It took the commission 900 days before it rejected the case, and in that span, he ran up $100,000 in legal bills, while the province’s bill is $500,000, Ezra Levant said.

Levant is particularly perturbed that in the end, it was a decision by a commission bureaucrat that determined the magazine did not run afoul of human rights legislation when it published the controversial cartoons in 2006.

“I should have the right to publish even if a second-rate bureaucrat does not approve it,” he told The CJN in a telephone interview from Alberta.

The power of the commission to investigate complaints and potentially restrict freedom of speech “is a huge problem not just for me, but for every journalist in the country, “ he said.

The complaint against the Western Standard and Levant was brought in May 2006 by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities, prompting an investigation by the commission’s southern regional director. In dismissing the complaint, the commission stated that, “given the full context of the republication of the cartoons, the very strong language defining hatred and contempt in the case law as well as consideration of the importance of freedom of speech and the ‘admonition to balance,’ the southern director concludes that there is no reasonable basis in the information for this complaint to proceed to a panel hearing.”

The cartoons in question were first published in Denmark and sparked rioting and deaths in the Muslim world. The Western Standard, along with the Jewish Free Press, a small newspaper in Alberta, were the only Canadian publications to reproduce the cartoons. (The complaint against the Free Press was dropped after it agreed to print a rebuttal.)

The Western Standard/Levant case highlights an ongoing controversy that has ebbed and flowed in Canada for years, if not decades. On the one side are those advocating a liberal interpretation of freedom of speech, in which the media should not be subject to administrative review by the likes of human rights commissions. Proponents of that view include Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who was one of the earliest advocates of human rights legislation. He has said that the laws were intended to combat discrimination in lodging and services, not to police expression.

On the other side are those who argue there is no unlimited right to free speech in Canada and that federal human rights commissions and similar provincial bodies should regulate hate speech to protect vulnerable minorities. Mainstream Jewish organizations share that view.

Levant suggested that the only reason the commission dropped the case was because of the bad publicity it had spawned. “I could afford lawyers and take it to the Supreme Court and beat up on the Human Rights Commission. That’s why I was let go. They were worried about the daily PR beating they were taking.”

Had the case gone forward, Levant said he would have argued that it’s “unconstitutional for a government bureaucrat to look through my magazine and say what I can or cannot publish.”

He criticized what he called “official Jews” – Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith Canada and Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center – for supporting human rights commissions, which he said had focused primarily on anti-Semitic cases in the past.

“Jews are not about censorship,” he said. “It’s very un-Jewish to censor your opponent. It’s Jewish to debate your opponent.”

Levant applauded B’nai Brith Canada for its recent announcement calling for urgent reforms of the human rights system in Canada. It was a good “first step,” he said.

In a news release, B’nai Brith said it was “long concerned with the defense and improvement of Canada’s human rights system [and] is calling for urgent reform of human rights commissions.”

David Matas, B’nai Brith’s senior legal counsel, said the recent case involving Levant, as well as one against author Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, were catalysts that prompted the organization to re-examine the commissions.

Maclean’s and Steyn are facing a human rights hearing in British Columbia over excerpts of Steyn’s book, America Alone, which the magazine published. The complaint was launched by Mohamed Elmasry and Naiyer Habib of the Canadian Islamic Congress. The book argues that radical Islam poses a threat to western societies.

“I think the fact that the cases came forward show that there are complainants prepared to use the institutions for a political purpose,” Matas said.

B’nai Brith has met with Richard Moon, a law professor who is reviewing the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s mandate on hate literature. The organization has recommended changes to the commission’s procedures to rule out politicized complaints, Matas said.

Those would include limiting complaints to a single jurisdiction, awarding costs against those who attempt to abuse the system by harassing “bona fide respondents” and educating investigators on the “get-political context within which they operate.”

Matas said unlike Levant, B’nai Brith doesn’t want to see the commissions refrain from adjudicating speech cases. “The right to be free from incitement is worth protecting,” he said. “The incitement to hatred can have an impact on people that can lead to violence.”

Bernie Farber, CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, said Congress first expressed “serious concerns on the need to reform” the federal human rights legislation last October.

Congress believes the process can be improved by speeding it up, as well as by putting in place a mechanism to ensure frivolous cases are dismissed quickly, awarding costs to the winner, and perhaps appointing an ombudsman or “someone well versed in human rights law” to approve complaints.

“The Steyn and Levant cases should never have come before commissions,” Farber said, but he added that this doesn’t mean the entire process should be eliminated.

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the constitutionality of the human rights legislation, and even though some see it as an infringement on the Charter right to free speech, “the anti-hate laws have been used as a shield and they provide a sense of protection to minority groups,” he said

Leo Adler, director of national affairs for the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, agreed the federal human rights legislation could be improved, but he argued Canadians have chosen to adopt a European model of restricted free speech and not the more open American model.

Asked to comment on Levant’s argument that the process in itself is the punishment given the costs needed to defend against a complaint, Adler replied, “We live our entire lives under ABCs – agencies, boards and commissions – that govern different aspect of our lives.” Lawsuits, police investigations and other legal matters might require an individual to incur costs by hiring a lawyer, he said.

He said that every genocide, including the Holocaust, started with words. “We don’t want words that have the potential for causing these catastrophes.”

Levant, however, dismissed that line of argument. Hitler, he said, gathered strength in the Weimar Republic, which had legislation against hate speech.

“What killed Jews in the Holocaust was not hate speech.” As well, he noted, the Shoah was preceded by the Nuremberg Laws and the removal of Jewish rights to property, self defence and even life itself.

“We’re foolish if we think that controlling speech will protect us from real violence,” he said.