Free Speech in Canada: A Review of the ongoing Lemire, Levant & Steyn cases

By Arthur Topham

May 18th, 2008

Freedom of speech in Canada has been under attack for a number of years but it is only recently that it has gained the attention of a growing number of Canadians and many stateside as well.

This is due to a variety of factors but the main mitigating ones have been the recent attacks upon two individuals who, had they otherwise not been targeted by the Muslim Canadian community, would have left this vital issue well below the public’s radar screen. Hitherto, such had been the case ever since those repressive forces within Canada first began their surreptitious manoeuverings designed to silence a growing and vociferous electorate slowly awakening to the actual political realities of today’s world.

In that respect, and within such a context, we owe a great debt of gratitude to the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) for without their direct involvement in this malevolent melodrama now unfolding upon Canada’s civil stage, we might otherwise not have come to understand the depth and the degree of danger that these draconian devils represent to our innate freedoms.

The second important factor of course has been the internet itself and the multitude of blogs that now exist and are, of necessity, focusing on the subject of internet censorship as it obviously is relevant to their own potential well-being depending upon the outcome of this threat to our fundamental civil liberties.

The two reluctant players of whom I speak are Ezra Levant http://ezralevant.com/ and Mark Steyn http://www.steynonline.com/ . They have, ironically, been cast in what is essentially a bad movie produced and directed by a certain group of individuals who have a vested interested in manipulating Canadian public opinion and controlling the content of information on the internet. Due to the longstanding effort on the part of this shadowy alliance of censors, one which extend back into Canada’s past to at least the 1930s, they have slowly and relentlessly been undermining our basic human rights and sovereignty as an independent nation for the past 80 years.

The third party (to date) in this present drama is Mark Lemire, the one Canadian to whom the nation as a whole ought to be, should justice be achieved, eternally grateful to for his persistent, undaunted will and indefatigable determination to battle with those forces now attacking so many Canadians who chose to exercise their natural right to freedom of expression. It is within the case of Warman vs Lemire see http://www.freedomsite.org that, like a welcome healing poultice, a remedy has finally appeared that is now drawing out the pernicious poison of censorship which has been wending its nefarious way through Canada’s wounded body politic for too many years.

As one of those additional parties currently under siege by these Soviet-Bolshevik-Communist-Cheka style censors ( see my Response to Canadian Human Rights Commission by the Radical Press, Jan. 3, 2008 http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=629 ) I have been intently watching this power play unfold since November of 2007 when I and my website http://www.radicalpress.com were rudely intruded upon and forced to “respond” to the thought police now steadfastly stationed within the federally funded precinct euphemistically known as the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and located in Ottawa, Canada.

Over the course of the last 6 months greater and greater amounts of information have slowly surfaced to the top of this scum-covered swamp that supposedly symbolizes Canada’s foremost guardian of our inherent human rights; information that, for the most part, would never have reached the light of day had it not been for the case of Marc Lemire and the subsequent cases that have drawn into the foray Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

The irony I spoke of lies in the fact that those to whom I have alluded above as being “repressive forces” are composed of elements of Canada’s Jewish community; supposedly good, kosher organizations that exist in order to make the lives of their respective members more positive and happy and also to contribute to the overall well-being of Canada’s multicultural mosaic of which we Canadians, ostensibly one of the world’s foremost democratic nations, profess to be so proud. That fact, coupled with the additional knowledge that both Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn are also members of Canada’s Jewish community is what makes this present theatre of the absurd rather a unique performance.

Due to these conditions which existed from the start and went either unnoticed or else were intentionally ignored by the many blogs feverishly analyzing and critiquing the events over the past half a year I have watched how this potential Gordian Knot of convoluted, and seemingly endless rhetoric would unfold before the general public. After years of diligent, painstaking research on my part into the age-old phenomenon of the “Jewish Question”, (being a Gentile married to a Jew I have a vested interest in the subject) I had come to what I felt to be a legitimate suspicion of the motivations of certain segments of the Jewish community (those adhering to the ideological mindset associated with political Zionism) and so when it became apparent to me that two of the protagonists were themselves Jewish, and in the case of Mark Steyn a self-professed “Zionist Bush shill”, I found it a fascinating (and yes, entertaining) notion that suddenly we had a situation of major importance to all Canadians and also that within the overall context of this culminating threat to our civil liberties we would ultimately be witness to a novel scenario wherein two apparent factions within the Jewish community would find themselves at loggerheads over such an important issue as freedom of speech and freedom of the internet.

There is a old saying that all roads lead to Rome and, for a greater part of human history that has been the case. Today though, I would venture to contend otherwise and say that to bring this saying into a modern-day context one would undoubtedly have to rephrase it to read that all roads lead to Zion rather than Rome. Based on such a presumption I felt that as night inevitably moves into day ultimately the machinations of those who adhere to the Zionist philosophy would also eventually move out of the shadow of darkness (wherein Zionism works best) into the sunlight of objective, public scrutiny. Such is the prospect in the current case of the Canadian Human Rights Commission versus Lemire, Levant & Steyn. Whether it ends in such a fashion or again becomes clouded over with new and additional subterfuges by those who long to keep the lid on Zionism’s global agenda waits to be seen. Time revealeth all and it is time that now controls the future unraveling of the final act in this drama.

Where a glimmer of hope now lies though is in the recent revelations of Ezra Levant and Marc Lemire with respect to those aforementioned Jewish organizations who are finally coming to the surface in the Warman vs Lemire case now before the CHRC. In an article entitled, Athanasios Hadjis: “I’m lazy” by Ezra Levant on May 16th, 2008 http://ezralevant.com/2008/05/athanasios-hadjis-im-lazy.html Levant challenges Athanasios Hadjis, the chair of the tribunal hearing the matter of Warman vs Lemire (the paramount Section 13 case) over the question of who gets to be present at the next round of hearings with respect to Intervenor Status. It turns out that the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) an organization described by Levant as “a registered charity, with a sterling record of defending minority rights, ranging from Japanese-Canadian fishermen to a Nisga’a chief” and comprised of “true constitutional experts” was turned down in its bid for such status by Hadjis while at the same time the three Jewish organizations, the B’nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (the three pro-Zionist organizations which I have been alluding to throughout this article) were not only given this Intervenor Status outright but, as it turns out on further scrutiny, there appears to be a distinct element of collusion involved between the tribunal judge Hadjis and these three parties, all of which are dead set against ridding the country of this draconian Section 13 clause now contained within the Canadian Human Rights Act while the CCF is questioning the legitimacy of Sec. 13.

When Hadjis justified his dismissal of the CCF on the grounds that “…interested party status will not be granted if it does not add significantly to the legal positions of the parties representing a similar viewpoint.“ Levant replied, “Oh, really? Is there really a difference amongst the positions taken by three of the intervenors against Lemire — the Canadian Jewish Congress, the B’nai Brith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center? They’re so cookie-cutter, they even file joint affidavits — as in this affidavit, that denigrates Canadian Jews as being psychologically insecure. Yet all three of them received Hadjis’s approval. That couldn’t be because they’re all on the side of the prosecution, is it?

Or: is it because, before Hadjis received his patronage appointment, he was vice-president of Canada’s Hellenic Congress, and he formed a coalition with the Canadian Jewish Congress? Did he approve the CJC’s application because they were old friends, but the CCF wasn’t?”

The fact that Ezra Levant (himself a Canadian Jew) is now questioning the motives of these three pro-Zionist organizations is a very positive step, not only for what I perceive to be the majority of Jews in Canada who I believe are not card-carrying members of these groups nor pro-Zionist in their political leaning, but because the issue of the underlying influences upon Canadian jurisprudence by these pro-censorship organizations is yet to be fully realized by the majority of Canadians and by broaching the subject of their involvement in repressive legislation in his article Levant is giving a strong indication that he is not of their camp and rather, is standing for what the vast majority of Canadians feel is the correct position on this important matter, i.e. that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act ought never to have been inserted into the legislation and that Canadians in general do not want to have their freedom of speech and their right to publish their thoughts on the internet curtailed by the questionable efforts of a small minority of Canadians whose allegiance to Canada’s longstanding principles of free speech is of a dubious nature.

As for “Zionist Bush shill” Mark Steyn’s position with respect to these pro-Zionist organizations, again time will tell whether or not he is willing to put the freedom of the majority of Canadians above his own partisan political views.

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Arthur Topham is the Publisher and Editor of The Radical Press.com, Canada’s Radical News Network. He can be contacted at: radical@radicalpress.com