Critics move to silence Ezra Levant

By Lorne Gunter

August 2nd,k 2015

Ezra Levant is being persecuted — again — by the human rights industry.

Levant was first hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) almost a decade ago. Back then, the popular former Sun columnist was publisher of the Western Standard magazine. He dared to publish the infamous Danish cartoons of Mohammed, which many Muslim fundamentalists decried as evil and which most newspapers and magazines declined to show out of fear of offending the fundamentalists.

For that “crime,” Levant was charged with discrimination. It took him three years and nearly $100,000 before the AHRC dropped its prosecution of him.

The hypocrisy of modern human rights activists amazes me. So long as you are prepared to conform to their politically correct views of multiculturalism, terrorism, faith and sexuality, you may say whatever you wish. But cross them and their first instinct is to try to shut you up.

Despite insisting that fundamental human rights (including freedom of speech) are sacred to them, the denizens of human rights commissions and special interest groups are only too happy to use whatever institutional means are available to silence those who disagree with their worldview.

Typically their institution weapons include courts and public tribunals, but in Levant’s case, his enemies in the human rights cartel have found an interesting loophole. Because Ezra is still, technically, a lawyer, they have started filing ethics complaints against him with the Law Society of Alberta, the organization meant to regulate the professional conduct of its members within the province.

Over the past seven years, human rights activists from as far away as Ontario have tried on more than two dozens separate occasions to get Levant (who hasn’t practiced law in many years and who no longer lives in Alberta) hauled before a law society disciplinary board.

Every one of these multiple complaints (you’d think there was a campaign against Levant or something) has been dismissed. Until now.

Edmonton lawyer Arman Chak, who was fired from his job as a prosecutor for the AHRC last November, has managed to get the “benchers” (sort of the board of directors of the law society) to hear his grievance against Levant.

A year ago March, Levant called two commission decisions “crazy,” and suggested the views of Chak and a human rights adjudicator, Moosa Jiwaji, might be crazy, too.

The Alberta commission had ruled that the association of professional engineers in Alberta had discriminated against a Czech-trained engineer, Ladislav Mihaly. In 1999, Mihaly failed the national engineering certification exams. On three subsequent occasions, he failed to show up for scheduled rewrites.

Jiwaji awarded Mihaly $10,000 and ordered the engineering society to lower its standards for foreign trained applicants. Levant said this was crazy, and it was.

In another case — that of a Nigerian-born electrician who was hired by an Edmonton contractor, but fired after he walked away from a jobsite – Jiwaji ruled the contractor was guilty of racsim. Crazy again, as Levant pointed out.

Levant could not be prosecuted in a criminal court for his opinion. And it is doubtful he would lose a defamation suit in civil court (although Jiwaji has recently launched one.)

But it is not clear whether Levant will suffer discipline from the Law Society of Alberta.

Ironically, since Chak filed his ethics complaint against Levant, he has been elected a bencher (a director) of the law society. You might think that is conflict worthy of Chak withdrawing his complaint. (It’s the equivalent of a newly appointed judge continuing with a lawsuit he has brought before the same court he is now a member of.)

But no such luck. Levant will be dragged before a disciplinary hearing this October.

http://www.calgarysun.com/2015/08/01/critics-move-to-silence-ezra-levant