By Richard Warman, legal expert
Quebec
The glory of internecine warfare within the neo-Nazi movement continued to reign supreme within Quebec in 2005, with sovereignty and language issues the dominating divisions. Efforts by anglophone Montrealer Tara Dribnenki to better organize the movement were hampered by a caustic level of vitriol between her and a number of francophones in general and extreme-right supporters of Quebec sovereignty specifically. Ms. Dribnenki managed just one meeting in April 2005, which was addressed by Paul Fromm, following a few meetings and protests in support of Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel during 2004. One such attempted pro-Zundel protest ended in disaster, however, when it was broken up by an aggressive counter-protest assembled by Montreal’s Anti-Racist Action and other young human rights activists.
A sympathetic portrait of Ms. Dribnenki’s trials and tribulations in attempting to organize such activities appeared in the English-language weekly magazine the Montreal Mirror in July of 2005. The fact that the article downplayed the extent of her beliefs was surprising given her expressed approval of vigilante violence, and self-postings onto the Internet of pictures of herself sieg heiling.
An openly neo-Nazi website created in October of 2005, which purported to represent a new group called the Wolf Division of Montreal, had a short lifespan after formal complaints were filed with Yahoo Canada and the Quebec provincial police hate crimes unit. The free website was operated on Yahoo’s Geocities, and although it contained predominately English-language materials, it appeared to be run by one or more francophones. In addition to antisemitic and anti-black materials, the site called on readers to send in the home addresses and other personal information of human rights activists involved with Montreal’s Anti-Racist Action, using inflammatory language implying that such information would be used for violent attacks.
In December of 2005, Montreal saw the first-ever successful mediation of a federal human rights complaint dealing with Internet hate propaganda. The respondent, Alexandro Di Civita, had become involved in the neo-Nazi group formerly known as the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) in 2002 at the age of 16. In August of 2003, a federal human rights complaint was filed against Mr. Di Civita and others involved in the group, alleging that material the group had put onto the Internet was likely to promote hatred or contempt against Christians and Jews, as well as blacks and other non-whites, contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. One of the few benefits of the slowness of the processing of such complaints is that by the time the matter was finally referred to the CHRT for hearing in August of 2005, Di Civita indicated that he had long since left the group and repudiated its beliefs.
With the assistance of Tribunal member Karen Jensen acting as mediator, and Monette Maillet, a lawyer for the CHRC, the parties crafted an agreement. The terms of the agreement include Mr. Di Civita willingly writing an open letter of apology to the Christian, Jewish, and black communities, and agreeing to perform substantial volunteer service in order to make amends for the harm caused to the community as a whole. As of November of 2006, however, Di Civita had failed to live up to his promises and enforcement measures are now being pursued up to and including contempt of court hearings.
In Montreal, a trial for Jean-Sébastien Presseault (aka Hatecore 88) that was scheduled to take place in June of 2006 was aborted after Presseault pled guilty to a charge of the willful promotion of hatred under s. 319 of the Criminal Code. Presseault operated two separate hate websites and used the sites to offer downloadable literature and music promoting the murder and genocide of blacks and Jews. No doubt of great assistance to the police was Presseault’s decision to post photos of himself, his neo-Nazi flags, and his computer set-up to ‘desperate for a date’ website www.facethejury.com. In these postings he bragged about his hate music offerings and listed the various racial and religious groups that he dislikes, using bigotted language and slurs. Presseault’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for late November, 2006.
In August of 2006, an Internet French-language blog hosted by Google called ‘Dossier Noir’ attracted media attention in Quebec after a federal human rights complaint was filed against it by Montreal’s Centre for Research and Action on Race Relations (CRARR). The blog engaged in obsessive stereotyping of the black community in Quebec and attempted to associate the community universally with criminality. Shortly after the complaint was filed, the person responsible appears to have either abandoned the blog or turned it over to a perennial figure in the US neo-Nazi movement. This US neo-Nazi then proceeded to use the blog and his main website to incite the murder of Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman who had commented on the Dossier Noir case in the media. The US neo-Nazi went even further, however, and provided Warman’s home address at the same time. A complaint was filed with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the results of their investigation are pending.
In addition, in an effort to use all possible avenues to deal with the issue, Warman, with the assistance of the Canadian Jewish Congress filed a ground-breaking application with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Under the Telecommunications Act, telecommunications carriers are prohibited from interfering with content they transmit without the permission of the CRTC. Based on this, the ex parte application asked the CRTC to permit carriers that were willing and able to do so permission to voluntarily block access to their Canadian customers to the Google blog and main website in question.
Unfortunately, the CRTC responded by indicating that they felt the matter would more appropriately be decided after going to what is likely to be a year-long hearing process following notice to the Internet Service Provider and public in general for any comments they may wish to make. Commenting himself on the CRTC’s initial decision, National Post columnist Warren Kinsella described the CRTC’s inaction as, “…addled, arrogant, and utterly disconnected from reality” and a “hazard to human life”.
In a troubling echo of the shootings at Montreal’s Dawson College, on October 4, 2006, the Surêté du Québec raided the home of 18-year old Renaud Émard and his parents of Île Perrot near Montreal. Police seized 18 guns and a large amount of ammunition from the home and have now charged Émard with five counts of careless storage of a firearm, possession of a prohibited weapon, and possession of a prohibited weapon for a dangerous purpose. Émard had become known on a number of neo-Nazi website forums over the past year-and-a-half for his expressions of hatred directed against Jews and non-whites as well as his obsession with firearms. Émard underwent a psychiatric examination at the request of his lawyer to determine his fitness to stand trial. The judge agreed with the examining psychiatrist’s opinion that Émard understood what he is charged with, the possible consequences of a conviction, and is able to assist his defence counsel and the matter has been set down for trial in December of 2006. The actions of the investigating officers with the Surêté du Québec are to be commended in light of having cut short the potential for another tragedy in this case.
