Your Daily Nazi: Important News On Your Ward News

I wrote last year:

So there's an T.O. East End Newspaper called Your Ward News.  From what I gather its mostly a direct mail affair; the publisher, a guy named Leroy St. Germaine, has Canada Post deliver it to folks down in Ward 31 (The Beaches).  It has apparently always been a bit flaky/racist, but the last couple of issues have seen a guy named James Sears gradually taking over, until recently he was appointed "Editor in Chief". And he has taken the publication "Full Nazi": articles promoting holocaust denial by old Heritage Front members; articles praising Adolf Hitler; articles promoting "white pride". The works.

Since then various people have taken various actions to make these guys stop publishing or get Canada Post to stop delivering them.  For example, local businesses advertising in the paper were contacted and asked to pull their classifieds.  This worked, more or less;  Sold space within the publication has declined.  But Your Ward has continued, and Canada Post has continued to distribute it.

Last week Canadian Civil Rights lawyer Richard Warman filed a human rights complaint against Canada Post, supported by numerous other luminaries.   You can find the actual paperwork at WK's place through the last link.  My favorite bit from it is:

It looks better if you click on the image, I think.

Anyway, this may be an interesting lesson in how to file this kind of complaint after the repeal of Section 13 of the CHRA.  Lets do a quick walk-through of the sections invoked.

Section 5:

5 It is a discriminatory practice in the provision of goods, services, facilities or accommodation customarily available to the general public

(a) to deny, or to deny access to, any such good, service, facility or accommodation to any individual, or

(b) to differentiate adversely in relation to any individual,

on a prohibited ground of discrimination.

This is invoked, as I understand it, to cover the discriminatory treatment of members of the public who are forced to receive the hate mail in question.

Section 7:

7 It is a discriminatory practice, directly or indirectly,

(a) to refuse to employ or continue to employ any individual, or

(b) in the course of employment, to differentiate adversely in relation to an employee,

on a prohibited ground of discrimination.


1976-77, c. 33, s. 7; 1980-81-82-83, c. 143, s. 3(F).

This suggests an infringement on the rights of the letter carriers forced to deliver the hate-mail.  It's worth noting that CUPW supports Warman's complaint.

Sections 12 & 14:

12 It is a discriminatory practice to publish or display before the public or to cause to be published or displayed before the public any notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) expresses or implies discrimination or an intention to discriminate, or

(b) incites or is calculated to incite others to discriminate

if the discrimination expressed or implied, intended to be expressed or implied or incited or calculated to be incited would otherwise, if engaged in, be a discriminatory practice described in any of sections 5 to 11 or in section 14.

1976-77, c. 33, s. 12; 1980-81-82-83, c. 143, s. 6.

&:

14 (1) It is a discriminatory practice,

(a) in the provision of goods, services, facilities or accommodation customarily available to the general public,

(b) in the provision of commercial premises or residential accommodation, or

(c) in matters related to employment,

to harass an individual on a prohibited ground of discrimination.

12 concerns discriminatory notices.  If you are willing to publish/distribute this level of anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-whatever hate, its basically indicating to the people you deliver it to that you will likely discriminate and that they should too.

And, again, he various subsections of 14 cover discriminating against those members of the public who receive and must deliver this hate literature.

*

So it will be interesting to see how this all plays out, in the absence of the now repealed Section 13 of the CHRA.  Richard does not instigate frivolous complaints.  As for Your Ward, finding the on-line version is easy enough if you want to take a look.

I imagine getting it delivered to your mailbox is like recieving uncovered, unsolicited pornography (indeed some of the images in the publication shade towards porn).  Its basically a sick joke being played by a few white supremicists on the folks down in The Beaches.  Hopefully this will put an end to it.

A Modest Proposal: A Trudeau Government Should Restore Section 13 Of The Canadian Human Rights Act

That's the hate speech provision, which I've written about it at numerous occasions in the past.  The CPC ditched it after a years long smear campaign engineered by white supremacists, Ezra Levant, various scribblers in the press, and a few easily gulled artsy farts.  But the point is--and this should be obvious when you considered the ill-favoured crowd that pushed it--the repeal was never popular. The deed was accomplished via a private member's bill in the dead of night and pundits who had howled for repeal for years suddenly found something else to ruminate over.  And while we may argue over the philosophical underpinnings of any hate-speech law, its worth noting that the concrete misdeeds ascribed to various government agencies in enforcing S13 were fabrications. Furthermore, some of the real weaknesses in the Human Rights Commision/Tribunal system pointed out during the ongoing debate (the possibility of forum shopping among federal and provincial bodies) were fixed at the adiministrative level by the bodies themselves.  So these issues will not likely come up again.

The CPC just ran one of the ugliest campaigns in living memory, and the repeal of S13 gave them a little more rhetorical space to propogate their various hate messages during this campaign.  I would love to watch them try to frame their opposition to a reinstatement; however, I suspect those of those left will cave out of pure embarrassment.  And I would love to watch the punditorcracy shit themselves in blind fury.  Remember, all they've got now are philosophical arguments against, and a few obviously self-serving economic ones like "If we have to live up to standards, we won't be able to publish as much."

Fun times ahead, hopefully.

What Will They Whine Of Next?

From the CHRC page detailing with access to info requests:

Logically, the only people on the planet who would care would be the folks named in the request itself, desperately trolling about for something to be fake-outraged about.  It appears, however, that they haven't found anything useful, as Fox News North is apparently down to hassling hippies at the Occupy Toronto campsite again.

Will Inky Mark Defer His Retirement To Help Pass Bill C-391 Repealing The Gun Registry?

Nah. Probably not, though there's a petition asking him to. Its got a whole 126 signatures. (But if it does happen, tell folks you heard it here first.)

Speaking of stupid petitions: there's also that one calling for a repeal of section 13 of the CHRA that I wrote about back in April . Remember? It was high profile stuff; Tory Senator Doug Finley was going to present it to Parliament when it reached 100,000 signatures. So far they're stuck at 336.

And then there's the Fox News North Facebook page, which has a whopping 1,609 followers.

Anyway, I forget what my point was.

LEAF Weighs In

LEAF (the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) is a Canadian legal organization that performs legal research and intervenes in appellate and Supreme Court of Canada cases on women's issues They've offered their submission on the review of the CHRA's section 13 (hate speech laws), by the Parliamentary standing committee on justice and human rights, here. There's some good historical and legal background in the document, which otherwise takes positions that are not terribly surprising. For example, LEAF follows the legal consensus re the Hadjis decision--section 13 alone is safe; s54.1 in conjunction with 13 may be a problem.

They do make an additional argument that you don't see much, which is that Canada needs hate speech laws to live up to its international obligations:

Canada is a signatory to several relevant international conventions that require state parties to prohibit hate speech. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Canada in 1976, provides in Article 20(2) that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”33 Similarly, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified by Canada in 1981, provides in Article 4 that “States Parties condemn all propaganda and all organizations which are based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin, or which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form, and undertake to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination.”34 In Keegstra, Chief Justice Dickson recognized these documents as reflective of “the international commitment to eradicate hate propaganda.”35 International law recognizes that measures against hate speech may take different forms.

So there you have it. Their website is here.

Lemire Case: The Upshot

Section 13 will not go away, and soon will revert to the form found constitutional in the Taylor case.

...which means minus the section 54 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (should this be found to be unconsitutional on appeal).

Even while we're waiting for an appeal of the Hadjis decision, I suspect any new s13 cases will go forward without an attempt at extracting S54 penalties from the respondent, and with greater attempts at "mediation" from the staff of the various HRCs. After all, the point is or should be that the offending material is removed from circulation. And, even without the S54 penalties, once a cease and desist order has been issued by a tribunal, ignoring that order can lead to a finding of "contempt" and, in some cases, jail time.

The s54 penalties are, from the POV of the law's purpose--ie. expunging hateful material--something of a frill. The law would seem to function without them.

Update: Pearl Eliadis agrees.

List-Mates

Yeah, that's Ezra's dad and my petition-signing buddy Galactus on Steyn's "Free Speech for Canadians" petition. I'll have to talk to G about that; he's always said he hates Freedom.

Says alot about the status of the debate that Steyn's has barely managed to scare-up 1,500 bodies to his cause, including numerous anonys and one giant purple space-fairing being, after launching this petition at least a year ago. Tells you how many votes there are in a "reform" of the Canadian Human Rights Act.