And, from my understanding, it’s not “libel” in our American sense. It’s “hate speech” that’s at the core of the suit. It may be cast as “libel” but that requires an interpretation of the word far broader than American law, because of the 1st Amendment, would ever allow.

Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the Act) empowers the Commission to deal with complaints regarding the telephonic transmission of hate messages:

13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Furthermore, Warman was the lead investigator AND prosecutor of the HRC. To say the HRC has nothing to do with it is preposterous since that is where the cases are being investigated and heard.

Um… no the HRC is not doing that. Richard Warman is suing the aforementioned bloggers for Libel. It’s a tort. It’s got nothing to do with the HRC.

The piece is a racist piece directed against Canada’s first black senator.

Even in America, with its First Amendment, one can launch a tort of defamation over something like this.

You can disagree with the Human Rights Commissions — I think they are wandering into territory not intended — but the lawsuit is not about the appropriateness of the commissions. The defendants maybe trying to make that connection, but it’s a red herring.

I am being sued for libel myself, by the way, over online political actions in the Green Party of Canada. I consider the suit without merit, and have many criticisms of Canada’s antiquated libel laws.

But falsely attributing racist writings to a human rights lawyer sounds actionable to me, if true.

Oh, our Prime Minister recently sued the Official Opposition for libel for printing what was spoken in Parliament, and repeated throughout the media. A lot of these same characters screaming murder over Warman’s libel suit support the PM’s vexatious libel suit.

Hypocrites.

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=567

I agree with freedom of speech, I respect people’s opinions by and large - but I must confess that seeing a right wing’d bloviator get slapped down is very pleasing to me personally.