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On Deborah Gyapong’s advice, I snapped up a copy of the 21 April issue of Maclean’s and read Charlie Gillis’s profile of serial litigant Richard Warman (at right). It’s worth every penny. Warman comes across as a blinkered, self-righteous egomaniac with no awareness that his crusade endangers freedom of speech.
His successful string of complaints to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission against bottom-feeding neo-Nazis inspired offended Muslims to bring their own complaints against high-profile targets Ezra Levant (for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons) and Maclean’s (for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book).
The ensuing public outcry has focused attention on the CHRC's scandalous disdain for proper legal procedures and prompted calls to repeal Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the section under which Warman has waged his censorious campaign.
Warman can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
[A]cademic, political and legal heavyweights have been lining up against Section 13 — and by extension, Warman. . . . For Warman, the reaction has been exasperating. He has nothing to do with the cases against Maclean's or Levant, he says, so why take away the legal weapons he uses against unregenerate hate-mongers? But John Dixon, a two-term former president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association who has locked horns with Warman in the past, says it's disingenuous for someone with Warman's means and legal acumen to run from the consequences of his cases. "Unless you're an idiot, you have to be thinking about what kind of conception of the law, what conception of freedom of expression, what conception of the relationship between the individual and the state is cemented in place by your action," he says. "Cases like these foster an atmosphere in which sensible people who know they can't summon the resources to defend themselves will censor themselves. It creates an ever-growing body of very regressive law when it comes to the integrity and freedom of a democratic forum."
What will it take to open Richard Warman’s eyes to the damage he has caused our civil liberties?
Read the whole thing for free here.
Previous related post: Richard Warman litigates again
[...] inability to distinguish between a good case and a good cause.”; Warman Examined; and “Richard Warman is exasperated” …. [...]
How good at law is Warman now, anyway? I mean REAL law, the kind he’s going to have to deal with in these lawsuits he’s launched. So many years of frolicking in the fantasy-world of the HRCs, where it’s impossible to lose, might have dulled his instincts. As Mark Steyn has put it, ‘the siren song of the soft target’ tends to cause one’s muscles to atrophy when it comes time to do some REAL work. I don’t think these targets are going to curl up in a ball and pay him off for some peace and quiet - it’ll be interesting to see how well he can hold up in a real contest.
Should be a good fight.
Leftie makes up a new right: “the right to equal amplification of free expression”…
Reliably far-left Globe and Mail commentator Rick Salutin engages human rights in today’s column and—surprise, surprise—gets it all wrong. It’s behind the G&M subscriber wall, but you can read the whole thing for free …