Cynapse: Canaries in the Coal Mine
Posted on 22 April 2008 by Jack
Some of you may not know the name Richard Warman but he may cause you to delete your Blogger account:
Linking one blog to another and allowing comments on her blog postings has landed one prominent Saskatchewan blogger in a legal quandary.
Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals is one of several named as defendants in a statement of claim filed by Richard Warman with the Ontario Superior Court on April 7. Others include Ezra Levant, the National Post and one of its journalists, Jonathon Kay.
In the statement of claim, Warman alleges he was defamed on a blog known as freedominion.ca. He alleges that those comments were linked to or commented upon on other blogs, including McMillan and the National Post’s.
This round of lawsuits stems from criticism of Warman’s earlier lawsuits via the Canada Human Rights Commission:
A complaint to police alleges that federal human-rights investigators used an unwitting woman’s wireless Internet connection to log on to white supremacist websites and make postings to chat groups.
The complaint to the RCMP and Ottawa police was made this week by Toronto resident Mark Lemire, who runs a website that has been the subject of a long-standing hate case before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Among other things, Lemire’s complaint alleges that commission investigators breached sections of the Criminal Code by “wilfully and with malicious intent” using the woman’s connection without authorization and “committed theft of telecommunication service.”
…
Lemire’s freedomsite.org website, started in 1995, became the subject of a commission hearing in 2003 after Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman complained that postings on the site promoted hatred or could subject a group to contempt.
So far the following bloggers have been targeted:
Popularity: 30% [?]
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Cynapse: You’re organizing the critical material in this post. You differentiate between the “sword against dissidence” and the “shield against abuse.” Between those two points lies the happy medium which balanced subjective judgment can reach for. In other words, “constructive criticism” has always been part of the mediation role. There’s a clear place and time for that.
What we’re all reflecting on at this point, given court cases are now pending — and notices have been served, is the legitimacy of the charges. Name-calling alone is not presently chargeable under the law as far as I’m aware. If so these cases should have taken off eons ago (thinking of 9/11 and since) where “Nazi and neo-Nazi” labels have been hurdled at many out there on both sides of the aisle. I think someone out there was right when he/she said to the effect once you use the Nazi argument, you’ve lost the argument. Not to say one can’t make comparisons in terms of historical events.
But the ’spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law’ will be what’s relevant in the upcoming cases, provided Richard Warman doesn’t drop them in the meantime. Which he’d be advised to do, simply because the interpretations possible of what’s transpired among bloggers are too broad/ambiguous at the moment under Section 13.1.
Til then, intimidation tactics should be dismissed. Even while defamation laws should be adhered to in terms of charging anyone on anything without undisputed evidence.
The blogosphere can be thought of as the extended Canadian round kitchen table discussion. Sometimes the discussions get animated as they should where reason and passions enter the mix. Frustrated Canadians of all persuasions discuss gov’t actions/inaction, this policy vs. that one. And tempers will flare, but they shouldn’t be subject to court challenges by individuals obviously try to cut into the Canadian discussion. We all can refuse to move into the fantasy ‘Orwellian world.’ We must refuse. Canada’s a premiere democracy with entrenched rights to freedom of speech and expression. It cannot be seen to be otherwise.
I’d advice Richard Warman as a private citizen to drop his charges against the above. The Canadian agenda’s priorities will lag behind after these issues. We have our water systems to rebuild (in Ontario the figure attached to that is $18 billion). We have bridges and roads reconstruction to get done. We have problems with food and material goods imports that are posing health risks. A health care system to revise in the interests of efficiencies lapses. The list is long. We simply don’t have time to linger over frivolous lawsuits which at the moment, in my view, represent only so many monkeywrenches we can’t afford in terms of time/money and energies expended.
Warman and others have no business interfering at our extended family kitchen table discussions. He’s shaming Canada’s reputation on the world stage through his most obvious self-interest pursuits. Finally, he simply can’t think he can shut the discussion down now, or at any time in the future.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Well said Anna!!
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Thanks, Fay. Calling it as closely as I see it.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
This Richard Wombat guy sounds like a real nutbar. (I don’t want to use his real name as I wish to avoid being sued.)