Human Rights Trial Wrap-Up: When is a Comic Not a Comic?

Photo: Painting behind chair in which adjudicator Murray Geiger-Adams sat at BC Human Rights Tribunal while hearing lesbian's complaint against comic

When is a comic not a comic? When he takes insults about "dykes" and "c*nts" off stage, when he twice marches over to the table of two lesbians in the audience, when he later grabs the sunglasses off the head of one of the lesbians after insulting her at the bar, when he hollers at the lesbians outside as they leave the restaurant, prompting one of their heterosexual female companions to holler back, "Hate speech is not free speech." That was the position taken by Devyn Cousineau, lawyer for one of the lesbians, Lorna Pardy, at the BC Human Rights Tribunal during closing arguments on Friday, April 9th.

Comic Guy Earle says he was a comic that night at Zesty’s restaurant as he hurled insults – he admits to the insults and to grabbing and breaking the sunglasses — at the lesbians. Earle’s lawyer, James Millar, said during a media scrum after he walked out of the Tribunal on the first day, that Earle’s right to freedom of expression as a performer is protected under Canada’s Charter of Rights & Freedoms. Millar was clearly exasperated with the Tribunal: "They are saying essentially that artistic expression should follow the same rules as somebody slingin’ hamburgers at Mcdonalds or some other outfit. Or that the same rules that apply to waiters apply to artists in British Columbia."

Cousineau constantly attempted to demonstrate during closing arguments that Earle’s remarks to the lesbians were not artistic expression. "The attacks were not part of a comedy routine", she said, as she began outlining what she considered the "most salient parts of the facts" of the case.

The Facts as Argued by the Lawyer for Lesbian Lorna Pardy

Pardy and the women sitting with her at Zesty’s that night were, "singled out on the basis of their sex and sexual orientation" and subjected to a "brutal and hateful" attack by Guy Earle at Zesty’s restaurant on May 22, 2007.

Pardy had worked that night until 6:30 p.m. as a meteorological technician at the Vancouver airport and then joined her friends on the patio at Zesty’s restaurant on Commercial Dr. She had "no intention of seeing a comedy show."

The patio closed at 11 p.m. and the women were asked by a waitress to move inside the restaurant. When they got a table inside and were speaking to a waitress, Brandy. As the conversation went "back and forth", a second waitress joined in. There was testimony, Cousineau said, that the "women were laughing and talking."

Around this time, "Ms. Broomsgrove leaned over and kissed Ms. Pardy on the cheek."

"The reliable evidence is that the women were not ‘making out’ as some of the witnesses have suggested." Cousineau noted that "a third party" at the table, Carlin Sandor, testified that Pardy and Broomsgrove were not making out at her table, and that she would "feel quite uncomfortable with such behaviour." This evidence that Pardy and Broomsgrove were not making out is important as making out has been "pointed to by respondents as a justification" for Earle’s attack.

The kiss "appears to have drawn Mr. Earle’s attention to the women’s sexual orientation which then became the focus."

Earle then made a number of comments to the audience:

"Don’t mind the inconsiderate dyke table."

"Don’t you have a strap-on dildo that you can take your girl home and fuck her in the ass with tonight?"

"Are you on the rag? Is that why you’re such a fucking cunt?"

He continued to call the women "dykes" and "cunts" from the stage.

"No one was laughing", Cousineau said at this point. "The comedy act had stopped."

"You ruined it for everyone, you stupid dykes, you stupid c*nts." The audience was booing Mr. Earle. Ms. Pardy was booing. Nobody from Ms. Pardy’s table was shooting insults back.

"Earle heads off the stage", Cousineau says.

He heads towards Pardy’s table, with his "eyes locked on her". She felt "threatened" and "splashed" water on him as he approached.

"Why do you have to be such a f*cking c*nt?", he asked.

"She was afraid; she was smaller than him….Ms. Sandor also testified that she felt uncomfortable with Mr. Earle angrily marching toward her."

Some of the witnesses — Cousineau said she was anticipating what Earle would say here — testified that Mr. Earle wasn’t threatening. The "only person" who could say whether he was threatening, Cousineau argued, "is Pardy herself". "The other male comedians were not reliable sources as to the level of fear she was experiencing."

Mr. Earle got back on stage and again began insulting the women:

"Thanks for ruining the evening you f*cking dykes"…or "c*nts."

"You want to be a man; that’s why you’re such an @sshole."

"That table of b!tches threw water in my face."

Then to Broomsgrove, "You’re a fat and ugly dyke and no man will f*ck you."

Then he said to Pardy, "Stick a d*ck in her mouth."

Cousineau noted, "These were not part of a comedy routine and nobody testified that they were."

Earle didn’t end it there, but continued "calling them dykes and c*nts", Cousineau said.

"Ms. Pardy felt shocked and embarrassed….felt like she’d been assaulted."

"A few minutes later, again feeling threatened, she threw water at Mr. Earle, saying, ‘I told you not to come near our table.’"

"Her hands are sweating….She’s amazed no one in the restaurant would intervene."

Earle is "not on stage now."

Before Pardy, Broomsgrove, and Sandor left the restaurant, Pardy had to go to the washroom. "As she passed Mr. Earle, he called her a ‘f*cking dyke’"…. In the washroom, "She cried….She felt afraid at that point for her physical safety." When she left the washroom, "She walked past the bar", where Earle said, "You had to ruin the show, you f*cking dyke, you f*cking bitch’." …. "He broke her sunglasses….She couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears."

[…]

As the women left the restaurant, "Mr. Earle was still talking to them…..Ms. Sandor said to Mr. Earle, ‘Hate speech isn’t free speech’….Mr. Earle told Zoey Bloomsgrove to fuck off. He began to follow them up the street but it appeared his friends tried to calm him down, so he didn’t."

At the end of Cousineau’s outline of what she presented as the fact of that night, Cousineau moved into her legal arguments and reiterated her position that Earle was not acting as a comic whose right to freedom of expression was guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: "My understanding is Mr. Earle says he was a comedian and this type of expression is subject to an enhanced protection under the Charter….But we have no evidence to support the argument that all or any of the expression in this case was creative expression as part of his comedy routine." She went on to say that "the abuse in this case was physical as well as verbal" and therefore not deserving of a "separate status from other harassment cases that the Tribunal hears ….where a landlord harasses his tenant in the way that we’ve heard in this case."

Non-Lawyer Sam Ismail Responds for the Defense, Accusing Lesbian of being motivated by "hatred".

One of the criticisms of the Human Rights Tribunal is that it stacks the deck by funding a lawyer for the accuser but not for the accused. Salam Ismail, who along with Earle is accused of discrimination based on "sex and sexual orientation", despite the fact that all witnesses except Pardy corroborate his claim that he was not in the restaurant when the abuse occurred, is represented by his brother, Sam Ismail, a lay person. Salam sat calmly beside Sam as Sam made little attempt to conceal his outrage, responding with a shocked expression when Cousineau stated during closing arguments that $10,000 in damages would be an appropriate award for Pardy. Sam looked at Pardy at one point and accused her of being motivated by "some kind of hatred, to destroy somebody, him and his business." "This was a huge burden on Salam for years", he added.

Sam acknowledged that without a law degree, he was no match for Cousineau, saying, "We are here to find facts; it’s not about who is smarter or who can twist an interpretation of the law."

Sam Ismail asked for an extension for submitting his written arguments and was granted one by adjudicator Murray Geiger-Adams, who previously said he has plenty of experience dealing with defendents who appear at the Tribunal without lawyers.
Sam Ismail did make few comments in response to Cousineau’s oral arguments.

Sam Ismail objected to the characterization of Pardy as an assault victim when in fact she had thrown water at Earle on two occasions that evening prior to him grabbing her sunglasses. "You say she was assaulted and she was insulted as well," Sam said. "How can that claim really be put forward by a professional person, when he was assaulted?"

“I’m not looking to defend Mr. Earle; they were both wrong”, said Sam Ismail. He added that if Salam Ismail had been in the restaurant at the time, he probably would have kicked both of them out.

Sam Ismail, speaking in broken English, also objected to an emphasis during Cousineau’s closing statement on the fact that Salam Ismail failed to create consequences for Earle after the attack. As Sam put it, "Salam wouldn’t go after the one who assaulted [Earle]. I don’t think Salam was obliged to go after that."

Sam Ismail further took exception to Cousineau’s presentation of Earle as an employee of Zesty’s in his role as MC of the ‘open mic’ comedy show the night in May 2007 when he insulted the lesbians, a status that would make Zesty’s owner Salam Ismail liable for Earle’s behaviour. Referring to the fact that the comics were given a $50 beer tab for pitchers of beer in exchange for showing up, Sam Ismail argued in slightly broken English, "Then I guess all the other comedians were employees as well, because that pitchers of beer was distributed among them." He pointed out that Earle and the other comics could not be seen as employees as their relationship with Zesty’s was so casual that Salam could not rely on them to show up, "You don’t know who your employees are if you don’t know who’s coming, who’s going, who’s going to MC the show and who’s not." He added, "It makes it very difficult for a business man to run a business when there is not a clear definition of what an employee is." He pointed out that if a definition of employee had been provided in advance, we "would not have to be here". With that comment Sam Ismail was on the same page as a real lawyer in this case, James Millar who was representing Guy Earle.

Millar had earlier attempted to put a stop to this Tribunal by going to the BC Supreme Court. The Court had in turn asked the Tribunal not to proceed with the hearing before reconsidering a few legal questions, ‘Was Earle a service-provider at Zesty’s?’, and ‘Could the service-provision section of the Human Rights Code be used to circumvent the Charter of Rights & Freedoms which guaranteed the right to freedom of expression?’ The Tribunal ignored the Supreme Court and proceeded with the Tribunal, saying they would answer the questions after the hearing. That’s the reason Millar walked out and Earle stayed at home in Ontario. "I’ve practised for 30 years and never been in a situation quite like this," Millar told the Tribunal on that first day. "You can’t put these people through it for three years and not even make a decision concerning your own jurisdiction. … It’s an abuse of process." Millar has once again headed back to the Supreme Court, asking that they find the Tribunal in "contempt".

That was one c-word Cousineau avoided mentioning in her closing statement. But she stated that it "should be common ground that the Tribunal doesn’t have jurisdiction to consider the Charter." This Tribunal cannot do the analysis, she argued, as to whether Mr. Earle’s behaviour under Section 8 of the Human Rights Code is a reasonable limit on the Charter right to freedom of expression.

It simply cannot be the case that all a respondent has to do, she argued, "is raise the Charter and the Tribunal is instantly deprived of jurisdiction". Everyone has access to the Supreme Court, she added. "Mr. Earle could go to the Court and ask that Section 8 of the [Human Rights] Code be declared unconstitutional, but merely citing the Charter cannot in and of itself deprive the Tribunal of jurisdiction.""

If Ms. Pardy wins", Cousineau continued, "then that’s the point at which he would argue to the Court that Section 8 [of the Human Rights Code] is unconstitutional."MacLeans magazine had intended to make just that argument should they have lost when the BC Human Rights Tribunal held a hearing into their publishing of the article, "The Future Belongs to Islam" by Mark Steyn. Cousineau referred to that case in fact: "The Tribunal considered Charter jurisprudence which involved the Macleans article and in that case they did take into account Charter jurisprudence regarding free speech and allowed it to influence their analysis of this case." Steyn tells it more bluntly:

"Under BC’s shitty "human rights" code, Maclean’s and I were, as a point of law, guilty. So we dared them to convict. And, like all bullies when someone stands up to them, the gutless pussies wimped out. I understand Guy Earle doesn’t have as deep pockets, but he needs a support network that will make the political price too high for Commissar [Heather] MacNaughton."

The price would be too high, argued Cousineau, if Earle were allowed to walk away from Pardy’s complaint, as it would "empty the Code of it’s power".

Geiger-Adams asked Sam Ismail to consider when preparing his written arguments, "whether Mr. Earle, independent of Mr. Ismail and independent of Zesty’s, was providing a service to the public." Perhaps Geiger-Adams is trying to lower the price for Salam Ismail.

John F. Kennedy Quoted on Liberty at "Islamophobia" Trial in Vancouver

This is hate speech?”, defense lawyer Julian Porter said in closing arguments at the trial of MacLeans magazine at the BC Human Rights Tribunal. "This is hate speech?," Porter repeated. "What on earth have we come to."

MacLeans is accused of making Muslims the target of "hatred and contempt" and "Islamophobia" with their 2006 article, "The Future Belongs to Islam", an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book, America Alone.

“Beware”, Porter said in an exaggeratedly sinister tone that reminded me of that used by kids wearing Halloween masks. “Beware”, he repeated, this time unable to stifle a chuckle, “when we are reduced to having an expert on Bollywood mulling, sifting, through the work, prospecting for prejudice.”

Porter summed up MacLean's publication of Steyn's opinions as, "It's what journalism does for liberty”. MacLeans was engaging in the “essential trade of ideas and argument -- at this point, Porter's voice got loud -- argument, fierce argument, dissent, contrariness!"

And here he quoted John F. Kennedy, imitating his Boston accent. “Loss of liberty brings a long, clear road to Cuba!”

The second defense lawyer, Roger McConchie, noted in his closing arguments that this case did not appear to be high on the priority list of one of the complainants, Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, President of the Canadian Islamic Congress. Elmasry hadn’t shown up at the trial.

Mark Steyn did show up.



Steyn spoke to the media (photo above taken on Friday) -- is his accent Australian? -- outside the courtroom during the lunch break. He and MacLean’s are “terrified” that the lawyer for the complainants, Faisel Joseph, “put on such an inept case that they may lose”, thereby depriving MacLean’s and Steyn of the opportunity to have this case heard in a higher court.

Protesters Carry Blank Signs at BC Human Rights Tribunal Hearing for Author Mark Steyn

(photo dag walker, a Vancouver blogger)

The signs protesters carried at the courthouse said it all by saying nothing.

They stood in front of the Provincial Courthouse in downtown Vancouver this morning to protest erosion of freedom of expression as the hearing of author Mark Steyn opened at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. Steyn was called to the Tribunal on a charge of hate speech. The protesters say the Tribunal poses a danger to free speech. In fact, they say the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal -- where truth is not a defense -- has morphed into Canada's "thought police".

Trouble started for Steyn, a newspaper columnist, when MacLeans magazine published an almost 5,000 word excerpt from his book, America Alone. In the book, Steyn examines the Muslim population explosion in the western world and concludes that Islam will be dominant in many Western countries in the foreseeable future. Three Muslim law students in Ontario saw the excerpt from Steyn's book in MacLeans and, along with Naiyer Habib and Dr. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress -- Elmasry is known for pushing for sharia law in Ontario as well as for announcing that it is acceptable to murder Israeli civilians -- filed a complaint against Steyn.

At it's peak, the protest attracted 30 - 40 people. They made their point: Steyn is not alone.

Related story: 'Five Feet of Fury' Blog Introduced as Evidence at "Islamophobia" Trial at BC Human Rights Tribunal

I am Mark Steyn

The blogosphere is abuzz over the protest planned for Monday outside the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in downtown Vancouver. The Tribunal is holding what truepeers, a blogger at the Vancouver blog Covenant Zone, calls a “Stalinist Show Trial” for author Mark Steyn. But Steyn's rights are everybody's rights. Hence slogans like, "I am Mark Steyn" or "We are all Mark Steyn."

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has scheduled a hearing for Steyn, a Canadian-born newspaper columnist living in New Hampshire, and MacLeans magazine on Monday. Both are accused of hate speech based on an excerpt published in MacLeans from Steyn's best-selling book, America Alone. One of the complainants is Dr. Mohammed Elmasry, president of The Canadian Islamic Congress who pushed for sharia law in Ontario.

But Mark Steyn is not alone, says dag, one of several bloggers at Covenant Zone -- he also writes at No Dhimmitude -- who is organizing the protest in support of Steyn as his trial kicks off. "His right to express opinions is on trial", says dag. The protest will be held at 8 a.m. on Monday, June 2 in front of the Provincial Court House at 800 Hornby where, according to the BCHRT website, the hearing will take place.

The Steyn hearing is not the first time Human Rights Commissions or Tribunals in Canada have acted as “thought police” on behalf of Islamic Imams. Ezra Levant, former publisher of the Western Standard, has been forced to appear in front of the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing material that a Saudi-trained Islamic Imam has complained about. Levant has pointed out that when complainants don’t have a leg to stand on in the real courts, they take their case to a Human Rights Commission.

How did Human Rights Commissions get the power to harass authors and publishers? They were founded as an inexpensive way to handle disputes between landlords and tenants or employers and employees, cases in which discrimination was being alleged. Now they've become a tool for Islamic Imams to curb the free speech of infidels.

If you think Human Rights Commissions care about free speech, listen to the words of Dean Steacy, the primary internet "anti-hate" investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. When questioned by Barbara Kulaszka, a lawyer for a website owner in a human rights case, Steacy said, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has become a bad guy here too. It was pointed out on Covenant Zone, a generally pro-Harper blog, that before becoming Prime Minister, Harper called Human Rights Commissions in Canada “totalitarian”. But since then, he has angered his supporters by failing to reign in these publicly-funded “thought police”.

Not only Prime Minister Harper but the average Canadian has done little to rescue their right to free speech from Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals. According to Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren, most of the donations to Mark Steyn's defense have come from Americans.

On Monday, though, Canadians will be speaking out about free speech erosion by Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals. That's obvious from the 80 comments left on the Covenant Zone post about the planned protest. As dag says, “I’m getting really excited about it.”

Executive Asst. in Lyndon Johnson's West Wing Fights for Democracy in Powell River

Patricia Aldworth went to the coastal pulp mill city of Powell River to retire. But the woman who had learned about politics while an Executive Assistant in the West Wing during Lyndon Johnson's Presidency, couldn’t retire. Not when she saw that democracy in Powell River was being fed through the wood chipper.

Aldworth ran for a Council seat in a by-election in this scenic British Columbia city, which has become a retirement destination for Americans. She won.

But not one Council member showed up for Aldworth's swearing-in ceremony; Mayor Stewart Alsgard emerged from his office only when the crowd of Aldworth's supporters overflowed into the hallway.

Councillors and the Mayor had shown up for an in camera meeting just a few hours before Aldworth (pictured above) was sworn in though, on March 4^th. At that meeting, they instructed City lawyers to launch a defamation suit against Aldworth and two other pensioners, now known as the Powell River Three. Did I mention that the other two, Winslow Brown and Noel Hopkins, were in their eighties?

Brown tried to wriggle out of this jam. He went to Council on March 11 and, voice quivering, apologized. "I had no idea how far the city was prepared to go. I'm a pensioner on a fixed income. I could never afford to fight this lawsuit in court. If I tried, it would financially destroy me, [I would] lose my home and family." At the end of this groveling, Brown handed his letter to the City Clerk and asked, 'So, is it ended?"

It had not ended.

A few weeks later, Mayor Stewart Alsgard (photo above) publicly reiterated his position that the City had been defamed and had a right to take legal action against the Powell River Three and anybody else who criticized them.

"Sounding more like a Soviet apparatchik than a Canadian," Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham wrote, "Alsgard went on to say the defamation suit provided a tremendously important lesson for the community's young leaders about 'courtesy' and 'mutual respect'."

"I can't imagine a more regressive lesson in democracy," said John Dixon, Secretary of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Dixon has a home in Powell River and went into the local newspaper office to place an ad to sell his motorcycle, only to see the public humiliation of Cecil Brown's apology splashed over the front page.

There is a name for the type of lawsuit that the Powell River Three are facing: SLAPP, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

The City’s decision to sue the pensioners came after the Mayor and Council decided they'd like to borrow 6.5 million to redevelop the north harbor. Even though there was a by- election coming up (the one that Aldworth would win), Council decided not to let citizens vote on the borrowing but to instead require opponents to go to City Hall to fill out a form. Ten percent of eligible voters – roughly 1,000 people – would have had to make the trek down to City Hall to put a stop to this borrowing. Outraged by this process, a group of pensioners organized to write letters to the editor and hand out copies of the forms at the mall, even helping people fill them out. It was involvement in this activity by the Powell River Three that prompted the Mayor to give them a SLAPP up the side of the head.

“No government should be allowed to sue its citizens for defamation regardless of what is said,” Aldworth told the Vancouver Sun at the beginning of May. “It really goes to the underpinnings of democracy. If you don’t allow citizens to criticize their government, then the government can get away with anything.” And Aldworth, who earned a law degree at Georgetown after leaving the West Wing, noted that because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms only came into effect in 1982, there is not yet much case law upholding the right to free speech.

Aldsworth also said -- and I've been saying this for years -- that Canadians aren’t as well educated about their rights or as willing to stand up for them as Americans.

Dixon wrote a letter to the Mayor and Council asking them to drop the lawsuit. He pointed out that in Ontario, the courts ruled against municipalities in 2006 that had launched SLAPP suits against citizens. In one Justice Kenneth Pedlar wrote: “If governments were entitled to sue citizens who are critical, only those with the means to defend civil actions would be able to criticize government entities.”

If the City doesn't back down, the BCCLA intends to take the issue to the BC Supreme Court and ask them to do what the Ontario courts have done – declare that a government cannot sue it’s own citizens.

In Canada, Powell River is everywhere

The problem in Canada is not strictly in Powell River; the problem is that in Canada Powell River is everywhere. What Bramham called "Soviet apparatchiks" are not only operating openly in the government of Powell River, they are operating openly under Mayor Sullivan in the City of Vancouver, they are operating full tilt at the Vancouver School Board, and they are operating openly in Human Rights Commissions across Canada.


The case of Vancouver homeless man William "Bill" Simpson left no doubt that Soviet apparatchiks are well ensconced in the City of Vancouver government. When Simpson was elected to the Board of the Directors of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Community Centre, one of Mayor Sullivan's henchwomen banished him to the sidewalk outside. Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, General Manager of Community Services, wrote a letter to Simpson a couple of weeks after he was elected, banning him "indefinitely" from the Carnegie Centre. When City management staff Ethel Whitty and Dan Tetrault hand-delivered Simpson the letter on behalf of Forbes-Roberts, Whitty told him that he would not even be allowed into the building to attend Board meetings.

Forbes-Roberts' revealed in her letter that Simpson's crime was one of free speech. He operated a website, she noted, which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which has criticized Carnegie staff. The blog had revealed such taxpayer rip-offs on the part of staff as the semi-regular locking of doors to computer and education services which they were funded to provide to the poor. Lawyer Gregory Bruce wrote to the City, reminding Forbes-Roberts that the concept of guilt by association was "contrary to the rule of law". She did not reinstate Simpson.

It became clear in the Simpson case that City of Vancouver staff were functioning as thought police. When questions were raised at a Carnegie Community Relations Meeting last summer about the lack of grounds for barring Simpson, Whitty defended the barring by stating, "He said he was proud of the blogger." This thought policing by Whitty was actually caught on tape.

Rachel Davis was one of the few Carnegie Board members who opposed the banning of a duly elected Board member from the building and Board meetings. And what did it get her? The Board held a special meeting following a regular Board meeting, when she was on her way home to pay her babysitter, and decided to send her a letter asking her to resign. Davis didn't back down. Did I mention she was born in the U.S.A.?

Photo: Ken Denike, Vancouver School Board Trustee

If you want a textbook case of Soviet apparatchiks shutting down free speech, though, look at the Vancouver School Board. Look at what the VSB did to a woman who wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing their handling of bullying complaints that she and others had independently lodged against a physically and verbally abusive teacher. In the letter, the critic stated that she intended to campaign in the upcoming tightly-contested School Board election about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints. Upon receiving the critic's letter, the VSB quickly resorted to a tactic that was used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union and continues to be used against dissidents in China: political psychiatry. The VSB abused political influence to arrange, under pretenses the police officer involved admits they knew to be fraudulent, to have their critic subjected to a psychiatric assessment.

The VSB arranged to have Car 87 -- a police car containing an armed police officer and a male psychiatric nurse -- arrive unannounced at their critic's home to perform the psych assessment. Car 87 is an ideal tool for smearing political adversaries as it works like this: even if you're cleared, you're never really cleared. A "Car 87" notation remains adjacent to your name on the police computer system for "99 years".

A few hours after the Car 87 visit, Police School Liaison Sergeant Lester told the critic in a taped telephone call that the VSB had given him a copy of her letter which he read and emphasized to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about the letter. (Her letter to the VSB was the sole evidence submitted to him by the VSB in support of the visit, a fact he confirmed during the taped call.) Despite Lester's protests about lack of evidence, the VSB pressured him, providing no additional evidence, until he approved the visit. "It was clear-cut case of fraud," says the targeted critic.

Car 87 visits are restricted by legislation to instances in which there is evidence that an individual is at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. The only thing the critic was at risk of killing was the slim chance that the NPA School Board had of retaining power. The critic could prove that an NPA trustee had been assuring the public via television that bullying complaints were being taken seriously, when in fact correspondence being received by complainants indicated otherwise.

When the critic obtained a copy of the psych report, she discovered that the psych nurse, Don Getz, after being briefed by the VSB, had entered "freedom of information requests" as the sole reason for the Car 87 visit. She had made two or three routine freedom of information requests over a period of a year for documents from her file. Georgina Kosich, the VSB clerk who processed Freedom of Information requests was presented to Constable Michelle Sevigny and nurse Getz as the primary witness in the case, and met with them to release the critic's freedom of information requests. Kosich apparently fraudulently concealed from the psych nurse and cop, the letters she had sent the critic encouraging her to submit freedom of information requests to the VSB.

Not only did the critic discover from reading the psych report that her ability to access documents under the Freedom of Information Act was presented as socially deviant, so too were signs of an intellectual life visible in the home-office space where psych nurse Don Getz and Constable Michelle Sevigny interviewed her. A computer surrounded by papers and books, and two bookshelves stuffed with books, were rubricized in the psych report as 'clutter'. The VSB were now burners.

Even the fact that the critic had been competent and responsible enough to substantiate all claims in her letter to the VSB was viewed by the psych nurse -- after he was briefed by the VSB -- as an indicator of mental illness as it made the letter "a little long". He admitted he had not personally read the letter.

As Getz and Sevigny left the critic's apartment, she commented to Getz that it was the election a couple of weeks away that had prompted this psych assessment. He agreed with her! She included this fact in a written complaint lodged with the VSB immediately after the visit. Getz has never disagreed with this statement.

The VSB's pre-election exercise in political psychiatry was successful. The critic was sufficiently terrorized that she abandoned her plans to campaign against the NPA in the election.

Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have responded to the failure of the VSB to address their history of political psychiatry by organizing, as an "absolute last resort", an international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board.

Shortly before this Car 87 terror was inflicted by VSB on a potential election campaigner, the outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, Reggi Balabanov, had sounded an alarm about the use of police to intimidate bullying complainants. Complainants were too often finding police showing up on their doorsteps, Balabanov said, resulting in a definite "chill" on the willingness of citizens to pursue school bullying complaints.


But no discussion of the duck-taping of the mouths of Canadians would be complete without a mention of publicly funded Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Originally set up as inexpensive forums for handling discrimination complaints such as those against landlords and employers, Human Rights Commissions have morphed into thought police operating kangaroo courts. Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Commission have targeted writer Mark Steyn, a Canadian living in New Hampshire, after Macleans magazine published a well supported piece by Steyn on Islamists. The Alberta Human Rights Commission has targeted Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the Western Standard, for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Levant had published the cartoons as a pro free speech statement, supporting publications around the world which had done the same.

Human Rights Commissions are always your best bet if you don't have a leg to stand on in a real court. They will use taxpayer's dollars to pay your legal fees, while they bankrupt your critic. On the Vancouver blog, Covenant Zone, where truepeers, a Canadian, and dag, an American from Idaho, monitor this racket, there is a link to a column by the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren:

"The notion that 'freedom of speech is an American concept' -- I am quoting Dean Steacy, principal "mediator" (i.e. thought-crime investigator) for the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- is proving sadly true in the limited sense that most of the money donated to the various legal defense funds has come, via Internet, from outraged citizens of the U.S."

Warren asked Canadians to divert donations intended for the Conservative Party of Canada to the defense funds of some of those targeted for these Kafkaesque prosecutions. He believes that action could jolt Prime Minister Stephen Harper out of the "sleepiness" from which he and so many other Canadians are suffering as the right to free speech is blungeoned to death.

The above tactics of Soviet apparatchiks on government payrolls in Canada are a mere sampling of those currently being used to harass citizens exercising their right to free speech.

What is to be done? Maybe Canada needs more Americans.

David Frum Weighs In on Human Rights Commissions Acting as Idea Censors

David Frum, a Canadian-born former speech-writer for George W. Bush, weighed in this morning on the persecution of writer Mark Steyn and publisher Ezra Levant by Human Rights Commissions in Canada.

Speaking on Vancouver's CKNW radio, Frum said that the hauling of his "friends" in front of the Ontario and/or B.C. Human Rights Commissions to answer for material published is so "egregious" that it may be a turning point for Canadians. He pointed out that Human Rights Commissions were set up as an inexpensive way to resolve housing and employment disputes, as an alternative to a trial, but were never meant to interfere in the "marketplace of ideas".