Time Immortal

Apparently, the Alberta Human Rights Commission has no less than fifteen people working on Ezra Levant’s case.

And yet, surprisingly, not one of them realized that Shirlene McGovern — in her questions for Syed Soharwardy (the Calgary imam who filed the human rights complaint against Levant for the latter’s publication of the Muhammed cartoons) — doesn’t even know which cartoons Levant’s magazine, the Western Standard, re-printed, nor does she apparently know what the twelve original cartoons of Muhammad actually are.

No, really.

Here are McGovern’s questions for Soharwardy. There’s a lot of crap in there, and I’ll try to comment on it all later. But focus on question 10:

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She talks about the “most offensive” Danish cartoon — the one with “mohammed as animal/pig; sex with animal”.

But no such cartoons were ever published by a Danish newspaper, nor by our magazine. Here are the original 12 cartoons exactly as published in Denmark: we chose eight of those.

What McGovern is referring to are three cartoons fabricated by Danish imams, designed to be as offensive as possible, in order to whip up ignorant Muslim mobs that might not get sufficiently excited about the actual Danish cartoons.

In other words, McGovern was duped by jihadist propaganda. Soharwardy must have smiled like a cat when he heard her regurgitate those lies as if they were truths.

Does anyone else find it alarming that one of the people charged with deciding what is perhaps the most important case of the right to freedom of expression that has ever come up in Alberta is so terrifyingly unfamiliar with even the most basic facts of the case itself?

Apparently, Ezra Levant’s interrogator at the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) — Shirlene McGovern — has quit:

I’m not sympathetic. I believe that any government bureaucrat who makes a living interrogating citizens about their political beliefs ought to be held in public contempt. McGovern truly doesn’t get it — she thinks what she does for a living is perfectly bland, just like her.

As I wrote in the Globe last month, at my interrogation, McGovern wanted to make small talk and shake my hand. I upset her by not being complicit in my own prosecution.

In the future, I suggest that, if asked at cocktail parties, McGovern tell people she has a less disreputable job — say, tax collector, or parking ticket issuer.

This is what denormalization means. Human rights commissions are bullies, even if their officer of the day is a spacey, middle-aged drone. Surely McGovern can find a less destructive career elsewhere in government or — heaven forbid, in the private sector.

Of course, Richard Warman is also an ex-employee of an HRC, and we all know how he turned out. McGovern may in fact be an even bigger problem on the outside of the system than she was on the inside. Or, perhaps, she’ll just go away quietly and find meaningful employment in an agency that does not make Censorship its mandate. One can only hope, for her sake and ours.

an investigator may do any or all of the following:

• (a) subject to subsection (2), enter any place at any reasonable time and examine it;
• (b) make inquiries orally or in writing of any person who has or may have information relevant to the subject‑matter of the investigation;
• (c) demand the production for examination of records and documents, including electronic records and documents, that are or may be relevant to the subject‑matter of the investigation;
• (d) on giving a receipt for them, remove any of the things referred to in clause (c) for the purpose of making copies of or extracts from them.

(2) An investigator may enter and examine a room or place actually used as a dwelling only if

• (a) the owner or person in possession of it consents to the entry and examination, or
• (b) the entry and examination is authorized by a judge under section 24.

Judge’s order

24(1) Where a provincial court judge is satisfied on an investigator’s evidence under oath that there are reasonable grounds for an investigator to exercise a power under section 23(1) and that

• (a) in the case of a room or place actually used as a dwelling, the investigator cannot obtain the consent under section 23(2) or, having obtained the consent, has been obstructed or interfered with,
• (b) the investigator has been refused entry to a place other than a dwelling,
• (c) a person refuses or fails to answer inquiries under section 23(1)(b), or
• (d) a person on whom a demand is made under section 23(1)(c) refuses or fails to comply with the demand or to permit the removal of a thing under section 23(1)(d), the judge may make any order the judge considers necessary to enable the investigator to exercise the powers under section 23(1).

(2) An application under subsection (1) may be made with or without notice.

Ezra Levant outlines the implications of the above:

Shirlene McGovern, or any other human rights officer, can come into my office whenever she thinks it’s reasonable, to “examine” it. No search warrant necessary. She can even come into my home, if she gets a court order — but such a court order can be applied for and granted without notice to me. That’s the kind of ambush usually reserved for getting warrants to break in on crack houses.

Again, without a warrant, she can take any documents I have, including on my computer.

Oh, and section 24(1)(c) allows for such search and seize orders to be granted not just against me but anyone else who refuses to answer questions put by investigators like Shirlene McGovern.

That’s the power of these commissions — before I’m even found “guilty”.

Mackintosh says I was “invited to respond in person or in writing to the allegations.” Indeed I was — with search warrants to enter my property and take my computer if I refused Mackintosh’s hospitality. I called these people fascist — I think they meet the definition of that stern term.

So there’s everything in a nutshell; the Alberta HRC — which by rights should have about as much enforcement power as the lady who gives out parking tickets — actually has less restrictions placed on it (when it comes to obtaining authority to enter homes and sieze property and information) than police do. One can only imagine that the CHRC is similarly unrestricted.

police have to get a warrant to search your house for illicit materials — HRC investigators do not.

Police have to demonstrate probable cause before a judge in order to obtain a warrant to search your house — HRC investigators only have to demonstrate that you didn’t want to let them in.

This is not the conduct one would expect from a government body that exists to uphold the rights of Canadians. This is the conduct one would expect from a government body that exists to undermine the rights of Canadians.

And that is, in fact, what happens.