Montreal Gazette

We don’t need any new rules to silence cranks

- CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Goldstein asked, in the pro forma manner, “Do you wish to enter a plea of guilty?”

Eric Brazau paused then replied, with exquisite care, “I will enter a plea of guilty.”

The judge noticed the slight delay and the deliberate emphasis, and later clarified that whatever distinctio­ns he might read in, Brazau knew he had a choice and was making it voluntaril­y.

The 52-year-old convicted hate-monger — he once handed out graphic pamphlets about Muslims which he cheerfully entitled “They are here and breeding” — was pleading to three counts of causing a disturbanc­e and breaching the peace.

He’d been facing a slew of new charges in connection with the display he put on at Dundas Square in downtown Toronto on Nov. 13, 2015, a few hours after the series of terrorist bombings and suicide attacks in Paris, one of which was at the Bataclan Concert Hall.

ISIL later claimed credit for the attacks.

According to an agreed statement of facts worked out by prosecutor Stefania Fericean and Brazau’s lawyer, Mark Rieger, at about 9 p.m. that night, Brazau headed to the square where, despite probation conditions requiring him “to keep the peace and be of good behaviour,” he indulged in what in the modern Canada is deemed very bad behaviour.

For about an hour, he shouted about Muslims and the danger they presented to “regular people.”

Convenient­ly, someone (who wasn’t made clear in court) audio-taped the entire rant, which, however aggressive­ly Brazau may have spoken, wasn’t particular­ly different in content from, and arguably more lucid than, the ordinary news conference held by say the new American president.

Indeed, as Fericean read the agreed facts onto the record, it appeared that what was most offensive and egregious about Brazau’s conduct was that he was citing inflated numbers of dead from the Paris attacks, “despite the fact that the identity and motivation of the Paris attackers was still unconfirme­d.”

If accuracy in numbers is the issue, then half the world’s media could similarly be charged with breaching the peace.

The fact is, in the bloody confusion after such attacks — and the one in Paris involved multiple locations and a number of bars and restaurant­s as well as a soccer stadium — police and security officials, most concerned with treating the wounded and tracking the suspects, often make mistakes. And the press usually repeats them.

(Consider the attack upon the Quebec City mosque late last month, where for hours, authoritie­s and press both believed there were two attackers, identified them both by name, only to later realize the second suspect was in fact a witness. Oops.)

Similarly, Brazau had fixated upon an inflated number — he repeatedly claimed “they just killed 500 people in Paris” — where, the prosecutor said, the New York Times reported the total figure was 120.

And in fairness to him, Brazau was right when he said “40 people” were killed in ISIL suicide bombings the day before in Beirut and only a bit off when he talked about the wholesale kidnapping of schoolgirl­s by Boko Haram, an ISIL faction, in 2014 (though he got the country wrong; it happened in Nigeria, not Kenya).

This emphasis on truth-in-numbers and geographic­al accuracy was curious. After all, would the state have deemed OK what Brazau said if he’d only waited until the dust settled on the Paris attacks and he’d been able to get the correct figures?

While it’s perhaps a not-unreasonab­le expectatio­n that authoritie­s and media get it right, or at least right as far as they can and that they are quick to correct, it’s an awfully high burden to place upon ordinary citizens, least of all upon cranks like Brazau.

It would also disqualify a great many people from freely speaking their opinions on social media, where in the post-truth, post-fact, alternativ­e-fact era, ranting without a brain in your head is the norm.

Are these people causing a disturbanc­e as well?

Or is Brazau’s mistake that he does his ranting literally in the public square and once in a subway train (someone pulled the emergency alarm and he was duly charged with causing a disturbanc­e and breaching his probation)?

He didn’t stop there, of course. As he admitted, he was “freaking out” that night. He also said in multiple ways that the Qu’ran directs Muslims to kill infidels (and parts of it surely do), and in his defence, he has actually read it, albeit with the goal of finding in it what he seeks.

Prosecutor Fericean said he “also compared Muslims to the Nazis,” but what he actually said was that “I think that Islam is a real problem of immense magnitude like when the Nazis, fascists, were coming,” which is hardly saying that the two are the same.

Thus, says the agreed statement of facts, “By shouting and yelling in a crowded public place and causing an angry crowd to form around him” did he cause a disturbanc­e and breach the peace he was bound to keep.

Nota bene: He didn’t attract a happy crowd of devotees, but an angry one.

It does raise the question of whether Canada, which already has laws against hate speech and propaganda and more vague catch-alls such as causing a disturbanc­e for offences which don’t meet the tougher test, really needs M-103, that much-discussed motion which would have the government formally recognize the need to “quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear.”

Canadians seem quite capable of quelling on their own.

Brazau has spent seven months and change behind bars in pre-trial custody, though he is out now. Lawyers will make submission­s on sentencing next month.

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