...vs the Northern Alliance and Jason Ouwendyk. The decision is
here, a couple of good stories
here and
here, and mindless shrieking in all the usual places.
Most notable--other than the fact that Warman won another case--are the reservations expressed by CHRT board member
Edward Peter Lustig re some of Warman's investigative techniques, which occasionally involved posting messages to sites like Stormfront. Specifically, two messages totaling about 50 words, if you don't count the quoted material. And curiously, not to any of the websites directly related to the Ouwendyk investigation. In any case:
[62] Mr. Warman stated that the communications quoted in the previous two paragraphs did not “cross the line” into hate messaging nor did they provoke hate messages by others. He stated that the inclusion in his postings of possible hate messages from others were inadvertent slips by him in sending messages over the Internet. He further stated that his postings were intended to assist him in his quest for information about persons using the Internet to communicate discriminatory hate messages.
[63] I do not see any acceptable reason for Mr. Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard sites, since there appears to be ample easily obtained messages on these sites available without his involvement. Moreover, it is possible that his activity in this regard, could have precipitated further hate messages in response. His explanation for including other hate messages in his postings by mistake seems very weak to me.It's not easy to determine from this whether or not Lustig is objecting to the notion of an investigator interacting with the possible targets of his investigation
per se, or whether he is objecting to Warman's particular use of this method (or merely the fact that Warman quoted previously uttered hate speech in his messages). The news stories
all assume the former, so lets make the same assumption.
If, going forward, HRC investigators can no longer avail themselves of this method, how big a handicap would that be?
Well, it is interesting that the decision refers to events about 5 years old, before the advent of sites like Facebook. And if you look at the work being done by
Anti-Racist Canada , for example, which
seems to rely on the more passive technique of simply "hanging out" at various online social networking venues related to white supremacist acitivity, and harvesting
the (occasionally criminal) stupidity, including geographical details related to the poster, perhaps not such a great handicap.
Or, at least, there appear to be many more opportunities these days to collect information in a non-invasive fashion. So, since this is the one aspect of HRC procedures that seems to bother otherwise supportive people, perhaps disallowing the technique going forward might be a good thing.
(Although, come to think of it, one does sometimes need to establish a sock-puppet to get onto these various forums. How much interaction does that typically require?)
PS. A good overview of the issues surrounding S.13 and Canadian human rights laws can be found in
Canadian Lawyer Magazine, though I think the article cuts Doug Christie too much slack.
And here is the beast illustrated. 
...it was piece o' choice for Bruce Willis in 
Some background, and a teaser: 
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