Further if some bureaucratic bimbo wants to be involved in some self-aggrandizing judgement of supposed hate speech (“I will judge your intentions, for I am a tribunalist, and I perceive your heart from afar”), then she deserves to lambasted at every street corner. So, you want a more “reasoned” approach? Sometimes principle is at stake. Sometimes a pseudo-academic paper written by the same crowd of people that sit on the tribunal isn’t gonna cut it. Make some noise. Change things. Get off your butt.

@Mike T, don’t even try to compare hate speech censorship to things dealt with on an “administrative tribunal”. One is a matter of fundamental principle. The other, well, excruciatingly boring minutia that courts don’t want to waste time on.

I was going o suggest the same thing about MacLean’s, but then what would Jack Mitchell do with his days

Below From National Post

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1271435

“Prof. Moon targeted Ezra Levant in particular, whose blog is a clearinghouse for skepticism of human rights law, and who claimed the day before Prof. Moon’s report was released that it had been “redacted by Jennifer Lynch,” the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

“The claim was false,” Prof. Moon told the all-party panel. “I was given complete independence, and when my report was released the following day and recommended the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the falsity of Levant’s claim was obvious. He had just made it up. He thought he knew what I would say and he sought to discredit the report in advance by attacking me and the commission rather than the arguments I might make.”

And there is more. Ezra likes to tell people that the BC Human Rights Commission sided with a worker at McDonalad’s who refused to wash her hands and held up her right to have dirty hands. As usual for anyone who actually took the time to read the full decision will see quite clearly that

http://www.bchrt.bc.ca/decisions/2007/pdf/aug/324_Datt_v_McDonalds_Restaurants_%28No_3%29_2007_BCHRT_324.pdf

there was no argument that employees not wash their hands. The issue was that McDonald’s didn’t make an effort to work with the person to find an accomodation. She had a terrible skin rash and was unable to use soaps or solvents. This was a problem of insurance company case-workers not communicating with McDonald’s, and McDonald’s making a bad choice and refusing to do things that the law requires them to do: to try and find some other way for the employee to continue their job.

The managers, when they gave it any thought at all, were directing their “creative energy” to all the ways an accomodation wouldn’t work, instead of thinking of possible accomodations. The Supreme Court has already noted that this is not permissable and th BCHRC was upholding the law.

In other words there is enough in Levant’s writings then repeated in his book that are provably false. But reviewers are more taken with his bombast and never look past as Moon said “his making things up”. I am hopeful that when Andrew Potter really looks into Ezra Levant’s book he will expose it for what it is.

Early on in the book Levant makes the claim that the Canadian Jewish Congress “paid John Garrity,a small time mercenary,to build up the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party….Garrity – and the CJC’s money – built the Canadian Nazi Party into a media sensation.”

This is frankly just a lie. I am very familiar with this history and well before the Garrity incident Canadian Nazi leader John William Beattie and his gang had garnered the media spotlight. They were albeit small but by goosestepping down the streets of Toronto , wearing Nazi uniforms and distributing nazi propaganda which even made its way into schools they had the city’s Jewish community in fear. After all it was only less that 20 years since the Holocaust at the time.

This chapter from a book by noted historian Franklin Bialystok tells the whole story not the made-up one by Levant.

http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cjs/article/viewFile/3474/2674

I also have a copy of the actual MacLeans article that Levant based this fiction on. The story published in MacLeans on October 1st 1966, entitled “I spied on the Nazis” was written by by Garrity himself. As I recall his full expenditure was about $100.00, buying some alcohol and costs for copying lists and materials. These costs have been inflated by Levant to create an impression that the CJC boosted and funded the Canadian Nazi Party. It is gross and irresponsible writing. The fact that Levant would make up stories when the truth is there for any decent journalist to uncover tells us more about Levant than we possibly care to know.

Jack, your possible the most prolific poster ever. Is there more than one of you. Like a brace of grouse or a murder of crows, is it possible there’s a sniggering of Mitchells toiling in some deep dark library cellar.

Of course I’ve followed the Macleans’s/Levant epic. Day-by-day, during the peak period. You are willfully misunderstanding my point. By baring his fangs so ferociously, Levant scared the Alberta HRC mightily; likewise the Maclean’s legal team in BC. If their object was merely to win their own cases, that was the right strategy; if they’d meant to actually effect change in the law, they would have had to lose the case, be fined, appeal, roll out the big guns, and win the constitutional argument. As it is, they both give the impression of being so scared for their own skins in their particular that they didn’t lure the HRC’s into the trap of a constitutional challenge. That would have needed guts, and it would not only have publicised the HRC’s but overturned the law. Every moment you complain about the HRC’s henceforth, remember that there are two reasons they still exist: Levant and Maclean’s.

There was a case in British Columbia a few years ago where a policeman followed a trail of blood into a house and arrested a man for murder. The evidence gathered in that situation was thrown out because the police did not respect the person’s charter rights for privacy and that no warrant was had to enter the house.

Do you think that a person who says something objectionable should have less rights than someone who allegedly murdered?

The reaction of people like you to what Ezra is doing says more about you than Ezra. And it is not complementary. Maybe you should sue me for thinking such vile thoughts about you personally.

Derek

This is just weird, Jack. Your comments often demonstrate the gift of perspective. What happened?

Yeah, well, exactly. Where’s the political action to remove speech from their purview? I guess some Brodie has decided it would alienate the GTA ridings the Tories have their sights on. I don’t think it would, though: if properly handled, it would be a non-issue. Just leave the extremists out of it on both sides and pass a law on principle. You wouldn’t be shutting down the HRC’s, just removing speech from their purview.

What troubles me even more is that there hasn’t been an appeal ruling striking down the HRC’s, possibly because no one has appealed it. I was rather ticked off at Maclean’s, for instance, that they put up such a fight (in terms of lawyers and in terms of propaganda) at their Steyn hearing, instead of a bare-bones approach that might have seen them fined. If they’d been fined, they could have appealed the constitutionality of the HRC’s; if there was ever an open-and-shut Charter case, this is it. But no, they dropped the ball, and we’re left with the status quo.

Give it a rest, glak. For the record, this is exactly the kind of trap that Levant has baited and set with his anti-HRC crusade.

Do you see, Mr. Potter, do you see? Do you see what glak and Levant are doing here? As soon as I express my distaste for Levant’s views (well, not “as soon as” but pretty quickly) I get attacked (mildly, here) for my alleged appetite for censoring those views. I do not want to censor them. I believe in free speech. But free speech is merely being used as a shield against legitimate political debate (or, in this case, random insult from me). Levant is as guilty as the HRC’s of turning free speech into a partisan charade.

The Brits don’t seem all that excited about Galloway & free speech; perhaps the more one knows about the Levants and Galloways the less one is inclined to jump on their bandwagons. We couldn’t have two more depressing poster boys.

Personally, I don’t see Neo-nazis as a big problem in Canada. They are the lunatic fringe of a lunatic fringe, a microscopic flea riding on the back of a tiny flea. Probably two-thirds of them have some sort of mental health issue.

There are perhaps 200 neo-Nazis in a country with a population of 33 million. Instead of trying to “draw” tenuous connections, you should do the math.

Fearless prediction: No it won’t. It will be hello remainder bin in no time.

I guess we’ll just have to take your word for it.

“And whatever he told you about the Human Rights Commission was probably irrelevant, misleading, a lie or all three.”

Nice to be as omnipotent as you. Question; do you ever deal in facts?

If memory serves correctly they were published concurrently to said controversy thus shedding light. Also, who cares when they were published.

I don’t think this is what bcl and jack are saying at all. In fact, they’re saying the opposite of that, imho (which is what archangel was trying to get at with his attempt to display a “logical fallacy”). They’re not saying that Levant’s worthy points SHOULD be discounted because Levant is who he is, they’re saying that they are now, and probably will continue to be, discounted, because of who Levant is. They’re lamenting that fact.

BCL’s point isn’t “Levant’s a nut at the head of a bunch of crazies, so we should ignore everything he has to say, even it it seems like a good idea”. His point is “Isn’t it too bad that because Levant’s a nut at the head of a bunch of crazies, people will tend to ignore everything he has to say, even if it seems like a good idea.”.

Andrew, your civil chat with Ezra certainly piqued my curiosity. I look forward to reading the full report.

You’ll be happy to know that I’m engaging as hell.

No. He courted controversy by publishing them long after they had already caused controversy elsewhere. This was his alleged ‘courageous act’.

The human rights complaint came after.

Yeah, our tribe does that too, and abuses that power. All the better to ensure the process has sufficient legal protections for everyone. You never know which tribe is going to be in charge of which instrument of power. I have the suspicion that many people on the left don’t mind the irregularities of the Human Rights Commissions because they are confident that the people who are employed by them are the “right kind of people” and therefore can be trusted. What if the people who are employed by the HRC’s are people like me with the same amount of discretion and lack of oversight? They might be someday you know. You don’t even need a proper education in the law.

You know, if I was staffing HRC’s by appointment, I might think clergy would be ideal to determining human rights, given their strong background in ethics and community involvement…