On the front page of today’s National Post;
Next Tuesday, at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa, one of Canada’s most prominent white supremacist propagandists, backed by the legal team that defended Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel, will put the country’s entire human rights bureaucracy on the witness stand.
After months of closed-door wrangling, a constitutional challenge, an appeal to federal court and a blizzard of legal motions, Marc Lemire can now interrogate, under oath, two investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission about why they posted provocative comments on his and other ultra-conservative Web sites. Much credibility hangs on their answers.
The curious thing about the hearing, which will make it a crucial moment in the history of Canadian human rights law, is that Mr. Lemire, the last president of the now defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, enjoys the qualified support of a Liberal MP, PEN Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — even a leader of B’nai Brith Canada.
[…]
All of which points to next week’s hearing in Warman v. Lemire as a watershed moment in the history of Canadian domestic human rights law.
It is as if all the cases, legitimate or ridiculous, are to be represented by this one, a most unfrivolous complaint against a prominent distributor of white supremacist propaganda, which threatens to implode not only because of the alleged unconstitutionality of the law, but because of shady investigatory practices.
Read the whole thing.
(And when you’re finished, don’t miss this one – “Axis of Shove It”)
Ed Minchau/DaninVan:
I think Shirlene McGovern resigned from Ezra’s case but not from her job with the AHRC.
Lori:
Thanks for your comments regarding the tone of the discussion. I have long felt that the cause of the right can be presented much more clearly and by using reasoned words than can that of the left. There is no need for expressions of anger when Canadians are starting to wake up to this very large issue.
right, Shirlene McGovern resigned from Ezra’s CASE. Not from the AHRC. Remember, she needs her salary and benefits and pension and…
She resigned because she didn’t like the publicity. After all, she was part of Ezra’s video
I’d like to add Kate to my 6:33 p.m. list.
With Canadians like these “standing on guard” for us, things could be far worse!
Good points lookout. Seems the CHRC thought they were poking a gopher and have just discovered they’ve poked the tail of the head of a pride of lions.
I didn’t like the direction of the article, but to those who read the whole thing, the glaring problems posed by HRC’s should be self-evident.
Given that HRC’s are using illegal tactics in dealing with people they don’t like, what are the chances that they give a fair hearing to people who are accused of employment/housing discrimination. I suspect that HRC’s are completely rotten and that the only way to deal with the problem is to completely disband them. It will be interesting to see if the NP article gets people who have been brought up before the HRC for non-political “crimes” start speaking out now.
Brent Weston said
” I have long felt that the cause of the right can be presented much more clearly and by using reasoned words than can that of the left. There is no need for expressions of anger when Canadians are starting to wake up to this very large issue.”
I second that. Very socially thoughtful and quite politically prudent.
Not to mention just plain truthful!
Well, finally got enough time to read the whole NP piece. I found it to be seriously short of satisfying. For one thing, Warman was soft-soaped. Brean simply neglected to point out Warman’s scandalous personal profit angle made even more scandalous by his having been a former employee of the HRC. And note the reference to how heart-broken Warman would be if the “baby gets tossed out with the bathwater”?
And what’s with the Mercer reference to Levant as one of the most annoying people on the planet. And why refer to Levant as a gadfly? That’s a bit demeaning, eh?
We’ve talked about this columnist before, what? He’s an a**hole, or perhaps, using penny’s immortal phrase, a “young person”. He doesn’t get it. He’s doing copy to a deadline.
An odd piece: sorta sounded like, “well, this is ‘conservative” paper’ so I have to say to at least hint at the basic principle of free speech but, er, I’ll try to balance that out as much as possible with lotsa nuance … unlike that loud and obnoxious Jew-boy; but ya know, maybe he’s not all that bad, after all Mercer is a “good friend”.
Two things:
1) What’s the concern on this thread with a lack of courtesy or reasoned argument? I don’t detect a problem.
2) I’m really concerned about the possibility that the CHRC babies might actually sabotage the hearing on March 25th. I’ve reread Ezra Levant’s March 20th post—below—and it seems that the most blatant grandstanding and snivelling on the part of CHRC lawyers has been allowed.
Read the incredibly ridiculous excuses of the CHRC lawyer, Vigna, which were accepted by the Chairman of the Tribunal, who allowed the Lemire hearing, in May, to be stopped.
For the CHRC lawyer and Chair of the Tribunal, the adjournment was all in a day’s work, for which they’d be paid—by you and me, dear taxpayer. The expenses of Lemire, who was using his vacation time, and his legal team, all from out of town, were being borne by Lemire.
(I have NO sympathy for the views of white supremacists, but I do have a lot of sympathy for a fellow citizen whose rights to due process are being trampled upon. An interesting double standard: the most egregious ACTIONS on the part of certain minorities are excused, while the WORDS of a person like Lemire are actionable. Oh, Canada.)
When you read Vigna’s juvenile excuses, just think: would YOU be relieved of your professional resposibilities if you tried on such a ridiculous, time and cost consuming excuse?
Below the line, minus quotation marks, is part of Ezra Levant’s post on March 20th, “Even the human rights tribunal is sick of the human rights commission”.
Cast of Characters:
MR. VIGNA: CHRC lawyer
THE CHRT CHAIRPERSON: Athanasios Hadjis
MS. KULASZKA: Marc Lemire’s lawyer
MR. CHRISTIE: lawyer and intervenor (I
believe) on Lemire’s behalf
______________________________
There has always been a quiet compact between the CHRCommission (the kangaroo investigators and prosecutors) and the CHRTribunal (the kangaroo judges and court apparatus): each would pretend that they were operating as parts of a legitimate legal system, even if there was a nod and a wink between them as they ground out a 100% conviction rate by systematically violating norms of natural justice. But the CHRC broke that deal — when Marc Lemire started using the Tribunal’s rules against the CHRC, the CHRC started treating Hadjis and the CHRTribunal with contempt, making absurd objections and doing whatever else it took to avoid Hadjis’s authority.
But the fear of the Federal Court has caused the CHRC to drop its absurd national security objections; and so now they’re back before Hadjis. Fool me once, the saying goes, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Hadjis read the embarrassing whine that that CHRC filed as a legal “argument” for keeping out the press again, and smacked it down hard — essentially calling the CHRC liars. Tuesday’s going to be interesting.
Or will it?
The CHRC’s section 37 national security objection is gone. And the Tribunal’s secret trial provision is gone. Does this mean that we really will get to hear about the inner workings of the CHRC? Maybe. But the CHRC still has a few tricks up its sleeve yet.
Do you think a rogue, secretive, abusive organization that regularly defies the rule of law — hell, forget those abstract principles; how about the embarrassing political optics of an “anti-hate” agency that admits to posting hateful messages on the Internet itself — would really go willingly into Tuesday’s hearing, with the national press assembled there to record their every misdeed and malefaction?
The CHRC already tried the “but they’re angry at us” argument. I think it’s just as likely that we’ll get the “I’m not serene” objection next.
What’s that? The CHRC tried it last year, and it worked. Look at this bizarre exchange last May (at page 4867 of this transcript). It literally goes on for 20 excruciating pages of stenography.
Giacomo Vigna was the CHRC’s lawyer, and the way he ground the hearing to a halt reminds me of a student pulling the fire alarm to get out of writing an exam. Here are just a few excerpts. You really must read the whole thing. Do it for the laughs alone — it’s really better than reading fiction. If this were a TV courtroom show, audiences just wouldn’t buy it — it’s a farce, not a drama:
MR. VIGNA: Sorry. Mr. Chair, I don’t have the flu but I don’t feel in a serene state of mind to proceed with the file today. I don’t feel very well. I feel dizzy, I feel anxiety, and I am not in a serene state of mind to proceed with this file today.
I have a lot of things worrying me right now and I don’t want to elaborate, but my colleague said, Mr. Fine, there are some certain incidents that have occurred which I don’t feel at liberty to elaborate right now, which have had an impact on my ability to proceed in a professional way on this file, at least for today, because I wouldn’t be rendering the Commission a just service by proceeding in this condition.
I am not dying, Mr. Chair, I don’t have the flu, but I am not mentally capable of proceeding under these circumstances.
THE CHAIRPERSON: But the witness is here?
MR. VIGNA: The witness is here. It’s not the question of the witness. The witness is here. I thought until this morning that I would proceed, but I really don’t feel primarily mentally able to proceed, and physically too.
MS. KULASZKA: I am very concerned about this very hush hush allegation that some sort of breach of security has happened. The only people who have been here for the last two days are us, either counsel or a representative of the party. No one else has been here in this room. I know of no incident outside that’s happened….
MR. CHRISTIE: I have heard two explanations which are as frivolous as any I have ever heard in justifying an adjournment of a whole proceeding… To say I am not feeling well, but sit here and talk about it, is inconsistent. There is no medical certificate, and I heard very faintly Mr. Vigna say I’m not physically sick, I don’t have a serene state of mind. Very few of us in the difficulties we face always have a serene state of mind. I don’t know what that means.
This is not a case of a nervous breakdown or a mental state justifying a psychiatric examination. I am certain of that. To say I don’t feel like doing it today is insulting…
MR. VIGNA: Mr. Chair, I will provide a medical certificate.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Please sit down, Mr. Vigna.
MR. VIGNA: I feel insulted by that comment.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Please sit down.
Now that kind of acting, that plain old brazening it out, that looking someone right in the eye and fibbing, that fantasism, takes a lot of chutzpah. But Vigna did it without blushing. Vigna’s gone –perhaps like Ms. Rizk he went on stress leave.
Do you think the CHRC’s new lawyers have the gall to try a gambit like that on Tuesday with the press there? It’s a tough call: face national execration and ridicule for pulling a transparent stunt like that; or face national execration and ridicule for the abusive way the CHRC conducts its thought crimes investigations. That’s called a lose-lose proposition.
I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance the CHRC’s lawyers or staff will pull a Vigna vignette and claim they’ve lost their “serenity” and scupper the hearing — or pull the fire alarm, or do some other childish stunt of the same calibre as their childish Internet costume parties where they dress up as bigots, but then later say they didn’t mean it.
A Vigna vignette would be humiliating and cowardly — but a humiliated coward survives. I don’t think the CHRC can politically survive the full disclosure of their dirty tactics.
Read the transcript, and tell me what you think is going to happen on Tuesday.
____________
lookout again. Until rereading this, I’d have said there’s no way the CHRC can wiggle out of the indictments against it. In “real life”, people are not allowed to use the weasel tricks it seems the CHRC lawyers are allowed.
If any person out there with legal training or insight into this strange phenomenon, of a paid professional being allowed to behave like a toddler and be excused from his/her obligations on a whim, I’d be very interested in your input.
This whole think of the CHRC is crap. If any one has a problem with what some one says it should go be for the courts, not some some brain dead government body staffed by their people. 1984 is coming to pass with people that even agree, that we should have a commission. It’s no more than a court of thought crimes. Power does corrupt as we can see. Give powers like that to a group of government people and you have problems. Nothing can fix it except cancel it. Leave it to the judicial system where it belongs period.
MND, my sentiments, exactly, expressed a few hours ago.
lookout
“What’s the concern on this thread with a lack of courtesy or reasoned argument? I don’t detect a problem.”
Exactly! Re-read Brent Weston’s observation.
The courtesy here UNDERLINES the Rights’ political views whereas the Left tends to UNDERMINE political courtesy and fairplay by supporting star chambers like the HRCs.
Now, I’m sure some yahoo will from the left will come along and point to some yahoo from the right. However, the right yahoo won’t call for retribution and government censorship or prohibitions whereas the left yahoo will..
Well, that’s why we have this thread, isn’t it? Canadians have finally begun to recognize which yahoo is the greater threat.
h2o-plus, I copy that!
I have been gleefully watching this entire mess unfold on the CHRC.
They made a sh*t decision in 1990 against a young CF Private.
Their arrogance is coming around to bite them in the ass.
It was just a matter of time that they would exceed themselves with someone who’d take them out behind the woodshed.
Re all of this: Mark Steyn’s latest post and his links to Deborah Gyapong, a Canadian journalist, are must reads.
It would be interesting to get a real Judges & lawyers opinions. On why this anti social psudo-legal group has been allowed to exist? Why has not the real justice establishment not spoken up about this abuse?
dfasdfa exaggerates but he/she certainly has a point.
Canadians seem to have been sleepwalking for some decades. There are many reasons for this: loss of faith in God and in ourselves as a people whose Judeo-Christian, British common law culture is valuable; the subsequent lack of discernment as we accept and follow more and more the false gods of materialism and relativism; the subsequent clouding of our minds and our willingness to be hoodwinked by propaganda, e.g., Trudeau tells us we’re getting a Charter of “Rights and Freedoms” and—“My those words sound nice!”—we believe him. (Someone has called it the Charter of “Fights and Fiefdoms”, which is a much better description.)
The vaguely worded Charter, which has actually divided us as a people, who squabble for their share of the “rights”, has been used to hollow out our democracy: appointed, activist judges have used the Charter to end run Parliament and rule from the bench, by, at their usually left-wing, ideological whim, “reading in” or “reading out” “rights” they want to add or which they don’t like. To expect that these people, who are all too willing to abuse due process themselves by using the Charter to impose their own ideas about what society should be like, to “rescue” us is hardly realistic.
Then we have our politicians, who are either left-wing ideologues themselves—the four opposition parties come to mind—or, even if they are conservative, with a majority, are too afraid to use Section 33, the Notwithstanding Clause (NWC) of the Charter to rein in the heavy handed, often left-wing judges with a “progressive” agenda. Part of the reason for all of this is the duplicitous MSM, which regularly lies to the people of Canada, e.g., the MSM frame the NWC as undemocratic and an abuse of government’s power. Nothing could be further from the truth: the NWC is PART of the Charter and restores democracy by returning power to our elected representatives. (Our judges are all appointed—most by the Liberals).
Then that gets us to the people themselves, who have basically sat back and allowed this undemocratic and radical restructuring of our society to happen. (Ideological, unelected judges actually MAKE law in this country: think how our social norms have been drastically altered by our judges, not Parliament, in the last few decades). Part of the problem is our appalling public school system, hijacked also by a left-wing, revisionist agenda. History is mainly propaganda about how horrible the West is: the false ideology of victimhood is promoted big time. The Charter is taught as a societal good, period.
Canadians have been brainwashed and, because they no longer know who they are—“You-are-what-the-“progressive”-state/MSM-say-you-are”—they no longer have the strength of their convictions. (Most SDA types are different.) So, when the Liberals, whose main agenda is getting and keeping power, decided to “protect our rights” by the establishment of “Human Rights” Commissions, Canadians again fell for the lie: “human” and “rights” are such nice words: let’s go for it! Then, of course, Canadians went back to their own lives and allowed the “experts” to wreak havoc. And here’s the MSM again: they LIKE the havoc and so have either deep sixed the story—e.g., the March 25th hearing—or spun it as good for Canada: hmmm . . . isn’t it good that Canadians’ basic freedoms to the rule of law and due process are being trampled in these kangaroo courts?
This is a democracy. Like freedom, it’s not free. Constant vigilance is needed. In this country, the Establishment is staunchly collectivist and materialist. Virtually all of our institutions, public and private (all kinds of churches, the “Y”, etc.) promote the left-wing ideology and agenda. Follow the money. The Human Rights (sic) Industry uses up vast amounts of resources, and, the more “rights” they can discover, the more cases they’ll have, and the more jobs and resources they’ll need. Like so many of the government programs in this country, it’s a sham and a scam. But, most Canadians live their “I’m OK; you must be OK (let’s not be judgemental)” lives, with no clue about what’s really going on. Canadians don’t like “not nice”.
That’s too bad because “not nice” in many guises, one being the corrupt Human Rights (sic) Commissions is curled up, like a poisonous snake, and living amongst us. Until—and if: it may be too late—Canadians stop being hypnotized by the propaganda of the Powers that Be, ably aided and abetted by the corrupt and self-serving MSM, we’re sitting ducks for the Orwellian society we’re fast becoming.
Today is Easter, the return to Life of the Truth that I believe sustains us all. There is hope, true hope, if only we are able to see it amidst the smoke and mirrors of our kaleidoscope, bread and circuses world. I’m now going to quote Jesus: let’s stop to consider that under the human rights (sic) rubrics of this country, my right to do this in a public place is severely restricted. I might “offend” someone. Remember, too, that in our courts, when Charter rights have been in competition, religious “rights”—no, the “rights” of orthodox Christians—have been trumped every time. Kyrie eleison.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” Amen. Alleuia!
Make that “Alleluia!”
You have said it all lookout and you have said it well!! Every Canadian in this country should be forced to listin to someone read your post to them.
Would you mind if I copied it and sent it to all the people on my e-mail list?
THANK_YOU. God Bless You.
Thank YOU, Jema.
Please feel free to send the post to whomever you wish—with my blessings. (But, if you leave in the last two paragraphs, please copy them into “Word” first and correct the spelling of “Alleluia”!!)
God bless you and your loved ones this holy season.
Thank -you lookout – it is going to the presses as soon as I finish posting this note of appreciation.
Jema54, you’re welcome!