In November 2024, the tribunal fined Mayor Harold McQuaker and the municipality of Emo, Ont., a total of $15,000 after an adjudicator ruled a comment by the mayor before a vote against the proclamation “proved that the vote was motivated by discrimination.”
“The CCF will argue the tribunal failed to consider Mayor McQuaker’s Charter-protected right to freedom of expression,” the group said in a news release Wednesday.
“(The decision) failed to apply the legal framework for balancing expression and the right to equality, established by the Supreme Court of Canada in Ward v. Quebec.”
Controversy began in 2020
The controversy began in 2020 when Borderline Pride asked Emo — located 200 kilometres southeast of Kenora with a population of 1,300 — to declare June Pride Month and fly or display an LGBTQ2S+ flag for a week during June.
During debate over whether to make the proclamation, McQuaker said, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”
Council declined to raise the rainbow flag, citing the lack of a municipal flagpole, and voted 3-2 against the Pride Month proclamation.
Adjudicator Karen Dawson agreed with Borderland Pride that the mayor’s remark prior to the vote proved that the vote was discriminatory, and awarded the group $5,000 from the mayor and $10,000 from the township.
‘Human Rights 101′
In addition, the mayor and Emo’s chief administrative officer were ordered to undergo a ‘Human Rights 101’ course within 30 days.
Shortly after the decision, Borderland Pride was granted an order to garnish the mayor’s bank account, taking the $5,000 plus costs.
“Human rights tribunals exist to prevent discrimination in public services, not to censor good faith political debates,” Josh Dehaas, counsel for the CCF, said in the news release.
The Toronto free speech movement has lost one of its most dedicated and active members, Jocelyne Demers. She died in Toronto, March 18, after a short illness. Born in Montreal, she earned a Baccalaureat Classique from the University of Montreal. She studied for her Master degree in Sociology from 1959 to 1961, From 1961 to 1973, she worked as a reporter for La Presse and in her work met many of the leading Quebec politicians of her times. While still a lover of the classics and traditional Quebec, she became something of a leftist in her La Presse days. Still a yearning for freedom burned in her. In 1975, she moved to Ottawa and was employed by the federal Department of the Environment. In 1977, she moved to Toronto and worked as a translator for various insurance companies.
In Toronto, she was first attracted to the Libertarian Party. Through it, she met a friend who was active in Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform. She became a regular at the monthly meetings of the Alternative Forum. During the Zundel trial, she did outstanding work using her research skill and prodigious knowledge to help the Zundel team. She prized a handwritten note of gratitude from the German publisher and censorship victim. She became a regular helper at the monthly mailings of this newsletter and could always be relied on to attend a demonstration. Indeed, already ill, she came out on a rainy December day for a free speech protest last year outside the offices of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in Toronto.
I celebrated Winter Solstice, 2024, at the freedom rally in Port Credit. Bravo for Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker defying the Ontario Minority Tyranny Tribunal.
RALLY TO SUPPORT EMO MAYOR MCQUAKER & COUNCIL VICTIM OF THE ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL
TORONTO, WEDNESDAY, December 18, 2024. Supporters of free speech ranging in age from 18 to 88, gathered on this rainy afternoon outside the offices of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. There was an ominous police presence
The rally, organized by the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE) was to support Emo, Ontario Mayor Harold McQuaker and the Emo town council victimized by a recent ruling of the tribunal. Their crime? They failed to proclaim Gay Pride Month and raise the rainbow flag. [The town doesn’t even have a flagpole!]. The mayor rightly noted that the town hasn’t proclaimed Straight Pride Month either.
For their common sense position, reflecting the will of their voters, the mayor was fined $5,000, the town $10,000 and the Mayor is to attend some Maoist political re-education training. The Mayor has refused to pay or to attend such demeaning propaganda. However, the complainant Borderland Pride has managed to loot the money out of his account.
CAFE has warned for decades that human rights commissions are mortal enemies of free speech and independent thought. The Tribunal went further, trying to compel speech the victims do not believe in.
Mayor Harold McQuaker is a free speech hero. He should get the Order of Canada for standing up to minority tyranny.
On the same day, the Emo Town Council filed an application for Judicial Review (appeal) of the Tribunal decision.
Human rights tribunal says the quiet part out loud
National Post
22 Mar 2023
BRUCE PARDY Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
In June 2021, an Ontario high school student tried to sign up for a summer program. He was rejected because he was white. The “Summerup” program, sponsored by the Ontario government, was open only to Black students. His father filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal alleging racial discrimination. Last November, the Tribunal dismissed the complaint, saying the quiet part out loud. White people, wrote the Tribunal, cannot claim discrimination.
The law appears to say otherwise. Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, every person has a right to equal treatment without discrimination. The Code, however, has a loophole. “Special programs” are exempt. Special programs give special treatment. They discriminate “to assist disadvantaged persons or groups to achieve or attempt to achieve equal opportunity.” A government, company or organization like a school board can apply to designate a discriminatory program as a special program.
The Summerup program had not been designated as a special program. But the Tribunal determined it met the requirements anyway, which the Code empowers it to do. If a program discriminates against the “correct” groups, it will fit within the exemption as a matter of course. The Tribunal wrote, “an allegation of racial discrimination or discrimination on the grounds of colour is not one that can be or has been successfully claimed by persons who are white and non-racialized.” The statute that purports to prohibit discrimination authorizes it instead.
It’s not just the Human Rights Tribunal. For almost 40 years, the Supreme Court of Canada has eviscerated legal equality. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
states that every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. But the Court has given it the opposite meaning. Like the Human Rights Code, the Charter has an equity exception, and like the Tribunal, the Court has made the exception into the rule. The Charter, the Court insists, requires not equal treatment between individuals but equal or comparable outcomes between identity groups.
The Charter does not merely allow discrimination against certain groups, the Court has said, but sometimes requires it. For instance, in 2020 the Court declared unconstitutional a RCMP job-sharing scheme that enabled employees to work part-time if they wished. The voluntary program was open to men and women. Since part-time employees worked fewer hours, they earned lower pension entitlements. More women than men chose to enrol, and as a result more women than men ended up with lower pensions. The program was unconstitutional because the rules of the program were the same for men and women.
Other courts, of course, have followed suit. In December 2022, the Ontario Divisional Court declared a standardized math test for teacher candidates unconstitutional. East and southeast Asian and white candidates passed the test more frequently than Black and Indigenous test-takers. Therefore, the Court concluded, the test was discriminatory, “which occurs when neutral laws have a disproportionate impact on members of enumerated or analogous groups.” The Court did not care why different groups passed the test at different rates. The fact of disparate success was enough to bring use of the test to an end.
Justice is supposed to be blind. Blind justice means that the same rules and standards apply to everyone without arbitrary distinctions. When the law treats people as individuals rather than as members of groups, it does not matter whether they are Black or white, man or woman, straight or gay, rich or poor. The law should not care who you are.
Unlike Canadians, Americans have a right to equal treatment, at least in principle. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 require it. The American legal system still contains within it the essence of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a society in which people are judged by the content of their character (as evidenced in their actions) rather than the colour of their skin. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide a challenge to Harvard University’s race-based undergraduate admissions process, which complainants allege discriminates against Asian and white applicants. In the U.S., “equal protection” is still the legal test.
In Canada, legislatures, courts, and tribunals have rejected equal protection, but they are not the only ones. Professional regulators, universities, and other public institutions have piled on, too. The Law Society of Ontario insists that in the practice of law there are too many of certain kinds of people and not enough of others. It aims to socially engineer the profession’s demographic makeup and to require lawyers and firms to comport with mandatory “equity, diversity and inclusion” measures. Universities offer admission processes, support programs, and faculty positions for which only certain races are eligible. Government agencies offer grants and other benefits to specific identity groups.
Preferential measures, distinguishing between people by their colour, lineage, gender and sexuality, are becoming the order of the day. It is time to say the other quiet part out loud: Canadians have not agreed to be treated unequally.
