TORONTO —

The complaint against the human rights organization was one of the motivating factors for it to advocate change to procedures behind the work of human rights commissions across the country, acknowledged B’nai Brith senior legal counsel David Matas. B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights has submitted a brief to Richard Moon, a law professor who is reviewing the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s mandate to address hate speech.

B’nai Brith has long advocated for the necessity of provincial and federal human rights legislation to address hate speech. Being on the receiving end of a complaint permits the organization “to see it from both sides,” Matas said.

B’nai Brith was the subject of a complaint by Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Service Association of the United States and Canada, following an October 2003 conference in Winnipeg hosted by B’nai Brith for first responders to terrorist attacks. The complaint, filed with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission (MHRC), alleged comments made at the meeting were biased against Muslims.

Matas noted, however, that Siddiqui did not attend the conference but relied on reports from unnamed sources. Despite the lapse of several years, B’nai Brith still doesn’t know who was the source of the allegations and what specifically was said, he added.

B’nai Brith has asked the commission for more information and received a letter “with general statements with a word or two but no quoted sentences.” Its own investigation turned up nothing that could be taken as violating Manitoba’s anti-discrimination laws.

“It’s shadow boxing, trying to find out if a rumour is true,” Matas said.

The MHRC has appointed an independent expert to look into the case, but Matas said he doesn’t know who the expert is and B’nai Brith hasn’t been asked for input into his investigation.

The investigator has been given documents that relate to the complaint, but B’nai Brith hasn’t been shown them. B’nai Brith has been told that it can respond to the report when it comes out, but Matas contends that could be too late.

“The findings could be definitive of the issue,” he said.

B’nai Brith’s experience, as well as the cases involving journalist and author Mark Steyn, Maclean’s magazine and the defunct Western Standard magazine, indicate the need for substantial procedural reforms in human rights cases, he said.

B’nai Brith doesn’t want human rights commissions abolished. “There is a problem, we need reform but the jurisdictions [over hate speech] are worth keeping,” he said.

Commissions have developed “without a full range of procedural safeguards, with informality. That was not a problem until a series of abusive complaints,” Matas said.

In its brief to Moon, BBC warns that human rights commissions are unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with ideological complaints driven by political Islam.

B’nai Brith has urged reforms that 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.”