That's right. And of course Richard Warman is paid to file complaints and he receives awards of tens of thousands of dollars.
My legal fees and those of the magazine amounted to about $100,000. Since I won and I was acquitted, if I had been sued in civil court I would have had my costs reimbursed. That's not the case with human rights commissions. If I had been charged under a criminal court, I would have had legal aid. The process has become the punishment.
Again I say to Mr. Ménard, I despise the censorship because I believe Canadians are free people. But putting that tremendous issue aside, the process here brings the administration of justice into disrepute.
The reason I was acquitted and he was acquitted, frankly, is that we're noisier, more articulate, more politically connected, and we're able to raise funds. But until we came along, no one had ever been acquitted, because they were beneath the law. They had no money. They were not articulate. Ninety-plus per cent of them couldn't afford a lawyer, and no lawyer was given to them. No one should be above the law in Canada, but no one should be below the law.
I think, as Mark Steyn alluded to, this whole thing has to be thrown out because it has been corrupted all the way through. The Criminal Code protects truth and honest belief as a defence; this human rights commission does not.