There were, I think, 13 lawyers. They were pretty evenly divided between the two sides.
Margot Blight did a return perfomance as chief apologist for the CHRC, and Richard Warman represented himself. It made me laugh that he was doing the "fool for a client" thing because it seems like he is piling on so much crap and dragging it out for so long that we will eventually be senior citizens duking it out with no lawyers and selling chocolate bars to pay for our printing. If that's the way he wants it, though, GAME ON.
In any case, I sat with Mark in the back row on the side of the pro-censorship villains. In front of us sat Marc Lemire and Narrow Back and BigCityLib. We all pretended we didn't know BigCityLib because he's an annoying gossipy little woman. He was too chicken to call us "Daily Nazis" to our faces, so he scurried around with his head down and sneaked up to see Warman every time there was a break and he thought we'd left the room. I was glad to see it confirmed, though, that BCL is a buddy of Richard Warman's. Next time he starts trying to intimidate our witness, that information will come in handy. Thanks, dude!
The villains presented their case first. For the most part, they all said the same thing. The CHRC behaved badly in the Lemire case, but Section 13 should not be scrapped for that reason. And, they are willing to give up the penalty provisions in order to keep their Precious. During Warman's turn, he took a slightly different route. He went off on a tangent about how he had REALLY wanted to mediate the case with Marc Lemire. Honest.
Interesting side note. When they were testifying, their side seemed to have blood pressure issues. Margot Blight had a beet red face, and Warman's ears were red and his bald spot was practically throbbing like a beacon.
During this time, the judge listened intently and didn't interrupt. His face was inscrutable. The funniest moment of the hearing came when the lawyer for B'nai Brith said that Section 13 is "a ringing endorsement of free speech". Everyone in the audience snorted and snickered uncontrollably. (Probably only one person in the audience was a censor and the rest were free speech supporters or media).
The second funniest moment was when Richard Warman (who obviously didn't have a clue that when all the lawyers on his side were talking about how the CHRC screwed up, they were referring to HIM), said that just because the CHRC screwed up this case shouldn't mean that HE should be deprived of HIS rights.
Throughout the entire thing, BCL looked like my youngest son in church, squirming around, taking off his shoes, staring into space looking like he was going to fall asleep. I should have brought him some animal crackers or a picture book.
We broke for lunch and went out for pizza with Shiva and NB. Then, we hurried back to make sure we got our seats back again.
Things got off to a rocky start after lunch. Barbara Kulaszka began her submissions and the judge was quite abrupt with her. She said (rightly) that Section 13 is a draconian law and she compared it to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany because there is a 100% conviction rate. The judge went crazy! He said that was hyperbole and that she shouldn't make that comparison, then he kind of gave her the bum's rush.
The CCLA followed up with a great presentation explaining why it wasn't an option to simply cut the penalty sections from the Act. The BCLA added some more good supportive arguments that I hope NB and/or Shiva can elaborate on. Cafe's lawyer asked the judge to rule on the constitutionality of Section 13, or, to at least provide detailed reasons if he felt he couldn't. He also made some pretty strong comments about Richard Warman, saying Warman is NOT a victim.
Barbara had another opportunity to speak and she made some very good statements about how the application of Section 13 has changed since the Supreme Court found it to be constitutional in the Taylor case in 1990. She made some convincing points about how phone messaging is not the same as internet messaging. This was crucial.
Doug Christie rounded things out for our side. He was able to tell the judge that he had been there arguing for free speech in the Taylor case. He said that, at the time, it was him against 25 lawyers, and that now the numbers on each side were about even. He went on to discuss how different it was now from then, so it is necessary to re-evaluate the constitutionality of Section 13 again because of those changes.
The judge mentioned twice that he was disappointed that the Attorney General didn't show up.
I'm being rather vague about the specifics of the arguments that were made because I'm going from memory and I know that Narrow Back an Shiva have great notes so they will be able to give you a more accurate report than I can.
Margot Blight finished things off by urging the judge to simply remove the penalty provisions, and to leave her Precious alone. At one point, she was trying to find something in her notes and Richard Warman pulled a Hermione Granger and jumped up to provide the judge with the correct paragraph. Judge Judy would have thrown him out for that.
In the end, the judge candidly told us that he had been hoping that he could just wait for the Whatcott decision or for Parliament to act, or that he could just sever the penalty provisions and not have to consider the constitutionality of Section 13. However, he said it was obvious he had a lot of work ahead of him.
I think we all walked out feeling like everyone had put their best foot forward and that the judge had listened and understood the issues. Now the ball is in his court, and we wait.
On a side note, I had a lovely conversation with Anita Bromberg, lawyer for the B'nai Brith. She keeps tabs on FD and she asked me if Harry was still banned. She is not a huge fan of Section 13, as it is written. This is good.
Joseph Brean was there, too. Mark told him we liked the article he wrote about Warman's pseudonyms. We didn't mention the previous article that Maikeru referred to as Brean's "tongue bath" of Warman.
That's all I can remember right now. I'm sure I'll add to this thread as I think of more.
