Kim Kerr's Defense: BC Housing Didn't Give DERA Enough Money

The Statement of Defence was filed on Thursday in the BC Housing v. DERA Housing case. Thanks to a reader who sent us this update:

"Cameron Ward (lawyer) is pleading if Kim Kerr was corrupt (that is, not doing what he should ) then it was because BC Housing did not give him enough money to do his job so he had to cook the books. The DTES housing providers are going to love this as all they do is complain about lack of funding and Kim is going to become their champion. Commit fraud and become the poster child of the DTES."

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.

Ujal Dosanjh: Proud Man or Con Man

Photo: Suzanne Dahlin, 2007

I heard Ujal Dosanjh interviewed on CKNW radio yesterday morning about today's Vaisakhi parade in Surrey, the one he was advised not to show up at as his safety couldn't be guaranteed.

Dosanjh was giddy during the interview; he giggled several times -- odd, since the topic was violence -- and at other times he was busy portraying himself as an upright man. The interviewer never once giggled.

I laughed out loud when Dosanjh told the interviewer: "I'm a very proud man." That's funny, the evidence points more toward him being a con man.

I used to live with a woman who did some work at Battered Women's Support Services in Vancouver when Dosanjh was BC Attorney General. Dosanjh was hardly an upright guy; he had a 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' relationship to BWSS. He funded BWSS and they gave him an election endorsement to their entire newsletter mailing list. I doubt that he included that endorsement in his election campaign costs. While he was funding BWSS, the top dyke there -- the one who put out their newsletter -- discussed in the newsletter how she had been sent to a conference in Texas where she sat in a hot tub.

But here's why I would never vote for Dosanjh.

While Dosanjh was throwing money at BWSS, there was evidence that men were being fast-tracked to "batterer" status there. Here's just one example: A guy's common law wife told him she was leaving him so he stopped buying her monthly carton of cigarrettes, which earned him the label "economic batterer" at BWSS, a label eventually abbreviated to "batterer". Even the common law wife in that case apparently questioned whether he was a batterer and said her psychiatrist, whom she was seeing for agoraphobia, told her she wasn't a battered woman. But the label "batterer" was used liberally at BWSS. If a man called to challenge these labels, he was at high risk of being labelled a "harasser" -- a catch-all label that they reportedly used relentlessly.

This labeling mattered because BWSS had an office at the court house and they threw their weight around in court cases, including child custody battles.

One of the top women in the BWSS "collective" was a lesbian who didn't like men and wasn't a big fan of heterosexual women either, and to go anywhere in that organization....well, let's just say your career opportunities improved once you switched to lesbianism.

Anyway, a few men and women began to demand that BWSS be held to a higher standard. Even a psychological governing body was critical of BWSS. But one woman involved in BWSS, said that if you spoke up about anything, staff could tell you to take your medication, that sort of thing -- crazybaiting is a predictable tactic used against whistleblowers. When it came to imposing standards, Ujal Dosanjh, was not proud enough to do it. He ignored complaints from both men and women.

Dosanjh would sometimes refer complaints to Suzanne Dahlin, a highly paid bureaucrat in Victoria who ran Victims Services, part of the Attorney General's office. (I have looked Dahlin up: she is aboriginal and worked on land claims.) One woman said she was talking to Dahlin on the telephone and she could hear Dahlin typing, clickity click, clickity click, on her keyboard, and then Dahlin suddenly interrupted her, snarling, "Are you finished?" The woman asked Dahlin if she had even been listening. And Dahlin banged the phone down in her ear.

Dosanjh was asked at that point to do something about Dahlin's abuse. He replied with a letter stating that her behaviour had been "exemplary". (I previously saw a copy of the letter but I've emailed the recipient to get her to send me a copy.)

Dosanjh' ability to just gloss over reality showed up in the CKNW interview too, when he said he had not had to fear violence in British Columbia, that violence had not been a problem for him. I thought, "Huh?" He had his skull cracked when a Sikh extremist waited for him when he left his office and whacked him across the head with a steel pipe. The interviewer reminded him of that fact.

Battered Women's Support Services was never intended to be what it became under Dosanjh. It was intended to be for women who were physically abused or being physically threatened, not for smearing non-violent men and disadvantaging them in custody battles. The most man-hating lesbian who worked at BWSS has since left. The place may have been cleaned up now that she and Dosanjh are gone. I don't know because I no longer know anybody on the inside there.

It's time Iggy looked closely at past behaviour that Dosanjh should be ashamed of.

Sarah Palin's Canadian Roots

When Sarah Palin spoke last night in Hamilton, Ontario, she said the Palin family -- her husband's family -- have two grandfathers from Canada, one from Saskatchewan and one from Manitoba. But she said she visited Canada often as a child with her own family.

Here's a verbatim transcript of Sarah Palin's comments about Palin ancestors in Canada:

"Relatives from Canada too. We have the foundation of the Palin family, one grandfather was born in Manitoba, this was a farming family there. And then another one born in Saskatchewan and there were some pretty funny stories of our relatives who were bootleggers I guess. This was many, many years ago. Don't blame me. There's never a boring story when it comes to the Palins."

Todd Palin's grandfather, Frederick Palin, was born in southern Manitoba, in the town of Hartley, Brad Coe, a history buff in Hartley, told the Toronto Sun. Coe says Frederick Palin eventually moved to Washington state where his son James Palin -- Todd Palin's father -- was born. Todd Palin was born in Alaska.

On her comment that some of the Palin ancestors were "bootleggers", Coe said that was a common way to make money in Canada during prohibition in the U.S. “A lot of guys fed their families that way. It was money, and you couldn’t get it otherwise. We had a lot of connections with rum-runners. They would make hooch up here, and then run it down to the States."

---------------

I've always thought the vilification of Palin in the media was rooted in classism. Rex Murphy had that take on it too in his recent column in the National Post. He thinks Palin is "smart" and that the vilification of her is rooted in class snobbery.

I recall when Palin was running as VP, I was listening to Ian Punnett hosting Coast to Coast radio, a guy who presents himself as a liberal Episcopalian minister. He opened the show by sneering at Palin for "dropping her g's" during a debate. He didn't talk about positions she took during the debate, just the fact that she was dropping her g's. I saw Punnett as a snob at that moment, and have never really shaken that impression of him.

These phony liberals are a constant on the Downtown Eastside. Like Brenda, who years ago worked at the Livingroom on Powell. Her ex-boyfriend told me that she lived on Bowen Island so that she didn't have to run into anybody from the Downtown Eastside on her off hours.

This morning I was walking up Main St. with a guy who was complaining about Pivot hypocrisy, but I told him I hear far more complaints about Carnegie. He said he knew what I meant, that management at Carnegie expects you to act meek. "Just look at the way they talk to people", he said, as though he knew he didn't have to elaborate.

Leonard, a guy who drops in to Carnegie but is not prone to criticizing staff, was chatting about them a few months ago. "They look down on us, you know", he said in a voice tone that suggested he thought they didn't that know he knew.

Just as it upset povertarians when Downtown Eastsiders started blogging to reach taxpayers with their opinions, I think it bugs elites that Sarah Palin can sit at her kitchen table in Alaska and twitter and reach voters.

Art Bell Spends $18,000 on Flying Cats

They're not unidentified flying objects. They're cats.

Art Bell said on Friday night while guest-hosting the Coast to Coast radio show, that since marrying a Filipina woman, he has moved back and forth between the U.S. and the Philippines -- and he's moved his three cats with him.

Bell has spent $18,000 flying his cats back and forth. He realizes that's "ridiculous", but says he has a "No Cat Left Behind" policy.

I heard Bell talking last year too about the $18,000 his frequent flyer felines have cost him. Actually, they're not frequent flyers; he said it costs a lot to fly a cat even once.

Human Rights Trial: The Lesbian Who Won't Talk

Where was Zoey? The lawyer for lesbian Lorna Pardy appeared thrown by a question about the failure of Pardy’s ex-girlfriend’s to testify at the BC Human Rights Tribunal. The question was asked by adjudicator Murray Geiger-Adams during last Friday’s wrap-up of a hearing into homophobic remarks that Pardy was subjected to by comedian Guy Earle, just after her then girlfriend kissed her at ’open mic’ comedy night at Zesty’s restaurant in Vancouver.

“Zoey Broomsgrove’s absence: What do you think I should or shouldn’t make of it?”

There was a prolonged pause after Geiger-Adams asked that question of Devyn Cousineau as she concluded closing arguments on behalf of her client, Pardy. “It’s up to the complainant to chose who can testify,” Cousineau said, after pointing out that Pardy and Carlin Sandor, the two women who had been sitting at a table with Broomsgrove at Zesty’s, had testified. “We have evidence about why Ms. Broomsgrove did not testify which I mentioned in a pre-hearing conference”, adding that it was “on the advice of her doctor”. Cousineau could be heard catching her breath, just as she had been doing at the beginning of her closing arguments, before she settled in and calmly rhymed off Earle’s insults about a “strap-on dildo”, “c*nts”, women who “must be on the rag”, and a “fat and ugly” lesbian who “no man will f*ck.”

No “adverse” inference should be drawn from Broomsgrove’s failure to testify, Cousineau told Geiger-Adams.

An adverse inference should definitely be drawn. That was the position of Sam Ismail, who was repesenting his brother Salam Ismail, Zesty’s owner, who can’t afford a lawyer. Sam Ismail pointed out in slightly broken English, “Ms. Broomsgrove was the one that was most insulted by the words”, and Cousineau has been “bringing them up all the time”. “So I wonder why Ms. Broomsgrove didn’t put the complaint forward and sue Salam.”

At the end of closing arguments, Cousineau requested that the Tribunal award Pardy $10,000 in damages for discrimination based on "sex and sexual orientation", and it's after effects.