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Background

Keegstra was an auto mechanic, a former mayor, and a high school teacher in the town of Eckville, Alberta [1]. In 1984, Keegstra was stripped of his teaching certificate and charged under the Criminal Code of Canada with "wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group" by teaching his social studies students that the Holocaust was a fraud and attributing various evil qualities to Jews. He thus described Jews to his pupils as "treacherous", "subversive", "sadistic", "money-loving", "power hungry" and "child killers". He taught his classes that Jewish people seek to destroy Christianity and are responsible for depressions, anarchy, chaos, wars and revolution. According to Keegstra, Jews "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy" and, in contrast to the open and honest Christians, were said to be deceptive, secretive and inherently evil. Keegstra expected his students to reproduce his teachings in class and on exams. If they failed to do so, their marks suffered.

Keegstra attempted to have this charge quashed as a violation of his freedom of expression; this motion was denied, and he was convicted at trial. Many of his former students testified against him. Publicly stating that Keegstra had brought their town into disrepute, locals were unable to impeach Keegstra as mayor and instead overwhelmingly voted him out of office at the next election.

[edit] Supreme Court Appeal

Keegstra appealed this conviction, claiming that it was in violation of Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This section guarantees "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication." Keegstra also challenged his conviction on the grounds that Section 319(3)(a) of the Criminal Code of Canada, which states that a person cannot be convicted of promoting hatred if she or he establishes that the statement is true, but only where the accused proves the truth of the communicated statements on a balance of probabilities, was a violation of Section 11(d) of the Charter. That section guarantees "the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal." Keegstra was not able to demonstrate the truth of the many anti-Semitic statements he made to his students, on a balance of probabilities. In the CBC News presentation Canada's Hate Law: The Keegstra Case (1991), Keegstra himself displayed the hate material where his views were obtained, admitting that none of it came from mainstream historical sources.

Keegstra's appeal ultimately reached the Supreme Court of Canada, in the case of R. v. Keegstra. In December of 1990, the Court upheld Keegstra's conviction, ruling that the law's prohibition of hate propaganda and suppression of Keegstra's freedom of expression was constitutional. The majority of Justices looked at hate speech as not being a victimless crime, but instead having the potential for psychological harm, degradation, humiliation, and a risk of violence.

Sentencing

At his original trial, Keegstra was given a fine of $5000. A subsequent decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal reduced that to a one-year suspended sentence, one year of probation, and 200 hours of community service work.. While the Supreme Court upheld the original conviction and the constitutionality of the law, they did not restore the original sentence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Keegstra

Trials
In 1983 Sabrina Citron, a Holocaust survivor and founder of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, filed a private complaint against Zündel before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In 1984, the Ontario government joined the criminal proceedings against Zündel based on Citron's complaint. Zündel was charged under the Criminal Code, section 181, of spreading false news for publishing "Did Six Million Really Die?".

Zündel underwent two criminal trials in 1985 and 1988. The charge against Zündel alleged that he "did publish a statement or tale, namely, "Did Six Million Really Die?" that he knows is false and that is likely to cause mischief to the public interest in social and racial tolerance, contrary to the Criminal Code." Zündel was originally found guilty by two juries but was finally acquitted upon appeal by the Supreme Court of Canada which held in 1992 that section 181 (formerly known as section 177) was a violation of the guarantees of freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The 1988 trial was notable for its reliance on testimony from individuals such as David Irving and Fred A. Leuchter, a self-declared expert in execution technology.[14] Leuchter's testimony as an expert witness was accepted by the court, but his accompanying Leuchter Report was excluded, based on his lack of engineering credentials. In 1985, key expert testimony against Zündel's alleged Holocaust denial was provided at great lengths by Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg. Hilberg refused to testify at Zündel's 1988 trial. Zündel was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court; however, in 1992 in R. v. Zündel his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada when the law he had been charged under, reporting false news, was ruled unconstitutional.

In 1997, Zündel's marriage with his second wife, Irene Marcarelli, collapsed after 18 months. "At one point I really loved him," she told an acquaintance. "By the end, I thought he was evil incarnate." She subsequently testified against him in the late 1990s when he was under investigation by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for promoting hatred against Jews via his website. In January 2000, before the Commission had completed its hearings, he left Canada for Sevierville, Tennessee where he married his third wife, Ingrid Rimland and vowed never to return to Canada.

Despite having lived in Canada for over forty years prior to moving to the United States, Zündel had never been able to obtain Canadian citizenship. Applications for citizenship were rejected by the government in 1966 and again in 1994 for reasons that have never been publicly disclosed.[1] So, upon his return to Canada, he had no status in the country as he was not a citizen and as his landed immigrant status had been forfeited by his prolonged absence from the country. Upon entry into Canada, Zündel claimed refugee status in hopes of preventing his deportation to Germany. This claim elicited public ridicule, Rex Murphy, a columnist for the Globe and Mail and a well known commentator on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wrote "If Ernst Zündel is a refugee, Daffy Duck is Albert Einstein... Some propositions are so ludicrous that they are a betrayal of common sense and human dignity if allowed a moment's oxygen."

On May 2, 2003, Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre and Solicitor General Wayne Easter issued a "national security certificate" against Zündel under the provisions of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, indicating that he was a threat to Canada's national security and/or the human rights of Canadian citizens owing to his alleged links with violent neo-Nazi groups including Aryan Nations leader Richard Girnt Butler, neo-Nazi Christian Worch, and former Canadian Aryan Nations leader Terry Long, as well as Ewald Althans, convicted in a German court in 1995 of charges that included insulting the memory of the dead and insulting the state.

Zündel moved twice to have Canadian Federal Court justice Pierre Blais recuse himself from the case for "badgering and accusing the witness of lying" and exhibiting "open hostility" towards Zündel, and filed two constitutional challenges, one in the Ontario courts and one in the federal courts, both unsuccessful. During the hearing, Zündel characterized his position as "Sometimes I feel like a black man being convicted on Ku Klux Klan news clippings."

Zündel meanwhile moved to be released from detention on his own recognizance while the legal proceedings were ongoing. His lawyer, Doug Christie, introduced as a "surprise witness" Lorraine Day, a California doctor who practises alternative cancer treatments, to testify that Zündel's incarceration at Toronto's Metro West Detention Centre was causing his chest tumor (revealed to the court a few weeks previously) to grow and his blood pressure to rise, that the medication supplied to control his blood pressure was causing side-effects such as a slow heart rate and loss of memory, and that "He needs exercise, fresh air, and freedom from stress. The whole point is we need to have his high blood pressure controlled without the drug."[20] On January 21, 2004, after three months of hearings including both public and secret testimony, Justice Blais again ruled against Zündel with a damning statement.

During his imprisonment, Canadian neo-Nazi leader Paul Fromm attempted to hold numerous rallies in support of Zündel, both in Ontario and in Alberta. The rallies were met with formidable opposition, namely by the Anti-Racist Action group, which heightened its opposition to Fromm's pro-Zündel work in the summer of 2004. The anti-racist efforts included participation by numerous Toronto activist groups and individuals, including Shane Ruttle Martinez and Marcell Rodden, and successfully managed to prevent similar future congregations of the neo-Nazis. Fromm eventually ceased his efforts after being advised by Zündel's attorneys that public clashes between opponents of the Zündel issues was not assisting the image of their client's case.

On February 24 2005, Justice Blais ruled that Canada could deport Zündel back to his native Germany at any time, and on February 25 Zündel's lawyer, Peter Lindsay, announced that his client would not attempt to obtain a stay against the deportation and that his fight to remain in Canada was over. In his decision, Justice Blais noted that Zündel had had the opportunity to respond to the allegations of the decision of January 21 by explaining the nature of his contacts with the extremists mentioned and/or providing exonerating witnesses, but had failed to do so. Blais found that "Mr. Zündel's activities are not only a threat to Canada's national security, but also a threat to the international community of nations."

Zündel was deported to Germany on March 1, 2005. Upon his arrival at Frankfurt airport, he was immediately arrested and detained in Mannheim prison awaiting trial for inciting racial hatred.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel

Parliament's concern that the dissemination of hate propaganda is antithetical to the general aim of the Canadian Human Rights Act is not misplaced. The serious harm caused by messages of hatred was identified by the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada, commonly known as the Cohen Committee, in 1966. The Cohen Committee noted that individuals subjected to racial or religious hatred may suffer substantial psychological distress, the damaging consequences including a loss of self-esteem, feelings of anger and outrage and strong pressure to renounce cultural differences that mark them as distinct. This intensely painful reaction undoubtedly detracts from an individual's ability to, in the words of s. 2 of the Act, "make for himself or herself the life that he or she is able and wishes to have". As well, the Committee observed that hate propaganda can operate to convince listeners, even if subtlety, that members of certain racial or religious groups are inferior. The result may be an increase in acts of discrimination, including the denial of equal opportunity in the provision of goods, services and facilities, and even incidents of violence.

- Chief Justice****on

The damage caused by hate messages to the groups targeted is very often difficult to repair. It insidiously reinforces the prejudice that some people may have towards minorities identified by race, colour and religion, thus prompting and justifying discriminatory practices and even violence against these groups. At the same time, these messages are most likely to affect the perception and self-esteem of all members of these groups, thus precluding their full participation in Canadian society and the achievement of their full potential as human beings...

- Mr. Justice de Montigny

Canadians who are members of any identifiable group in Canada are entitled to carry on their lives as Canadians without being victimized by the deliberate, vicious promotion of hatred against them. In a democratic society, freedom of speech does not mean the right to vilify. The number of organizations involved and the numbers of persons hurt is no test of the issue: the arithmetic of a free society will not be satisfied with over-simplified statistics demonstrating that few are casting stones and not many are receiving hurts. What matters is that incipient malevolence and violence, all of which are inherent in "hate" activity, deserves national attention. However small the actors may be in number, the individuals and groups promoting hate in Canada constitute 'a clear and present danger' to the functioning of a democratic society. For in times of social stress, such "hate" could mushroom into a real and monstrous threat to our way of life. Nor does giving some of these hate promoters a radio or television platform serve any valid debating purpose. The Committee is aware that radio and particularly television may expose malice and fraud for what it is, but such a view of affording an electronic audience to hate promoters does not take into account the effects of hate arguments and pseudo-facts on uncritical and receptive minds. The broadcasting of "hate", therefore, whether for news or exposure purposes, should be carefully disciplined by those in charge. Indeed, the Committee feels that in recent years some radio and T.V. producers, with the best of intentions, have been mistaken in their belief that exposure of this kind will destroy the virus. But whatever the validity of these views, they do not justify giving propagandists a mass platform as if what they had to say was normal debate on real issues. Plainly it is not.

In the Committee's view the "hate" situation in Canada, although not alarming, clearly is serious enough to require action. It is far better for Canadians to come to grips with this problem now, before it attains unmanageable proportions, rather than deal with it at some future date in an atmosphere of urgency, of fear and perhaps even of crisis. The Canadian community has a duty, not merely the right, to protect itself from the corrosive effects of propaganda that tends to undermine the confidence that various groups in a multicultural society must have in each other.

Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1965)

The Charter is one of the most important documents in Canadian history. In the years since it was passed, it has been used to overturn or amend over 300 laws deemed in violation of the Charter. The Charter is now cited as the basis for Supreme Court of Canada decisions. Because the Charter had clarified and solidified the meaning and definition of rights and freedoms, it was easier for courts to interpret them. Also, by placing the Charter in the Constitution, its statements could not be overridden by other laws.

The Charter has been used by the Supreme Court on several occasions to enhance and promote human rights and diversity. One example is case of Vriend v. Alberta [1998] in which the Supreme Court ruled that gays and lesbians could not be discriminated against; in this case, they could be left out of provincial human rights legislation. Another example is the case of R. v Keegstra [1990]. In this case the court upheld the decision to charge an Alberta teacher, James Keegstra, with hate crimes after he taught his students that the Holocaust did not happen. The court ruled that this was an acceptable infringement on his freedom of speech.

http://www.edukits.ca/multiculturalism/student/rights_charter_e.html

Enforcement

Enforcement of guaranteed rights and freedoms
24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.

Rights and freedoms in Canada

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Fundamental Freedoms

Fundamental freedoms
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Life, liberty and security of person
7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Equality before and under law and equal protection and benefit of law

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.