And now the post we’ve all been waiting for (I know I have). Ezra Levant spoke first in the afternoon panel at the Joseph Howe Symposium. Although the symposium was to be devoted to free speech issues, Ezra used his time to talk about a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission case that had nothing to do with offensive speech.

His strategy from the outset has been to de-normalise human rights commissions, and his story fit right into that.

The case Ezra discusses was the subject of a post at his blog last April. The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission ruling is posted here.

What follows is based on my own audio recording made at the symposium. The transcript of that recording has been lightly edited for intelligibility.

Ezra Levant

[Carries laptop to the podium.] It’s easier than a piece of paper, isn’t it?
First of all, thanks very much for the kind invitation from the Chumir Foundation. It’s nice to be here.

I have 600 seconds and 6000 words. So, that’s just 10 words a second, no problem.

We had a heckler earlier on [just as Margaret Wente was about to deliver her keynote address] and I thought I’d heckle the heckler. But I’m actually not too worried about a little heckler; I’m more worried about the calm, six-figure-earning lawyer who was sitting up here from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission far more than I’m worried about some noisy heckler. You can say to the heckler, “Shoo, shoo”, but you can’t quite do that to someone who works for the state.

Section 30 of the Nova Scotia Act says that anyone who is complained about before the Human Rights Commission has certain risks. One of them is that our friend Krista here can literally enter any premises in the province without a search warrant and take a copy of any thing, and make any search without a warrant.

So, an accused murderer has more rights in Nova Scotia than an accused publisher. That’s somewhat scary to me.

It’s a little bit scary also to hear David Koresh-like utopianism: We’re going to get a world of utopia, in her words, where no one hates anymore, we all love each other, and we’re just so close. Sorry, I don’t take that in my cults and I don’t take that in my government agencies.

Let’s talk about a local story. As Shakespeare says, “What’s in a name?” There’s a family that came to Nova Scotia from Egypt in 2000. The Assal family immigrated here in 2000. In 2002, they bought a condo on 240 Willett Street, on the other side of town. Very nice condo complex, beautiful homes, there’s no power lines, landscaping was gorgeous.

Now one of the things you have to do to move into the Willett Street condos is sign an agreement that you’re not going to put up ugly things like satellite dishes. That’s one of the reasons it’s so attractive. In 2003, the Assals decided they wanted to get a satellite dish, which was banned for everyone. Not just any little pizza-sized satellite dish, but a mega-satellite dish, a monster-size ArabSat satellite dish because how else are you going to get Al Jazeera?

So, they said they were going to put it up and the condo board said, No, you can’t do that. Remember you signed this? They say, Yeah, we remember, and they put it up anyway. The condo board wrote and said, You gotta take it down.

By the way, they put it up right in the middle of the condo complex, not on their own property, they bolted it to a tree. This thing is the size of a trampoline and it had to be aimed just right. They put up their ArabSat satellite dish, bolted it to a tree in the public space, and before the condo board could take it down, the Assals slapped the condo board with a human rights complaint. You’re racist, they said, because we’re Arabs.

No, you just put up a pretty ugly satellite dish in the condo complex.

That was in 2003. For four years, Koresh’s agency prosecuted the Willett Street condo. Two agents, Jennifer Ross and Jason Cook (good people and they need work, don’t they—lawyers). For four years, two Halifax lawyers earned their living prosecuting the Willett Street condo for their bigotry because they wouldn’t allow this ArabSat satellite.

The condo board fought it for four years, and they won. By “winning”, I mean, during those four years, the satellite dish was up because if they were to take it down, it would be called retaliation and they’d be fined. So, for four years, this monstrosity was up there, while taxpayers paid for the prosecution.

But they won—if “winning” means four years of aesthetic ugliness and fees. Four years.

Let me ask you: In terms of race relations, do you think the other 89 people in that condo complex who were called bigots for four years—not just by some fools from Egypt, but by the government of Nova Scotia. Do you think that race relations in Halifax improved or went down because of Koresh and her agency? Do you think that by giving funds and by prosecuting a religious fatwa against 89 of their neighbours, do you think this town is better or worse? Do you think Jews, Christians, and Muslims get along better or worse?

Right to offend? Absolutely. I believe in some restrictions on speech—Official Secrets Acts, copyright, fraud, forgery, death threats, obscenity—yeah. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about Koresh and her agents saying what we can and can’t think about.

I was prosecuted for 900 days by 15 Government of Alberta bureaucrats. That’s more people than work for Horatio Caine on CSI Miami. I am a major crime scene.

I was offered a plea deal. If I gave a page of my magazine unedited and a few thousand bucks in shakedown money, I could go free. Nuts to that, I said. I had to spend $100,000 defending myself and I won. “Winning” means, of course, I don’t get my costs paid. The radical imam whose secular fatwa was prosecuted by a secular agency—he was the real winner.

By the way, the federal Human Rights Tribunal has a 100% conviction rate for hate speech. No one has ever won. 91% of those charged by the Canadian Human Rights Commission are so poor they can’t even afford lawyers.

Rev Stephen Boissoin spent six years in purgatory. If he was an accused murderer, the judge would say: No speedy trial? You’re acquitted. But when you’re an accused pastor, you don’t get a speedy trial. It’s part of the punishment to get your face ground in the dust because you didn’t pray to the church of Koresh.

I look forward to giving you the other 5900 words in the question-and-answer period.

Possibly related posts

• 2 December 2008 -- Joseph Howe Symposium videos posted
• 3 November 2008 -- Ezra Levant’s speaking notes
• 1 November 2008 -- Overall impressions of free speech symposium
• 9 January 2009 -- Stephen Harper OK with Section 13

Tags: Civil liberties, Ezra Levant, Joseph Howe Symposium
Filed under: Canada, Canadian Politics and Government
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