Posted on 03/25/2008 6:21:04 PM PDT by canuck_conservative
OTTAWA -- Investigators at the Canadian Human Rights Commission share control of an online identity called Jadewarr, which they have used to anonymously monitor and contribute to controversial far-right and white supremacist Web sites, in a strategy that a prominent defendant calls entrapment.
The admission came in testimony Tuesday at the final day of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's hearing in the case of Marc Lemire, who is charged with violating the Human Rights Act's controversial hate speech section because of comments posted on his FreedomSite.
Legally, the admission by CHRC investigator Dean Steacy, and the subsequent cross-examination by Mr. Lemire's lawyers, was the most significant part of the day, in that it bolstered Mr. Lemire's case that he should not be held accountable for what others post on his site, especially if those others are government employees.
But as a microcosm of Canada's beleagured human rights bureacracy, there was much more to take note of, and no shortage of dark humour.
In the gallery, for instance, seated just in front of the thick-necked Lemire supporter who kept violently cracking his neck, was the conservative Maclean's columnist Mark Steyn, dapper with a red pocket puff, who at the breaks held court for his many fans and signed autographs. Based largely on a Steyn book excerpt it reprinted, Maclean's is also accused of a section 13.1 violation, brought by Mohamed Elmasry, the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and others.
Ezra Levant, the other high-profile section 13.1 defendant (he published the Danish Muhammad cartoons in his now-defunct Western Standard magazine) was not there, but he had the luxury of reading live Internet coverage of the hearing by Mr. Steyn's colleague Kady O'Malley and Mr. Lemire himself, who blogged from his chair closest to the witness stand.
There were moments of drama, such as when Mr. Steacy bluntly and repeatedly refused to answer a question (he was asked for the identity of an anonymous complainant, who never filed a formal complaint), to the evident shock of Athanasios Hadjis, the one-man tribunal hearing the case.
"You refuse to answer?" he said twice.
There were raised voices, most notably that of Doug Christie -- best known as Ernst Zundel's lawyer and now an intervenor on behalf of Mr. Lemire -- yelled at Mr. Hadjis that he had flown all the way from Victoria, B.C., on his own tab, and he was not going to let the Commission lawyer continue her "obstruction" of his cross-examination.
There were revelations about the informal relationships between Commission investigators and police forces and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Mr. Steacy, among the commission's main Section 13.1 investigators, said he has asked for and received information from law enforcement "maybe a dozen times," and twice provided information to them.
Mr. Steacy himself raised the strange hypothetical scenario of an investigator being charged for online writing that, in the words of section 13.1, is "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."
"My understanding of the legislation is there's not an exemption for anybody, so that would have to apply to investigators. If an investigator posted hate, then a complaint could be brought against them," he said.
But, for skeptics of human rights commissions, the coup de grace came when the Tribunal wrongly outed an innocent person as a Commission operative, thus exposing her to the unwanted attention of the vast army of bloggers who support Mr. Lemire, or at least do not support the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
For a government agency that has fought for months to protect the personal security of their own staff, even going so far as to (unsuccessfully) invoke national security to keep them off the witness stand, their handling of the "Nellie Hechme" question was shocking.
The mystery arose first thing in the morning, when Alain Monfette, director of the law enforcement support team for Bell Canada, took the witness stand.
He had been subpoenaed to explain who logged on to the Web site freedominion.ca as Jadewarr in December, 2006, just as bloggers were using technical data to reveal it as Mr. Steacy's online identity.
Later in the day, Mr. Steacy testified that the name Jadewarr "is actually a short for for Jade Warrior, which is a character from a novel I read as a teenager." He said access to the account was shared by at least five people, including investigators, their superiors and Mr. Steacy's personal assistants (he has been blind since 2004).
He said there was no managerial oversight of what investigators did under this identity, although he said "the manager would be aware of what was going on."
Once Mr. Hadjis explicitly ordered him to do so, Mr. Monfette reported that Bell's technical staff learned that whoever logged on as Jadewarr that day in 2006 had accessed the Internet through a Bell account controlled by Nellie Hechme. He gave the phone number and the street address of the apartment where the account was registered.
By the morning coffee break, associates of Mr. Lemire had already tracked down the value of Ms. Hechme's apartment, but not her identity. By the end of the day, the Commission's lawyer Margot Blight said that Ms. Hechme is a mystery to everyone involved, including Mr. Lemire's team.
Reached by phone last night, Ms. Hechme, 26, told the National Post she has no connection to the tribunal, has never known any of the investigators, and has never accessed a Web site as Jadewarr. She said that in the relevant period in 2006 she did have a Bell Sympatico account with a wireless connection that was not password controlled, meaning anyone within range of her apartment could have accessed the internet with it.
She does, however, have a link to Bell Canada. She has been employed there, though not in the internet division, since before 2006. She had never heard of this Jadewarr issue before, and was disturbed that her name had been publicly disclosed, by her employer no less, without so much as a heads-up.
Even before the lunchbreak Tuesday, her identity was the subject of feverish speculation on Web sites supportive of Mr. Lemire, which also posted her address. By the late afternoon, someone had dug up her old MySpace page, in a mass online investigation that no doubt continued into the wee hours of this morning.
It was just the most prominent of awkward moments for a tribunal hearing whose ending, to judge by the tone of the discussion in the late afternoon, has come as a blessed relief to all involved.
Notably, however, we all await the decision.
I tell you, this just chills me to the bone reading this. This is why we have to fight this speech code crap with every fiber.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
....
Canada Free Speech Ping.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The problem with special interest commissions is that they have to justify their existance, and I have hardly every found a special interest organization that didn’t at points go to the extreme to support their cause.
Human Rights Commissions have to find evidence of evil doing or their commission is pointless. Government players can play fast and loose with the rules while your average citizen is a sitting duck waiting to be picked off if they react to the enticement improperly.
I am not a supporter of hate sites, but I have seen how the government pounces, considering everyone in sight to be an evil perp. There are times when folks aren’t evil, they have simply done stupid things that make them look so.
If there are hate sites out there, and there certainly are, why does the government have to play along to get convictions? If the hate sight qualifies as a hate sight, then prosecute. If it doesn’t qualify, then move along and quite trying to catch somebody in something.
It is baffling to me with so many sights out there with obvious problems, that federal agencies seem to have some need to enhance things to make a clear cut case.
I’m sure there’s more than enough problematic sights in Canada for this Human Rights Commission to keep busy with them and leave the borderline folks alone. Either that or there isn’t as many problematic sights out there as they would like us to believe.
My FRiend, you folks to the North need the equivalent of both our first ans second amendments.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
In the Ernst Zundel case, a tribunal of the Canadian Human Rights Commission ruled that “truth is not a defense” when testimony was presented that what had been said was actually true...
Good... because Freedominion.ca is the Canadian version of FreeRepublic... or at least it was modeled after FR. In Canada, Jim Robinson would be hauled up before a Canadian Human Rights Commission tribunal for some of the things we write about democrats and muslim Jihadists...
Hmmm, is there a ‘reader’s digest’ version of what is going on here? This article is hard to follow.
Hey Jadewarr, come and get me you hate mongering, evil loving communists. I live in Colorado, USA.
I belong to an association where the past chairman is automatically the chair of the ethics committee. I remember hearing one report gleefully of no business. I was concerned then. I don’t expect my association’s ethics committee would ever have gone overboard but the Canadian example seems to illustrate a politically motivated policing of ethics. Our chair wasn’t paid; these clowns need to justify their paycheck.
"truth is not a defense".
Let that be their epitaph.
Hate by whose definition? The gubmint can measure me going 10 miles over the speed limit. The gubmint can determine that I withheld $10 that I should have paid in taxes. The gubmint can sift the evidence and find me guilty of shooting someone. How in God's name can they ascertain the level of dislike I might have for one or more of my neighbors? Much less determine a level of punishment if I cross that arbitrary, undefinable line.
even with all these revelations there is approaching a 0% chance that Mr. Lemire will be “acquitted” by the Human Rights Commission.
No one has EVER been acquitted by the Human Rights Commission.
Free Dominion, which was accessed by "Jadewarr", would not fit either of these descriptions.
Are the guilty sent to gulags? Just asking.
Damn it Canada, you used to be somebody! Canadians used to be the good guys. Canadians fought Kaiser Bill, Hitler, even the North Koreans.
Now they could be headed the way of all fascist states.
Ernst Zundel, a naturalized Canadian citizen who lived in Kentucky where he lived with his US citizen wife while going through the process of applying for permanent residence, was rousted out of his home at gunpoint by sheriff's deputies and INS agents for failure to appear at an immigration hearing that neither he nor his attorneys were told about, bounced from sheriff's station to police station to INS holding while his wife and attorneys were trying to find out what was going on, denied a phone call, summarily deported to Canada, where he was held in solitary confinement and then hauled before a Canadian Human Rights Commission tribunal for a website hosted in the United States, convicted, stripped of his Canadian citizenship, and deported to Germany where he had been already convicted in absentia for holocaust denial and sentenced to five years in prison.
His German appeal attorneys were threatened with prosecution if they attempted to defend him by presenting any evidence of what he said or published... one was arrested for a question asked in court.
All for thought crimes. George Orwell was right... he was only off by a few years.
While I disagree with Zundel's doubts about the holocaust, this anti-1st amendment behavior of the governments is reprehensible... as much or more, to my mind, as Zundel's opinions.
Speech codes = chilling effect
LOL. Actually all of that should be protected by the traditions of the British Parliamentary system and the Magna Carta. Actually we do have freedom of speech - for licensed broadcasters. LOL. Again, keep in mind McCain-Feingold took a swipe at freedom of speech for the peons but kept it intact for the media. This makes Canada a dangerous nation where the media, all liberal, is free to make speech, but I am not. Steacy actually did comment publicly a number of months back that “Freedom of Speech is an American concept”. Can you EFEN believe that!? Only you evil Yanks actually believe in the freedom to Opine. What makes you so dang unreasonable? Are you revolutionaries, or something? :)
...it bolstered Mr. Lemire's case that he should not be held accountable for what others post on his site, especially if those others are government employees.
Thanks. I’m not totally in tune with this process up there. This does sound like what I’ve been gleaning from the descriptions.
Yes, I’m am aware of what FreeDominion is. I appreciate the mention just the same.
I wasn’t seeking to infer that FreeDominion was a site I didn’t approve of at all. I don’t consider it a hate site.
I think you know the racist sites I’m refering to in generalization.
Robin, when I refer to a hate site I’m refering to a NAZI site or a racist site along the lines of the KKK or another anti-Semetic site. While I agree with your comments when it comes to public forums discussing general political and other issues of the day, I think we can agree on those and realize that there are some sites that are pretty well out there, not all that difficult to agree on what they are up to.
Would you disagree?
BTTT
If anyone is against hate sites they don’t have to visit them .
-
Ernst Zundel was a German draft dodger who was never a Canadian citizen . In 2005 Zundel tried to claim refugee status in Canada , failed and was deported back to Germany where , in 2007 , he was convicted of 14 counts of incitement of racial hatred for Holocaust denial and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison.
Zundel tried to ban Shindler’s List because it , in his opinion , cast a bad light on Germany and warned Muslims that their enemies , Zionists , were “goading the West into a future criminal war” against them , . He also said, “You know that such talk is a cold lie and that this lie made possible a military butchery, a crusade of “Good against Evil.” (that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction )
The two criminal trials in the that found Zundel guilty were dismissed in 1990 by the Supreme Court of Canada as a violation of the guarantees of freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
DO —
Thank you for your response. I apologize for not writing more clearly. My point was not to disagree with your thoughts in your original post (I do agree with you, there.), but to point out that the tools available to government, whether Canadian, US, or Stalinist Russia, are such blunt and heavy instruments that government can never act consistently and equitably on thought (hate) crime.
You and I are a different matter. If we perceive evil it is our duty to shine a light on it. If we are wrong, or at least not entirely right, we have not crushed the offender by our solitary actions. If we are right, and to the degree we are right, we have participated in the corrective action.
I agree. I would say though that when you consider what networking like that can ultimately lead to, I can’t sign off on just ignoring it.
Thanks for the discussion Robin. Let me address it like this.
When it comes to a sight like FreeDominion or FreeRepublic, I don’t mind seeing racist comments because other posters can come along and shine light on the falicy of racism, or draw out the writer’s true (possibly not racist) intent.
Whether that human rights council can comprehend it or not, that is actually a very healthy thing. People who were contemplating racist thoughts wondering if they were right, can see opposing views and gain from it. In particular, young people gain from seeing ideas lofted and then shot down for what they are. This is productive IMO.
If you’re talking about a site dedicated to supremacy whether White, Brown or Black, there is generally an underlying theme that cannot be challenged. Anyone not agreeing with the supremacist story line will be banned.
I sometimes sound like a racist when I advocate for continued self-determination for Whites. I do not advocate that Blacks or Hispanics not have influence. It’s just that those groups have nations now that allow for them to have self-determination. I don’t think it’s necessary to surrender nations where white’s have self-determination to those groups.
We face a situation where there may no longer be any self-determination for Whites in fifty to seventy-five years. We have seen what that heralded for Jews, and I think it’s an issue that we should discuss. That does not mean that I think others or inferior or should lose self-determination in nations where they have it today.
When you look at the leadership of Blacks in America today, you begin to see why I address this issue. This guy White is not an isolated individual. His views are shared by a lot of people.
We should all be content to think of ourselves as U.S. Citizens, but sadly we are not. Some groups want to stand alone, demanding special status. That is a very dangerous thing, and if they should ever become the majority, watch out.
Hope this makes sense.
I dispise people who are afraid to show their faces. Filing charges anomyously is ambiguous and proves those people filing those charges are gutless pieces of crap.
The government has a tribunal solely based on anomyous charges, and is unsupportive of any freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, or free thinking individuals other than those chicken sheets who hide behind a red curtain.
Canada, you have your hands full here and better be prepared for a real fight because the commie thought police are knocking at your door.
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