{"id":3622,"date":"2019-12-29T22:24:47","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T03:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3622"},"modified":"2019-12-29T22:24:47","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T03:24:47","slug":"oclas-2019-year-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3622","title":{"rendered":"OCLA’s 2019 Year in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OCLA’s 2019 Year in Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Dear OCLA\nSupporter,
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This email\nis to give you an update on the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)\u2019s\nwork and activities in 2019.
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2019 OCLA Civil Liberties Award \u2013 Kelly\nDonovan<\/strong>
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Kelly\nDonovan, a police whistleblower and public-protection advocate, was this year\u2019s\nrecipient of the OCLA Civil Liberties Award.
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Ms. Donovan\nis a former police constable and use-of-force instructor with the Waterloo\nRegional Police Service. Her efforts to report bias or arbitrariness of\ndisciplinary measures against police officers who sought improvement or redress\nwere met with gagging measures, further discipline, and publicly-funded\ntribunal litigation against her person. But she never gave up, and in 2019 as a\nself-represented litigant, she won a matter at the Court of Appeal for Ontario,\nreinstating her right to sue both the Board and the Police Chief.
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Kelly was\nalso recently awarded her litigation costs in both the appeal and the case in\nthe lower court, a rare and important accomplishment for a self-represented\nlitigant.
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Full details\nabout the award, including Kelly\u2019s acceptance video, are posted on the OCLA\u2019s\nwebsite here<\/a>, and an\nexcellent media report in Brant.One<\/em> is available here<\/a>.
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Research report<\/strong> \u201cGeo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory\nGlobalization and Social Engineering\u201d<\/strong>
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OCLA\nresearcher Dr. Denis Rancourt authored a 78-page research report about the\ninfluence that two large-scale, post-WW2 geopolitical transformations had on\nindividual rights, democracy, and societal organization in Western countries.
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The report\nseeks to demonstrate how geopolitical and global economic conditions are at the\nroot of many of the erosions of civil liberties that have been underway in\nWestern societies during the past several decades.
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The report\ncan be read here<\/a>,\nand a media summary published in CounterPunch<\/em> is available here<\/a>.
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OCLA opposes the international campaign to\nadopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of\nanti-semitism<\/strong>
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In June\n2019, the OCLA endorsed the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association\n(BCCLA)\u2019s expressed opposition to the international campaign to adopt the\nInternational Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism,\nand we issued our own public statement opposing the campaign.
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The OCLA\u2019s\nposition, which can be read at the link here<\/a>,\nrepeats our previously expressed argument (detailed in our July 2018 letter<\/a> to the Attorney General of Ontario) in opposition to the \u201chate speech\u201d\nprovisions of the Criminal Code.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OCLA interviews Tony Heller on social media\ncensorship<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One current\narea of severe censorship is any questioning of the \u201cclimate emergency\u201d or of\nthe dominant mediascape view of \u201cclimate change\u201d.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OCLA\nresearcher Dr. Denis Rancourt recently interviewed climate activist Tony Heller\nabout the need for freedom of expression amid censorship by mainstream and\nsocial media corporations. The video interview is available here<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OCLA Executive Director earns PhD<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OCLA\nExecutive Director Joseph Hickey completed his PhD in Physics in 2019. His\nthesis, \u201cA Complex Systems Study of Social Hierarchies and Jurisprudence\u201d, studied\nsimple models of the formation and evolution of social hierarchies, with\nimplications for the role of individual freedoms in maintaining the stability\nof societies. The thesis also contains a statistical analysis of the citations\nbetween Canadian judicial decisions, which explores possible reasons for the\nexplosion of family litigation that occurred in Canada in the 1990s.
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Joseph\u2019s thesis\nis available online here<\/a>.
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Media coverage<\/strong>
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2019-07-04: \u201cIn\nCanada and elsewhere, freedom of speech is on the endangered list\u201d<\/a>, LawNow<\/em>
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2019-07-16: \u201cPatients\nflagged as potentially violent wait months for appeal\u201d<\/a> London Free Press<\/em>
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2019-09-07: \u201cMan\nunder deportation order due to terrorist links to speak at University of\nToronto\u201d<\/a> Canadian Jewish News<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2019-09-25: \u201c\u2018Nasty\u2019\ndigital warnings from authorities putting chill on FoCo bashes\u201d<\/a>, London Free Press<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2019-12-01: \u201cDebate\non the \u2018Take Back the Toronto Public Library\u2019 Protests\u201d<\/a>, Stranger Tides Podcast<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to stay connected and donate to the\nOCLA<\/strong>
Website: http:\/\/ocla.ca<\/a>
Twitter: @oncivlib
Facebook: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/110883345731728\/<\/a>
YouTube: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCKqbht2j2BPu4Wb2epM4BKw<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OCLA’s 2019 Year in Review Dear OCLA Supporter, This email is to give you an update on the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)\u2019s work and activities in 2019. 2019 OCLA Civil Liberties Award \u2013 Kelly Donovan Kelly Donovan, a police … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1399,276],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}