It’s true, we’ve heard this before. The Missing Sockpuppet compares the case of Abrams v. North Shore Press at a B.C. human rights tribunal to the complaint against Maclean’s.
The similarities are uncanny.
So why wasn’t there a campaign to end human rights commissions back in 1996? That’s right, there was – but it was all neo-Nazis and their sympathizers.
What’s perhaps most interesting is that the published articles in question, found at the end of the case, are less inflammatory than the contents in question from Maclean’s.
The Missing Sockpuppet has done an entire series on this subject.
So why the double standard? Some Canadians apparantly have less rights today in contemporary society than others, what the Missing Sockpuppet calls the turban effect.
But all the more reason for human rights tribunals to step in to create a more level playing field.
I am Harry Abrams, the complainant in Abrams V. NSN/Collins.
On the one hand I am pleased to see people, especially law students take note of my decision, but on the other hand, I see a number of misapprehensions on Missing Sockpuppet that deserve correction. The site does not easily accommodate posting of comments or offers a link to communicate with its owner, so I will say a couple of things here.
Firstly, my case was NOT an appendage to an earlier complaint : CJC V. Collins/NSN.
Canadian Jewish Congress and I each had our own separate actions. Theirs was heard first and based upon one article: “Swindler’s List.”
Mine was heard several months later and the corpus of the complaint contained 4 articles. The logic of this was to demonstrate a pattern of publication over and within a limited a period of time.
Also although Missing Sockpuppet does touch upon the concept of coded language used to mask racist invective disguised as journalistic comment, but misinterprets the Tribunal decision somewhat.
The respondents chose not to present arguments at the BCHRC hearing. Their position was simply that the Tribunal was a “kangaroo court” and they disengaged themselves from the process.
When the decision came in, the NSN paid the $2,000 fine, and promptly published a summary of the decision as was directed by the Tribunal.
Doug Collins, represented by Doug Christie and his Free Speech League then attempted to appeal the decision based on constitutionality, but were rebuffed by BC Supreme Court, BC Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada because no arguments were entered at the tribunal hearing.
Collins died as Christie was preparing arguments to present to the BC Tribunal, and the case was dismissed for lack of a client to instruct the barrister.
Mr. Abrams,
Thank you very much for your comments.
Perhaps the Missing Sockpuppet will respond here as well.
Thank you, Lawiscool.
If anyone has any questions about my case, I would as much as I am able to; be happy to reply. I’m at habrams@pacificcoast.net
Truth be told, I was a little nonplussed that not much made the media about the 2 Collins/NSN cases, because they not only made the case law concerning fair comment Vis a vis published Vs. distributed invective, but demonstrated that it should take more than just one nasty article to substantiate a reasonable complaint. That pattern idea BTW, was based upon my own amateur reading of the John Ross Taylor case, which is the backbone of all Cdn. discriminatory publication codes….
This is substantially why I was a little surprised that the Macleans case even got to a hearing…because it, like CJC was based upon a single article, and truth be told, I didn’t think that that article came anywhere near being invective. Lopsided, perhaps, but outright hateful enough to deserve proscription? Not even close.
I suppose the reason why Maclean’s has gone as far as it has, was because the complainants feel that they should have had more right to respond within the pages of Maclean’s than the mgmt. was prepared to offer.
There’s differences here, obviously.
It could be argued that Maclean’s has done some things that are perhaps questionably ethical. I’ve seen them do “bait and switch” tactics with sensational cover headlines that led to somewhat offbase articles ie: ISRAEL CAN’T SURVIVE!.. and for certain, the magazine seemed to focus on Muslims and Islam more or less negatively over several months. But we have Indeed had recent domestic terror issues from Muslims in Canada lately. True, these problems come from a small fraction of another otherwise normal, integrated minority group… there has to be some leeway in being able to fairly discuss these issues of public interest in the media.
The problem with the NSN is that they made a “bloodsport” out of Collins’ race baiting. It aroused controversy. It increased reader interest. It made the advertising sales more profitable. At the time, it seemed to represent the thin edge of the wedge to make “slow-drip” hate propaganda publicly acceptable once again.
Jews were not Collins’ only targets. My original complaint cited published hatred against women, Gays, Iranians, Chinese and Japanese. But as time went on, although most representative organizations for these groups expressed some initial approval of my complaint, they refused to join the action in any official capacity, so I was left to defend my own ethnicity.
Then, as now, there was a considerable backlash from mainstream media and pundits. Arguments played back and forth in the editorial pages of the Vancouver Sun and the Victoria Times Colonist and elsewhere.
I was publicly called nasty names many times before anybody ever asked me what I did for a living.
Politically, I am a middle-of-the-road conservative. Married now nearly 30 years, with 1 daughter.
Since 1984, I have owned and operated a small advertising business that specializes in display advertising in elevators. I develop my clients by making sales calls, and I also design and the advertising and do the commercial art.
Freedom of speech and commerce are totally important to me.
However,somehow, I manage to offer advertising that sells without purposely offending people because of the things about themselves they cannot change.
I agree that Canada’s HRC system deserves tweaking in a number of ways. Not least to somehow recompense defendants who have found themselves out of pocket for defending an obviously vexatious complaint. Or to somehow speed up the process so that defendants are not hung up and “on edge” for years.
But HRC’s serve an important function concerning the Cdn. quality of life and general civility towards each other that we can enjoy.
Thank you.
Hi Mr. Abrams,
Since we already engaged in conversation on my site I will make my comments here brief.
We never meant to make it seem like your case was somehow an appendage to the CJC v. Collins case.
Second, based on your comment I cannot discern how we misinterpreted the decision somewhat. We did not elaborate on the Respondents refusal to disengage from the process, as this act is worthy of another discussion on its own.
However we did mention that their main contention was with the constitutionality of the provision (the ability of the Tribunal to interpret to be exact); an action that eventually got dismissed by the Courts and sent back to the Tribunal.
Lastly, as was mentioned on the site, and perhaps it wasn’t made clear to the entire public,the CIC complaint was also in response to a barrage of invective articles.
Thank you again for being open and available to discuss this issue.
Opponents of Canada’s HRC codes have always sought to have the commission & tribunal processes dismantled to exclude allegedly racist speech liability in favour of holding all expression issues to a criminal standard.
This means that to obtain a conviction, the evidential basis is to be “beyond a reasonable doubt” as opposed to “a balance of probabilities.”
However the push to raise the bar to a criminal standard rather than the lower civil standard would,(as has been decided) put the process out of reach of ordinary persons who did not have the extraordinary means and funds available to seek redress if they were defamed on prohibited grounds; therefore denying them equal participation as citizens.
Also the nature of hate propaganda is such that the more sophisticated varieties of it will often take a grain of truth, and then weave elaborate lies around it to deliberately mislead the reader .
One of the most notorious hate propagandists of our time, Ernst Zundel, built a huge and profitable propaganda enterprise by cleverly exploiting the media and using the controversy of his public exposure to make a circus of defaming the dead and ridiculing the victims of industrial homicide.
During his “false news” trial, which was held to a criminal standard; he and his council were able to tie up proceedings by compelling the plaintiffs to get bogged down endlessly proving the veracity of the Holocaust.
These shenanigans didn’t hold up at all facing the CHRC. The now classic PENSA interim decision
determined that those seeking relief from OBVIOUSLY discriminatory expression should not have to be tied up endlessly proving the veracity of the hatred they’ve experienced.. see
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/articles/online_hate/tribunal_decision_98.cfm