Notes from a day spent with Canada’s chief anti-hate crusaders
National Post
Sat Feb 6 2010
Page: A1
Section: News
Byline: Joseph Brean
Source: National Post
The Island of the White Supremacists is not, as it might sound, a Survivorstyle reality show in extraordinarily poor taste.
It is more like a private video game, set in an imaginary tropical paradise in the online virtual world of Second Life, where “Internet neo-Nazis” gather around a digital tiki bar “for planning and plotting recruitment efforts and gatherings,” according to an Ontario government hate crime expert.
In that sense, it is like a cartoon version of what lay in store for the real-life Caribbean island of Dominica in 1981, when it was the target of a failed coup by a group of Canadian and American far-right mercenaries.
The expert’s account of how she won a rare invitation to the island–and the imaginary stripping and prostitution that helped pay her imaginary boat fare– was a bizarre highlight of a legal conference on hate crimes this week in Toronto, attended by senior judges, Crowns and defence lawyers, chiefs of police and politicians.
Ms. Corb, who asked that her first name be withheld, is an Open Source Intelligence Operations Specialist for the Hate Crime Extremism Investigative Team, a joint effort of 13 Ontario police forces. “I act as an agent
In her workshop presentation about online hate, she described how racist groups use social media, and she showed the Facebook pages of prominent Canadian hatemongers, noting how free they are with personal information.
She also showed video of a Second Life pole-dancer — “I’m sorry if this is offensive,” she said — to illustrate her anecdote about needing to raise Second Life play-money to pay for the ferry to the island, and turning first to stripping and then prostitution.
“I hooked a few times, turned my tricks, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t make much money as a Second Life hooker,” she said. “I’m not joking.”
As with many otherwise intelligent adults who are baffled by new media, some people in the room did not seem to get it. “What is illegal about Second Life?” asked one.
WHO ARE YOU CALLING A SHOE?
Mark Freiman, national president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and former deputy attorney-general of Ontario, is among the most esteemed defenders of Section 13, the possibly unconstitutional Internet hate speech section of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is soon to be argued in federal court.
In a debate over Section 13 with law professor Richard Moon, a prominent critic, Mr. Freiman, pictured above, said many of its problems can be solved by “relatively simple tweaks.” He also came up with the quote of the day when he justified hate speech laws like this: “The marketplace of ideas is as prone to market failure as the market for exotic financial derivative instruments.” But he came close to insulting the many police officers in the room by identifying a lack of police expertise as a major problem for hate crime prosecutions, a generalization he qualified by acknowledging the work of Toronto’s hate crime squad.
This awkward compliment, which carried the implication that regional cops perhaps cannot tell a swastika from a spatula, prompted Chief Armand LaBarge of Ontario’s York Region to stand up at the mic, but he got cut off by the timekeeper.
Later, in an interview, Chief LaBarge said he was going to remind the audience of his force’s prosecution of Brad Love, a man who was convicted of promoting hatred, and is still famous in newsrooms and political offices for mailing articles torn from newspapers and covered with sloppy, handwritten racist messages. Chief LaBarge remembered one in particular that he received, with a Star of David drawn on his face. Chief LaBarge is not Jewish, not that there is anything wrong with that.
Marvin Kurz, national legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, offered what he called a “cook’s tour” of the lesser-known anti-hate tools in Canadian law. He noted that civil or human rights cases, which require a lower threshold of proof than criminal charges, are often more effective against hate promoters, such as in the case of anti-Semitic New Brunswick teacher Malcolm Ross, who was removed from the classroom not by a criminal prosecution, which never got off the ground for fear of failure on freedom of expression grounds, but as a result of a human rights complaint. He cited customs laws against importing hate propaganda, Broadcasting Act restrictions of “abusive” comment or pictorial representations, even the ministerial power to revoke mail privileges, which he said has been used exactly once, and unsuccessfully, against Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. He also described the sections of Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that can prohibit hatemongers from entering Canada. Hard-line Rwandan Hutu activist Leon Mugesera, whose case was argued at the Supreme Court, is a prominent example, but others who have been stopped at the border include a British Holocaust denier and American leaders of the White Aryan Resistance, the Ku Klux Klan, Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party. Lawyer Douglas Elliott later described class-action cases as a novel tool that “can get the private bar involved in the fight against hatred.”
He described his work on behalf of the late George Hislop, a representative for the class of same-sex spouses denied pension benefits, which went to the Supreme Court and became a major precedent in Canadian equality law.
TORONTO’S TURNER DIARIES
Detective Sergeant Steve Irwin, a veteran Toronto police hate crime specialist (not to be confused with the late Crocodile Hunter of the same name) told the conference that his policy is to respond to reports of hate crimes “as if it were an incident of violence,” but that it is rarely clear how to proceed. Having worked in homicide and sex assault, he said hate crimes are “probably the greatest challenge I’ve ever dealt with regarding the Criminal Code.”
He recalled the single time he has used the law that allows for a warrant of seizure against hate propaganda when a large Toronto bookseller imported copies of the Turner Diaries, a popular white supremacist fantasy of race war, and book industry representatives lined up in defense of freedom of expression.
So Det.-Sgt. Irwin called a meeting of Customs officials and the industry representatives, and said any store that tried to sell the books would be raided and the books seized. “Of course, no one volunteered to do it, the books never made it out of the warehouse, and in fact were returned to the States,” he said.
A COOK’S TOUR HATRED OR CONTEMPT? YOU BETCHA
He was miles away in Alberta, but conservative blogger Ezra Levant, right, kept popping up at the conference like a pesky libertarian gopher in a field of good intentions. Presenters kept saying things such as, “And of course there’s Ezra Levant…,” referring to the hate speech complaint against him for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons and his subsequent online campaign against the entirety of human rights law, such that by lunchtime he seemed to hang about the room like a ghost, or like Shoshanna in the climactic scene of Inglourious Basterds.
Prof. Moon ended his arguments against Section 13 with a brief warning that its fiercest critics are not to be trusted in their smear campaign. And at least two people in the crowd are suing Mr. Levant for libel over his blogging: Mr. Warman and Khurrum Awan, a lawyer and the driving force behind the three parallel human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine on behalf of the Canadian Islamic Congress. There were also rumours about complaints to the Law Society of Alberta.
Mr. Levant said yesterday there are “20 or so nuisance complaints against me with the Law Society of Alberta … yet another use of lawfare.” One is outstanding, he said, by Giacomo Vigna, a Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer whose libel suit against Mr. Levant goes to trial next week in Ottawa.
In what he called “a mass dismissal of more than a dozen complaints at once,” Mr. Levant said there was a finding of a minor violation of the lawyer’s code of conduct, followed by a “mandatory conduct advisory” with a senior bencher, known as a “fireside chat,” after which the complainants have no possibility of further appeal. Mr. Levant described the meeting, which happened late last year, as a pleasant coffee with Stephen G. Raby, QC, who made no demands that he change his behaviour, just to “remember you are a lawyer.”
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, EVERYTHING’S REFINED
Irwin Cotler, who can challenge even Michael Ignatieff as the federal Liberal party’s top authority on human rights, said in a brief interview that he learned the value of free speech from his father, but his mother taught him the dangers of “assaultive speech,” the notion that “life and death are on the tip of the tongue.”
He called the controversy over Section 13 “a priority as a justice issue,” but said he is not informed enough to offer an opinion. He has not read the Moon report on the issue, published in November 2008, but said he conflicts with fellow Liberal Keith Martin, a prominent parliamentary critic of Section 13. Mr. Cotler said he is in favour of “maintenance of the remedy” and “refinement” over Dr. Martin’s proposal of elimination, but said he is “going to have to look into it.”
WHO’S AFRAID OF RICHARD WARMAN?
It is nerve-wracking to be in a room with this man, Canada’s top hate speech complainant under Section 13.
On this very day in a Virginia courtroom, a judge overturned one of four recent convictions against the American neo-Nazi activist Bill White, pictured — the one about threatening Mr. Warman with death. U.S. District Judge James Turk described White’s conduct toward Mr. Warman, including the publication of his home address and encouragement that he be “drug out into the street and shot,” as “mean-spirited ridicule and harassment, reminiscent of grade school bullying.” “Most of the language referring to violence against Richard Warman was not directed or communicated directly to Warman…. It is an appropriate assumption that the audience of like-minded individuals would have treated these statements as ‘a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition’ to Warman.” Even still, sitting a few chairs away, one cannot help but be on the lookout for large bald men, and in a room full of police officers and judges, this is torture.
MUDDY YORK
Patrick Monahan, provost of one of Canada’s most famously conflicted campuses, York University, described for the conference “the problem of the unwilling participant,” in which students who want to study find themselves swept up in some wave of protest over the Middle East or abortion. Between a faculty strike and the war in Gaza, he said last year was volatile at York, with the “potential for a very ugly situation.”
Mr. Monahan spoke about new remedies, including mediation between student leaders and better enforcement of the use of space. In an interview, he said York is “not a staging ground” for outside groups to wage their ideological battles, and he said he is proud there have been no major demonstrations this academic year.
There is still conflict, though, as the school itself stated in a press release the day before about a confrontation in the student centre between a pro-Israeli group and angry hecklers.
“York deplores any comments and actions that are racist or anti-Semitic in nature,” the release said. “An investigation is currently underway, with the potential for disciplinary action. The University is reviewing closed-circuit video of the incident and is speaking to students who may have been involved. If there is evidence of a crime, the matter will be referred to the Toronto Police Service.”
REGINA VS. HITLER?
The case of Red Deer preacher Stephen Boissoin, below, and his letter to the editor urging action against the evils of homosexuality, is a popular talking point in free speech circles, because of the image it sets of a proper court overruling a loosey-goosey tribunal. The recent ruling of Mr. Justice Earl C. Wilson of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta was twice criticized at the conference for setting the bar for hate speech impossibly high. Prof. Moon said the judge framed the legal test “in such a way that it would be very very difficult to meet it.” Lawyer Douglas Elliott went one further, saying that under Judge Wilson’s interpretation, “I don’t think you could prove Adolf Hitler guilty of hate propaganda.”
