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In Canada, Criminal Libel Charges Laid For Criticizing Police
BitterOak writes "A Calgary man is facing criminal charges of libel for criticizing police. According to the story, the RCMP have filed five charges against John Kelly for claiming on his website that Calgary police officers engaged in perjury, corruption, and obstruction of justice. What makes the story unusual is that the charges are criminal and not civil. Even in Canada, which has much less free speech protection than the United States, it is extremely rare for people to be charged criminally with libel. It is almost always matter for civil courts."
time to pack my bags and head north. ohh wait....
That's a loaded and subjective statement - care to back it up?
BlackNova Traders
Fcuk teh poliec!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Even in Canada, which has much less free speech protection than the United States ...
Really? Because in canada there is a tonne of laws protecting free speech - so long as you're not engaging in hate speech. In fact, the laws are almost exactly the same as in the USA in regards to freedom of speech (with hate speech being a key difference).
... like awarding a family damages over the autism-caused-by-vaccines debacle which has been debunked by real scientists over and over...)".
I think what the article means to say is that "In canada, they're not litigation happy, and the courts have made it very difficult to get a multimillion dollar settlement for pouring hot coffee on your lap and claiming that it was the fault of the coffee shop for not telling you that coffee is hot... (and other such nonsense cases
Yes, in Canada you can't walk around holding a pistol and suing everyone who looks at you funny. You also can't start a chapter of the KKK, start publishing material that has no value and offends a large audience. Oh, and queer-bashing? Also illegal. Why? Because you couldn't say or do the same things to someone that wasn't queer, and not get arrested/charged. That doesn't mean canada has lax free speech laws. That means Canada has a better system of protecting the rights of its citizens.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
As long as it actually WAS libel.
There are enough people out there who distrust the police, we don't need unfounded accusations reducing police support further.
On the other hand, if the statements were factual, the cops and prosecutors involved need to be lined up against a wall and shot.
It meant that they could raid his house and get a copy of everything that he had, possibly then loosing some of it for him. If it was a civil action then they would not have been able to do this. What is dreadful is that the ''other side'' (ie the police in this case) get an immediate advantage. This is abuse of power.
http://www.bownessca.com/
The purpose of this site is to inform the residents of Bowness, the citizens of Calgary and others, as to how senior individuals within the City of Calgary placed the Bowness Community Association (the BCA) into receivership by illegal, corrupt and criminal means.
.
There has been over 5 years of corrupt and criminal acts that have been committed and they are continuing to be committed by Derek Podlubny and the present Board, ably assisted by lawyers from the law firm of Blake Cassels and Graydon.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
there needs to be some kind of - protest about this .. like ASAP they can't get away with this sort of bullshit. criminal my ass this is not a police state
All the guy has to do is raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of ONE juror.
When he's not convicted, this will be seen by many as proof that the RCMP did in fact perjure themselves. Dumb move, cops.
Which has fuck all to do with free speech.
You can let the hate groups fester where nobody can see or you can leave them out in the open to be ridiculed by all.
See, the funny thing is in America our president can insult the police and its all fine and dandy. Just saying.
Actually, the funny thing is that it was neither libel nor slander, in this case.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
The problem is that whenever you stop protecting the unpopular speech, and let the government decide what is and is not of "value" or "useful" or whatever, you open the gates to restricting speech for all sorts of bad reasons. It is the unpopular speech that must be protected.
As an example, look at the sham that is the Canadian Human Rights Commission. You have a lead investigator that said, on the record "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value. It's not my job to give value to an American concept." Where you don't have the right to question your accuser, hearsay is admissible with few exceptions, and truth is not always a defense. Basically, if a plaintiff can demonstrate you hurt their feelings (with rather dubious standards of evidence to do so), even if your statements were true you can get in trouble.
Really you want free speech very protected, where there are clear lines as to what can't be done and those lines are only there as needed to protect people (like you can't order someone to kill someone else and claim free speech). As it stands in Canada, the laws are used to shut down unpopular speech.
Yeah, that's not speech and you can't eliminate hatred by outlawing it.
I live in Calgary. the chief of police is a hard liner to the letter of the law and if stupidity was against the law there would be charges laid ,anybody that expects compassion or common sense would be greatly disappointed .The current mayor is a developer who has blocked the attempts of the charitable societies to make Calgary a more friendly place there is much more damning things to say ,my opinion. Completely normal behavior
See, the funny thing is in America our president can insult the police and its all fine and dandy. Just saying.
Actually, the funny thing is that it was neither libel nor slander, in that case, either.
Fixed it for ya. Er, for me.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Back in my day we ignored the crazies....
-=-Ze End-=-
So someone committing a blatant crime is an example of the failure of free speech? You silly, or dumb, or both. Either way you're fucked up.
See, the funny thing is in America our president can insult the police and its all fine and dandy. Just saying.
The federal government is a separate entity from the state and local governments and, in certain ways, is superior to them. For example, the FBI can override the jurisdiction of local cops, particularly if a crime happens across state lines. For those reasons, yes, the President can criticize or even insult police.
But it wasn't all fine and dandy. Obama is a politician and took a lot of heat for, basically, opening his big mouth when he shouldn't have. That's been a recurring criticism of Obama: that he talks about stuff when there's no good reason for him to, and wastes his political capital.
Also I don't know the libel standard in Canada but in the US:
1) The statements must be untrue. Truth is the ultimate libel defense. So if his statements are true (probably not, but just saying) then that is the end of that.
2) The person making the statements had to know they were untrue. While this gets a little more "he said, she said," in the case of someone who's connection to reality is a bit tenuous, this could easily be a defense. He may honestly believe what he is writing is true. In that case, it isn't libel. It is crackpottery, but not libel.
3) The statements must have been made with the intent to cause harm. Well here again, might be a problem. After all, he may well be making the statements to inform people, not to attempt to harm anyone. In that case, again not libel.
Could be very different in Canada, of course, but that's how it works in the US. Libel/slander are when someone deliberately spreads false information about you to harm you. It isn't when someone makes fun of you or the like.
So no, in the US, conspiracy nut rantings aren't libel. If they honestly believe what they are saying is true, it isn't libel.
Also personally I think speech against the government should be the very most protected of all. The government needs to accept that people can just drag them through the mud, that is the right of citizens in a free country. Pretty much anything is fair game. I mean really, if your government can be harmed by the rantings of conspiracy nuts, then you have bigger problems.
Yeah, that's not speech and you can't eliminate hatred by outlawing it.
Yeah, but you can encourage it's growth by talking/spreading it.
Actually, you can't encourage it's anything because that's gibberish. Learn to apostrophate properly.
Saying that free speech spreads hate is like saying Lysol makes people sick. Yes, out of a large-enough population, some idiot will try to drink Lysol, but restricting its availability will make everyone sick.
There are many ways to fight hate speech. In canada, we fight it by making hate speech illegal. we fight it by making it illegal to spread, we mock it with our TV programming, education system and comedians.
If you make speech selectively illegal, it's no longer free speech, it's restricted speech. Restricting people's activities because of their ideas or origin is the very criterion used to identify a crime as a hate crime.
In the USA, dissenting voices are usually dealt with by a lynch mob (or some other draconian measure meted out by an arbitrary justice system with no remaining checks or balances). Oh, and glenn beck.
I've lived in the United States for 24 of the previous 26 years (non-continuously). I have never seen or known anyone that was “dealt with by a lynch mob,” or any “other draconian measure” in our criminal justice systems. Restricting speech because you don't want to hear someone is draconian.
As for checks and balances, that's a term referring to separation of powers doctrine (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checks_and_balances), which is much more fundamental to the U.S. Constitution (and the individual state constitutions) than it is to the Canadian Constitution. If you just don't like the outcomes, go ahead and say that. Just realize that if you are ever sued for or charged with defamation, and later you're lawfully admitted into the United States, collection of a debt resulting from criminal or civil defamations suits in foreign courts is illegal in the United States, a measure that unanimously passed in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
As for Glenn Beck, he's our Lysol-drinking idiot and it's better that everyone keep an eye on him.
>Police deny the charges, saying they injure the reputation of Calgary police officers and interfere with an ongoing homicide investigation. Know what... I bet all of 12 people even heard of any of this before. Now people worldwide think Canada, calgary police, and rcmp are the worst kind of scum; who are corrupt and this is their way of trying to get it to go away. They did far more to damage their reputation.
Boy, I hope you grow out of this when you become an adult else it's going to be no fun. You don't need to compete with the grownups to see who's more full of shit.
For Canadian standards see http://www.cscja-acjcs.ca/criminal_civil_law-en.asp?l=4
"More evidence is needed to find the accused at fault in criminal cases than to find the defendant at fault in civil ones. To convict someone of a crime, the prosecution must show there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the person committed the crime and, in most cases, that they intended to commit it. Judges and juries cannot convict someone they believe probably committed the crime or likely is guilty - they must be almost certain. This gives the accused the benefit of any reasonable doubt and makes it less likely an innocent person will be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. Civil cases, in contrast, must be proven on a balance of probabilities - if it is more likely than not that the defendant caused harm or loss, a court can uphold a civil claim."
It will be fairly easy to show who did the publishing and that he intended to do the publishing.
Problem for the RCMP, who are not the defamed group, and the Calgary Police will be showing that a crime was actually committed. The key phrase in Canadian law is "on reasonable grounds, he believes is true". Is it reasonable for a person to argue these points given what is known to be true? Looking at the site, at least some of the statements do not seem "reasonable".
But also, he is not publishing in Canada. eg: Court publication bans do not extend to websites hosted in other countries.
If you look at the site, it clearly appeals to the fringe and is long on accusation and short on evidence. It also explicitly names particular people without a lot of supporting documentation. Personnally, I would say this guy is pushing the limits of free speech beyond what is ethical but I am not so sure that there is a law broken. My gut reaction was that he is a wack job and is doing more harm than good for his cause. Police should be held to higher standards and complaints should be investigated independantly but I would not want to be a public servant in a tough, demanding job and be subject to this kind of public complaint. Again, I'm not saying there is criminal defamation; just saying that this is clearly at the limit.
Finally, first thing I did upon reading the article was to go find the site: http://www.rottenapples.info/ ;->
I am sure that this fellows site popularity has soared.
This will be an interesting case to follow.
Public Enemy never would have gotten of the ground. '911 is timely and effective'....just doesn't work. God Bless America.
Your inner tribal monkey is showing. The left is just as immune to truth and reason as the right.
The recent past with the online gambling and hate speech arrests seems to indicate that it isn't where it was published, but where the person is. If you publish something on a website hosted in Germany that violates laws in Brazil, you won't get extradited if it is not illegal in Germany, but It would not surprise me to see you arrested if you visited Brazil. Bottom line, if you upset a nation state, don't even fly over it.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
How about we let the audience decide that for themselves?
If we want to prove that our ideologies are indeed superior to those of the KKK, that can only be done on a fair and equal forum of debate
How does a man on fire, tied to a cross, surrounded by people who hate him, have a fair chance to speak? By the time the current discussion is over, I'm pretty sure he never wants to see the colour white again (and will be perpetually biased against the living).
Dude, are you retarded? Or do you honestly not understand the difference between assault/murder and freedom of speech?
I'm willing to bet the answer is probably "yes" to both those questions.
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
Not to mention that the authorities that be have clearly laid bare their contempt for individual sovereignty and the Charter during this summer's G20 (That's the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for you, rest of the world). We may or may not have lived under a police state for a long time, but I think post-G20 is the first time where the affirmation that Canada isn't a police state cannot be defended at all.
The last 2 years, I've been trying to ring the alarm for my friends and relatives, to (what seems to be) no avail. But the lack of indignation about the G20 events have told me all I needed to know; we've been (apparently successfully) sheeple'd just like the Americans and the English. I'm out; my plane is leaving in a few days.
Our cops have trouble with the truth. It is not just Canadian cops. The next small town up the road from me just caught a cop who was raping women by stopping them with his squad car and telling them that if they did not submit he would arrest them on trumped up charges. We even had one cop who moved to another county, while still being a cop, and was tying young women to trees and axing them to pieces.
My point being that if we have cops that stoop to rape and ax murders you can bet that more than a few cops are frequently doing lesser crimes while on duty. It is all too easy to "find" drugs or weapons on unpopular people.
That's a loaded and subjective statement - care to back it up?
"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." - Dean Steacy, Canadian Human Rights Commission
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Please tell us your version of the G20 summit. All I heard was that a bunch of protesters were sitting our doing there thing when a tiny percentage of them went anarchist and started burning and smashing everything in sight. Then the police stepped in with an iron boot and arrested a few hundred. No?
Two words: "Fox North."
-FL
Got some bad news for ya there, Hoser. Canada's descent into soft authoritarianism predated Stephen Harper or the new right wing TV network that's coming to Canada. See your infamous Human Rights Commission. People in your government decided long ago that they simply weren't going to put up with the messiness that is American-style freedom, and things were going to be nice and ordered, for the greater Canadian good.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I can be wrong without it meaning I'm part of some tribe you know! :)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Saying that somebody is acting like an idiot is an insult and one cannot be prosecuted for libel (although defamation of character may apply).
Saying that somebody is not doing the actual job they are paid to, or in this case, saying that somebody committed specific criminal acts while they were supposed to be doing their job is something altogether different. Although defamation may still be applicable, such statements are, in general, provably true or false, and if false, would constitute libel unless the person can present sound reason why they had believed those statements to be true at the time that they originally printed them. If they can show this, they would then be required to retract those statements immediately, or face prosecution for libel just as if they had originally printed the material with the full knowledge that it was false while presenting it as true
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Be a man, respond with, "he's right; we need to fix that."
If what the man is alleging is true then I'd agree that would be the correct response. However why are you automatically assuming that he is telling the truth? Suppose he is just an idiot with an axe to grind against the police? The fact that they called in the RCMP and that criminal charges have been made suggests that at least the RCMP think he is lying.
I have no idea about the facts of the case but if this man is lying then I think it is completely right and proper that he should get charged with criminal defamation since he would be undermining confidence in an important public institution through lies and misinformation. Frankly I'd be a lot more concerned if they had gone for a civil suit - if you want to bully someone into shutting up that would be the way to go since the burden of proof is so much lower.
No they have it figured out. The HRC is a kangaroo court which is not bound to the normal judiciary rules of the Canadian legal system. Where with normal court, hearsay is inadmissible unless it falls under the exclusionary rules. Even in normal court the only other time that hearsay is admissible is during bail hearings. In the HRC court any and all forms of hearsay are admissible. You can be found guilty of hurting someones feelings, or perceived feelings, or no feelings at all. Factual evidence can be excluded based on the heads whim. There's no disclosure for the defense(In canada we have evidentiary disclosure, which means that the police & prosecution must disclosure all evidence to the defense so they can build, or manufacture a defense). At the end of the day, it's nothing other than a way for someone to silence someone based on whether their feelings were hurt.
If you want examples, feel free to look at Ezra Levant and Mark Styen(last two high profile cases). Both of who were tromped up in front of the HRC for publishing motoons(that's the cartoons in which muslims raged over drawn pictures). In a normal court, it would be bounced so fast that your head would still be spinning next year.
Did I mention that the "court" had a 100% conviction rate? Well it did until Levant and Styen showed up.
Om, nomnomnom...
Libel laws exist for a reason. If he decides to advertise to everybody that specific officers did specific things then he'd better be able to prove it.
The fact that it's the police he's railing against doesn't matter. If he'd have just stuck to ranting about the police in general he wouldn't have had a problem.
Really? Because in canada there is a tonne of laws protecting free speech - so long as you're not engaging in hate speech.
Which means that anything someone doesn't want you saying, they simply define as hate speech. What a great way to totally clamp down on anything negative said about the government.
You obviously don't understand what the term "free speech" really means, it means being free to say WHATEVER YOU WANT. No matter how hateful or hurtful, it should at least be allowed to be expressed without fear of being detained by the government.
In practice it works out pretty well because you have something like true Nazis put up sites, but then doom themselves to permanent niche status through the absurdity of their own writings. It's called giving someone enough rope to hang themselves with.
Another way to look at it is that there's no idea so dangerous someone shouldn't be allowed to explain it.
Now consequences like libel and so on, that's a different matter - but that's monetary punishment, not incarceration.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am a U.S. citizen who is appalled by my country deciding that announcing your intentions to burn Koran's amounts to something that should be prevented. The right to free speech does not include just being able to say only those things (or otherwise communicate ideas) which are non-offensive but also must include the right to say offensive things. Including the right to show contempt for the Muslim religion by burning a book. (by the way, I do not approve of burning the Koran, the Bible, or any other religious text.). When my government takes notices of this, and tries to suppress it, that is when I get concerned about the right for free speech.
Libel, in this Canadian case, must be based on facts showing that the statements being made were untrue and that the defendant knew this but went ahead and said them for malicious reasons.
Do not confuse punishing libelous speech with punishing free speech.
Please tell us your version of the G20 summit. All I heard was that a bunch of protesters were sitting our doing there thing when a tiny percentage of them went anarchist and started burning and smashing everything in sight. Then the police stepped in with an iron boot and arrested a few hundred. No?
No. And it was well over a thousand citizens, most totally innocent, some even just on their way home from work or wherever, rounded up and held in unheated cages for two days and longer while the cops either laughed at them or felt so much shame they couldn't make eye-contact.
Also, look up the term, "Agent Provocateur". THAT was the big story which the media refuses to look at. It's huge. It was a big, big part of the events which unfolded. Canada has a history with that kind of manipulation going back to previous fiascos. In one instance in Quebec, cops pretending to be anarchists dressed in the same basic get-up as the G20 'anarchists', were captured on film and proven to be police agents. The police, after several attempted lies, were forced to admit it, (though no real measures were taken or penalties paid in the end by the police. Business as usual). After all their lies up to that point, it was hard to believe their protestations that their agents were not there to incite violence, but simply to monitor and keep people safe. -They told us this even when one of their thugs was holding a nice weaponized rock on camera and refused to put it down when asked by a legitimate protester. Such bullshit. The government cannot ever be trusted.
Anyway, in this latest instance, the threads on the official account when pulled come apart very quickly for anybody with the stomach and spine for it. (Most aren't. The number of people who bury their heads in the sand is sadly quite large in Canada.) The cops even ponied up some sacrificial squad cars for a nice photo-op public burning in order to justify the 1.4 billion dollars poured into summit security. But the media refused to explore that angle, which of course is to be expected by a media bought and paid for. The only real story here was that of a giant manipulation in order to bring Canada up to speed with modern population control tactics, and by "brought up to speed", I mean two things; installing hardware and procedures for corralling humans into cages in large numbers, and installing the mind-programming to make sure the population knows that this is the new "normal".
-FL
No person shall be deemed to publish a defamatory libel by reason only that he publishes fair comments
I don't see how making up malicious lies falls anywhere in the realm of "fair comment" and this is what he is accused of. However if he has seen something that might reasonably lead him to make the claims he has then I completely agree it is fair comment.
How is the Streisand effect relevant? Have they tried to suppress the website? They don't seem to be acting in a manner to suppress the information, their actions are more consistent with them having found someone committing a criminal offence. Whether or not he is guilty of it remains to be seen but he is accused of criminal defamation, not civil, and there is a big difference.
It's a more useful language than you might think; France itself has a pretty high population, and Quebec+Switzerland+Belgium doesn't hurt, but there are also millions of Africans and Caribbean people who speak it, plus quite a few in the Middle East and North Africa.
Wikipedia lists it as 14th for native speakers, but 4th for total speakers. I'd guess that a lot of the difference comes from Africans who speak another, local language as their mother tongue but speak French when they leave that area, Arabic speakers who also learned French, and continental Europeans who learned French (probably as a third language, after their own and English)
That's just talking sheer numbers, too--French has not only a history of great art, but continues to be a language in which many great films are produced, and the occasional great book. France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Quebec are all economically powerful, compared to the nations where the more-widely-spoken Spanish is used, making it arguably at least as useful as a business language.
Overall, of European languages, it's easily the third most useful after English and Spanish, unless you're talking about a specific area (obviously it'd only come in a distant 4th if you were only considering South America, for example). One can easily name scenarios where French would be far less helpful to know than other languages, but taking a general big-picture approach, it's pretty damn far up the list.
That still doesn't change the fact that this is absolutely idiotic and should not be allowed. He didn't "interfere" with anything if you read the article.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!