
Rochelle Wilner President	Frank Dimant Chief Executive Officer	Prof. Stephen Scheinberg National Chair	Ruth Klein National Director of Advocacy

1997 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents

HATE IN CANADA: AN OVERVIEW

THE STATE OF THE NEO-NAZI RIGHT IN CANADA

Over the last few years there has been a decline in organized hate activity in Canada due to a lack of leadership since the majority of known figures were embroiled in legal matters, as a result of a serious crackdown of law enforcement agencies, and the subsequent move to the model of "leaderless resistance" by hate groups. In 1997 attention was refocused on the former Toronto leader of the now-defunct Church of the Creator, George Burdi, who had moved to Windsor to operate his hate record company, Resistance Records. Based in Detroit, to circumvent Canadian hate laws, this company became one of the leading suppliers of hate rock music in North America. In September Resistance Records was raided by the Detroit Police, in a joint task forces operation labeled "Project Birdcage", and involving the Ontario Provincial Police, Windsor and Toronto Police and Canada Customs. Three individuals, George Burdi, Joseph Talic and Jason Snow, are now facing charges of willful promotion of hatred and conspiracy to commit willful promotion of hatred. While Wolfgang Droege has been seen in the company of prominent figures of the far-right, it is unclear as to whether he has regained a leadership position.

During the municipal elections for the new Toronto mega-city, Nazi sympathizer and convicted hate monger, Don Andrews, ran for the position of Mayor, coming in third after the winner Mel Lastman and former Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall. Andrews garnered close to two thousand votes, 2% of the total, but he spoke at public debates and drew a steady following. Marc Lemire, webmaster of the Freedom-Site that hosts the websites of several of Canada’s most virulent antisemitic organizations such as the Heritage Front, The Canadian Patriots Network and the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform, ran for the position of school trustee in Toronto Public School Ward P17. Lemire, who is on Ernst Zundel’s payroll, received 2,285 votes representing 12% of the total. Paul Fromm, former Peel Board teacher, known for his prominence on the neo-Nazi speaking circuit and publisher of the Free Speech Monitor, ran for the position of school trustee in Peel Board Mississauga Wards 1-7. He came in last of four candidates with 827 votes or 10%.

Shortly after the campaign, Fromm sent material to all local school libraries promoting his anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant material under the guise of free speech advocacy. The material circulated by Fromm included his own newsletter entitled "Free Speech Monitor" and was full of inferences dredging up the mythologies of the Jewish conspiracy controlling the minds and the monies of the world. Fromm presents himself and his "beleaguered allies", such as Doug Collins, as objects of this power. “Perhaps most ominous of all is the wholesale attack by special interest groups on the Internet”, writes Fromm in defence of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and his webmistress Ingrid Rimland, currently involved in a Human Rights Tribunal addressing the issue of the promotion of hatred across the Internet.

The leadership of anti-immigrant and so-called "freedom of speech" groups have also refocused their activities in Western Canada and appear to be gaining ground in terms of organization, networking and fund-raising. Paul Fromm, since his termination as a teacher from the Peel Board of Education, has been travelling across Canada attempting to organize speaking engagements in cities throughout the country. Fromm was fired from the Peel Board on February 27, 1997 following an official complaint from the League for Human Rights, based on reliable information that Fromm was continuing to flaunt Board and Ministry policies with impunity. The League supplied the Board with a video tape of Fromm speaking at a memorial symposium for known white-supremacist, Revilo P. Oliver, sponsored by the National Alliance, a virulently antisemitic and racist group, based in the United States. This occurred after Fromm received a warning from the Ministry of Education and was ordered by the Board to end his association with such groups and individuals who propagate the hatred of immigrants, non-whites, Jews and other minorities, because such activities are against Board policies, and therefore undermine the employer/employee relationship. Since February, Fromm has had some success in the West; however, two engagements in the Maritimes, one in Fredricton New Brunswick and another in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were successfully cancelled after representatives from the Atlantic Jewish Council complained to the venues where Fromm was scheduled to speak.

Douglas Christie, best known as legal counsel to people such as Malcolm Ross, James Keegstra, Nazi War Criminal Imre Finta and Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, has been very active in British Columbia, conducting meetings of his so-called "Canadian Free Speech League" and distributing a newsletter. As these meetings are conducted primarily at public libraries in Victoria and Vancouver, a heated controversy was created concerning the use of public facilities for the promotion of hatred. Doug Collins, recently retired columnist from the North Shore News, who is currently facing a complaint before the B.C. Human Rights Commission for the antisemitic and racist nature of his columns, appeared as a guest speaker at one of Christie’s meetings at the West Vancouver Public Library.

HATE ON THE INTERNET

While hate activity in "cyberspace" continues to attract a great deal of attention, 1997 has been a watershed year for the formulation of strategies to deal with Internet regulation in Canada. In 1996, under the rubric of webmaster Marc Lemire’s "Freedom Site",Canada’s far right hads taken to the Internet in a big way. The Toronto-based Freedom-Site hosts such organizations’ webpages as the Heritage Front, Paul Fromm’s Canadian Assocation for Free Expression (CAFÉ) and his Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR) as well as the Canadian Patriots Network. Mark Lemire is also in the employ of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. Along with an email newsletter, Marc Lemire is currently operating a telephone hotline. Most of the ideologues of Canada’s extreme right, such as Paul Fromm, Ernst Zundel, and Doug Christie continue to maintain sites on the World Wide Web both to disseminate their propaganda and recruit new "foot soldiers" to their cause.

In September 1997, at the opening of B’nai Brith Canada’s International Symposium on Hate on the Internet, co-chair Lawrence Hart, stated that,

“The Internet may be seen as a great equalizer of information and disinformation, allowing Holocaust educators and Holocaust deniers to share the same legitimacy through search engines, bringing this pernicious form of antisemitism, racism and hate directly into the homes of children researching their history projects.”

When the Internet first moved from the academic community into the wider community, there was an aura of uncontrolled renegade freedom in cyberspace. The technology did not support regulation. However, in 1997, Canadian legislators and the judiciary took their first steps toward applying to the Internet the laws that regulate the promotion of hatred in Canada. This move toward regulation has provoked a frenzy of knee-jerk reactions from "freedom of speech" advocates who echo the American constitutional position of absolute freedom of speech, regardless of the impact on minorities. Thus the hate groups found unlikely allies in the Civil Liberties Associations and the Electronic Frontier. Ernst Zundel himself, in a posting on the Zundelsite entitled "One Week in Cyberspace", illustrates how ludicrous the situation can become:

A ban by the German censors on my server was imposed. 1,500 web sites were inaccessible in Germany because of five small words, still followed by a question mark. Did Six Million Really Die?
But then the incredible happened! Under vicious political siege, my web site was cloning itself! For an entire week, from Patagonia to the Northern Polar Regions, from China to the Cape of Good Hope, the click of the mouse was the roar of the lion that roared: "Hands off the Internet!" A friend said that he felt the planet lurch.
Censorship busters materialized from nowhere and sprang up like mushrooms after rain. University students, computer buffs, Internet veterans and columnists all leaped to my defense. The phones kept ringing off the hooks. The fax machines went crazy. The mailman groaned under the load of conventional mail, and so much e-mail arrived that we were overwhelmed. Total strangers, who under normal circumstances would have never heard of me, much less supported me, spontaneously copied or mirrored my web site and e-mailed large portions of text files all over the world.
At the height of the controversy, at least 13 identified mirror web sites existed in the USA and, we were told, at least one in Australia. An outcast had become an incast. That miracle in cyberspace will be forever cyber-history. It was magnificent!

It must be noted, of course, that the so-called miracle was short-lived. Due to the strong counter argument to Holocaust denial posted on the Nizkor site, and because universities and providers enforced various related policies (eg. no service for non-members; or inappropriate use of school facilities, etc) virtually all mirrored sites were shut down within a few months. It is of some concern that in 1997 Zundel’s site was once again mirrored in at least three locations.

As opposed to the American Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms maintains a balanced position, limiting freedoms to preserve democracy. As David Matas, Honourary Senior Legal Counsel of B’nai Brith explained at our International Symposium on Hate on the Internet, “Our challenge in a democratic society, as always in human rights issues, is to balance the right to freedom of speech with the right to be free from being the object of hatred and the violence that flows from it.” The Symposium’s recommendations have been published and released in a document entitled "International Symposium on Hate on the Internet: Executive Summary and Recommendations". The recommendations have been presented to the Justice Minister, Solicitor General, and Secretary of State, and are appended in this report.

HATE PROPAGANDA AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL

In addition to recruitment activities by hatemongers, the distribution and dissemination of hate material continued relatively unabated in 1997. For example, packages containing a video of the Nazi propaganda film "The Eternal Jew" with the addendum "and Jewish Ritual Slaughter" were sent to organizations involved in animal issues including the "Animal Alliance of Canada" and the "Farm Animal Council". Dozens of university professors across Canada were targeted with a lengthy hate pamphlet replete with a myriad of classical antisemitic themes and hate propaganda including Holocaust denial, anti-feminism and anti-Zionism. It should be noted that while such mail campaigns affect a great number of individuals directly targeted by the material, and may be treated as multiple occurrences by the police, a series of incidents with an identical modis operandi is treated as one incident for statistical purposes for the Audit.

“Holocaust denial is at the centre of the web of hate” stated noted Holocaust scholar, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, delivering a keynote address at the International Symposium on Hate on the Internet. Throughout 1997, Ernst Zundel, based in Toronto, continued to publish and disseminate Holocaust denial material world-wide, both on the Internet and through the exports of his publishing house, Samisdat. Much to the chagrin of most Canadians, Zundel continues to be a leading figure of Holocaust denial in the world. In 1996 Zundel was deemed a security threat to Canada by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) which would effectively bar Zundel’s ever becoming a Canadian citizen. However, Zundel succeeded in his appeal to the Federal Court on the basis that SIRC exhibited a bias against him following the publishing of the “Heritage Front Affair” which was the report of their findings in their investigation into the Grant Bristow affair and the Heritage Front. Zundel was categorized as a hate monger in the document. This argument succeeded at the Federal Court which found a reasonable apprehension of bias against SIRC in their adjudication of Zundel. This decision was successfully appealed by the Federal government to the Supreme Court of Canada and in 1997 the decision was overturned. This decision has made it ultimately impossible for Zundel to become a Canadian citizen. At the same time, the Federal government enacted a legislative amendment, brought forward by the Minister of Immigration, allowing for a retired judge to adjudicate such cases instead of SIRC in any instance of a reasonable apprehension of bias, thus closing this possible loop-hole for individuals who do constitute a threat to national security.

Doug Collins continued to write for the North Shore News during the better part of 1997, printing articles that targeted Jews and other minorities. Collins’ articles, which contained rhetoric consistent with Holocaust denial, indicated that he made common cause with known Holocaust deniers and antisemitic groups. This was confirmed when Collins appeared as a guest of honour at a meeting of the Canadian Free Speech League, led by Douglas Christie on May 12, 1997, at the West Vancouver Public Library. During 1997, Collins appeared before a Tribunal convened by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission to hear a complaint made by the Canadian Jewish Congress dealing with an article Collins had written on the film "Schindler’s List". According to the Victoria Times Colonist Editor-in-chief, Jody Paterson on May 9, 1997:

Collins called it [Schindler’s List] “Swindler’s List” in his March 9, 1994 column in the News. He accused Hollywood’s "powerful Jewish influence" of keeping Holocaust propaganda alive. The result, said Collins: Movie after movie about the Holocaust. and endless "propaganda" for the Jewish cause. Meanwhile, the equally murderous Japanese from the same era have to endure vilification in just one movie, Bridge on the River Kwai. “So now it’s all licky-licky for the Japanese. But not for the Germans,” he wrote.

However, the decision of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal was mixed. Dave Clements of the Saanitch News reported on November 19, 1997 that:

“The tribunal, headed by chair Nitya Iyer, found that a column by Doug Collins, did not warrant action under B.C.’s human rights code. Iyer did find the column to be anti-Semitic and ’likely to make it more acceptable for others to express hatred or contempt for Jewish people.’ However, she still dismissed the complaint. She also upheld the constitutionality of B.C.’s law banning hate speech, drafted by the NDP Mike Harcourt government in 1993.

This decision has cleared the way for the complaint filed by B’nai Brith’s B.C. representative Harry Abrams, which focuses on a larger corpus of Collins’ work, showing a consistent pattern of antisemitism and racism as opposed to the one incident involving Schindler’s List.