March 25th Lemire Tribunal hearing to be a SECRET HEARING!

From FREE DOMINION:

As many of you know, Marc Lemire's Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing is scheduled to resume on March 25, 2008.

The defence team is planning to question Dean Steacy, a Human Rights Commission investigator, about why he registered on Free Dominion when we were not under investigation (something he claimed never to have done), and to ask about the CHRC complaint that was lodged against us over a post that was made just days after Steacy registered here.

I sent the following email to Carol Ann Hartung on March 6th:

Connie wrote:

Dear Ms Hartung, My name is Connie Fournier and my husband and I were administrators of the website Free Dominion when a person named jadewarr signed up as a member. It has come to our attention that this matter will be discussed at the March 25th tribunal hearing of Warman v. Lemire, and we would like to request permission to sit in on the hearing since the evidence concerns a website that belonged to us. Please let us know if this is agreeable. Thank you in advance for your consideration. Connie and Mark Fournier

Rest of the story here:  http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1155220#1155220

 

 

 

A secret trial

One of the hallmarks of justice in a liberal democracy is transparency. In extreme circumstances there are secret trials in Canada, or trials that are open to the public but that are covered by publication bans, but such secrecy is only permitted for very unusual and overwhelming reasons -- such as to protect the identity of a child victim of a crime, or for true national security reasons. Secret trials, such as those conducted in the Star Chamber, are notoriously susceptible to abuse, and erode public confidence in the administration of justice.

So it should come as no surprise that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing on March 25th -- where human rights commission staff themselves are to be cross-examined on their dubious tactics of anonymous infiltration of websites, entrapment and even the bizarre practice of commission staff themselves planting bigoted remarks on websites -- is going to be closed to the public.

It is hypocritical in the extreme that HRC staff who scrutinize every public utterance and private thought of their victims will be exempted from public scrutiny themselves. There is no legitimate reason for this blackout, other than the HRCs simply being HRCs and engaging in censorship and the restriction of public debate. Usually they censor political expression they disagree with; this time they censor their own embarrassing conduct from being seen and heard by taxpaying Canadians. I don't blame them, frankly -- the more their inner workings are publicized, the greater will be the demand for politicians to rein in their excesses. The videos of my own interrogation at the hands of the Alberta Human Rights Commission have been seen more than 500,000 times; imagine the publicity that a videoclip of HRC staffers admitting to planting evidence of bigotry would receive.

I'm disgusted but not surprised by the tribunal's decision to be secretive. And I won't hold out hope that Canada's large media companies, who normally rush to court in unison to overturn other publication bans, will do so here.

 

Rest online here:  http://ezralevant.com/2008/03/a-secret-trial.html