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Urgent call for disclosure of usage statistics and personnel data
Lubomyr Prytulak to Mary M Gusella   09-Jan-2004
Mary M Gusella, Chief Commissioner
"A Ukrainian complained of by a Jew to the CHRC is likely to conjecture that the CHRC has to date allocated not ten, not a hundred, not a thousand, but a million times the funds to prosecuting Jewish complaints as it has to prosecuting Ukrainian complaints." � Lubomyr Prytulak

  09 January 2004


Mary M Gusella, Chief Commissioner
Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC)
344 Slater Street
Ottawa, ON    K1A 1E1

Re: Urgent call for disclosure of usage statistics and personnel data

Dear Ms Gusella:

Does the CHRC practice what it preaches?

I wonder if the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), contrary to its name and its mandate, does not make of itself the leading practitioner of ethnic and religious discrimination in Canada, and the chief instigator of ethnic and religious strife, by placing its resources at the service of some ethnic or religious groups, while denying these resources to other groups.  For example, it may be the case that the CHRC will support a complaint of hate messaging lodged by a Jew against a German, but not a complaint lodged by an Arab against a Jew, even though the racist and homicidal qualities of Nazis and Zionists in the respective cases are comparable, and even though Nazi crimes are historical whereas Zionist crimes are ongoing.

Is CHRC allocation of resources equitable?

The question of the CHRC servicing some ethnic and religious groups to the exclusion of others might be tested by examining the proportions of its hate-messaging budget that it has dedicated annually over the past decade to prosecutions (a) on behalf of various ethnic and religious groups, and (b) targetting various ethnic and religious groups � of particular interest perhaps being Arab, German, Jewish, and Ukrainian groups.  Furthermore, the CHRC publishing on an ongoing basis, together with an annual summary, a listing of all hate-messaging cases would also be helpful in evaluating CHRC bias, and which would be no more than bringing the CHRC up to the standard of openness of a court of law, where all cases are a matter of public record, and where listings of all cases are available.  I would appreciate your informing me where such CHRC funding and case information has been published, or if it has not been published, when it might be, or if it never will be, then what alternative evidence the CHRC intends to produce that will be capable of convincing Canadians of CHRC impartiality.

A million times the funding does invite a reasonable apprehension of bias

The need for disclosure of this information is urgent, because as things stand, a Ukrainian complained of by a Jew to the CHRC is likely to conjecture that the CHRC has to date allocated not ten, not a hundred, not a thousand, but a million times the funds to prosecuting Jewish complaints as it has to prosecuting Ukrainian complaints, which conjecture will suggest to the defendant Ukrainian that he stands before a kangaroo court whose intent is to conduct a show trial, and which conjecture is so damaging to the CHRC, and which is so likely to bring the administration of justice into disrepute, and which must so inevitably incite inter-ethnic and inter-religious animosity, that it is mandatory to quell that conjecture with hard data demonstrating that it is false.  I urge you to brush aside every obstacle to the gathering and publication of this data, as the credibility of the CHRC is at issue, and that credibility will not survive stonewalling.

Is the CHRC shunned by Arabs, Germans, and Ukrainians?

It would be insufficient for the CHRC to explain any preponderance of Jewish-initiated prosecutions which the above-proposed analysis might discover by replying that the CHRC responds to complaints from whatever source they happen to come, and that complaints do happen to come overwhelmingly from Jews rather than from Arabs, Germans, or Ukrainians.  Citing this observation would not contribute to removing the apprehension of CHRC bias because Arabs, Germans, and Ukrainians might not complain to the CHRC of Jewish hate messaging against them for the reason that they perceive the CHRC to be a tool of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and thus incapable of dealing impartially with any matters relating to Jews, and for the additional reason that Arabs, Germans, and Ukrainians perceive their grievances as being founded on Jewish hate messaging being false, and so might shun the CHRC because of its committment to disregarding the truth value of the messaging complained of and because of their aversion to dealing with any tribunal which on a key question banishes truth from an evaluation of merits.

Doesn't hate propaganda sometimes target Arabs, Germans, and Ukrainians?

And neither would it be sufficient for the CHRC to hypothesize that Jews are the targets of the brunt of hate messaging, and thus deserving of the bulk of CHRC hate-messaging resources, as it can readily be demonstrated � as has been done on the Ukrainian Archive web site at www.ukar.org � that Ukrainians are the targets of hate propaganda so voluminous and so vile and so mendacious as to find no parallel in anything published against Jews.  Possibly Arabs and Germans would be able to make a comparable claim concerning the hate propaganda which targets them.

Are CHRC personnel partisan?

Furthermore, the CHRC must buttress data which tests the question of unequal funding with data which tests the question of biased staffing, as even a formula of allocating each group an annual hate-messaging budget proportional to that group's representation within the Canadian population would fall short of guaranteeing CHRC impartiality if CHRC staffing were partisan.  For example, even if Ukrainians and Jews partook equally of the CHRC hate-messaging budget, the perception of CHRC fairness would be shattered by CHRC lead hate-messaging counsel having his, and his parents', trip to Paris paid for by a Simon Wiesenthal organization, a topic already broached in my letter to you of 20-Dec-2003.

What does the shoe feel like on the other foot?

In closing, I invite you to consider what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot.  Imagine that a Jew finds himself hauled up before the Canadian Human Rights Commission on a hate-messaging complaint lodged by an Arab.  Imagine that the Jew estimates that the Commission has been spending one million times as much supporting Arab hate-messaging complaints as it has supporting Jewish hate-messaging complaints.  Imagine further that the Jew notices that CHRC lead hate-messaging counsel is an Arab who appears to have recently had his and his parents' trip to Paris paid for by Yassir Arafat's Al Fatah.  Imagine what would be the outcry, and what would be the chances of CHRC survival following such an egregious display of prejudice.


Yours truly,



Lubomyr Prytulak



cc:

Irving ABELLA, National Honourary President, CJC, Department of History, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON  M3J 1P3
Bernie FARBER, Executive Director, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Ed MORGAN, Chair, CJC, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 84 Queen's Park, Toronto, ON  M5S 2C5
Moshe RONEN, Chair Board of Governors, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Len RUDNER, Director of Community Relations, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
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