OCLA’s 2019 Year in Review
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
2019-07-04: “In
Canada and elsewhere, freedom of speech is on the endangered list”, LawNow
2019-07-16: “Patients
flagged as potentially violent wait months for appeal” London Free Press
2019-09-07: “Man
under deportation order due to terrorist links to speak at University of
Toronto” Canadian Jewish News
2019-09-25: “‘Nasty’
digital warnings from authorities putting chill on FoCo bashes”, London Free Press
2019-12-01: “Debate
on the ‘Take Back the Toronto Public Library’ Protests”, Stranger Tides Podcast
How to stay connected and donate to the
OCLA
Website: http://ocla.ca
Twitter: @oncivlib
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/110883345731728/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKqbht2j2BPu4Wb2epM4BKw