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‘They were all self-nominating targets. I didn’t go particularly looking for anyone. They were already out there posting their hate propaganda on the Internet’ — Richard Warman

“It’s subjective opinion, right,” Mr. Warman said when asked about his confidence in what he was doing. “I was 100% confident in my own abilities,” he said. A few minutes later, he pointed out he was being facetious. Even still, it is hard to doubt the sentiment, given that he won 15 in a row.

“They were all self-nominating targets. I didn’t go particularly looking for anyone. They were already out there posting their hate propaganda on the Internet,” he said. “I would do it, in effect, on a triage basis. So I would take the worst offenders, or the individuals and groups who were in a leadership position, and then say ‘How do you structure this in a way that you address the worst problem initially, and work your way down. In a sense, I never got beyond the black letter law, because virtually all the cases I dealt with involved either the promotion or incitement to ethnic cleansing or genocide. I never ran out of bright red targets to address, so I never had to question myself, as to saying whether, well, this is getting a little grey, it’s a little weak, maybe this is something that doesn’t merit a human rights complaint. It was always situations where there was a crystal clear violation of the law.”

Mr. Warman said he thinks Section 13 has made it harder for hate groups to organize in Canada. This may be so, but as it teeters toward final judgment in Parliament and the courts, the only certainty about Section 13 is that Mr. Warman’s clarity is a thing of the past.

National Post
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