Kinsella and I have been trading political barbs for ten years. We have appeared opposite each other on radio and TV, even on Lloyd Robertson’s CTV election night desk in 2000. Political sparring is what we do – I always assumed it was in good humour.
But about a year ago, something snapped with Kinsella – he just couldn’t countenance my battle against the censorship of Canada’s human rights commissions. He particularly hated my criticisms of Richard Warman, the former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who has been the complainant in the majority of censorship hearings prosecuted by the CHRC. Kinsella lost his cool over the subject. Instead of acting like a professional pundit or party activist, he started fighting personally.
I have to admit, I’m still half-expecting him to say “just kidding!” at any moment, because what he’s doing is just so spectacularly bizarre and ineffective. Far from marginalizing me and other free speech advocates over the past year, he has brought attention to our campaign for free speech. And far from grinding me into submission, as he has done with other people he has targeted with libel chill in the past, he has galvanized my convictions. That, along with the generous support of my website’s readers, has allowed me to parry the two dozen human rights complaints, defamation suits and law society complaints filed by Kinsella, Warman and their allies.
