As It Happens, February 26, 2013
Doug Christie made a career out of defending those that many would find indefensible: racists, Nazis, Holocaust deniers. For decades, Mr. Christie has been representing those accused of hate speech, people like Ernst Zundel and James Keegstra, on the grounds of freedom of expression, but he will not be able to do so for much longer. He has advanced liver cancer and doctors do not expect him to live long. He fears that no other lawyer will fill the void that he will leave behind. We reached Doug Christie in Victoria.
Q: Hi Mr. Christie, how are you feeling?
A: Well, not too well today.
Q: What are your doctors telling you?
A: I have about six months according to them, but it sometimes doesn’t feel it.
Q: What’s your gut telling you?
A: Well, it hasn’t spoken to me lately except to express extreme pain.
Q: I’m sorry to hear that.
A: Yes well, that’s the way it is.
Q: You’ve done a lot in a career but what you’re best known for I guess is defending the free speech rights of those on the extreme right. Jim Keegstra was one of your first high-profile clients, charged in ’84 and eventually convicted for teaching high school students the Holocaust was fraud and Jews were evil. Why did you want to defend him?
A: Well, because everyone should be entitled to express opinions. I suppose it wasn’t the appropriate forum in the sense I would expect the fact the government of any province can dictate what can be taught. I think that what you said was somewhat of an over-simplication of the situation, but accepting what you say for the moment for the sake of argument, I don’t care what a person’s opinion is, and I’ve said many times, free speech is the one thing you have to give to your worst enemy if you want to keep it for yourself.
Q: You’ve represented Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, alleged leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, and white supremacists and I wonder why. What motivated you overall?
A: Well, because they’re the only people these days who are under attack for what they say. I don’t know, other than Little Sisters Bookstore, I don’t know too many people on the far left who’ve been hauled up before a Human Rights Commission or charged with promoting hatred. These people didn’t come to me or I would have represented them too.
Q: I wanted to ask you where you got that drive to take those kinds of cases, cases some lawyers would shy away from and you know, I half expect you to paraphrase that old story about the guy asked why he always robs banks who says “that’s where the money is.” Is that it if you want to take on freedom of speech cases, you have to take on the cases of the people testing it?
A: Well, that’s true, and their not usually people with money. They’re usually what I would call soft targets for the Crown, with the exception of the rather unwise decision of the Human Rights Commission to take on Maclean’s Magazine or Mark Steyn. They finally went one bridge too far on that. That’s when people began to question Section 13(1) in a serious way.
Q: What are the cases you’re most proud of?
A: Well, I think actually it would be the Finta case and maybe the Zundel case. The Finta case created a very important precedent that was contrary to Nuremburg law or the Nuremburg trials principles, which meant that obedience to superior orders is a defence if those orders are not manifestly unlawful.
Q: This was Imre Finta, the alleged war criminal.
A: Yes, the acquitted war criminal.
Q: And you refer to the Ernst Zundel case. What about that are you proudest of?
A: Well, it was basically a case where I would think he was about as unpopular as anybody in Toronto could be made to be, with the exception of the people who actually knew him. I think Madam Justice McLaughlin made a very courageous stand for free speech in that case and that’s where we finally won.
Q: There are those who believe you did the work because they sympathize with the politics of your clients. How often was that the case?
A: I don’t know if it’s ever been the case, really. I sympathize with every person who sincerely believes in an ideal, any ideal. And I don’t mean someone who puts it on for some sort of political game, and these people never did that by any means. So I sympathize with people who are persecuted, and I know of no people more persecuted than people in the position of James Keegstra or Malcolm Ross, or even Imre Finta or Ernst Zundel. They were the most vilified people I think ever to appear in the Canadian media.
Q: Was there a personal price you paid for taking on those kinds of cases, Mr. Christie? A stigma? Were you ever ostracized, harassed for it in any way?
A: Oh, my windows were broken, probably 15 times until I boarded them up. I’ve been spat at and hit, you know people have shouted at me on the street death threats. One time a guy was flying around my house and he said he was going to crash into my house, actually.
Q: Why do you think no one else is going to want to do the work that you’ve been doing? What do you feel will happen if no one picks it up.
A: Well, it isn’t something that anyone else was willing to do while I was alive, with the exception of Peter Lindsay, and I don’t know they’ll be a whole lot of people willing to do it after I’m dead, but you know, it’s essential in my opinion.
Q: You mentioned some of your clients. Do you have any regrets?
A: Only that I couldn’t carry on with other cases that are in the works now. I know the people that I’ve defended need help, and I feel that I’m going to be letting them down.
Q: Mr. Christie, thank you for speaking to us on As It Happens tonight.
A: It was a pleasure to speak to you.
Q: Bye-bye.
A: Bye-bye.
Doug Christie is a lawyer. We reached him in Victoria.
Showing posts with label Keegstra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keegstra. Show all posts
Friday, May 3, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Doug Christie in 1985 on "Crossfire"
After the first Zundel "False News" trial in 1985, Doug Christie appeared on the show "Crossfire" and was aggressively questioned by Ian Mulgrew of the Globe & Mail, law professor Kathleen Mahoney, and George Oak of the Edmonton Journal.
He responds to them in true Doug Christie fashion.
Doug then was defense counsel in the first Keegstra "hate speech" trial, which went to the Supreme Court twice, and a second Zundel trial (1988) that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting in the law being declared unconstitutional.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
A View of Free Speech in 1997
Doug Christie wrote the following foreward in 1997 to the second edition of his booklet Free Speech Is the Issue! which reproduced his arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Keegstra case:
It is now 1997, December, about eight years after my speech in the Keegstra case to the Supreme Court of Canada. I said on page 8 of this booklet:
"It will legitimize many other laws. ... I do not need to worry about that, but it is an improper attempt to legitimaze these laws." There I was attempting to describe the unanimity with which the Attorneys-General of the various provinces all agreed in arguing for the "hate" laws.
It is now clear after the passage of the last eight years that the people really don't care. The laws have become more severe. The prosecutions of innocent people have become more numerous.
Malcolm Ross has been fired from his job for merely expressing his own religious views off the job, by a one-man human rights tribunal appointed by the New Brunswick government. Paul Fromm has been fired for speaking at a free speech conference in Vancouver and at a funeral memorial in Urbana, Illinois, both on his own time.
The future seems very unstable and unclear.
The future for freedom of speech is more restricted as the Liberty Net case in Ottawa was lost before the Supreme Court. The internet case of Ernst Zundel is before a Canadian Human Rights tribunal. Both the latter two cases involve the action of Canadians in other countries, like the United State, where Ernst Zundel's website is located and where the Liberty Net's phone message was transferred.
Doug Collins' case has gone before the one person B.C. Human Rights Tribunal consisting of Nitya Iyer (a lawyer for the Yukon Status of Women in a previous case) and, after $203,000 in legal fees, he was found not guilty but the B.C. Human Rights law (section 7.1) which allows a tribunal to control publications in newspapers, still stands.
[In 1999, Doug Collins was found guilty of a discriminatory practice under the same law for four columns, including the one originally found not to offend. He was fined $2,000. Mr. Collins is now seeking judicial review of the constitutionality of this law.]
The chill remains. The power of the state grows.
The individual diminishes and most people in Canada have given up on freedom as long as it doesn't affect them.
The bites out of the freedom apple have taken even the core.
This time is a dark hour for freedom.
We have allowed ourselves to be imprisoned and robbed of our freedom by a government which is run by questionable men.
For my part, I believe that we must remain calm, rational and tolerant. We must write rational and persuasive letters to newspapers. We must give money, time, energy and prayers to those who are threatened and persecuted for their beliefs. The people need to be awakened and reformed into articulate speakers for freedom.
Of course, the Supreme Court of Canada had rejected the arguments you are about to read. They rejected them four to three. The majority even said that truth is not a defence worth recognizing, if hatred is promoted. The same three who sided with me in the first appeal sided against me in the second when Mr. Keegstra was convicted a second time.
The cases since have been even worse for free speech.
The future of those who stand on these issues can improve only if people read or are better informed, active and more articulate. We must circulate this booklet and make people aware of what is really happening.
The suppression of thought, belief and opinion which is so ominous in our time can only be reversed by self-sacrificing efforts of each of us to restore our freedoms by peaceful means. We must do this because where freedom is lost irrevocably, it cannot be recovered by peaceful means.
The governments of most provinces, the federal government, the various pressure groups all agree. They want more power to suppress speech they don't like.
They push and push and push, until freedom is squeezed into a tiny place where it is surrounded and hemmed in, where people can only talk to each other in a whisper and even then, they suspect their neighbours might turn on them and destroy them by informing.
They will be pushed until they are afraid to talk in their sleep or until they push back. Then and only then will freedom return as only then will it have many worthy champions. Dear reader, the challenge is yours.
Douglas H. Christie
Victoria, B.C.
December 30, 1997
It is now 1997, December, about eight years after my speech in the Keegstra case to the Supreme Court of Canada. I said on page 8 of this booklet:
"It will legitimize many other laws. ... I do not need to worry about that, but it is an improper attempt to legitimaze these laws." There I was attempting to describe the unanimity with which the Attorneys-General of the various provinces all agreed in arguing for the "hate" laws.
It is now clear after the passage of the last eight years that the people really don't care. The laws have become more severe. The prosecutions of innocent people have become more numerous.
Malcolm Ross has been fired from his job for merely expressing his own religious views off the job, by a one-man human rights tribunal appointed by the New Brunswick government. Paul Fromm has been fired for speaking at a free speech conference in Vancouver and at a funeral memorial in Urbana, Illinois, both on his own time.
The future seems very unstable and unclear.
The future for freedom of speech is more restricted as the Liberty Net case in Ottawa was lost before the Supreme Court. The internet case of Ernst Zundel is before a Canadian Human Rights tribunal. Both the latter two cases involve the action of Canadians in other countries, like the United State, where Ernst Zundel's website is located and where the Liberty Net's phone message was transferred.
Doug Collins' case has gone before the one person B.C. Human Rights Tribunal consisting of Nitya Iyer (a lawyer for the Yukon Status of Women in a previous case) and, after $203,000 in legal fees, he was found not guilty but the B.C. Human Rights law (section 7.1) which allows a tribunal to control publications in newspapers, still stands.
[In 1999, Doug Collins was found guilty of a discriminatory practice under the same law for four columns, including the one originally found not to offend. He was fined $2,000. Mr. Collins is now seeking judicial review of the constitutionality of this law.]
The chill remains. The power of the state grows.
The individual diminishes and most people in Canada have given up on freedom as long as it doesn't affect them.
The bites out of the freedom apple have taken even the core.
This time is a dark hour for freedom.
We have allowed ourselves to be imprisoned and robbed of our freedom by a government which is run by questionable men.
For my part, I believe that we must remain calm, rational and tolerant. We must write rational and persuasive letters to newspapers. We must give money, time, energy and prayers to those who are threatened and persecuted for their beliefs. The people need to be awakened and reformed into articulate speakers for freedom.
Of course, the Supreme Court of Canada had rejected the arguments you are about to read. They rejected them four to three. The majority even said that truth is not a defence worth recognizing, if hatred is promoted. The same three who sided with me in the first appeal sided against me in the second when Mr. Keegstra was convicted a second time.
The cases since have been even worse for free speech.
The future of those who stand on these issues can improve only if people read or are better informed, active and more articulate. We must circulate this booklet and make people aware of what is really happening.
The suppression of thought, belief and opinion which is so ominous in our time can only be reversed by self-sacrificing efforts of each of us to restore our freedoms by peaceful means. We must do this because where freedom is lost irrevocably, it cannot be recovered by peaceful means.
The governments of most provinces, the federal government, the various pressure groups all agree. They want more power to suppress speech they don't like.
They push and push and push, until freedom is squeezed into a tiny place where it is surrounded and hemmed in, where people can only talk to each other in a whisper and even then, they suspect their neighbours might turn on them and destroy them by informing.
They will be pushed until they are afraid to talk in their sleep or until they push back. Then and only then will freedom return as only then will it have many worthy champions. Dear reader, the challenge is yours.
Douglas H. Christie
Victoria, B.C.
December 30, 1997
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