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By Deborah Gyapong
CONTROVERSIAL columnist and former publisher Ezra Levant has tried to turn the tables on Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) by posting videos of his January 11 hearing on the Internet.
Several hundred thousand people have viewed Levant's YouTube videos, available through EzraLevant.com. Many columnists and talk radio programs have picked up the story.
Those who have long argued that human rights commissions (HRCs) have strayed from their original mandates to suppress freedom of expression and of religion hope the exposure will encourage the federal and provincial governments to rein them in.
Levant, the former publisher of the conservative newsweekly magazine Western Standard, appeared before the AHRC to respond to a complaint filed in 2005 by a Calgary imam after the magazine published Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
Extremists had used the cartoons to foment riots around the world that left more than 100 people dead and saw some embassies set on fire. Most North American news media, however, chose not to publish or display the cartoons.
"It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures," said Levant in his opening statement, which was subsequently published in the National Post and other Canwest newspapers. "That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state."
Catholic Civil Rights League executive director Joanne McGarry agreed HRCs should not be hearing cases like the complaint against Levant.
"This case is not about discrimination, but rather about the free debate of political and religious issues that were topical when the cartoons were published," she said. "While the right to free speech is not absolute, it is fundamental enough that any curtailment of it should be held to a much stricter legal standard, such as we see in court cases involving libel, slander or defamation."
Levant has pointed out on his site and in television interviews that the imam first tried to lay hate crimes charges against him, but police refused.
Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) general counsel Alan Borovoy, who played a role in the creation of HRCs and the laws that govern them, is concerned. "We never envisioned that these laws would be used as an instrument of censorship," he said.
"This trend towards using human rights laws as an instrument of censorship is a very backward and disquieting step," he said. "When you look at how broad the law potentially can be in this area, they could wind up censoring all kinds of material."
Borovoy said he finds especially troubling the fact that the law includes material "likely to expose" people to hatred or contempt. He noted the lack of any requirement for intent to foment hatred. The truth or a reasonable belief in truth is not a defense. That means news coverage of world hot spots such as Rwanda, Kosovo, the Middle East and Northern Ireland could be seen as subjecting any of the ethnic or religious groups involved to contempt or hatred under this law, he said.
In his opening statement, Levant argued that the "interrogation" went against 800 years of common law, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also described it as "procedurally unfair."
"Unlike real courts, there is no way to apply for a dismissal of nuisance lawsuits," he said. "Common law rules of evidence don't apply. Rules of court don't apply. It is a system that is part Kafka, and part Stalin. Even this interrogation today -- at which I appear under duress -- saw the commission tell me who I could or could not bring with me as my counsel and advisors."
Levant and others have also argued that even principles like "innocent before proven guilty" do not apply. While the complainants' costs are covered, the defendant has to pay his or her legal fees in most provinces. Levant told the AHRC that even if he wins he loses thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of wasted time. In his closing argument (also on YouTube) he said he hoped to lose his case so he could appeal to a "real" court.
REAL Women of Canada was one of the first organizations to raise alarms about HRCs back in 1989. "Now, finally it's become general information and general knowledge," said REAL Women's executive vice president Gwendolyn Landolt. "It's an agony for Canada these people have this power and influence."
To Levant's procedural complaints she added that the commission sits in judgment after their "own personnel create a dossier against the accused" and that commissioners are often not legally qualified for their roles.
The Centre for Cultural Renewal's executive director Iain Benson said the widespread viewing of Levant's videos will "in effect 'out' the kind of things that are implied when we begin to adjudicate for 'hurt feelings.'"
"That is good for Canada where so many Canadians seem satisfied that all is right with human rights generally and tolerance in particular," he said. "It is far from all right."
Levant's case has gained additional traction because his hearing occurred right after the huge publicity given to human rights complaints launched against Maclean's magazine for running an excerpt of conservative columnist Mark Steyn's book America Alone. That complaint, filed by Canadian Islamic Congress national president Mohammed Elmasry, accuses the excerpt of being "flagrantly Islamophobic." Less well known are human rights complaints leveled recently against Catholic Insight magazine for articles alleged to be homophobic.
Both Benson and Borovoy, however, hope reaction against HRCs does not undermine their original purpose, which Borovoy said was to focus on "discriminatory deeds, not words" in areas of housing and employment.
"There is an important place for genuine human rights protection but this work will be hampered by this kind of inquisition about which Mr. Levant complains," said Benson.
In recent years, many Christians and Christian organizations have faced HRC complaints, including Calgary Bishop Fred Henry and a British Columbia Knights of Columbus council.
-- copyright Canadian Catholic News. Please do not reprint without permission.
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The right not to be offended
Do you remember a cover story Maclean's ran on Oct. 23, 2006? No? Me neither, and I wrote it. Such is life in the weekly mag biz. But it was an excerpt on various geopolitical and demographic trends from my then brand new tome, America Alone: The End of the World as we Know It. I don't know whether my bestselling book is still available in Canadian bookstores, but it's coming soon to a Canadian "courtroom" near you! The Canadian Islamic Congress and a handful of Osgoode Hall law students have complained about the article in Maclean's to (at last count) three of Canada's many "human rights" commissions, two of which have agreed to hear the "case." It would be nice to report that the third sent the plaintiffs away with a flea in their ears saying that in a free society it's no business of the state to regulate the content of privately owned magazines. Alas, I gather it's only bureaucratic torpor that has temporarily delayed the province of Ontario's enthusiastic leap upon the bandwagon. These students are not cited in the offending article. Canadian Muslims are not the subject of the piece. Indeed, Canada is not mentioned at all, except en passant. Yet Canada's "human rights" commissions have accepted the premise of the Canadian Islamic Congress - that the article potentially breaches these students' "human rights."
Mark Steyn, Maclean's, January 12
Defiant Levant republishes cartoons
A controversial conservative commentator was unrepentant going into a Human Rights and Citizenship Commission hearing yesterday, using his Web site to republish the same cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that got him into trouble in the first place.
Keith Bonnell, Canwest News Service, January 12
An object lesson in free speech and democracy
In a free country, we have to live with how some of the 40 per cent of Canadians who find homosexuality morally unacceptable might "hate homosexuality." We can't legislate what people feel. Canadians have the right to hold offensive views about minorities -- so long as they don't actively discriminate against them. Other Canadians, meanwhile, have the right to tell people with harsh beliefs exactly why they believe they're wrong. It's called democracy.
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, January 12
Alberta's gauntlet of bias
Ezra Levant is a courageous man. On Friday, he flipped the bird at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The AHRC, and the rest of the country's human rights witch hunts, have long needed the bird flipped at them.
Lorne Gunter, National Post, January 14
Cartoons and Islam
A couple of conservative bloggers have said they want to know my opinion about Ezra Levant's efforts to defend those infamous anti-Islam cartoons. (I'm not interested in re-hashing Ezra's personal approach to limitations on the speech.) So here goes.
Warren Kinsella, Full Comment, National Post, January 14
'Human Rights' Vs. Magna Carta
What follows is excerpted from a transcript of remarks delivered by former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant before the Alberta Human Rights Commission in Calgary on Jan. 11.
Ezra Levant, National Post, January 15
Kafka's Canada
At the moment, a number of "interesting" cases are coming before Canada's inaptly-named "human rights commissions." I have mentioned in this space before the case being brought against Maclean's magazine, for publishing an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn, by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Ezra Levant has just gone on "trial" before an Alberta "human rights" tribunal, for what he had published in the (now defunct) Western Standard newsmagazine two years ago. He ran examples of the Danish cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed -- to show readers that the fuss over them was overblown. His right to publish is being contested.
David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, January 16
Too many rights make a wrong
It was one of those rare, particularly sunny days in Vancouver in September when, addressing an audience at the University of British Columbia, I suggested that multiculturalism and its partner in crime, moral relativism, were leading to the demise of Western values. "But you must understand," implored a well-intentioned woman in the audience, "multiculturalism is Canada's gift to the world." If Australia is set to follow Canada, then thanks, but no thanks. Call me ungrateful, but we should have returned the gift to Canada long ago. I say that as someone who has long adored Canada. Its politics may be as dripping wet as Vancouver, but the people are warm and funny, and there is something sweet about the US's insecure, slightly wimpy northern neighbour. Yet there comes a point when weakness morphs into a reckless death wish. That point is about now. I'm back in Canada and the distinct chill is not just in the air. Last Friday, conservative commentator Ezra Levant was hauled before Alberta's Human Rights and Citizenship Commission for publishing the infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons two years ago in the Western Standard.
Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, January 16
Freedom such a fleeting thing, even in Canada
If I have my heart set, for whatever reason, on advertising for a female nurse, a heterosexual bookkeeper, or a Catholic janitor, there should be no legislation forbidding me to do so. Any society prohibiting such discrimination -- prohibiting it, that is, for anyone but the government itself, for public jobs or accommodation -- is no longer free.
George Jonas, CanWest Publications, January 17
The ideological crush
A year or so back, I wrote a review of Robert Ferrigno's fine novel, Prayers for the Assassin. I'd all but forgotten what I said until it turned up in the Canadian Islamic Congress's "dossier" documenting Maclean's "flagrant Islamophobia" that they've submitted to the thought police of the human rights commissions. Welcome to the new Canada, where reviewing a fictional story about fictional characters gets you hauled up in front of government tribunals. Good luck holding that society together, "liberals." At the time I reviewed it, I was skeptical of Ferrigno's premise -- that a free Western society would voluntarily convert en masse to Islam. A year on, it doesn't seem so far-fetched, not if you listen to Miss Greer; or the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle who says she's also a practising Muslim; or indeed the various correspondents to Canadian newspapers so anxious to sign up to the reductive definition of "free" speech understood by certain Muslim lobby groups.
Mark Steyn, Maclean's, January 19
Canada's wonderland
I wonder if I should make a complaint to a "Human" "Rights" "Commission" (I write sarcastically). Perhaps I could get a hundred or more journalists to go in with me. The complaint would be lodged with the "human rights" bureaucracies for Canada, British Columbia, Alberta, and perhaps Ontario -- simultaneously, the way the Canadian Islamic Congress has brought its case against Maclean's magazine for publishing Mark Steyn.
David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, January 20
What a strange place Canada is
What a strange place Canada is in 2008, where the police care more about human rights than the human rights commissions do, where fundamentalist Muslims use hate-speech laws drafted by secular Jews, and where a government bureaucrat can interrogate a publisher for 90 minutes, and be shocked when he won't shake her hand in greeting.
Ezra Levant, Globe and Mail, January 21
Fire the censors
Although the episode was virtually ignored by the mainstream media of the day, I remember it quite well because of the growing threat it posed to free speech. I especially recall that, in writing about the pro-choicers' demands, I interviewed an erudite and eloquent public-policy expert who spoke passionately about this threat. "Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society," the man said. "It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this very scary stuff." That person was the president of the National Citizens Coalition, a politically astute fellow by the name of Stephen Harper, a man who, of course, has now gone on to much bigger and better things. I don't think it would be too much to ask of Mr. Harper now that he put his words into action, and move to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to eliminate the commission's censorious powers. Perhaps such a move would inspire Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell to act similarly.
Terry O'Neill, National Post, January 23
That's for sure
In the three decades of the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal's existence, not a single "defendant" has been "acquitted." Would you bet on Maclean's bucking this spectacular 100 per cent conviction rate? "Sentence first, verdict afterwards," declares the queen in Alice In Wonderland. Canada's not quite there yet, but at the Human Rights Commission, it's "Verdict first, trial afterwards." So I'm guilty and Ken Whyte's guilty and Maclean's is guilty because that's the only verdict there is. Who has availed themselves of the "human rights" protected by Section XIII? In its entire history, over half of all cases have been brought by a sole "complainant," one Richard Warman. Indeed, Mr. Warman has been a plaintiff on every single Section XIII case before the federal "human rights" star chamber since 2002 -- and he's won every one. That would suggest that no man in any free society anywhere on the planet has been so comprehensively deprived of his human rights. Well, no. Mr. Warman doesn't have to demonstrate that he's been deprived of his human rights, only that it's "likely" (i.e. "highly un-") that someone somewhere will be deprived of some right sometime. Who is Richard Warman? What's his story? Well, he's a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission: an investigator. Same as Shirlene McGovern.
Mark Steyn, Maclean's, January 26
What's at stake at Durban II
These are more than mere words. We have already witnessed attempts to put the UN bureaucracy to work as an international enforcer of Islamic definitions of blasphemy. During the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005, the Organization of Islamic Countries demanded that the UN condemn the cartoons as a form of racism. The UN did not quite do that. But UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, a Canadian, did take jurisdiction of the matter and did promise an investigation.
David Frum, National Post, January 26
What I'm reading
The Prophet's literary critics object. Their arguments are no less "pointed and weighty" than they were in the days of Hassan ibn Sabbah and the original assassins. In Eurabia they've been threatening to silence Hirsi Ali physically; in Canarabia they try sharpening daggers of "human rights" to silence Steyn figuratively. Every day Human Rights Commissions exist we move nearer the nightmarish world of tyranny.
George Jonas, National Post, January 26
On Ezra and human rights panels
I have not written, anywhere, that I actually support the human rights complaints against Messrs. Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. I don't. The complaints don't meet the threshold for the types of issues with which human rights bodies should be concerned. Both cases, if they proceed any further - I strongly suspect they won't - actually risk delegitimizing future complaints involving fact situations that are far more harmful.
Warren Kinsella, Full Comment, National Post, January 29
Ezra Levant on Warren Kinsella on Ezra Levant ... on Ezra Levant
As the great legal scholar and intellectual, Warren Kinsella, has written, I am a defamation lawyer, and have represented both plaintiffs and defendants, and I have occasionally been a litigant myself. Kinsella says I'm a "fraud" and "full of crap" because I believe defamation law is legitimate law, but believe that government censorship through human rights commissions isn't legitimate. That's not a real argument, of course. It's an attempt to discredit me personally -- not my ideas. I support laws against other forms of speech, like fraud, forgery or copyright violation. Kinsella sets up a false dichotomy: I must either support all legal restrictions on speech, or none; I must either support both real courts and kangaroo courts, or neither.
Ezra Levant, Full Comment, National Post, January 29
The free-speech myth
In railing against censorship, we should take care not to falsely simplify the evolution of free expression in this country. Modern pundits tend to cast our history as one in which a tradition of untrammeled free speech has given way to the predations of politically correct thought police. In fact, censorship has long been a feature of the Canadian legal landscape. This is important when we discuss the travails of Maclean's magazine and former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant -- both of which are accused by human-rights complainants of publishing nasty material about Muslims.
Bob Tarantino, National Post, January 30
January 31/2008
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have
organized to censor a variety of sources of news and information that disseminate knowledge of Islam.
http://lee-phillips.org/youtube