Two BC Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) decisions came down last week, and they’re important for a number of reasons.  Both are in the matter of Chilliwack Teacher’s Association v. Barry Neufeld.  

Decision 10

Decision 11

This all goes back to when Neufeld was a School Trustee in Chilliwack and began actively publishing anti-transgender, anti-2SLGBTQ material online.  I won’t spend a bunch of time tearing into Neufeld’s claims – they are in the large the usual assortment of bogus claims about 2SLGBTQ people and transgender people in particular.  

The case as framed by the original complaint is interesting because the Chilliwack Teacher’s Association (CTA) filed a complaint on behalf of a class of its membership rather than individual complaints.  Given that Neufeld was a person in a position of public power, this is a bit different than your average discrimination case involving direct attacks on an individual.  Neufeld appears to have used his position as a public figure to amplify his messaging, and it had direct impact on staff working for the Chilliwack school system who were members of the 2SLGBTQ community as a whole.  Consequently, what we have is a form of “class action” human rights complaint which is a bit unusual. 

My goal here is not to “relitigate” the decisions of the BCHRT – I’m certain that Neufeld will be appealing these into the courts with the assistance of any number of right wing legal agitprop organizations like Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) that routinely take on these cases both to grift donation money and in the hopes of driving a wedge into the existing body of case law.  The outcome of those appeals remains to be seen. 

However, I’m seeing a lot of people expressing “shock and outrage” over the amount of the awards, which runs to some $750,000.  However, I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the bigger issue.  Most discrimination cases involve actions that affect an individual, or possibly a couple of people.  

Here we have a case where the impact is much different because the actions taken by Neufeld affected teachers within the Chilliwack school system – not a single individual, but rather many individuals who were in the school system’s employ at the time Neufeld was campaigning against 2SLGBTQ recognition in the schools.  

This is, to my knowledge, the first time in Canada that a discrimination case has been filed where the victims are not recorded as individuals who have been directly affected, but as members of a class of individuals who were directly and indirectly affected by the impugned activities.  This is what makes the amount of the fine so high.  Instead of the BCHRT assessing each case individually and handing out penalties, the amount is to be distributed by the CTA to its affected members.  This is not unlike a “class action lawsuit”, where the amount of compensation per individual may not be a lot, but when there are a sizeable number of individuals in the Class, the gross amount can appear to be a “huge sum”.  

Where this becomes interesting is in terms of its importance in future human rights case law.  It provides a means to pursue someone where they are attacking a class of individuals rather than actual individuals with their rhetoric.  In general, human rights law in Canada focuses on individual rights and has tended not to recognize attacks on identifiable groups very well.  

Neufeld made accusations in his publications that stated flat out that 2SLGBTQ people were pedophiles, or worse.  These aren’t nuanced statements – they are cases where he deliberately associated 2SLGBTQ people as a whole with acts and behaviours that are both criminal and profoundly harmful to the victims.  It is not a small matter to accuse an individual of being a pedophile, it is no less harmful to accuse an entire class of people of such – especially from a person who is in a position of public power.

I have mused in the past about the need for some kind of “class libel” law in Canada where global aspersions against a class of people are often the tool of choice in justifying legislative attacks on those minorities.  In these cases, we often find – as we have seen with Barry Neufeld in BC, and certain pastors in Alberta, a tendency to claim that they are “merely expressing deeply held religious beliefs”.  To me, these claims are the refuge of scoundrels – an escape hatch where anything can be justified by claiming it’s “religious”.  

“Deeply held religious beliefs” are fine – I don’t actually care what a person believes.  However, there is a line that is crossed when those beliefs become justification for attacking the rights and freedoms of others in society.  If you want to believe that “all trans people are pedophiles”, knock yourself out.  However, if you then turn around and demand that those same transgender people be banned from using public washrooms based on that belief, that’s a different matter (especially when those “deeply held beliefs” have as much validity as claiming the world is flat).

Public figures need to understand that even if they “sincerely believe” something, there is a higher standard that they must hew to given their influence and sway.  Just because they “believe” something does not grant carte blanche to simply spew whatever they believe.  They have a duty and responsibility to ensure that their public utterances are in fact grounded in reason and fact, not supposition.  

Words continue to have great power, and can be used to cause great harm.  That is ultimately the underlying lesson here – and perhaps we have a precedent here that can be used in the future when other public figures use their position to foment hate and fear.