IE WAY of the transgressor is hard. pecially if one transgresses against the codes the politically correct. What they don’t ww about you will be made up. Lies for le, sort of thing. 2=Such has been the case: in my Swindler’s List 2 encounter with the Canadian Jewish Conese the Non Democratic. Party and many in the media. A verbal vortex. : ‘ake Sol Littman, for i instance, he ‘of the “Nazi-hunt- 1g”.Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Toronto. He had i me'on the Women’s Television Network of stat- ig that all immigrants are bone-in-the-nose savages. . ‘Dreadful though I may be in the eyes of the orthodox, n’t yet qualify fora bed i in ‘the loony bin and have ever said any such thing. By wrote Shad to do with the gutlessness ‘the media where the i immigration issue is concerned. I sit has now. dawned on all but the most dim-witted aa that no bone-in-the-nose savages are more eager to bow before their idols than. our liberals are to bow down - fore the taboos of racism.” ;Littman Bore Lituman, when I confronted him with mn r raped by i - peddled by Judy Rebick on the CBC's Face Off, by fa Paula Brook; ‘a fem who scribbles for The Vancouver Sun : doctorate i in bilge, Allan Fotheringham, and copy one another’s stuff. Let an eae cantankerous old coot, for instance, stated that feminists should be ‘in question was made nearly 20 years CKVU. At the time, urged on by s¢ idiots in Ottawa were planning to group: sn ‘into combat units. Which has now hap- was that if there were another war it ¢ Russians (the Cold War was still on). q I stated; it was my hope that Media Watch should be the first to volunteer and that if they they would surely | be raped by the the statement was made tongue in cheek. ess po litically correct wretches, however, "never cheeks. © > V rains, either, to see that I didn’t nits ts precisely ‘because they would said, et De i 7 Boyd's twaddle, for instance. who Sing to hi me in the same breath as ing ¢ add ic i dais and 4 joined the cous he" set out to prove thit T call'the Chinese “slan- he got me ‘mixed up with the Duke of “Concup, who had written that I refer to slanty cyes.”-° came’from 2 column of quotes in which I report- ‘of Edinburgh had told British students if fey s stayed there much longer they the guts to rey can all “Freedom of expression was entrenched in our Constitution and is guaranteed in the Quebec Charter so as to ensure that everyone can manifest their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, indeed all expressions of the heart and By Timothy Renshaw Managing Editor trenshaw@direct.ca THE government’s heavy thumb is firmly on one side of the scales of justice when it comes to human rights tribunals. Take the recently completed hearing involving the North Shore News, its columnist Doug Collins and the Canadian Jewish Congress. Where to start? How about money? Govern- ment bets it all on one side. Complainants in any human gti tribunal are automatically eli- le for legal aid to fund their “No means test is required. No proof of hardship or shortage of money. It’s all on the taxpayer. As is the legal expense involved in marshalling lawyers for the attorney general’s oftice and any other gov- ernment party that might choose to intercede in the case. The Canadian Jewish Congress, which is far from destitute, was therefore free to fund a portion of its case courtesy of the govern- ment. However, CJC lawyer Gerald Cuttler said the CJC did not take advantage of that government esse. Defendants in tribunals, on the other hand, 2 are offered no such government helping han The North td News, for example, has already spent over $200,000 in its defence over the past three years. A substantial amount by any measure; a crippling amount for a community newspa- r. ms As to the tribunal procedure itself, defendants have no recourse to the traditional avenues of defence pro- vided in the Criminal Code under libel and slander or even hate crimes sections. The News, for example, could not defend itself at the recent tribunal on the grounds of: @ truth; ‘(B fair comment; Wi qualified priviieg C3 Black of of foreseablty that anyone would be harmed Wi that the | pose of the column was the removal of. Fate from other identifiable par- a I the issue being one of pressing public interest. _ And the newspaper was subject to legal ambush from the outset. For example, the North Shore News was required to file its arguments by November 1995, more than 18 months before the start of the tribunal hearing. Our charter and constitutional arguments _had to be detailed in advance of the hear- in; eThe various supporters of the com- plaint were under no such requirements. News’ lawyers réccived little or no information on what the complainant’s or the government's arguments would be at the hearing. The procedure thereby pro- vided little or no opportunity to prepare rebuttal and left the News wide open to ambush during the hearing. mind, however unpopular, distasteful or contrary to the mainstream.” The News was also afforded no indica- tion of what the government was trying to accomplish at the hearing until the start of the hearing itself. No notice or details of any sort were given to News lawyers of expert evidence presented at the hearing. ; Instead the newspaper's two-man defence team was given a week during the hearing to rebut that evidence. In normal court cases, the Canadian Evidence Act requires notice of such evi- dence to be given 30 days in advance. The rules of court go further, requiring 60 days. In addition, the attorney general’s office and the CJC applied to amend their complaints during the hearing. after the News had Sen building its defence over the previous 24% years based on the original complaints. Summonses mses by News lawyers to deter- mine such key information as how often the government had used or considered Section 319 of the Criminal Code (hate crimes) to ascertain its need and the details of cases pending under the section were denied out of hand by Nitya Iyer, the hearing’s tribunal of one. At the end of the hearing on June 27, the attorney general obtained an order giving its lawyers a two-week extension to compose an argument to part of the News’ constitutional challenge. GCE Borg dene resentin| the CJC, the attorney ment, the deputy chi the B.C. Human Rights ¢ Gauliton : The hearing’s location was a mys _ until immediately prior to thie start of hearing, and it moved around ‘Vz c like a travelling circus. The tribunal itse ‘consisting of a single ‘government ed Nn. : leanwhile, the identity ing’s tribunal, which the News had understood as carly as August 199: would be Human Rights tribunal mem! Tom Patch, was switched to Iyer immedi: ately prior to the hearing’s May.12 ‘Start ates % And how about the burden of proof ® : that a published statement has ‘likely’ . exposed a person or persons to > Under Bill 33 and the case law on which it is based, the only requirement is ~ that the tribunal be convinced that it is miore probable than not that the “most... unthinking and malevolent” person (read: the bottom end of the human torem -_ pole), after reading the Doug Collins col-’ umn at issue, could be likely to expose a single person to hatred. . Now that’s justice, citizens. “[J)n a free, pluralistic and democratic suciety we prize a diversity of © ideas and opinions for their inherent value both to the community and to the individual.” (Supreme Court of Canada, Irwin Toy Limited)