Minister of Justice of Canada Holding Consultations on New “Online Hate” Laws

Posted on July 30, 2020 by admin

On July 22, 2020, civil liberties associations were invited by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (MJAG) to participate in a roundtable discussion as part of consultations to “inform the development of legal remedies for victims of online hate.”

This consultation document was attached to the MJAG’s email, and is intended to “guide” the roundtable discussion.

The consultation document, which refers to the June 2019 report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights entitled “Taking Action to End Online Hate”, proposes three potential “legal remedies for victims of online hate”. These three items are as follows, with our brief explanation added in parentheses for each one:

I. Consideration of civil remedy to combat online hate (reviving section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act)

II. Amending section 319 of the Criminal Code (to remove the requirement for Attorney General consent prior to proceeding with a “hate speech” prosecution)

III. Adding a peace bond to the Criminal Code (imposing pre-conditions on individual freedoms, in anticipation of future violations of the “hate speech” Criminal Code provisions)

The OCLA has previously communicated its reasoned arguments that the “hate speech” provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code are unconstitutional, in contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified by Canada in 1976), and therefore must be repealed.

In particular, we expressed this position in our July 24, 2018 letter to the Attorney General of Ontario about Criminal Code censorship prosecutions in Ontario. We have sent our 2018 letter to the MJAG and asked for it to be shared with roundtable participants in the current consultations.

Regarding the items I-III listed above, OCLA opposes reviving the repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act; section 13 was broadly recognized as a censorious law used to attack individuals’ freedom of expression, and was rightly repealed in 2013.

Item III in the MJAG’s consultation document would give authorities the extreme power to:

“… prevent criminal conduct before it occurs by allowing a person to apply to a court when they have reasonable grounds to fear that another person will commit certain conduct. … (e.g. conditions could include electronic monitoring, restrictions on the use of computers and/or the internet, restrictions on access to weapons, reporting to police). A failure to follow those conditions can result in criminal charges.” (MJAG consultation document, pg. 2)

This is an astounding proposal to extend the reach of an unjust law. We note that the anticipated future “criminal conduct” in this case is speech in which no actual harm to any specific person needs to be proven by the State; nor does the anticipated “criminal” speech involve incitement of a crime, but rather incitement of “hatred” (an emotion which is not in itself a crime) in unspecified persons at large. For example, could the simple act of reading a controversial text or document constitute “reasonable grounds to fear” that the reader will repeat or comment on “hateful” material therein?

We make no comment on Item II since it would be nonsensical to discuss tweaking the parameters of a law that grossly violates the fundamental human right of freedom of expression and that is harmful to democracy.

We urge all lawmakers in Parliament to repeal the “hate speech” provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code and to resist further damaging freedom of expression in Canada.

Update 2021-06-23: Email from MJAG announcing introduction of Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human RightsAct and to make related amendments to another Act (hatepropaganda, hate crimes and hate speech)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Disappearance and Reappearance of OCLA’s Facebook Group

Posted on July 29, 2020 by admin

The OCLA has had a Facebook Group since its founding in September 2012. The group currently has over 4000 members.

The group disappeared from Facebook sometime yesterday afternoon (July 28, 2020) and reappeared around noon today (July 29, 2020).

OCLA has sent an email to Jennifer G. Newstead, Vice-President and General Counsel of Facebook, Inc. asking for clarification about why this occurred.

We will post any responses below, when they are received.

Please join OCLA’s email newsletter list to stay connected with OCLA in the event that our Facebook Group or other social media are deplatformed.

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Amazon’s Deplatforming of Ezra Levant’s China Virus Book is Wrong

Posted on July 24, 2020 by admin

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association has received documentation from Ontario lawyer Aaron Rosenberg showing that Amazon interfered with and repeatedly deplatformed his client’s book.

The book is “China Virus: How Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Communist Ideology is Putting Canadians in danger”, by Ezra Levant of Rebel News.

Amazon is enabled by State corporate laws to in-effect operate as a book publishing monopoly.

Amazon benefits from corporate law by tax advantages and by shielding its executives and board members from personal liability.

Amazon occupies the internet, thus using internet facilities that have been largely created with public money. The internet is a publicly-funded shared resource, from landlines following rail and road networks, to university hubs, and so on. The very architecture of the internet is from publicly-funded intellectual efforts.

Corporations, such as Amazon, are free to be independent in their corporate strategy and functioning. However, non-specialized monopolistic online publishers and social media giants, because of their fundamental and government-enabled societal role in giving individuals a voice to participate in democracy and to express themselves freely, with equal access, should not violate the constitutional, Charter, democratic, political, and natural freedom-of-expression rights of authors and readers, arbitrarily or by contract.

Blocking YouTube channels and banning books on Amazon are akin to requiring government authorisation to operate a printing press or to buy a photocopier or pen and paper. Only the technology and the administrative covering structures have changed. Establishment censorship is establishment censorship.

Amazon is applying the correct principle of free expression in publishing the historically influential works of Mao, Hitler, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Errico Malatesta, Adam Smith, and many others, but it is applying outright censorship against current works that it deems threatens the dominant establishment projects of the moment.

OCLA has noticed an aggressive censorship of influential works that potentially threaten the current global state of medical totalitarianism. “Public health risk” is being wielded as a ready-made pretext for deplatforming and censorship. This is obscene. There must be free expression, whether establishment structures have declared a pandemic or not. There must especially be free expression when the government is enacting draconian measures, such as a global lockdown and forcing individuals to wear masks, no less. Everyone must have a voice. Everyone is impacted by unprecedented (we argue reckless[1]) government actions.

It appears that Ezra Levant’s book may have been captured by the medical totalitarian net. Whatever the actual reasons for Amazon’s egregious violation of Mr. Levant’s free expression, and of the rights of his readers, the actions of Amazon are wrong and harmful to society.

[1] OCLA Report 2020-1, “Criticism of Government Response to COVID-19 in Canada”, by Denis G. Rancourt: https://ocla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/OCLA-Report-2020-1-Criticism-of-Government-Response-to-COVID19.pdf

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Criticism of DK Chu et al. on face masks for COVID-19 by professor Joseph Audie

Posted on July 14, 2020 by admin

Professor Joseph Audie wrote to OCLA’s researcher Denis Rancourt on July 14, 2020, to describe his observations about the “Chu et al.” article and its use by the WHO. Here is professor Audie’s letter, published with permission.

Hello Dr. Rancourt,

My name is Joseph Audie. I am a professor of biochemistry and computational drug design researcher. I appreciate all of the excellent work you are doing researching matters related to COVID-19.

On April 5th, with respect to the mass use of face masks by the general public, the WHO wrote:

However, there is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

On June 5th, the WHO, citing the meta-analysis of DK Chu et al., wrote:

A recent meta-analysis of these observational studies, with the intrinsic biases of observational data, showed that either disposable surgical masks or reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks were associated with protection of healthy individuals within households and among contacts of cases.

I have identified fundamental errors in the DK Chu et al. meta-analysis that I want to bring to your attention.

Briefly, after reading your letter to the WHO, I decided to start reading the meta-analysis authored by DK Chu et al. which can be found at:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext

Figure 4 in the article lists numerous results from what are purported to be face mask versus no face mask studies. According to information provided in the figure, Wang et al. (2020 for COVID-19 – reference 70) reported a result that would favor face masks as a method for infection control:

Face mask data: events/face masks = 1/1286
No face mask data = events/no face masks = 119/4036

Given that the Wang et al. study was one of only a few that focused on COVID-19 and given the large number of subjects and magnitude of the reported effect, I decided to read the Wang et al. article:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.20.20064899v1.full.pdf

The first thing to note is that the Wang article is a pre-print that appears to not have been subject to peer review. More importantly, the Wang et al. article does not report the aforementioned results as face mask versus no face mask but rather (in Table 2) reports the results as level 2 protection versus inadequate protection:

Level-2 protection = 1/1286
Inadequate protection = 119/4036

According to the Wang et al. article, level 2 protection is said to include: disposable hat, medical protective mask (N95 or higher standard), goggles (anti-fog) or protective mask (anti-fog), medical protective clothing or white coats covered by medical protective clothing, disposable gloves and disposable shoe covers.

Hence, the Chu et al. article appears to be misclassifying level-2 protection/inadequate protection results as face mask/no face mask results.

Moreover, the Wang article provides raw results in Table 1 that can actually be interpreted against the efficacy of face masks:

No protection: total infected without protection/total infected staff = 25/120 (20.8%)
Surgical mask: total infected with surgical mask/total infected staff = 94/120 (78.3%)

Finally, the Wang et al. article reports results on COVID-19 associated death outcomes that illustrate the limits of observational studies and the need for careful interpretation, especially as it pertains to the assignment of causation with implications for government policy. In the Wang et al. article, it is reported in Table 1 that one doctor died who worked in a hospital center that did not treat COVID-19 patients and that no doctors died in hospital centers that did treat COVID-19 patients. From this, are we to conclude that treating COVID-19 patients reduces COVID-19 mortality risk relative to treating non-COVID-19 patients? Obviously, this conclusion is absurd, and it focuses attention on the challenges of inferring causal relationships from observational studies. On a related note, the discussion of the doctor’s death is totally inadequate and the calculated fatality rate of 0.8% may be misleading.

In summary, the DK Chu et al. article erroneously includes and reports results from the Wang et al. article for level-2 protection versus inadequate protection as results for face mask versus no face mask. Additionally, the Wang et al. study actually reports data, ignored by Chu et al., for surgical mask versus no protection (no surgical mask) that could be interpreted against surgical mask (face mask) efficacy. Finally, the Wang et al. article reports on a single COVID-19 associated death that can be used to spotlight the limitations of observational studies. These errors are of a fundamental nature and, if confirmed, call into question the entire article and any policy recommendations that derive from it.

Best,
Joe

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OCLA Recommends Civil Disobedience Against Mandatory Masking

Posted on June 30, 2020 by admin

(Available as a PDF here.)

Municipal governments and authorities in Ontario are arbitrarily imposing face masks in the general population, without any reliable scientific basis, and in contradiction of the precautionary principle.

There are significant anticipated harms from the widespread use of masks in the general population, which both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the OCLA have described in detail. [ https://ocla.ca/ocla-letter-who/ ]

Governments are enforcing laws, by-laws and “health” directives that thereby put the general population at risk, while not having satisfied the onus of demonstrating that their draconian policies are safe, and not harmful to the very fabric of society.

Therefore, the OCLA recommends peaceful civil disobedience against directives imposing masks in the general population.

The OCLA provides the following practice guide for the civil disobedience.

  • Do not be isolated. Find or form grassroots support groups, or even just one other trusted person who can accompany you.
  • Be polite, not argumentative. Do not be legalistic. Calmly state your position of defiance of the rule, without trying to convince authorities.
  • You do not need to justify yourself, or provide any evidence of special circumstances. Simply state that you will not comply because the directive is not justified.
  • Record your interactions with authorities and establishment personnel. Get name badges and positions. Ask questions to clarify what they are requesting and who is requesting it and why.
  • Make your recordings and reports public, on social media, and to your support groups. OCLA can receive and publish your reports, as one venue.
  • Expect that other citizens will oppose you and that they may be angry or aggressive. Do not respond with anger or get into an argument. Your respectful act of defiance speaks for itself.
  • If they want to trespass you, then ask them to call police or security to do that. When a police or peace officer arrives, explain the situation calmly. Be cooperative. Follow orders. Do not resist arrest, if it comes to that.
  • If you are given an enforcement or by-law ticket, ask why and on what basis. Anticipate fighting the ticket in court, as a next step. [OCLA does not provide legal assistance, but may help you find legal assistance.]
  • Be strong, confident and positive about the experience that is civil disobedience. You are freely doing it for yourself and society. There is a cost but it is often worth it.

Ontario lawyers who wish to provide pro bono assistance to fight fines are asked to contact OCLA via web, to be added to a list that can be used to inform those needing help:  https://ocla.ca/contact/

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Opposing Mandatory Face Masks in Ontario Municipalities

Posted on June 27, 2020 by admin

Ontario municipal governments and Medical Officers of Health are implementing or announcing intentions to implement mandatory face mask policies.

OCLA’s position opposing mandatory use of face masks in the general population was expressed in our June 21, 2020 letter (en français ici) to the Director General of the World Health Organization.

This post contains links to OCLA’s letters to Ontario municipal officials opposing mandatory face masks. We will also publish responses we have received.

Letters to municipal authorities:

Responses:

Civil disobedience

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OCLA Asks WHO to Retract Recommendation Advising Use of Face Masks in General Population

Posted on June 21, 2020 by admin

OCLA has sent a letter (en français ici) to the Director General  of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, asking him to retract the WHO’s recommendation advising the use of face masks in the general population to prevent COVID-19 transmission.

The letter criticizes the lack of a valid scientific basis for the WHO’s recommendation and expresses OCLA’s concerns about serious harms to individuals and societies stemming from the recommendation and from government impositions of face masks on the general public.

The letter includes statements such as:

“… the WHO cannot collect and rely on potentially biased studies to make recommendations that can have devastating effects (see below) on the lives of literally billions. Rather, the WHO must apply a stringent standards threshold, and accept only randomized controlled trials with verified outcomes. In this application, the mere fact that several such quality studies have not ever confirmed the positive effects reported in bias-susceptible reports should be a red flag.”

and

“It is an unjustified authoritarian imposition, and a fundamental indignity, to have the State impose its evaluation of risk on the individual, one which has no basis in science, and which is smaller than a multitude of risks that are both common and often created or condoned by the State.”

A copy of the letter is posted here and embedded below.

Une traduction en français de la lettre est disponible ici.

Related: Dr. John H. Murphy’s Letter to the Editor of 2 June 2020, submitted to the WHO Bulletin (the WHO refused to publish Dr. Murphy’s letter)

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OCLA Research Report 2020-1

Posted on April 18, 2020 by admin

The OCLA has published a research report (OCLA Report 2020-1) authored by OCLA researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt.

The report is entitled “Criticism of Government Response to COVID-19 in Canada”.

The Abstract reads as follows:

We review the scientific literature about general-population lockdown and social-distancing measures, which is relevant to mitigation policy in Canada. Federal and provincial Canadian government responses to and communications about COVID-19 have been irresponsible. The latest research implies that the government interventions to “flatten the curve” risk causing significant additional cumulative COVID-19 deaths, due to seasonal driving of transmissibility and delayed societal immunity.

Dr. Rancourt’s article “Masks Don’t Work: A review of science relevant to COVID-19 social policy”, which is cited in OCLA Report 2020-1, is available at the link here.

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OCLA interviews Dr. Ashley Frawley on cancel culture

Posted on January 24, 2020 by admin

OCLA researcher Denis Rancourt interviews Dr. Ashley Frawley (Senior Lecturer in Public Health, Policy and Social Sciences, Swansea University) about the need for freedom of expression in an era of increasing censorship and social mobbing. Ashley puts her recent public interventions — such as her viral “cancel culture is toxic” — in the context of her academic research on the discourse of modern Western-state ideologies.

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OCLA’s 2019 Year in Review

Posted on December 30, 2019 by admin


Dear OCLA Supporter,

This email is to give you an update on the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)’s work and activities in 2019.

2019 OCLA Civil Liberties Award – Kelly Donovan

Kelly Donovan, a police whistleblower and public-protection advocate, was this year’s recipient of the OCLA Civil Liberties Award.

Ms. Donovan is a former police constable and use-of-force instructor with the Waterloo Regional Police Service. Her efforts to report bias or arbitrariness of disciplinary measures against police officers who sought improvement or redress were met with gagging measures, further discipline, and publicly-funded tribunal litigation against her person. But she never gave up, and in 2019 as a self-represented litigant, she won a matter at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, reinstating her right to sue both the Board and the Police Chief.

Kelly was also recently awarded her litigation costs in both the appeal and the case in the lower court, a rare and important accomplishment for a self-represented litigant.

Full details about the award, including Kelly’s acceptance video, are posted on the OCLA’s website here, and an excellent media report in Brant.One is available here.

Research report “Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering”

OCLA researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt authored a 78-page research report about the influence that two large-scale, post-WW2 geopolitical transformations had on individual rights, democracy, and societal organization in Western countries.

The report seeks to demonstrate how geopolitical and global economic conditions are at the root of many of the erosions of civil liberties that have been underway in Western societies during the past several decades.

The report can be read here, and a media summary published in CounterPunch is available here.

OCLA opposes the international campaign to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism

In June 2019, the OCLA endorsed the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA)’s expressed opposition to the international campaign to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and we issued our own public statement opposing the campaign.

The OCLA’s position, which can be read at the link here, repeats our previously expressed argument (detailed in our July 2018 letter to the Attorney General of Ontario) in opposition to the “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code.

OCLA interviews Tony Heller on social media censorship

One current area of severe censorship is any questioning of the “climate emergency” or of the dominant mediascape view of “climate change”.

OCLA researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt recently interviewed climate activist Tony Heller about the need for freedom of expression amid censorship by mainstream and social media corporations. The video interview is available here.

OCLA Executive Director earns PhD

OCLA Executive Director Joseph Hickey completed his PhD in Physics in 2019. His thesis, “A Complex Systems Study of Social Hierarchies and Jurisprudence”, studied simple models of the formation and evolution of social hierarchies, with implications for the role of individual freedoms in maintaining the stability of societies. The thesis also contains a statistical analysis of the citations between Canadian judicial decisions, which explores possible reasons for the explosion of family litigation that occurred in Canada in the 1990s.

Joseph’s thesis is available online here.

Media coverage

How to stay connected and donate to the OCLA

Website: https://ocla.ca
Twitter: @oncivlib
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/110883345731728/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKqbht2j2BPu4Wb2epM4BKw

The OCLA is an independent, volunteer-run organization. Donations help cover operating costs such as booking rooms for public events, printing promotional material for campaigns and events, and paying for court filing fees and court document production costs (copies and binding) for court and tribunal interventions on civil liberties issues.

As we are an entirely volunteer-run organization with a very small budget, we do depend on donations to continue our work, and appreciate any contribution you can make.

Donations can be made in two ways:

1) Through PayPal, by clicking the “Donate” button in the top-right corner of https://ocla.ca; or

2) By sending a cheque to “Ontario Civil Liberties Association” to our mailing address:

Ontario Civil Liberties Association
170 Laurier Avenue West, Suite 603
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1P 5V5

The OCLA is not affiliated with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) or the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA). All three associations are separate and distinct.

Thank you for your support and all the best for the New Year!

Yours truly,

Joseph Hickey
Executive Director
Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)

 

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