Ontario
Perhaps the most momentous event related to Internet hate over the past year in Canada was the February 24, 2005 decision by Justice Blais of the Federal Court, which upheld the reasonableness of the government decision to designate Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel as a threat to national security.
The flurry of media attention around Zundel at the time frequently glossed over his previous record in this country, as well as the events that led to his deportation from the United States and his subsequent detention in Canada. We see this as well in media coverage of his deportation to his native country, Germany, and his current imprisonment there on hate crimes charges.
It is necessary to recall the complaint form of three simple paragraphs that would ultimately be the undoing of Zundel, who had plagued Canada with his presence for so many decades. To sum them up, the paragraphs alleged that Ernst Zundel, through material on his website, had exposed Jews to hatred and contempt contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The complaint form, dated September 25, 1996, was signed by Holocaust survivor Sabina Citron.
Without the complaints by Sabina Citron and the Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations, a case in which the League and others intervened, there would never have been hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Without the continuous struggle of those involved in the case over the subsequent five years, Zundel would never have fled the country just before the close of hearings in an attempt to evade responsibility for his actions.
This united action set in motion a continuing chain of events, with Ernst Zundel finally being held accountable for his Holocaust denial, an activity that a judge in another German case has described as “moral arson”.
Having reviewed all of the evidence, Justice Blais concluded:
“Mr. Zundel has associated, supported, and directed members of the Movement who in one fashion or another have sought to propagate violent messages of hate and have advocated the destruction of governments and multicultural societies.”
Justice Blais also found that Zundel had intended, “to destabilize the legal and legitimate democratic government of Germany…” and of “…using Canadian soil to advance his goal of undermining the German government.” Based on this, Justice Blais stated, “Mr. Zundel’s activities are not only a threat to Canada’s national security but also a threat to the international community of nations.”
Justice Blais described the sea change that the advent of the Internet has had on the organization of neo-Nazi groups:
“…the White Supremacist network is still very much alive and active. The use of the Internet has created new methods of communication which have replaced traditional ones. No longer must halls or pubs be rented in order to have meetings; rather, communication can now take place easily and anonymously between adherents of the White Supremacist Movement, as well as anyone else curious enough to visit websites or log onto chat rooms dedicated to keeping this network alive.”
The permanent departure of Zundel from Canada was a most welcome event that left the Canadian neo-Nazi movement with a gaping hole where he had once stood as patriarch.
February of 2005 also saw the end of a hearing before Athanasios Hadjis, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Vice-Chairperson, into a complaint against Alexan Kulbashian of Toronto and James Scott Richardson of Hamilton. The complaint also cited Kulbashian’s website hosting company Affordable Space, and groups the two were associated with, called the Tri-City Skinheads (TCS) and the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team (CECT). Originally filed in 2003, the complaint deals with extreme racist and antisemitic materials that had appeared on the now-defunct TCS and CECT websites.
Affordable Space was named as a corporate respondent on the basis that it was the hosting company for both websites and that Kulbashian, as the controlling mind, knew of the presence of the illegal discriminatory material and failed to take action to remove it. The complaint also alleged that Kulbashian retaliated against the Complainant in violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act by mistakenly referring to him as Jewish, making pointed comments about the gassing of Jews during the Holocaust, and then publishing the Complainant’s home address at the time. A ruling by the Tribunal is still awaited.
On April 13, 2005, the white supremacist movement in Canada lost another of its leading lights with the shooting murder in Toronto of Wolfgang Droege, allegedly as a result of a love triangle. Although Droege had declined in prominence in recent years, he was infamous during the 1980s and early 1990s first for his involvement with other neo-Nazis in the attempted mercenary invasion of the small Caribbean island of Dominica in 1981, and later as the leader of the Heritage Front, what was then the largest neo-Nazi group in Canada. However, Droege’s credibility as a leader had been consistently called into question as a result of his perpetual involvement in petty criminality (occasionally in co-operation with the very non-whites he despised) and drugs. Worse still, it is generally accepted that Droege’s authority was dealt a deathblow in 1994 when the Toronto Sun revealed that Grant Bristow, who for years had been Droege’s right-hand man and the Heritage Front’s ‘security chief’, was in fact a CSIS mole.
In May of 2005, Toronto-based ISP Canaca.com agreed to close a Polish-language neo-Nazi website that had previously been forced off ISPs in Poland, Slovakia, and Germany, along with an English-language website titled ‘nukeisrael.com’. The Polish-language website carried a section headed ‘Our Enemies’, which purported to list the names and home addresses of Polish human rights activists, along with advice on how to break anti-hate laws and avoid detection by security forces. It also promoted arson as a means of destroying public facilities that host ‘anti-national’ events. The successful removal of the websites was the result of cooperation between the Canadian and foreign members of the International Network Against Cyber Hate.
Marc Lemire, long-time associate of Ernst Zundel, found himself in hot water on August 19, 2005 when the CHRC referred a complaint against him to the CHRT. The complaint to the Commission, originally filed in November of 2003, focused on material posted by Lemire and Craig Harrison of Georgetown to Lemire’s now largely moribund website www.freedomsite.org and its forum. It was alleged that this material was likely to expose Italians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, francophones, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, Jews, and homosexuals to hatred or contempt in violation of s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Mr. Lemire, represented by former Zundel counsel Barbara Kulaszka, has indicated that part of his defence will be to challenge the constitutionality of s. 13. At present, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, Canadian Jewish Congress, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (Canada) have co-operatively applied for and received intervenor status in support of the legislation. The Attorney-General of Canada has also indicated it will be intervening to uphold the law’s constitutionality.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing against Craig Harrison took place in June of 2006 in Toronto and had to be adjourned shortly after the opening of the hearing when Harrison stormed out of the room yelling homophobic slurs and profanity in front of numerous journalists. Harrison went home and refused to return to the hearing causing the Tribunal to continue hearing the matter in his absence as provided for under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The evidence presented included material that had been turned over by webmaster Marc Lemire pursuant to a Tribunal subpoena and testimony from a Bell Canada security official who stated that as Harrison’s Internet Service Provider, they could confirm that his computer was logged onto the Internet at the same times as seven or eight randomly selected posts from among those Harrison was alleged to have made. In his decision dated August 15th, 2006, Tribunal member Michel Doucet found that Harrison had indeed posted the repeated calls for genocide and issued a permanent cease and desist order against him along with a penalty of $1,000 out of a possible maximum $10,000. Georgetown local media reported strong community criticism of the Tribunal’s penalty portion of the decision as a “slap on the wrist” given the horrific nature of Harrison’s postings.
The remaining portion of the complaint against Marc Lemire has now been scheduled for hearing beginning in January of 2006.
At some point in the fall of 2005, the website of the London, Ontario white supremacist group Northern Alliance (www.northernalliance.ca) went down for reasons that remain unclear. Although still too early to herald the group’s demise, there are suspicions that the financial woes of leader Jason Ouwendyk, who sought bankruptcy protection in December of 2004, may be the cause. At the time of his bankruptcy protection, Ouwendyk owed approximately $50,000 to creditors, including $12,500 owed to the author of this article. This was after his bankruptcy trustee accepted the full claim for damages and costs in a small claims libel suit against Ouwendyk as a result of comments made on the Northern Alliance website.
Also in 2005, the CHRC was successful in identifying a John Doe who had been named in a federal human rights complaint against Canadian representatives of the neo-Nazi group World Church of the Creator (WCOTC). The individual had at one point been listed as the WCOTC’s Toronto contact and was traced by the Commission using a search warrant to access the records of his rented P.O. Box. When finally notified of the complaint against him, however, the individual indicated he had contacted the group only twice by email out of curiosity, and had quickly determined that the group’s leaders “had a few loose screws”. He said the group listed him as their contact without ever asking him, and refused his repeated demands to have his email and P.O. Box addresses removed from the website. The respondent further stated that this address was largely used to redirect his pornography magazines from his parents’ house, that he has a wide variety of friends from different races and religions, and that he considers his gay friends as “the best people to party with”.
In September of 2005, the CHRC referred to the CHRT a complaint originally filed in August of 2004 against the Canadian Heritage Alliance and its leader, Melissa Guille of London/Cambridge, Ontario. The complaint alleges that material on the website would likely expose homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, First Nations, blacks, Arabs, other non-whites, and Roma to hatred or contempt in violation of s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Website content engaged in Holocaust denial, and argued that whites who have relationships with black men deserve to die, and that non-white immigration into Europe is worse than the Black Plague that struck during the Middle Ages. During preliminary matters the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered Guille to provide the membership list of the Canadian Heritage Alliance in advance of the hearing scheduled for late November 2006.
On October 4, 2005, for the first time in Canadian legal history, the Federal Court of Canada issued an injunction to stop a London, Ontario man from posting hate propaganda to the Internet.
The order by Justice de Montigny prohibits Tomasz Winnicki from posting “messages that are likely to expose persons to hatred or contempt by reason of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, or religion” until the CHRT finishes its hearings into a complaint against him and issues a final decision.
The original complaint against Winnicki was filed in September of 2003 under s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), which prohibits the posting of hate messages to the Internet. The complaint alleged Winnicki’s postings (mostly to a US neo-Nazi forum) were likely to expose Jews, as well as blacks, to hatred or contempt. The postings engaged in profanity-laced attacks alleging Jews were murderers bent on destroying Western civilization, and that blacks were animals, subhumans and criminals, and should be segregated. The postings displayed an extreme level of rage and anger and included specific targeting of a named B’nai Brith Canada employee.
Hearings before CHRT member Karen Jensen were held in August and October of 2005 in Toronto, with final arguments on December 12, 2005. Just before the CHRT hearings started, the CHRC, represented by legal counsel Monette Maillet, took the extraordinary step of applying for the injunction to stop Winnicki, pending a ruling from the Tribunal. Over the past three years, Maillet has been involved in all of the Commission’s hate cases and deserves special recognition for her tireless efforts in this regard.
In his reasons issued November 7, 2005, Justice de Montigny said that the test for issuing injunctions in Internet hate cases should be “where the words complained of are so manifestly contrary to s. 13 of the CHRA that any finding to the contrary [by the CHRT] would be considered highly suspect by a reviewing court.”
Finding that the material in this case met that test, Justice de Montigny stated “[h]aving looked at these messages in their entirety and in context, I have no doubt that they are likely to expose persons of the Jewish faith to hatred or contempt… [a]nd the same can be said of the messages which target persons of the black race. They are undoubtedly as vile as one can imagine and are not only discriminatory but threatening to the victims they target.”
In April of 2006, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal handed down their decision finding that there was no doubt Winnicki had violated the hate messaging provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Tribunal issued a permanent cease and desist order for Winnicki to stop posting his hate to the Internet, fined him $6,000, and also awarded complainant Richard Warman damages of $5,500 for Winnicki’s misplaced anti-Semitic attacks against Warman.
Despite the Federal Court’s injunction issued in October of 2005, however, Winnicki continued to post his hate propaganda to the Internet unabated and also began to add attacks against the judiciary replete with the same expletives he directed towards his other targets. In response, the Canadian Human Rights Commission brought contempt of court proceedings against him before the Federal Court in July of 2006. Rendering his decision two weeks following the hearing, Justice von Finckenstein stated that the ongoing material posted by Winnicki was:
…willful, contemptuous, repetitious, and contumacious and shows a total lack of respect for the court. He has shown no remorse for his contempt. Given this, I find that his behaviour justifies a term of imprisonment of nine months.”
Winnicki was arrested and jailed the following day. The instability of many self-declared leaders within the neo-Nazi movement was amply shown when in response to Winnicki’s jailing, the operator of the website forum where Winnicki had posted his hate propaganda posted incitement to murder Justice von Finckenstein, complainant Richard Warman, and employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Complaints to the website’s ISP, however, quickly resulted in its shutdown and when it finally managed to resurface weeks later the threats were conspicuously absent. Winnicki ultimately served approximately three months of his sentence before being released pending an appeal. Pursuant to his release conditions, Winnicki was required to post a bond of $5,000, surrender his passport, and perhaps most importantly make no postings whatsoever to the Internet. His appeal is scheduled to be heard in January of 2007 and Winnicki must surrender himself back to jail the day before his appeal is to be heard.
A federal complaint against Bobby Wilkinson of Ottawa and his fledgling group the “Canadian Nazi Party” was referred to the CHRT for hearing on 4 November 2005. The complaint had originally been filed against the respondents in December of 2003. It alleged that Wilkinson was the operator of a freeboard located at http://pub68.ezboard.com/bcanadiannaziparty, and was responsible for comments by himself and others that would likely expose the mentally disabled, Jews, Hispanics, blacks, homosexuals, Roma, Pakistanis, Arabs, Chinese, and Japanese to hatred or contempt contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Wilkinson ‘the younger’ made bitter posts to neo-Nazi website Stormfront bemoaning the fact that the complaint was initially served on his grandfather, who bears the same name and lived at the same address. Preparations for the Tribunal hearing are continuing.
The worst fears of any parents were realized in April of 2006 when a young Ottawa man affiliated with the neo-Nazi movement was murdered at a party with associates in Collingwood (north of Toronto). The violence inherent in the neo-Nazi movement was proven once again when 22-year-old Stephen Long was killed in a brutal baseball bat attack while he slept. Media reports indicate that Long had embarrassed Christopher Broughton, the man now charged with his first-degree murder – earlier in the evening but that Broughton left and only returned much later. Long had often posted attacks on Jews, blacks, and other non-whites on US hate website Stormfront and his parents had become concerned enough that they contacted the Ottawa Police Hate Crimes Unit 18-months before their son’s murder. When contacted, the police confirmed that Long was involved in the local neo-Nazi scene. Long’s father was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen following Stephen’s murder that white supremacists had “…used the tentacles of the Internet to brainwash his son into a lifestyle filled with hate.” As a final gesture, Long’s father asked that donations in his son’s memory be made to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
