Levant's third point, that the CJC bolstered the CNP in order to emphasize the need for legislation against hate speech, is provocative. Certainly CJC had been advocating for restrictions on hate speech for some time. Yet this was not a unanimous view. The main committee dealing with anti-Semitism in Canada was the Joint Community Relations Committee (JCRC). It was 'joint' because it had representatives from CJC and B'nai Brith Canada, the two largest Jewish organizations with representatives from many synagogues, fraternal groups and community centres, representing a wide array of ideological positions in the Canadian Jewish community. When the decision was made to press for the anti-hate legislation, the chair of the JCRC, Sydney Midanik, a longtime civil liberties advocate, resigned. Alan Borovoy, the most effective advocate of civil liberties in Canada for the last half century, joined the JCRC in the 1950s and was, and continues to be, both active in the CJC and an opponent of such legislation.
I can't find the appropriate link, but I am pretty sure Borovay's position now is that he supported hate-speech legislation then, but has come to see the error of his ways. Which the above statement would seem to dispute. Perhaps being in proximity to The Ez inevitably drives a man to bullshit.
