RCMP Investigation Of CHRC Led To Investigation Of Marc Lemire

From some heavily redacted documents on Freedom Site.

During the course of the whole "hacked wifi" non-controversy, CHRC lawyer Kathleen Fawcett sent a letter to RCMP officer S. Turgeon requesting a background cheque on Marc Lemire from the DCAU.

The “DCAU” is the RCMP’s “DIVISION CRIMINAL ANALYTICAL UNIT”, which performs CPIC checks on Canadians. Marc Lemire is the man behind the origonal criminal complaint, and one-time leader of The Heritage Front. On FreedomSite, Lemire writes:

The contents of the message sent by the CHRC’s lawyer were censored from the report, but the RCMP immediately turned around and investigated Lemire*.

Not much further can be gleaned from the RCMP documents available (see below). But it is clear that:

The RCMP didn't trust complainants Lemire and Don Black of Stormfront.
They made note of the fact that the CHRC was a full 400 metres from Nelly Hechme's apartment (and therefore out of range of a wireless hack).
They also noted that a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) would be required to secure access to Stormfront records, and these are only used for serious criminal matters, not bogus complaints made by white supremacists.
A post from Ezra's site is also included in the RCMP docs.

Full document here.

* Marc often refers to himself in the 3rd person.

Rehabilitating Marc Lemire

Without heroes, without victims, the speechy movement amounts to very little beyond a few syllogisms cobbled together from Mill's On Liberty. No, to make it real, to put flesh on the abstractions, its been necessary for Ezra and Steyn and the gang to find examples of good men and women beat down by an out-of-control bureaucracy, to find proud citizens who've fought back against the language police.

Thus far, the best they've managed to come up with is Marc Lemire.

However, Lemire is a problematic figure, and maybe not good hero material. For example, the standard histories (ie wiki) tag him as "President of the often violent Heritage Front organization from January 1, 2001 until the organization folded around 2005." HF was a white supremacist gang, and that's their logo top-left.

But is this claim re the Heritage Front True? Lemire himself has apparently denied it, and just last month FreeD's Mark Fournier (posting as Entropy Squared) challenged his readers to "do what nobody else has been able to do. Source that ridiculous claim."

Well, they've been too busy paying off legal bills at FreeD to take up that challenge, but the folks at Anti-Racist Canada have done so and, not to spoil and wonderfully thorough post, but yeah, Lemire was leader of the Heritage Front. The money quote, from Heritage Front co-founder Gerry Lincoln:

This is more or less an open letter to the new leadership, specifically Marc Lemire, who seems to have assumed the role of head honcho and put his good name on the line.

It's a thankless job, but I guess somebody has to do it.

QED

Free D In Dutch Again!!!

Connie at Free Dominion writes:

Tonight we answered a knock on our door and we were served with papers from Richard Warman (famous human rights complaint filer).

She's right. Insofar as one can become "famous" in Canada for launching civil rights complaints, Richard Warman is:

Warman is best known for initiating complaints against members of the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements for violations of the Canadian Human Rights Act, regarding Internet postings and website content of those individuals or organizations. As a result of his work, in June of 2007 Warman received the Saul Hayes Human Rights Award from the Canadian Jewish Congress for "distinguished service to the cause of human rights".[1]

He is/was also active in the Federal/Ontario Green Party, where he has run as a candidate several times in various ridings around the province.

Warman charges that, during the whole episode involving Marie Gentes and her CHRC complaint:

...you have spoken words and/or written words and/or published words that are defamatory and libelous to me appearing on the website http://www.freedominion.ca/.

You can read his whole list of charges at Free-D (through the first link). I should say that I think most of the stuff that Free-D posters have accused him of is pretty mild, but I am not an expert in libel law. It is also unclear to me that Mr. Warman understands that the "you" he is referring to above includes not just Connie and Mark, but their hundreds(?) of regular posters (although I suppose one could argue that they indeed "published" the comments by hosting the forum).

In any case, as his wiki entry indicates, Mr. Warman seems far more bloody-minded about this sort of thing than Ms. Gentes, so his case is much more likely to be seen through to its conclusion.

Also, I don't think Connie has done herself much good in enlisting Neo-Nazi Marc Lemire to help "research" the comments that sparked the complaint. Although her response to this particular point is interesting:

I couldn't disagree more with the white nationalist point of view, but I am also disgusted by people who would use the government and the courts to try to shut down everyone they disagree with.

Marc Lemire has been fighting Richard Warman's complaint with the CHRC and he has been winning because Warman has been caught doing things like posting on white nationalist sites under fake ids. (Thus the links to the white nationalist sites in my post).

The information that Marc Lemire has provided us is verified court evidence that shows what Warman has done in the past. I am not going to refuse to take it because it was given to me by Marc Lemire.

Oh well, time to get out the pop-corn again. I will update as things change.

And, oh yeah, h/t to Buckets.

CHRC Off The Hook

The RCMP will not pursue charges against the Canadian Human Rights Commission over allegations that its investigators hacked an Ottawa woman's wireless internet account to conceal their identity on websites under investigation for hate speech, the National Post has learned.

This one has been a foregone conclusion ever since Marc Lemire pulled similar claims from his constitutional challenge a couple of months ago. If the man behind the criminal complaint didn't believe his own allegations, why should anyone else? Nevertheless, the decision has been a long time coming.

Furthermore, the charges were ridiculous in the first place. As I have argued repeatedly, at about 350 metres distance, Nelly Hechme's wifi network was out of range of CHRC computers. Nor would it have been necessary for the CHRC to hack her connection, as a wifi scan of the street in front of CHRC HQ shows any number of wireless access points within range.

Furthermore, as some excellent work by Bucket's demonstrated (well, I helped a little), the IP address that Stormfront owner Don Black and Marc Lemire handed over to the tribunal was originally used by CHRC investigator Dean Steacey to access Stormfront in September of 2006. Given the highly dynamic nature of Bell's wireless network, it is wildly unlikely that Streacey's computer should have been given the same IP address in December, when he accessed the site on a 2nd occasion.

I wrote at the time:

Hint One: Most likely nobody visited Stormfront from 70.48.181.203 on December 8, 2006. Not Steacy, not Hechme--nobody. Lemire's criminal complaint, which refs that IP number, will therefore come to nought.

Hint Two: Given the search tools employed by Stormfront, a thorough search of IPs related to Jadewarr should have returned more than a single address. And the address used by CHRC staff in December, 2006 is almost certainly sitting undiscovered in Stormfront records.

This is interesting in the light of this bit from Brean's National Post story:

...to investigate further would involve [the RCMP] going after technical data from a website based in the United States, stormfront.org, which they said is not possible.

Mark Lemire elaborates unhelpfully:

...the RCMP will not criminally charge the CHRC with theft of an innocent woman’s internet connection because the evidence leads to an American website, which is outside the jurisdiction of the RCMP.

Well, wait a minute, if Don Black handed over technical information to Lemire, why could he not do the same for the RCMP? It is quite possible that he in fact refused to hand over this information, and that he is hiding the presence of the 2nd address mentioned above in his records. In other words, the information turned over to the Tribunal and RCMP may have been intentionally left incomplete.

Warman vs. Lemire Constitutional Challenge: Warman Wins

The decision can be found here. Warman's comments can be found  here, and I will write something up that's a bit more substantial when I read the entire 72 page decision.  But essentially, the decision accepted the pro-CHRC arguments as summarized below:

As to the presentations, they generally went according to plan, with the pro-HRC side arguing that all that should be on the table is the  severing of Section 13's penalty provisions.  But there were a few interesting twists, or at least arguments I haven't heard before.  The young gal from the African Canadian Legal clinic (Moya Teklu) argued that there has been so little analysis of the CHRC's actual behavior that it would have been impossible for Athanasios D. Hadjis (the tribunal chair that had ruled for Lemire last go-round) to know whether this behavior had changed over time--and thus whether it had become less conciliatory, more litigious. She also has a tattoo on the back of her neck, so they clearly aren't barriers to success anymore.   Richard Warman argued from the transcripts of the earlier hearing that in fact he had been open to the possibility of settling with Lemire, contra Hadjis' opinion.

Some comments.

1) Some weight seems to have been given to Ms. Teklu's argument noted above.

2) Judge Mosely rejected Lemire's argument that somehow the Internet "changed the  rules" when it comes to hate speech.  From the decision:

...which, by analogy, probably bodes ill for anyone trying to make an analogous argument in cases of alleged on-line defamation.

3) Judge Mosely rejected the notion that S13 definitions of hate speech were too vague to be workable.

4) Judge Mosely decided that S13 only minimally impaired Free Speech:

5) Judge Mosely basically exonerated the HRC and Warman, As Richard himself puts it:

2) Repeated efforts were made by the Commission and Richard Warman to engage Marc Lemire in mediation or negotiation but these were always refused by Lemire because he would not accept a cease and desist order as part of any settlement. (para 60)

Now, Bill C-304 repealing S13 is wending its way through the Senate, but Lemire is apparently not off the hook.  He faces a return to the tribunal and a permanent cease and desist order.  Furthermore, whatever its fate with the Harper Tories, Mosely's decision will mean that a future government will have justification for reinstating the section or something close to it.  And by that time most of the MSM opinionizers who were willing to carry Lemire's water for him last go-round will be unemployed and in a soup line.

So there you have it.

Lemire Retreats! Speechies Get Stiffed!

Somewhere out there, Marc Lemire is putting the final touches on a 500 page "book" outlining his constitutional challenge to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. However, Ezra has already posted the CHRC response and, not surprisingly, he has ignored the most important bits.

Firstly, Lemire has long claimed that CHRC staff in general, and CHRC investigator Dean Steacy in particular, posted racist material in the course of their investigations of various White Supremacist websites. Well, no more! From the CHRC document:

The respondent has conceded at page 400, line 4 that Dean Steacy posted no racist material in the course of his duties as a Commission investigator.

Naturally, Ezra, Kate, Mark Steyn, and etc., were happy enough to regurgitate Marc's nonsense. I imagine now, in light of all the lawsuits his pronouncements have generated, that Mr. Lemire will not be on their Xmas card list.

However, my favorite bit concerns Lemire's whole ridiculous "hacked wifi" conspiracy, in which CHRC employees, whose laptops were not wifi enabled at the time, were apparently able to hack an encrypted network from about 350 meters away, or three times the effective diameter of your typical wifi hotspot. This charge was bone-headed to begin with, and the MSM (esp. The National Post) touched a new bottom in journalistic credibility by reporting it with a straight face, even after Buckets and I publicly refuted it (well, Buckets did most of the work, but he is shy and retiring and doesn't like to make a fuss). In any case, it appears that Lemire has dropped these accusations from his brief as well:

There is no allegation in the respondent’s written submissions corresponding with previous allegations in motion materials pertaining, inter alia, to disclosure, that the Commission breached the privacy of the individual whose name was publicly disclosed as a result of a subpoena granted to the respondent by Bell Canada, or that the Commission gained surreptitious access to her wireless internet service. The evidence did not establish any such surreptitious access and this was denied vehemently by the Commission. The Commission considers this unsubstantiated allegation to now be withdrawn.

Of course, Ezra, Mark, Shaidle and the rest of the "Canuck Six" were quick to broadcast this drivel to the world as well, with Mr. Steyn going so far as to accuse Dean Steacy of criminal acts by name. Presumably, they will all apologize immediately.

The Speechy Bowl! Court Date Set in Warman Vs. Lemire!

December 13 and 14, 2011
Federal Court of Canada
180 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario

Warman  and the CHRC  vs. Marc Lemire hits the court on that date.  I've written tons about this legal battle. Marc Lemire is the white supremacist that Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman brought before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for violating Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act--its hate-speech provision.  The case will have important implications for fighting the spread of hate-speech in Canada. 

Here's what the guys on CHRC side will argue:

The Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that s. 13 was constitutional long before the penalty provisions were added to it. As such, Mr. Hadjis should have simply ignored the penalty provisions and applied the appropriate cease and desist order against Mr. Lemire," [Joel Richler, CJC National Honourary Legal Counsel] added.

"This action is known as the doctrine of 'reading out' - a well-established practice endorsed by the Supreme Court of Canada under which the portion of a law that may be unconstitutional is edited out but the remaining constitutional elements are applied. Mr. Hadjis should have 'read out' of section 13(1) the penalty provisions and preserved the rest of the section. Mr. Hadjis failed to consider this option, even though the Supreme Court of Canada has been clear that section 13(1) is perfectly constitutional," Richler explained.

Warman On Whatcott

More through the links below.  I've discussed the Warman/Lemire case, referenced in point six, here and here:

2. This unanimous 6-judge decision upholds the 20+ year old majority decision from the Supreme Court in Canadian Human Rights Commission v. Taylor that Canadian human rights laws on hate propaganda are constitutional. The unanimous Whatcott decision now includes Chief Justice McLachlin who had previously led the minority 4 judge dissent in Taylor arguing the parallel federal human rights restriction on hate propaganda was unconstitutional. This is a tectonic judicial shift.

3. The Supreme Court’s decision confirms that existing hate speech case law has been following the earlier guidance from then Chief Justice Dickson in the Taylor case to deal only with the most extreme examples of hate speech. The SCC’s decision cites 4 of my cases with a particular emphasis on the ‘Hallmarks of Hate’ from the crackerjack Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Member Karen Jensen in the Warman v. Kouba decision which brought together a cogent analysis of the indicia that will demarcate legal expression from illegal hate speech.

An interesting point, here.  Now both the SCC and Richard Moon have exonerated the behavior of HRC employees.  That is to say, they have not pursued frivolous cases, only the worst examples.


4. The Supreme Court has affirmed the social destruction caused by hate speech & emphasizes “the added impact of the Internet”.

5. The decision largely cements the legal test in the Taylor case as the governing law for the indefinite future and I believe confirms the current de facto state of the law.

6. Warman & CHRC v. Lemire – Justice Mosley of the Federal Court ruled in October of 2012 that he was obliged to follow the Supreme Court’s guidance in Taylor and uphold the constitutionality of s. 13 (the federal human rights act provision prohibiting Internet hate speech in Canada). Marc Lemire’s frivolous appeal of that decision is done.

Marc Lemire: obscurity is calling you.  Time to return to it.

PS.  Bernie Farber has weighed-in.

Your Daily Nazi: Marc Lemire = FdaJEWS

As the moves to cripple human rights commissions and/or repeal section 13 of the Canadian Rights Act kind of burble along, and Marc Lemire makes his occasional appearance in the media spot-light, its useful to remind people that he is less a free speech hero and more the guy that took over the white power group Heritage Front after Wolfgang Droege retired.

And today this reminder comes in the form of transcripts of an Internet chat session from Sept. 2001 between Lemire and Tri-City Skins member James Richardson. Its entertaining and enlightening stuff, and well worth a read. But I have just one question--what did Lemire's Internet handle--"FdaJews"--mean? Did he want to "free" them?

Anyway, here it is.

Your Daily Nazi: Marc Lemire Throws In The Towel

From Richard Warman's site:

It was only a matter of time after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld civil law controls on hate speech as constitutional in the Whatcott case, but Marc Lemire has finally admitted that his parallel attack on the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibition on Internet hate-speech (s. 13) has been gutted (‘please ignore my legal arguments found at paragraphs 84-115 of my previous Federal Court of Appeal factum’).

[...]

Mr. Lemire caves on the now legally (even more) entrenched facts that civil controls on hate speech are reasonable limits on freedom of expression, are justifiable in a free and democratic society, and are a pressing and substantial objective to avoid the serious damage caused as history has shown. Reading bumps on people’s heads to know what their intent was is still out. Hatred and contempt as narrowly defined by the Supreme Court in Taylor have been properly interpreted by human rights tribunals.

Relevant court docs have been supplied through the link.

I keep writing about this issue because the courts have essentially rejected the various Speechy arguments against S.13 and against hate speech laws in general.  So, even if bill C-304 passes the Senate, a new clause can be inserted into the Canadian Human Rights Act under more favorable circumstances without worrying about constitutional issues.

At the moment, incidentally, C-304 seems pretty thoroughly stalled in the upper house.

You Daily Nazi: The Shorter Buckets

Buckets begins to make his case. The For Dummies Version:

1) StormFront Moderator PatrickOdin claims that CHRC investigator Dean Steacy posted to StormFront on Sept. 15th, 2006 from IP address 70.48.181.203.

2) In March 2007, Freedomsite owner Marc Lemire, who has brought a criminal complaint against the CHRC for hacking Nelly Hechme's wifi, asked Stormfront founder, Don Black, for IPs related to the activities on Stormfront of one Jadewarr, Dean Steacy's Stormfront Pseudonym. Black provided Lemire with the IP address 70.48.181.203. Lemire then subpoenaed Bell Canada for information about this address.

3) However, because Bell uses dynamic IP addressing, by December 2006 the address 70.48.181.203 had been assigned to Ottawa resident Nelly Hechme, who lived about a quarter a mile away from the CHRC HQ. And when Bell technicians revealed this fact, Lemire hatched the "CRHC employees hacked her wifi" conspiracy theory.

4) Except: what are the odds that Dean Steacy hacked a wifi account that, by sheer coincidence, bore the same IP in December as the IP borne by his own account about three months earlier? I would suggest they are rather low--"infinitesimal", as Buckets says.

Where does the story go from here? Read more in the upcoming few days, but here's a couple of hints.

Hint One: Most likely nobody visited Stormfront from 70.48.181.203 on December 8, 2006. Not Steacy, not Hechme--nobody. Lemire's criminal complaint, which refs that IP number, will therefore come to nought.

Hint Two: Given the search tools employed by Stormfront, a thorough search of IPs related to Jadewarr should have returned more than a single address. And the address used by CHRC staff in December, 2006 is almost certainly sitting undiscovered in Stormfront records.

Update: Buckets unspools more of the mystery here.

Sockpuppets For Lemire?

Someone has been trying to edit Marc Lemire's wiki entry using accounts named after his real life critics, including M.J. Murphy, the pseudonym I employ when not blogging. Wiki suspects Lemire himself. If it is you Marc, then I love you too, but only in a manly non-gay way like those Spartans that ran around in their underwear together in the movie 300. The people at Wiki may say you're a "bad hand", but I think you're just misunderstood.

Yours, BCL.

h/t Ns-Out.

More at AR Canada.

Your Daily Nazi: Tory MP's Office Sends Letter In Support of Bill C-304 To White Nationalist Marc Lemire (The Inspiration Behind The Bill)

Here's the letter:

And here's the source.  And here's some background on Mr. Lemire, including his wiki entry, from which I quote: "Lemire was the last president of the often violent Heritage Front organization from January 1, 2001 until the organization folded around 2005".  If Mr. Chisu was living in T.O. back in the mid 1990s to early 2000s, he should have heard of this guy.  I will send his office a quick email, and see if he remembers.

PS. A reader notes that Lemire

...the last known president of the Heritage Front, was working for Mr. [Ernst] Zündel part-time, and then full-time for many years until Mr. Zündel left for the United States.

...and that CPoC Minister Vic Toews has reitereated that Mr. Zundel is not welcome back in Canada.

Back to Court For Lemire/Warman

Ex-Heritage Front leader Marc Lemire is appealing Judge Mosley's decision re his constitutional challenge of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the now repealed hate speech provision).  I have no idea on what grounds, as Lemire hasn't mentioned the appeal yet on his own blog.  In any case, here are the relevant court docs.

Things That Won't Happen But Which, Perhaps Perversely, I Would Like To See Happen

Marc Lemire has asked to be invited to appear before the Committee. His story should jolt them out of the fog Lynch laid down.

That's this Mark Lemire, and the Committee is The Standing Committee On Justice and Human Rights which is examining the hate speech clauses in Canada's Human Rights Act.

I would particularly like to see a picture of Tory MP and Committee member Brent Rathgeber shaking Lemire's hand.

Corneliu Chisu's Office Responds

According to the following, The Tory MP's staffers did not know who Marc Lemire was when they replied to his request for Mr. Chisu's support re Bill C-304:

We respond to individuals who write in to our office, regardless of political affiliation or whether they are a constituent or not; that being said we have no way of knowing the political affiliations of whoever writes in or the previous history of anyone who writes in. Mr. Lemire asked for Mr. Chisu’s stance on Bill C-304 so I gave it to him. Corresponding with someone does not mean they share values with that person, and I can guarantee you that if in fact Mr. Lemire is as you’ve described, this would apply.

I have left the personal contact information off this email, as per the senders request.  But: someone should have applied teh Googles.

The Records Are Gone

A bit of minutia from the ongoing Warman vs. The Nazis saga, of interest perhaps in that it confirms things I've read elsewhere. Written by FreeD's Mark Fournier:

"Yesterday evening I had a telephone conversation with Marc Lemire, who was at the center of this case until the antics of Richard Warman stole his limelight. The information about the Anne Cools post first surfaced during the Lemire case, which is still pending before the CHRT.

Richard Warman did everything he could to keep this information out of the tribunal records. When the Lemire camp wanted to subpoena the Rogers records Warman fought them every step of the way. He even tried to invoke Section 37 of the Canada Evidence Act, thinking he could hide behind it. In the end the Rogers records were subpoenaed but Rogers no longer had the information from that far back."

So the only documents that might conclusively tie Warman to the infamous Anne Cools post no longer exist. Everything else is probabilities, and the most elaborate attempt to calculate these put the odds that Warman made the post in question at about 1 in 300 against.

Speaking of numbers, Mark, the important thing is that the PM is on our side.

Marc Lemire Supports Conservative Party Resolution P-203

...to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Marc, former leader of The Heritage Front, once member of the Canadian Alliance, (a precursor to today's CPoC), wiki sockpuppeteer extraordinaire.... you still got it, boyo, you still cast a shadow over the Canadian Conservative movement.

So far Marc hasn't weighed in on the whole polygamy debate. We'll have the exclusive here at BCLSB when he does.

h/t RB.

Your Daily Nazi: Holocaust Museum Shooter's Canadian Connections!

In 1996, long before he became a Speechy warrior, and pre-Heritage Front, Marc Lemire, who Connie Fournier now regrets banning from Free Dominion, and who Mark Steyn once described as having done "sterling work" in his Section 13 constitutional challenge, was flogging audio-tapes of Ernst Zundel's Zundel Radio broadcasts over Toronto FreeNet, a kind of clumsy pre-Internet BBs service that I remember well (they also had a writer's forum).

In any case, several of the interviews Ernst recorded (and Marc presumably profited from the sale of) were:

# 57 and # 58. James von Brunn, American artist and businessman, talks with EZ about his failed attempt to arrest, at gun point, the Board Members ofthe Federal Reserve in Washington. Von Brunn was arrested, tried andconvicted to 8 years' imprisonment in a federal penitentiary byquestionable legal maneuvers.

(Note: if you click through the link to Nizkor, scroll way down, as its a big file.)

And, yeah, its our guy--"artist", Holocaust denier, and murderer James W. von Brunn; the incident he is talking about is described in greater detail here. In that piece, Michael Tomasky asks:

So this is the second act of right-wing terror, the first being the murder of Dr. Tiller, in a mere three weeks. These are terrorists, as surely as Zawahiri is. Will Rush Limbaugh and the other demagogues like him call them that?

And I would just add: does that mean that all the folks above--Connie, Mark, Marc, and so forth-- have (admittedly tentative) connections to right-wing terror?

We'll just let that question hang in the air, and hum some ominous music.

Your Daily Nazi: Fox News North To Interview Marc Lemire!

Dets here! First Ezra did Shaidle, now Lemire.  He must thinking giving these guys a platform is going to get some government somewhere to act.

Update: The message on FreeD has been disappeared.  Don't know what that signifies.  You can see it on google here.