Ezra Levant

I just listened to a great interview that London's Andrew Lawton and Ari Fine did with Ann Coulter, previewing her visit to Canada next week. Click here to listen. (I was surprised and flattered to hear her kind words about me!)

There's still tickets for her speech in each of the cities (London, Ottawa and Calgary), and some VIP reception tickets, too. Find out the basic details here, or e-mail me for details about the VIP receptions.

I can hardly wait to hear her comments -- and to see if any of our events are crashed by human rights commission stormtroopers!

I just listened to a great interview that London's Andrew Lawton and Ari Fine did with Ann Coulter, previewing her visit to Canada next week. Click here to listen. (I was surprised and flattered to hear her kind words about me!)

There's still tickets for her speech in each of the cities (London, Ottawa and Calgary), and some VIP reception tickets, too. Find out the basic details here, or e-mail me for details about the VIP receptions.

I can hardly wait to hear her comments -- and to see if any of our events are crashed by human rights commission stormtroopers!

The trial in the matter of Giacomo Vigna v. Ezra Levant began today in the Ottawa court house on Elgin Street.

As I noted here, the trial had originally been scheduled for February, but was postponed until today.

If you're in town and want to come by, feel free -- it's in room 35, and runs from about 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., with a break for lunch. The trial is set to run all week, but there's a chance it might end early.

I've been writing about freedom of speech, the need to reform Canada's human rights commissions, and Mr. Vigna's lawsuit for over two years, and I've shared plenty of opinions on the subject.

Now's the time for a judge to hear the facts of the case and render his verdict.

Thanks to all of my supporters, both those who have given me moral support and the financial support to be able to sustain my legal bills.

Here's a story in today's National Post about Richard Warman's nuisance lawsuits against me -- part of the larger lawfare campaign waged against me by radical Muslim activists, their Canadian Human Rights Commission collaborators, and even some Official Jews like Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress:

Free-speech blogger Ezra Levant has accused anti-hate activist Richard Warman of exploiting court processes to publicly "scandalize" him with "wholly irrelevant" allegations, and to discourage his "public service journalism" against human rights commissions.

The claim is in an affidavit, obtained by the National Post, that is part of Mr. Levant's defence against a libel suit brought by Mr. Warman.

A judge is to rule later this month whether Mr. Levant can examine files gathered by Mr. Warman over his decade of activism against those who post hate messages on the Internet, which includes 16 cases at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

In an affidavit supporting his request for disclosure, Mr. Levant said Mr. Warman's "focus on my political views, and [his] express concern for the political reputation of non-parties to this lawsuit, such as Mr. Warman's former employer, the [Canadian Human Rights Commission], demonstrates my contention that his lawsuit is indeed a 'SLAPP' suit -- Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation -- designed to 'chill' public discussion of these issues."

Mr. Levant's writing, including the 2009 book Shakedown, has focused on the controversies of human rights law, especially Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits online messages that are "likely to expose" identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt."

"That a single citizen [Mr. Warman] is the largest sole user of a legal procedure for 10 years is newsworthy in itself. It also makes it impossible to scrutinize the CHRC's conduct without scrutinizing Mr. Warman's conduct, as they are largely one and the same on this issue," the affidavit reads.

In a recent court appearance, Mr. Warman's lawyer Brian Shiller called the request for disclosure a "fishing expedition" that would unfairly expose personal information, and Mr. Warman states in an affidavit that Mr. Levant is seeking "mountains of documents that clearly have no arguable relevancy to the matters in question."

Mr. Levant's affidavit states that he has no interest in personal information, and that Mr. Warman "has disclosed only a limited number of records relating to his own statement of claim, and almost no records relating to other matters pleaded in my statement of defence."

Those other matters relate to Mr. Warman's use of false personas as part of his hate-speech investigations. Mr. Levant said his own "public-interest journalism about this controversial conduct" is "a central issue" of the case.

Mr. Levant calls this libel suit against him and other bloggers "highly political," and describes federal Liberal party strategist Warren Kinsella as Mr. Warman's "spokesperson," which Mr. Warman denies.

...In his emailed response to questions, Mr. Warman also alleged that the accusation at the core of this libel suit -- that he was the author of a racist and sexist message posted on the far-right freedomsite.org-- was "invented" by that site's owner, Marc Lemire, as part of an effort to "derail" the hate speech case against him. That case, brought by Mr. Warman in 2003, concluded last year when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal judged Section 13 to be an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of expression. An appeal is soon to be heard in federal court.

 

Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh just can't help himself when it comes to smearing our Canadian Forces.

Yesterday he went on the CBC to imply that our soldiers "ordered the torture" of Taliban terrorists and "sent people to torture" -- or at the very least consented to that happening. It's all very vague -- Dosanjh is building accusations on rumours, so it's all a product of his own fervid imagination -- but the point is clear. Watch the clip for yourself:

This has become a recurring theme for Dosanjh. Last fall, he called our generals' explanation of our troops' conduct in Afghanistan "morally weak":

This would be bad enough if Dosanjh were a back-bench MP. But he is Ignatieff's hand-picked defence critic -- in other words, were the Liberals to be returned to power, Dosanjh, a former Communist organizer and NDP premier, would be the defence minister. Could you imagine if such a smearer of our troops became the boss of our troops?

Dosanjh's comments are not gaffes or errors. They represent the considered position of the Liberal Party. Here's his colleague, John McCallum, a former defence minister, outright using the phrase "war crimes" (and the CBC's crack investigative reporter Suhana Meharchand bravely declines to ask him about it):

Ignatieff himself has fingered our own troops -- again, based on nothing but speculation and innuendo. Here's what he told Joan Bryden last fall:

Ignatieff said the documents would shed light on such crucial matters as whether Canada has respected international law and human rights, "the conduct of our troops in the field" and the conduct of the government which appears to have ignored warnings about torture.

"This is really serious stuff," he said, adding that Liberals "will not let up about this."

Without seeing any documents, without seeing the facts, Ignatieff was smearing "our troops in the field" -- not bureaucrats in the Department of Defence, not political leaders or even generals, but our troops in the field.

It is remarkable to me how sensitive the Liberals, and their chorus in the mainstream press, are to charges of being unpatriotic or anti-military. How they bristle at that accusation. And for good reason: they are anti-troops, and as the video clips above, and Ignatieff's quote, show, they don't hesitate to say so.

They just hate being called on it.

Being accused of being anti-soldier wouldn't cause such a reaction in, say, Stephen Harper or Peter MacKay -- they would laugh it off, or give a puzzled look, or simply rattle off the dozen things they've done to revitalize our military, both physically and morally. Such an accusation wouldn't hurt their feelings or lead them to sputter in righteous indignation, because it would be so obviously baseless.

The shrieks of horror when the Liberals are accused of being anti-military are precisely because they are anti-military, but they think they can get away with it.

I agreed with Tom Flanagan, when he wrote that the Tories should not be afraid, politically, of the Afghan detainee issue. The opposition parties are united against our troops; and on the related issues of Omar Khadr, Maher Arar and other underminers, the opposition parties are united in support of our enemies. That goes over well with much of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the Canadian Bar Association, but ordinary Canadians find it appalling, and even traitorous.

Let's have an election on this issue. Let's stack the moral character of our Canadian Forces against the moral character of those who are trying to assassinate their reputation for political gain. Let's get Maher Arar on the campaign trail -- hell, let's run him as a star Liberal candidate, and even put Omar Khadr's name on the ballot as a Liberal candidate, in absentia. The media cheerleading will make it an unbearable five weeks, but the rebuke our unpatriotic opposition and the MSM will receive from Canadians after such a spectacle will make it worthwhile.

Election, please.