00:16:05.100And that was why I was hoping to do what I was hoping to do there.
00:16:09.600So there must be some guidelines, you know, so I'll kind of circle this back to the recent case that's really kind of got a lot of, well, there's a couple recently that got people worked up.
00:17:42.500Yeah. And that's another point that's interesting is that, you know, the complainants can be quite well rewarded if they win through these, though it's not going through the proper channels of a civil action in a regular court. So it really incentivizes people to bring in, you know, concerns when they're not necessarily, I mean, you can't speak for all of them, but not necessarily looking to remedy an injustice. I mean, conceivably, some people are just looking to make a few bucks at times.
00:18:08.380oh sure now i mean once they break up this 750 000 that newfound's supposed to get it could not
00:18:15.200it might not be that much but they have no idea yet who these people are that they're even going
00:18:19.100to give this money to but that's exactly one of the problems with these things is that um you know
00:18:25.920the awards in the larger and larger awards incentivize people to use these procedures
00:18:31.560certainly and the thing you've got to know about these procedures is as a complainant you have
00:18:37.260you have no skin in the game really because you don't have to pay for a lawyer uh that's all
00:18:43.020taken care of for you you're represented by these commissions and into a tribunal you don't have a
00:18:48.540lawyer and if you lose unless you've done something egregious while you've been a complainant uh you
00:18:54.240won't have to pay any costs which is completely different of course from a civil action uh so
00:18:59.420the respondent of course has to pay a lawyer has to go through this process and the process takes
00:19:04.560years. In Alberta, it was about five years when I became chief just to get to the tribunal to a
00:19:12.180hearing. So for a respondent, this is a horrible process to go through. So to play a bit of devil's
00:19:19.600advocate, or maybe not even so much, I mean, there could be people who have really experienced a
00:19:24.180human rights violation against themselves, and they want to seek remedy. If they are a low-income
00:19:29.860person without legal connections and so on, though, I mean, going through the conventional
00:19:33.480system could leave them hanging because that could take years as well but cost you know many
00:19:38.020thousands of dollars that they presumably don't have. Is that part of the purpose I guess of
00:19:43.040having a commission rather than putting people through conventional courts? It is yeah and I
00:19:48.940think there's that that's certainly a plausible that was sort of the reason these things started
00:19:53.720up. Now what's happened though is you've seen that these commissions most of what they deal
00:20:01.240with our employment matters. So often what you'll find is somebody has been fired. They're making a
00:20:06.340claim under the Human Rights Commission, but they'll often have a wrongful dismissal suit
00:20:09.400going to the courts as well. So we've, you know, do we want to have that sort of this commission
00:20:16.560also being running adjacent to civil action? They may be going to employment standards. They may
00:20:23.380be going through a grievance process with the union. And of course, the commission now does
00:20:27.740have more authority in Alberta to stay their proceedings or to put them on hold but you know
00:20:33.140we've kind of moved beyond this basic idea of okay you know so I say you have a gay couple and
00:20:40.400they're trying to rent an apartment and they're denied the rental they could go through this
00:20:44.840process and say there was you know there was discrimination but we're getting these massive
00:20:50.920awards that are would really be more appropriate to be considered in a civil case not in this sort
00:20:56.880venue yeah so i mean and then there's the crazy large awards then there's some small awards
00:21:04.080but on some really absurd rulings which is one that came out in the last couple of weeks as well
00:21:08.500so i believe that was in ontario maybe it was quebec uh it was a non-binary person who was
00:21:14.760demanding a non-binary option for haircuts and then this person had the same need for haircuts
00:21:21.600that you do. So we aren't even looking at a rational need. This was a bald person demanding
00:21:27.120a specific type of haircut option. I mean, you would think a person with even a smidgen of
00:21:32.860common sense would tell this complaint and get out of here. We've got better things to do with
00:21:36.420our time. But instead, they ruled in favor of this person and fined the place $500.
00:21:44.860Yeah. And I think that's, again, it's a procedural issue. It shouldn't have gone to that
00:21:50.680to that link um the the respondent this salon had offered you know three uh three free haircuts and
00:21:59.460as you say i don't know what i saw the person too i'm not sure what he they she whatever needed them
00:22:05.160for um i'm not sure what pronouns they use but um you know it then plus they had said they would
00:22:12.560remedy on their website so that the problem so that you would have a non-binary option
00:22:20.320and so why didn't why wasn't that sufficient that should have stopped the the case there it should
00:22:25.840have been accepted but instead the complainant moved it along didn't accept that the commission
00:22:30.640should have said no and there are procedures increasingly now with these commissions to say
00:22:34.880if you don't accept a reasonable offer then you're done and i think we need more of that and that's
00:22:40.400That's why I say, again, we need to focus a lot more on the procedural elements
00:22:43.660because the case in Quebec is also ridiculous.
00:22:48.040Well, and they're using it as a weapon, some individuals anyways, and activists.
00:22:52.480It reminds me farther back to when same-sex marriage was just starting to become a thing.
00:23:00.660And I'm fully supportive of it by all means.
00:23:04.880Hope you last until retirement and beyond as a married couple, whatever you might be.
00:23:08.660But there were couples, I remember one in particular in Vancouver, I think it was, went after a Knights of Columbus hall because they knew darn well it's a Catholic organization and it wouldn't host their reception. Now, if it was the only hall in the world, I could see the problem. But you know, darn well, there was dozens of dozens of halls. Just pick one of those. But they were looking for trouble. And if you're looking for trouble, does that, you know, why should that still entitle you for remedy? That's activism. That's not somebody who's been harmed in a human rights problem.
00:23:36.860Right. And one of the concerns, and this was in the Neufeld case out of BC, is there was the mention that human rights issues are now moving more. Discrimination is going more from individuals and complainants to thoughts, to belief systems. And people are discriminating more on the basis of belief systems.
00:24:00.520But the problem with going that route is, of course, people argue over belief systems all the time. You know, that's why you go to university or something. You learn other people's ways of doing things, how they think about things, you know, different philosophies, and you argue over them and you disagree and you say some are wrong.
00:24:20.500So, you know, we're moving into that range, and I think that's a very scary thing, which is, of course, why a lot of people have said in response to a situation like the Neufeld case is BC, and Alberta would need to do this too, needs to get rid of the provision in their human rights code or statute regarding this hate speech and the publication of hate speech in the same way that the federal government did under Harper, and also Ontario, which does not have this provision in its code.
00:24:48.100so um kind of where you know when you when you contacted me and something i've been saying
00:24:54.500online i'm kind of at the point of just saying let's just get rid of these commissions i mean
00:24:58.140there's nothing they're providing that actually can't be provided in the current court of law
00:25:03.380in fact they've morphed into something a quasi-judicial uh layer of bureaucracy that
00:25:09.260can really punish people uh but i mean i don't know is it reparable or maybe is it just time
00:25:14.780get rid of these and expand our our court ability um i guess i'm i'm sort of either way let's try
00:25:21.820something let's just do one or the other you know we i think we could repair them but it's going to
00:25:27.340take some serious looking look at the procedural elements that need to be fixed um and i'm kind of
00:25:33.100i've been i'm a bit surprised that danielle smith given how she's looked at some of the procedure
00:25:36.940elements of uh professional regulators hasn't looked at the human rights commission because
00:25:41.420it needs some work a lot of work actually but on the other hand maybe it is time to get rid of them
00:25:45.980because you could just create a statutory tort of discrimination and it would go to the courts
00:25:52.220now of course the courts don't really want that because they these were small small amounts they
00:25:57.500were small claims and they didn't really want to have to deal with them so they sort of liked having
00:26:01.900them over at the special commission and they just review the decisions if they're bad but you know
00:26:06.860If we're going to get into these large numbers, then absolutely, I think you need to have, the courts need to deal with this because there's a lot, the procedural fairness is much better at the court level.
00:26:18.240You have two parties who are both can be, if either one loses, there's costs awarded, but we don't have that yet.
00:26:27.040So I think we have to really consider if you're going for some, we maybe do need to get rid of these commissions altogether if we have these higher rewards.
00:26:33.580or i'm wondering i mean you're more you know of course the uh expert on legal matters could
00:26:39.420another type of court be set up i'm thinking along the lines of you know there's there's drug courts
00:26:43.560for example because we didn't want to really choke up our already overburdened criminal courts
00:26:47.660with a lot of people who were obviously suffering from addiction problems but you still have to deal
00:26:52.380with them so there's some jurisdictions outside of canada that set up drug courts where they at
00:26:56.320least then they'll have specialized uh type of it's still a prosecution but it's focused more
00:27:01.480on the rehabilitation of the individual and it's a little different and it takes things out of you
00:27:05.440know you don't have a murderer sitting next to a person who's just an addict who was in the
00:27:09.540got themselves into trouble it could a division of the courts be dedicated still the legal system
00:27:16.100still the courts but it would be just dedicated to these human rights things and then you could
00:27:19.500still have some of the the same controls as you would in a proper courtroom well sure i think you
00:27:24.720could now i'd want to be careful with that because of course one of the other problems is these
00:27:29.860tribunals that are set up are all have a mandate so um they tend to skew towards a certain view of
00:27:36.420what human rights should be and shouldn't be so that's another problem with them so like say if
00:27:40.500we we could certainly put them into the court system and because human rights cases are like
00:27:45.580when i was chief uh they were 80 to 85 percent of the cases were about discrimination in employment
00:27:51.500so most lawyers who deal with human rights are also employment and labor lawyers so they could
00:27:57.460be kind of wrapped into that part of and have sort of a court just specifically dealing with
00:28:03.140that and the courts are certainly trying to make some changes to speed up employment and wrongful
00:28:07.860dismissal claims so certainly I think that's that would be another possibility and get them out of
00:28:12.740this sort of activist approach and of course in the BC case you had they're they're very activist
00:28:18.800there they even have a commissioner whose whole role is to push a certain notion of human rights
00:28:23.920which is very identity-based, which I would completely get rid of. I don't think that's
00:28:27.960legitimate at all, but yeah, I think we could certainly move to the courts.
00:28:33.060Are these solely provincial jurisdiction, or is this a federally driven sort of thing like
00:28:38.220criminal law? It's, well, every province sets up their own, so they're different across
00:28:44.700each jurisdiction, but the feds also have a Canadian Human Rights Commission,
00:28:49.520um which has had its own issues there's been accusations of racism going on there and their
00:28:56.260chief had ran into a problem who he got booted out he came from alberta actually so um yeah i
00:29:02.900think you know they're all they're across the country but each one is different too so they
00:29:06.120have different approaches all right well that time went fast but it's interesting you know i i see a
00:29:12.120commenter saying human rights you know i'd say get rid of them i i'm hoping and i'm thinking the
00:29:15.980person means the commissions, not the human rights and in of themselves, but human rights
00:29:19.720are important and the protection of them is important and for people who aren't necessarily
00:29:24.100able to defend themselves. So it's going to be an ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, it just seems
00:29:27.800we've kind of created a monster in the mechanism that has defeated its initial perhaps goals and
00:29:35.160purposes. So before I let you go though, you're quite prolific with your columns and things
00:29:39.460online. Where can people find your work and your stuff so they can follow up on what you're doing?
00:29:44.220um i have a lot of on my linkedin page i also have a muckrake page actually i didn't set it up
00:29:51.340i guess if you're right enough you get one of those uh but uh you know i've got quite a bit
00:29:56.220on there on my facebook page uh so you know look at any of those and if anybody's interested you
00:30:01.780know send me send me a link to ask me to to chat and i'm happy to to talk about any of the things
00:30:07.820that i've written about recently and you still have an active legal practice in the province
00:30:35.720Well, either way, I hope it takes off.
00:30:38.420And I do hope you get remedied for, yeah,
00:30:40.220it's uh there would be all almost a whole separate interview to talk about the the bs whereas you
00:30:44.340ended up getting cancelled uh as i said i remember it happening at the time i think i might have
00:30:47.920written a column on it actually back then so uh well thank you very much for the the time you you
00:30:52.660gave us today and uh for talking about this and well let's just uh hope if we keep pushing some
00:30:56.820common sense will finally come in i mean it doesn't always get there but we got to keep trying
00:31:01.820yeah well in these i think with the common sense is what's needed and it's it's not there and
00:31:06.380there hasn't been, we just haven't shone enough light on these things. And, but hopefully these
00:31:10.500bad decisions will, you know, spur some change. I hope so. I guess when they overshoot the target
00:31:17.160far enough, it can actually lead to positive change later. It's just, unfortunately, Mr.
00:31:21.540Dufeld's got to suffer some stress until it gets to that point. So thank you again. And I hope we
00:31:26.500get to talk again soon. Great. Thanks, Corey. Great. Thank you. So yes, guys, that is Colin
00:31:31.940May. And yes, he's done a lot of work out there. And he's, oh, I see that as well. He's completing
00:31:37.780a book right now on the future of cancel culture. I wrote on that, actually, that was in a different
00:31:43.920publication. I write in multiple places myself, but about the Kaylin Ford case, speaking of
00:31:49.120cancel culture. And that's one that just got into, there's Western Standard stories on it.
00:31:53.580We're covering that. Got into the courtroom. Speaking of things that take a long time, I think
00:31:57.800that was began in 2019. And she's finally getting remedy in the courts there. That's part of how
00:32:04.220things unfortunately wear you down when it comes to trying to get justice for yourself. But she's
00:32:12.540really been victimized by cancel culture. And she's pushing back and she's fighting back. And
00:32:17.920to a degree, she's already been winning. There's been a couple already settled out of court
00:32:21.440knobs such as Duncan Kinney, I believe did. And his little, I don't, I can't keep track of them
00:32:29.540progress, Alberta or press progress, but look that stuff up because we do have a civil court's
00:32:35.120means to deal with things. But as we're seeing too, it can really take a long, painful and
00:32:41.120expensive time. So again, hats off for Kaylin. She wasn't giving up and she's been pushing
00:32:45.320and CBC and the Toronto Star and the NDP, all are defendants in this thing.
00:32:53.260And yeah, so Jacqueline Littler, setting up more courts for specialized things,
00:32:57.820just kicked the can down the road, saw the results of divorce courts by a friend, disgusting.
00:33:01.200Yeah, family court, I mean, law is complicated. It's a mess.
00:33:05.980Of all areas, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer or judge in it if I had to be a lawyer or judge.
00:33:10.020I think I want to stay away from the divorces for all I'm worth. But of course, somebody has to do
00:33:15.180it. Somebody has to be the mediator. Somebody has to sit in the middle. Look, there are some cases
00:33:21.160of over, you know, too much intolerance. And they're to the point where it gets where somebody
00:33:27.900should be perhaps, you know, I guess, punished, discouraged. I don't know. And we need a rational
00:33:34.200discussion on it, though. Not when some he, them, whatever the heck it is, nutcase, wants to
00:33:39.440demand a haircut when they have no hair or, uh, that, uh, Jessica Yaniv deal out in BC,
00:33:46.320you might remember, uh, that guy was out there demanding that, uh, uh, uh, minorities in, in,
00:33:53.200in, uh, aesthetics places wax his nuts. You know, we all remember that. And then of course it was
00:33:59.820just an extortion scheme really, because he would take it to the human rights commission. Cause of
00:34:03.540course, they will take every case, at least to consider every case, and it would freak out
00:34:10.060those people and he would hope for a settlement outside of that. And why people like that are
00:34:16.080taken seriously and able to abuse that system? You know, we've got to stop that idiocy. So
00:34:22.180let's get more into BC. We've got some crazy stuff going on, that Musqueam decision, which
00:34:28.580nobody quite seems to know what it means yet but I mean some of the stuff uh at first they
00:34:34.960wouldn't put the agreement out of the federal government and and uh the Musqueam and British
00:34:40.940Columbia what's going on like is this land given control over is it not and they wouldn't give the
00:34:45.520text to the agreement so they did release the text and uh one of the things in it says it does not
00:34:50.480create title and does not constitute a treaty or land claims agreement. Okay. Uh, but then they
00:34:58.760could also potentially seek that through the courts. The Cowichan did that and, uh, this opens
00:35:04.720the door. So some of the people are kind of, I think, overreacting at least on the immediate
00:35:10.020consequences of what's going on with that, that settlement or the agreement or whatever the heck
00:35:14.620it is, but they are not wrong in being freaked out and concerned about what this is going to turn
00:35:21.040into farther down the road. This never stops. This never stops. Here's where I get on the case of
00:35:29.020truth and reconciliation commissions and endless settlements and payouts and so on. When does it
00:35:36.220end? How many more generations? Are we going to have to get 500 years away from when Canada became
00:35:43.060a country or Alberta became a, uh, a province before we finally say, okay, we've paid back
00:35:49.020enough. No, it won't end because there's a whole pile of lawyers making a whole pile of money out
00:35:55.540of this, not to mention a whole lot of claimants, um, constantly reaching their hands out and
00:36:03.720getting settlements. I talked about that recently, of course, with the, the, the grifters, I'll say
00:36:07.920of the fraudsters and the Kamloops band who took $12 million to exhume and dig holes and never did
00:36:15.600it. And where's the responsibility? If it had been in the business world, you either would have been
00:36:20.220charged with fraud or at the very least taken to court and would have a lien put on your house
00:36:25.140until you pay the money back. Nothing though, nothing. What did they do? They gave them another
00:36:29.440$12 million so they could build a healing lodge for the bodies they never found. This endless
00:36:36.620This irresponsibility, this endless settlement of something that can never be settled, apparently, this compensating generationally for things that happened hundreds of years ago, not only all of that, but it's not working.
00:37:52.540Why is it so hard to get somebody heading these things who can't just look at some of these frivolous cases and just say, no, no, we're not going to spend our time on that.
00:38:01.540We're not going to go after somebody on that.
00:38:03.860You are being unreasonable and we aren't going to let you take up any more of our time.
00:38:08.800But they don't, or at least, well, we never see the ones they say no to.
00:38:12.000But when we see some of the crazy ones they say yes to, it doesn't seem that they turn down too many.
00:38:18.220Speaking of insanity, Brampton, Ontario, really turning into one of the hubs for, you know, Canada in its bad examples.
00:38:27.660And they hosted a memorial for the Ayatollah Khomeini following his death, a memorial, the man who killed 30,000 protesters in five days.
00:38:39.120You know, the double standards in this world, 30,000 protesters, just protesters of his own people in five days.
00:39:47.260individuals holding a memorial for that man.
00:39:49.800Yeah, the world is an ugly, ugly thing. I talked a little, mentioned a little earlier on my thing. Yeah, we've got the Alreda Federation of Labor. That's headed by Gil McAllen. He's been there a long time. You know, you get in those labor positions, they're almost as good as being an indigenous chief for getting the money, eh? Job security.
00:40:14.760He won't admit it, but the reality is that whole recall attempt that's falling apart chronically.
00:40:49.560So this ought to be fun to watch, fun to watch.
00:40:52.300It's the only thing, there's one of the things, I guess, because like I said, I'm trying to be constructively critical of the Smith government.
00:40:58.140Because for the most part, I like them.
00:40:59.920And I certainly appreciate Daniel Smith in general.
00:41:03.800We're very close to each other ideologically, and I think she wants to do the right things.
00:41:07.960but there's that temptation of just going with the flow or going with whatever way you're pushed
00:41:16.020from the opposition. And the only opposition we have right now is coming from the left. So that's
00:41:21.220when they're throwing money at issues rather than solving them because that's a left-wing approach
00:41:28.020to it. But look at the opposition. Nahed Menchie, he's failing brutally, brutally. People still
00:41:36.420don't even really know who he is. He's not grabbing the imagination of Albertans. The NDP
00:41:40.380is sinking in the polls, which again, kind of worries me a little because we've got to make
00:41:46.460sure to keep a little fire under the government, whether it's a government you like or not.
00:41:50.880And he's not doing that. He's failing. He's a terrible leader of the opposition.
00:41:55.800Max Fawcett, if you really want to see leftist knobs, he's a special sort of example of one,
00:42:02.820But even he has been coming out now, and this is fun to kind of watch in a morbid sort of way.
00:42:07.500They're starting to call for Nenshi to get out.