active membership of Stormfront. They are two different things. And Lynch's seven Nazi members chose the second option: to be active, hate-spewing members. They had the choice; they could have merely observed, as you and I can. But instead they joined, and dove right in.

Jewish scum! Gay cancer!

That's what they wrote. That's not investigation. That's bigotry. That's entrapment. And that's standard operating procedure in Lynch's little Nazi nest.

I regret that this important discussion has degenerated into unwarranted personal attacks on the employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission carrying out their legislated mandate.

That's my favourite line. It's apparently not "unwarranted" and "personal" and "attacking" for Lynch's seven Nazi members to call Jews scum or gays cancer. That's not unacceptable to her. That's not outside the limits of fair play.

What's unacceptable is anyone -- especially a mere citizen -- calling her to account for it.

She's a bigoted censor. To her, any debate is unacceptable. She's about gagging dissent, not engaging with it. And she's so vain, she'd rather side with the seven Nazis in her organization than admit that she runs a rotten, corrupt operation.

Jennifer Lynch did not create section 13. She was not the CHRC's chief commissar when the seven Nazis in her employ joined Stormfront. She could have, upon discovering the rot, disowned it -- by identifying it as a problem and fixing it. Cauterizing the wound. She could have shown leadership -- improving, reforming, fixing.

Instead of disowning the Nazis, she's owning them and their foul deeds. She would rather protect her seven little bigots than admit that anything is wrong in her fiefdom.

What an odious woman. When she accosted me on Parliament Hill back ni May, I didn't recognize her -- she is much more haggard and old than her ancient publicity picture. In other words, she surpised me. I think I shook her hand, because I had no idea who that old woman was who approached me. I dearly wish I had known who she was, for I would never have shaken the hand that shakes the hands of so many Nazis.

Here's my letter in today's Post:

Jennifer Lynch of the Canadian Human Rights Commission says the matter of the hacking of Nelly Hechme's Internet account is "closed." The RCMP doesn't think so -- its report indicates that the CHRC is its only suspect, and the case is "unsolved." And the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is still considering damning testimony from Bell Canada about the hacking. For Ms. Lynch to publicly prejudge a case before the tribunal is highly inappropriate.

But the most amazing thing is her statement that CHRC staff have never written "hateful or derogatory" comments. CHRC investigators have admitted under oath to writing on Nazi websites that Jews are "scum," gays are a "cancer" and white police should be loyal to "their race," to list just a sample. Is she saying those comments are not derogatory? And does she really think that such bigotry is part of her "legislated mandate"?

Fire. Them. All.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

and here are three more that ran yesterday. The first:

Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), was not present on March 25, 2008, when the evidence of her own investigator revealed the gross chicanery of the commission's investigative procedures. If she had been, she would have heard first-hand the disgraceful admissions which she is now playing down.

Those of us who were there heard of the hacking into the personal computer of an Ottawa resident so that investigators could then connect with a target website under the guise of an innocent and unknowing citizen. The audience was appalled to hear that, once inside the targeted website, investigators deliberately planted misleading messages designed to goad the accused into making an inculpatory reply, thereby founding a charge of "hate speech" against him.

We also heard the investigator confirm that freedom of speech was an "American concept" to be disregarded in his investigations.

Despite her protestations, Ms. Lynch cannot state that the attacks upon her investigators are unwarranted. It is beyond sound administrative principles that no steps have been taken by the argumentative commissioner to clean house of the rot that is pervading her fiefdom.

Gerald Langlois, Hawkesbury, Ont.

and this one:

I'm so glad Jennifer Lynch, the CHRC's chief censor -- oops, I mean commissioner -- was able to clear up that little misunderstanding about her investigators being Nazis. I guess if you only pretend to be a Nazi for the sake of "obtaining evidence" against Nazis -- for the greater good of society, of course--it doesn't make you an actual, dyed-in-the-wool Hitler aficionado.

To ensure that no one ever again mistakes CHRC investigators for real-life Nazis, might I suggest her sleuths wear T-shirts emblazoned with the following message: "I'm not a Nazi, I just play one on the Internet"?

Mindy G. Alter, Toronto

and this one:

Jennifer Lynch just doesn't get it. When she tells us the CHRC engaged in gathering evidence, is she not saying that the commission is engaging in investigative work that should only be done by trained professionals, such as the police. That Ms. Lynch obviously believes her body is above the law tells us something about her commission.

David Woolley, Langley, B. C.

It's amazing to me how much momentum the drive to reform Canada's human rights commissions has. Mark Steyn's show trial was last June, and my own acquittal was last August. Yet here we are a year later, and the criticism of the HRCs is a daily event.

Today's Windsor Star:

...the problem is that the CHRC is essentially the investigator, prosecutor and judge of complaints of racism and hate speech. The burden of proof under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is also subject to interpretation. It says it's an offence to communicate anything "likely to expose a person ... to hatred or contempt."

Ezra Levant, who was the subject of an unsuccessful complaint before the Alberta after he published controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, says CHRC's standards make it an advocate of censorship.

"The word 'likely' is amazing. The CHRC doesn't have to prove you've actually done anything, just that you might in the future," says Levant. "And all they have to prove is that you said something that might cause one person to have hard feelings about another."

And yesterday's Montreal Gazette reprinted my expose of the Nazis at the CHRC -- and another 125,000 households learn of the fraud that is the CHRC.

I count seven Canadian Human Rights Commission staff who have access to memberships in Nazi organizations, but I think there are actually nine. Here's my column in today's National Post on the subject:

Neo-Nazi hate, courtesy of the CHRC

Last month, a parliamentary committee invited Jennifer Lynch, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to answer questions about her agency's conduct. She refused to attend, sending in her place a deputy who could not answer key questions put to him by MP Russ Hiebert.

Now that Parliament is safely on summer holidays, Lynch has bravely emerged from her bunker -- the CHRC office actually is a bulletproof bunker -- to accuse Hiebert of getting his facts wrong.

But it's Lynch's version that's false.

In her July 11 letter to the National Post, Lynch denies that CHRC staff hacked into the Internet account of a private citizen to cover their tracks as they logged into their memberships in neo-Nazi websites. Lynch says both the Privacy Commissioner and the RCMP "found no evidence to support this allegation."

But that's not true. The Privacy Commissioner's staff did not investigate the hacking -- that is not within their jurisdiction. They only examined "whether the CHRC improperly collected, used, disclosed or retained personal information about the complainant," a different and irrelevant question.

And neither did the RCMP declare that there was "no evidence" to the accusation. They investigated for months. Only when the case led them to a U. S.-based Internet server did they drop their investigation rather than pursue it internationally. That's quite a different thing from exonerating the CHRC.

There was a hearing into the matter, though, at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on March 25, 2008. Alain Monfette, Bell Canada's security officer, testified that the CHRC accessed the Internet using that private citizen's Bell account. Lynch's lawyers sat in embarrassed silence -- they did not rebut Monfette's evidence nor even bother to cross-examine him.

As Nelly Hechme, the hacking victim, told reporters, "I merely wanted some answers and maybe a little justice, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm basically being told to just accept it."

Lynch is pretending that Hechme doesn't even exist. But that pales in comparison to Lynch's statement that CHRC staff did not "post hateful messages on the Internet."

In fact, CHRC employees have been active members of neo-Nazi organizations for years, and have published countless anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black comments online. CHRC employees have admitted to this under oath. On the same day Monfette testified about the hacking, CHRC investigator Dean Steacy testified there were no guidelines about what CHRC staff could do using their online Nazi memberships.

Steacy, for example, used his Nazi membership to write encouraging words to a racist group called B. C. White Pride. He praised them, told them their racist posters were "great" and promised to distribute their literature. Your tax dollars at work.

Other CHRC investigators went further. One praised Nazi leaders ( "I still say [Adrien] Arcand is our man!"); called for Canadian police to discriminate against blacks ( "exactly when will white cops understand that they should stand by THEIR race?!"); and trashed a Jewish youth group ( "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.")

At least 12 CHRC prosecutions have been tainted by CHRC staff or witnesses using agent provocateur tactics like that. They've even written Nazi shorthand for "Heil Hitler".

Steacy testified that at least seven CHRC staff have access to Nazi membership accounts: Steacy himself, his two personal assistants, investigator Sandy Kozak, lawyer Giacomo Vigna, manager John Chamberlin, and former CHRC investigator and current serial witness and complainant Richard Warman.

By sheer numbers, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has more Nazi members than the tiny Canadian Nazi Party did when it briefly existed in the 1960s.

If real police and prosecutors behaved this way, they would be suspended and any criminal charges tainted by such misconduct would be stayed. Not so at the CHRC, which lacks an internal affairs office or written operational policies. It doesn't even have a code of ethics.

It's become so embarrassing that even the tribunal -- the kangaroo court that rubber-stamps CHRC censorship prosecutions -- has ended its silence. Four months ago, the tribunal examined some of these comments, including one denouncing Jewish politicians as "scum."

"I do not see any acceptable reason for [Richard] Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard [neo-Nazi] sites," wrote the tribunal. "It is possible that his activity in this regard could have precipitated further hate messages in response ... The evidence in this case of his participating on Internet sites similar to the Northern Alliance [neo-Nazi] site is both disappointing and disturbing."

It's a scandal that the CHRC joins Nazi groups on the taxpayers' dime. But instead of recognizing the problem and fixing it, Lynch is trying to cover it up.

The Prime Minister needs to intervene. It's time Stephen Harper fired everyone with a Nazi membership at the CHRC, along with the woman who is permitting their bigotry.

A couple of thoughts I didn't have space for in the Post:

1. Who cares about Nazis? Well, the Official Jews say they do, especially Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Well, in the Warman v. Lemire case -- that's the case where much of these Nazi antics were revealed -- the CJC, the B'nai Brith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center were all interveners. In other words, those Official Jews were right there in the room -- they didn't need the media to tell them what happened. But none of them issued so much as a stern press release: they were all fine with the Nazification of the CHRC. They were more than fine with it -- they were intervening in support of the CHRC, and these Nazi tactics didn't faze them. Disgusting.

2. When do the Nazi antics cease to become a political embarrassment to Jennifer Lynch, Richard Warman and their ilk, and start to become a political problem for the Conservative government that appointed her, tolerates him, and continues to let this menace grow? In the recent past, the Conservatives and especially its predecessor parties the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party, were accused of being "far right", "extremist", "racist" and the like. Those were baseless smears, of course. But why would the party risk having real members of Nazi organizations working in the government? Perhaps a year ago it could plausibly claim ignorance. But that's not the case now. Why won't the government disown Lynch and her mob?

3. Lying is not a crime -- at least not lying to the press. Lying to Parliament is a different matter; so is lying under oath. Will Russ Hiebert and other MPs call Lynch herself to Parliament -- and subpoena her personally, so she doesn't evade them like she did last time -- and press her on this subject? Will she lie about it then? And if she does, will this government continue -- inexplicably -- to tolerate it?

 

A couple of weeks ago, conservative commentator Michael Taube reviewed Shakedown for the Washington, D.C.-based Weekly Standard magazine. (I should note that the Weekly Standard was one of the few U.S. magazines to reprint the Danish cartoons.) Here's the link; here are some excerpts:

...In February 2006, Levant was the publisher of a conservative magazine, the Western Standard. After some consideration, he decided to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed "to show our readers what all the fuss was about." It was a gutsy move. Whereas most Canadian publications decided against publishing them, Levant thought people should be free to look at these cartoons in print and judge for themselves.

...Today, HRCs are the equivalent of kangaroo courts used predominantly by the Canadian left to sue political rivals and soothe the hurt feelings of residents of glass houses. Shakedown details some of the more ridiculous human rights cases that have succeeded in Canada--and sadly, the vast majority of cases have succeeded:

...Muslim police cadet was awarded $500,000 (Canadian) for, among other things, being shouted at by a drill sergeant whose job it was to--well, shout at him.

...It soon became clear these human rights commissions had nothing to do with human rights but were the first-line defense of the left-wing agenda against the rights and freedoms of opposing doctrines.

...Shakedown might well shock your senses; it certainly will make you shudder about Canada's lackadaisical support for free speech. Mark Steyn, who has written Shakedown's introduction, calls Levant "a true Canadian hero." I'll take it one step further: He's a true hero for all people, and societies, who love freedom.

That's pretty friendly! And here's a review in Lifesite News, by John Jalsevac:

...the worst thing that ever happened to the CHRCs was when a Muslim imam by the name of Syed Sohawardy decided to file a human rights complaint against a magazine published by Levant. Sohawardy claimed that he was "offended" that the now-defunct Western Standard had dared republish the so-called "Danish cartoons" that depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad and that had been the ostensible catalyst for violent rioting by Muslims across the globe.

As Levant relates in Shakedown - his recently published book on the human rights commissions - he honestly didn't think he'd have to spend more than five minutes dealing with what he really thought - as a reasonable, law-abiding Westerner living in what he considered a "free country" - was a mere "bureaucratic formality." After all, the cartoons were the hot news at the time, and Canada didn't operate according to Sharia law.

...As soon as Levant realized that he was being forced to walk the gauntlet of a broken human rights system that was, ironically, perhaps the greatest threat to human rights in the country (yes, even beyond the various pathetic white supremecist sites that HRC employees apparently spend their lazy afternoon hours baiting with racist comments) and that he was far from being the only victim, he never looked back. His recent book is the percolated and highly volatile result of several years spent fighting that system and learning the finer points of how it operates. The book is an informative, disturbing, and beautifully galvanizing read.

To me it really is a wonder that anyone from Canada's HRCs has shown their face in public since the release of Levant's book. Shakedown is a damning and deeply embarassing indictment of a government entity that has become so bloated with its own power that it seems utterly incapable of conceiving that dragging ordinary Canadian citizens through the mud of absurdly lengthy, costly, and demeaning "investigations" into whether or not someone may or may not be "offended" by something they said, just might not be in anyone's best interests - except, of course, their own.

Shakedown has been favorably reviewed in most of the major news publications from coast to coast. And the most remarkable thing is that Levant's sympathizers cross all ideological and political boundaries - and this even though most of the commission's "hate speech" victims have been political and social conservatives and Christians. Indeed, perhaps Levant's greatest accomplishment has been to transcend ideological boundaries, largely by showing that just because the commission is persecuting social conservatives now, doesn't mean that its persecutory mechanisms and lack of due process can't be turned on anyone, no matter where they fall on the political or ideological spectrum.

That's great!

Later this week I hope to blog about a fascinating review of my book written by Mark Freiman, the new figurehead president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. That will take more time than merely pasting some excerpts -- it's styled as a review of my book (and, actually, as a review of me), but it tells much more about Freiman and the CJC, I think. I'll try to get to that soon.

 

I took a couple of weeks off after our new baby arrived, and it's still tough to grab an hour to do a good blog post. Of course there is news every day about Canada's corrupt and abusive human rights commissions, but the two weeks I was off blogging seemed to be a particularly newsy time. I still want to take a proper run at Jennifer Lynch's stunning confession that she has 1,200 files on her enemies. Not only is that politically scandalous -- shades of McCarthy and Nixon -- but I believe it is also illegal, and I'll make my case to that effect when I can clear some time.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to post some quick entries that I missed. I'll start out with a debate I had with Pearl Eliadis, a former Ontario Human Rights Commission director, in the letters pages of the National Post. I'll provide the links to the Post's website, but for convenience I'll also reprint the letters in full below:

Eliadis starts:

There is simply no excuse for the media continuing to mislead the Canadian public on the hate speech debate. The Post repeats the "100% conviction" figure to describe what happens to hate speech complaints. Leaving aside the mendacious use of the term "conviction" -- which only applies to criminals and not to administrative proceedings of this kind -- the reality is different.

Of 66 complaints filed and accepted under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act since 2001, only one-quarter have been brought forward to a tribunal and been upheld. And all have been against extremist white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

The claim of 100% conviction is absurd. In recent memory we all know that the complaint against Rogers (in the Maclean's/ Mark Steyn matter) was dismissed, even though one author tried to turn it into a chronicle of a conviction foretold. And after that, a much-publicized stunt complaint from Quebec by a blogger was also dismissed -- without even an investigation.

But there is more. The Post continues to complain that "offensive" speech is outlawed. The opposite is true: According to the Supreme Court of Canada, the subjective test of being offended is not the benchmark.

There are good ideas for reforming human right commissions in Canada. These ideas have been around for more than 10 years, with proposals by the commissions themselves. Most recently, Mark Freiman, in his trenchant critique of Ezra Levant's Shakedown in The Literary Review of Canada, has referred to some of these ideas. They are worth listening to.

Pearl Eliadis, human rights lawyer, Montreal.

I love that signature: "human rights lawyer", like it's some attempt at a professional designation or other status. Good for Eliadis for still brazening it out, I guess -- most HRC employees are ducking for cover these days, too embarrassed to be identified. Don't take my word for it -- ask chief commissar Lynch! Of course, my own favourite new appellation is "human rights activist", something that, when Michael Coren first described me that way on his show, shocked me to hear it. But if censors like Eliadis can call themselves "human rights lawyers" while they're destroying human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion, you're damned straight I can call myself a human rights activist for actually standing up for civil liberties against the massive police powers of the state that Eliadis, Lynch and company represent. Anyways, here's my rebuttal:

Re: Understanding The Hate-Speech Debate, letter to the editor, June 19.

Letter-writer Pearl Eliadis, a former employee of a human rights commission, is entitled to her own opinions, but she's not entitled to her own facts.

Ms. Eliadis denies that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has a 100% conviction rate for hate speech prosecutions. But it's true: Since the law was enacted in 1977, not a single person has ever been acquitted by the tribunal that hears the cases. That's not surprising, given that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act does not allow truth or fair comment as a defence.

In the 32 years the law has been used, only one prosecution has ever failed: the ridiculous case of beachesboy@aol.com vs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com.Seriously, that's what the case was called -- one Internet nickname complained about what another nickname said on an Internet chat site. The CHRC subpoenaed AOL to find out who drumsaremybeat@aol.com was and narrowed it down to someone living at the home of Ronald and Heather Fleming in Edmonton. But the CHRC refused to tell the Flemings who beachesboy@aol.com was.

drumsaremybeat@aol.com -- whether or not it was one of the Flemings -- wasn't convicted that day. But he wasn't acquitted, either. The CHRC forgot to bring any witnesses or the mystery complainant, beachesboy@aol.com. So after asking the security guard to look around the lobby for someone looking like a beach boy, the tribunal just cancelled the whole gong show. That's not an acquittal -- that's just incompetence. Other than that, every single person who the CHRC has prosecuted has been convicted. Not even North Korea can boast a 100% conviction rate.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

As you can see, I forgot to add the "human rights activist" title after my name! Here's Eliadis's reply:

Re: The Hate-Speech Debate (II), letter to the editor, June 23.

Letter-writer Ezra Levant can't have it both ways. When he was targeted by human rights complaints, he (and others like him) protested that his "conviction" was a certainty, even though the complaint was only at the preliminary screening stage. At that stage, however, the statistic I quoted ( "Understanding the hate speech debate, letter, June 19") -- which is publicly available at page 24 of the Special Report to Parliament-- is nowhere near 100%. In fact, only one-quarter of cases get through.

What Mr. Levant now does is to change footing, by blurring the preliminary screening phase and the tribunal phase. Once a case gets that far, very few complainants lose--not because the fix is in, but because commissions screen aggressively. The numbers speak for themselves: For example, in Quebec, roughly 1,500 human rights cases are filed each year and about 750 are investigated. Of those, about 95% are bounced before getting anywhere near a tribunal.

Mr. Levant is right to point out that the success rates are high among the very few that do get to tribunal. Continuing the Quebec example, the rates hover in the 90% range for all cases --but the point is that it is 90% of less than 5%. To go on about "100% rates" when what we are talking about is "100%" of such tiny numbers is stunningly disingenuous.

Pearl Eliadis, Montreal.

I see she no longer calls herselt a human rights lawyer -- or the Post no longer went along with her conceit. Anyways, here's my final word on the matter:

Re: Hate-Speech Debate (III), letter to the editor, June 25.

Former HRC-employee Pearl Eliadis says we shouldn't be worried about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's 100% conviction rate for censorship prosecutions, because the CHRC doesn't prosecute every complaint it receives. Of course it doesn't -- it would need a much larger budget to prosecute everyone on its list of enemies. According to CHRC boss Jennifer Lynch, that's 1,200 files.

Ms. Eliadis says that for every victim the CHRC formally prosecutes, many more are investigated without a formal hearing. I know all about that: I was investigated for 900 days by 15 bureaucrats and lawyers at Alberta's HRC because of some cartoons in a magazine I published. In the end, the HRC didn't formally prosecute me, but taxpayers spent $500,000 on that witch hunt and I was stuck with my own $100,000 legal bill.

Recently, the CHRC targeted Father Alphonse de Valk, an elderly Toronto priest. He didn't have his day in kangaroo court -- but he was put through the ringer by the CHRC all the same. As he struggles to pay off his $20,000 legal bill, I doubt he feels good that he wasn't formally "prosecuted" -- merely harassed for two years by a human rights commission that doesn't give a damn about human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

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.

 

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! 

I should have devoted more attention to the leadership contest for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Four candidates ran in that election -- Tim Hudak, Frank Klees, Christine Elliott and Randy Hillier. And -- amazingly -- reform of Ontario's out-of-control human rights commission became the central policy debate of the race.

Stop for a moment to reflect on how incredible that is. That simply wouldn't have happened two years ago, or perhaps even a year ago. That is a testament to the denormalization of Canada's HRCs, and how politically-aware Canadians (particularl