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Canadian Association for Free Expression Inc. Monday at 2:00 p.m. William John Beattie, the former leader of the Canadian Nazi Party, will present shocking testimony to a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal inquiring into "hate" charges against Toronto publisher Ernst Zundel for a site called the Zundelsite, located in California and owned and operated by a U.S. citizen. The tribunal is being held on the 10th floor of 151 Bloor Street in Toronto. In the heady spring of 1965, a 23-year old Torontonian John Beattie was on the front page of most Toronto newspapers, his every comment headline news. Beattie will reveal that he was a dupe and a patsy, that everything from his group's name to its major activities was suggested or quarterbacked by persons acting as agents for or reporting to the Canadian Jewish Congress. Uncannily, at the very time that the Canadian Nazi Party was being built up and just as quickly destroyed a government committee was holding hearings to propose anti-hate legislation. The Cohen Committee made significant mention of the threat posed by John Beattie. The Canadian Jewish Congress, which largely created the short-lived Canadian Nazi Party, had, since the 1930s been lobbying for restrictions on freedom of speech. Beattie will reveal how an agent for the Canadian Jewish Congress lured him into a technical breech of the law, which landed the now unemployed, penniless Nazi leader in prison for six months. Beattie will also expose the fact that the same agent proposed legal maneuvers that were calculated to frighten and cause distress among Jews, thus heightening the "Nazi" menace, which was used as the argument for the 1971 "hate law" (Section 319 of the Criminal Code) and the subsequent section 13.1 (telephonic communication of hate) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, where truth is no defence. John Beattie will also be mentioning the role of a prominent Liberal politician in his early political activities in Toronto's far right. Beattie is one of a number of witnesses being called by the Canadian Association for Free Expression, Canada's foremost free speech group, in its role as an intervenor in these proceedings.
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