Chapter 10
When the mob says no
In the end, you will walk out. Because 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate.
Gandhi (1982)
I have warned would-be complainants throughout this work that the legal system is insufferably slow and byzantine by design. One extra caveat is its focus on redress rather than prevention; the justice system usually waits for actual harm to have occurred rather offer preemptive relief, and its belated remedies often fail to resolve the issue at hand.
In Chapter 2 I’ve briefly mentioned a campaign 1 Million Voices For Inclusion waged against We Unify and its Reclaiming Canada conference’s lineup of notorious transphobic speakers in June 2024. We urged the City of Victoria’s municipal council to cancel its contract with the organization, warning it of legal jeopardy under Section 7 of the BC Human Rights Code, which forbids publication of speech intended to discriminate against a protected group or expose it to hatred and contempt. In vain.
The uninitiated could be forgiven for wondering why we didn’t reach out to the BC Human Rights Tribunal instead of attempting to shut down the conference with a massive protest. The reason is that the Tribunal, unlike the courts, does not offer preliminary injunctive relief. A complaint can only be filed once the infraction has taken place, which in this case would be after the conference. And that of course would only be the beginning of the headache, as the following saga demonstrates.
Chilliwack Teachers’ Association v. Neufeld
Barry Neufeld used to be a trustee for the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association. During his term he initiated a zealous crusade against what he deemed radical gender ideology, especially the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) charter promoting inclusion of queer school students coming out at school. Never mind that SOGI is only intended to prevent the bullying of students whose sexuality and gender identity don’t fit in the mould, but hey, some conservatives have nothing better to do with their time than to undermine society’s meagre civil rights protections by subverting the system.
In October 2018, Neufeld went as far as filing a defamation suit against BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) president Glen Hansman for criticizing his stance, which backfired so spectacularly that the Supreme Court of Canada slammed it as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) pursuant to Section 4 of British Columbia’s Protection of Public Participation Act (PPPA).1
The BC Teachers’ Federation had filed a complaint against him as well, on behalf of the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association, with the BC Human Rights Tribunal for violating Section 7 of the Code by posting homophobic and transphobic comments online.2 I would rather quote from the Tribunal’s dismissal application decision than attempt my own characterization of the respondent’s disturbing conduct:
The discrimination complaint concerns a series of statements between October 2017 and December 2018. BCTF says that Mr. Neufeld’s statements and publications had and continue to have a discriminatory effect on the work environment for all teachers in the School District and a “particularly discriminatory effect” on teachers who identify as LGBTQ. For example, BCTF says that Mr. Neufeld calls teachers who support transgender students “child abusers”, refers to teaching about LGBTQ families as “evil ideology”, compares teachers’ work supporting transgender students to the cultural genocide of the residential school system, and discounts the lived experiences of transgender individuals by describing them as “confused”, as part of a “biologically absurd theory”, and experiencing undiagnosed autism.3
Allow me to spare you the whole vitriol. I’m all for freedom of expression, and my own views aren’t systematically aligned with that of the queer community. Nevertheless, I’m drawing the line at hate speech and bigotry, as do most people of conscience, including of course the complainants in this case.
That being said, the human rights complaint faced significant hurdles from the onset. The most significant was that Section 7 of the Code was insufficiently tested. The Tribunal had to contemplate whether claims pertaining to Internet publications fell within provincial jurisdiction, since regulating telecommunications is the prerogative of the federal government.4
Also, the scope of this complaint warranted an obscenely long and complex hearing; whereas the typical complaint is heard by a single Tribunal member in just a few days, this one was heard by three Tribunal members over thirteen days and extended from November 2024 to May 2025. The whole process spanned over eight years, a very long time even by the Tribunal’s abysmal standard of service. In contrast, remember that in Chapter 3 I recounted attending a hearing for a major judicial review in which both the BC Human Rights Commissioner and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General intervened, and yet it lasted only one week, taking place thirteen months after the petition was filed.
Finally, in February 2026 the Tribunal found Neufeld guilty of infringing upon Sections 7 and 13 with heated public speech exposing LGBTQ people to hatred or contempt. The complainants were awarded a record $750,000 for injury to dignity and self-respect, plus $10,000 in costs for improper conduct during the course of the complaint.5 Even then, it isn’t the end of the litigation. The respondent has announced within days his intention to file a petition for judicial review,6 which is bound to be heard given the complexity of the case, the lack of precedent, and the obvious public interest in getting things right. A subsequent appeal is likely, and may even escalate to the Supreme Court of Canada just because the respondent raised a constitutional question. The decision may also be remanded to the Tribunal for reconsideration, which would add several months to the process. At this rate, the soap opera may drag on for another four years and involve a dozen interveners like civil rights associations and community advocates. Then, and only then, will the justice system settle the question of whether to order Neufeld to shut the fuck up for good.
Naturally, the mob has neither the patience nor the inclination to wait this long, since everybody knows there is only one way to silence a bigot. Especially one such as Neufeld, manifestly undeterred by the human rights process, who called upon his supporters to rally at the Tribunal in November 2024 ahead of his testimony.7
The 1 Million March 4 Children
We aren’t quite done with Neufeld and his cohort. Let’s go back to September 2023, at the peak of the polemic surrounding transgender policies in schools, with the 1 Million March 4 Children, reaching out under the umbrella of ‘parental rights’ to oppose gender identity education and the use of preferred pronouns in schools. It was organized by social conservative and libertarian groups scattered in cities across Canada, which meant to march simultaneously in about a hundred cities across the country.
Days ahead of the event, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network posted a statement describing these protests as “supported by a big tent of far-right and conspiratorial groups, including Christian Nationalists, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens, and anti-public education activists.” It concluded as follows: “Local activists can and should prepare to counter-demonstrate. Find out what is happening in your city and in the region on the 20th, and make plans with local community partners, including unions and community solidarity organizations. Check out our Pride Defence Guide for safety tips and ideas.” The said guide was written in anticipation of violent counterprotests to Pride parades, but was just as applicable when the roles were reversed.
Even more impressive than the marchers’ organization was the spontaneous response by counterdemonstrators who swarmed these rallies with the intent to shut them down, often absent any organization. And the resistance was particularly fierce across British Columbia, where support for SOGI is strong and patience with transphobes thin.8
Here in Victoria, the would-be marchers were swiftly outnumbered by a hostile crowd numbering in the hundreds chanting “Go home, fascists!” over two rows of police officers separating the factions; two counterprotesters were arrested for crossing the line. The march had to be cancelled altogether for safety reasons, as even three dozen officers struggled to contain the opposition.9 The standoff lasted until the evening, as some attending the event steadfastly refused to leave the premises out of spite.
Resistance was similarly heated elsewhere. In Vancouver for example, the opposition also vastly outnumbered the participants to the point that the police could not separate the factions; tension ran so high that a brawl erupted, and one marcher was arrested, seemingly for instigating the fight.10 Factions likewise clashed in Nanaimo, where one participant was arrested.11 In Toronto, the event drew a thousand counterprotesters, and escalated to the point that a marcher was arrested for carrying a weapon while attending a public event.12 Even in bastions of conservatism like Calgary, Edmonton, and Saskatoon, marches drew significant backlash.13
An event did take place in Chilliwack, at which Barry Neufeld was witnessed wearing a sandwich-board sign reading on one side “There are no transgender children! Only confused boys & girls!” and on the other “Gender-affirming care destroys kids’ lives. It’s the new sexual lobotomy.”14
In the aftermath of the campaign, public officials rushed to make statements in support of the LGBTQ+ community. For instance, the City of Victoria issued a Declaration of Ongoing Solidarity with Gender-Diverse Residents of Victoria the following month.15 That being said, mere months later the municipality refused to deny We Unify a venue to spread transphobia, showing how little its words actually meant; since the local government had no inclination to uphold its own declaration, we activists had to rally a mob in order to enforce it.
OneBC’s residential school denialism
In British Columbia, provincial politics have become acutely polarized in recent years, reflecting a global trend.16 The BC Liberal Party rebranded itself as BC United in April 2023 with an abrupt shift to centre-right policies, and even stunningly withdrew all candidates during the 2024 election campaign in a strategic alliance with the BC Conservative Party, whose views had similarly migrated toward the far right.
That being said, BC United party leader Kevin Falcon would not countenance an outright merger with the BC Conservatives, with the following rationale: “There’s practical reasons why, but many of their candidates are frankly too extreme. I can’t merge with a party that has candidates that equate vaccinations with Nazism or apartheid.”17
It might come as a shock then that there were some reactionaries among members of the Legislative Assembly for which even the BC Conservatives were too politically correct. One of its members, Dallas Brodie, was ejected from the party after mocking the testimonies of residential school survivors on her postcast.18 She and Tara Armstrong, another party member who followed suit, founded OneBC, running on a platform including a ban on gender-affirming health care and the repeal of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
DRIPA is sacrosanct for Indigenous peoples and their allies.19 Recent calls to amend or repeal it face fierce resistance even amid a polemic following a BC Supreme Court judgment asserting that claims of Aboriginal title under DRIPA supersede those made under the Land Title Act.20
OneBC went even further by amplifying residential school denialism, an open wound in the history of Indigenous peoples’ colonial assimilation. The boarding schools, built in the aftermath of the Indian Act of 1876, were intended to extinguish their cultural heritage by removing Indigenous children from their communities and subjecting them to compulsory Christian education. Thousands are known to have died while under the custody of these institutions, the grim toll increasing as more records are uncovered.21
The party’s main argument is of course that none of the victims’ bodies have been exhumed from sites where ground-penetrating radar has detected anomalies consistent with mass graves.22 Never mind that there exist ample records attesting to these deaths,23 irrespective of whether human remains are ever recovered at those locations—and that deniers disturbing grave sites under the cover of darkness with the pretense of investigating those claims themselves undermine their own objections.24
Somehow OneBC thought touring universities to spread their calumnies was a brilliant idea, and targeted the University of Victoria over past ceremonial gestures honouring residential school victims, with a speaker event featuring party leader Dallas Brodie, notorious residential school apologist Frances Widdowson, and disgraced high school teacher Jim McMurtry. The university administration begged to differ, and stated so when it reached out to event organizer Frances Widdowson following her public announcement on social media, to deny them a venue at the beginning of December 2025 on the grounds that their event hadn’t been approved, another event already had been at that specific time and location, and the university could not implement safety measures on such short notice. Widdowson brazenly signalled in response that she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and the trio barged in anyway.
Instead of receiving a warm welcome, the three stooges were countered by a crowd of several hundred antagonists intent on cancelling the event by force. Indigenous faculty and staff held an event of their own, with speakers including Kuper Island residential school survivor Steve Sxwithul’txw.25
Considering the risk of escalation, the Saanich Police Department elected to evict the OneBC agitators for trespassing, and even arrested Widdowson. In my experience, the local police force avoids enforcement actions at protests, therefore I presume it did intervene only upon being pressured by the overwhelming opposition.
While the crowd was largely peaceful, there were a couple of physical altercations. One occurred on a nearby parking lot involving a masked counterprotester slapping a OneBC volunteer’s camera aside, amidst an ominous orange smoke screen; police officers separated the factions before the fight escalated into a brawl but declined to arrest anyone. In the description of a video clip posted on social media, Brodie bemoaned that “Canadian Police refused to enforce the law against a masked leftwing protester after he assaulted a OneBC volunteer in broad daylight, but they arrested Frances Widdowson for peaceful speech.”26 Forgive me for gloating that she was for once absolutely correct, in accordance with the leading premise of this book: Vox populi, vox Dei.
The debacle punctuated a tumultuous period within OneBC, plagued with undignified drama and infighting which triggered a crisis in Brodie’s confidence as party leader. Later that month, the party’s board voted to oust her, with the obvious intent to put Armstrong in charge, but she refused to quit; although she quickly regained control, the entire board resigned, leaving her as leader of an aptly-named party of one.27
And since Brodie is a slow learner, she doubled down on unsanctioned university speaker events, the second time in January 2026 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which unfolded likewise.28
As for Armstrong, she introduced a motion in February 2026 to repeal the Human Rights Code and abolish the BC Human Rights Tribunal, in the aftermath of the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association v. Neufeld decision; it was voted down at first reading by an uncomfortably narrow margin of 37 in favour to 50 against.29 She is herself the target of a recall petition campaign in her electoral district of Kelowna–Lake Country–Coldstream.30
Canada First’s anti-immigration rallies
Do you know what Canadians loathe even more than transphobia and residential school denialism? MAGA-hat Trumpism and its anti-immigrant rhetoric.31 But don’t tell that to the Canada First Movement, whose president Joe Anidjar ranted against unchecked and unvetted mass immigration while wearing a “Make Canada Great Again” red cap in a recent speech ahead of an anti-immigration rally:
Let’s stand up for our country. Let people know, and put this country on notice, that we’re not gonna accept the flooding of our country. We’ve got to stop mass immigration and we need to send these people back home. If you can’t respect our country and our way of life, it’s a no-go, you’ll be on the list and sent back home, and that’s just it.32
Like its American counterpart,33 Canada First runs on an openly Christian nationalist platform spreading hysterical Islamophobia. Its leaders lack the wits of most radical groups to use coded language like Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party of Canada,34 or at least euphemisms like the Dominion Society of Canada.35 Amid widespread sympathy for the Palestine liberation movement36 and overt hostility toward the Trump administration’s madcap mass deportation raids,37 the aspiring movement’s platform was bound from the onset to consign itself to ignominy.
So when in September 2025 the organization called for an anti-immigration rally at Christie Pits Park in Toronto, a city populated with an immigrant population of nearly fifty percent, it was of course inviting counterprotesters to crash the event38—especially considering it chose the site of Canada’s worst ever antisemitic riot in 1933, instigated by literal Nazi sympathizers.39 The opposition indeed did turn out en masse, overwhelming the hundred in attendance by about ten to one. The Toronto Police Service reported performing nine arrests, with charges ranging from mischief over $5000 to assault. Mounted police units even had to position themselves between the factions in order to prevent these from clashing.40
Apparently Canada First didn’t get the message, since it held more Toronto rallies, in October 2025 at Queens’ Park41 then in January 2026 at Nathan Phillips Square.42 Which, you guessed it, unfolded likewise. In a stunning display of cognitive dissonance, the organization’s blog depicted the latter event as a huge success while denouncing the counterdemonstrators’ radical tactics, the caustic media coverage, and the municipal council’s public repudiation.43 Go figure.
I would like to conclude this section by advising Canada First president Joe Anidjar to at least change his last name if he means to keep ranting about immigration, lest he invite calls for self-deportation. Here’s what online genealogy platform MyHeritage has to say about it:
The surname Anidjar has its roots in the Jewish communities of North Africa, particularly among Sephardic Jews who settled in regions such as Morocco and Algeria after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The name itself is believed to derive from the Arabic word anid, which can mean to be stubborn or to resist, reflecting traits that may have been valued or observed in the ancestors of those who bore the name. Over time, the Anidjar family, like many others, adapted to their environments, often engaging in trade, craftsmanship, or scholarly pursuits, which were common occupations among Jewish communities in the region. The surname’s historical significance is intertwined with the broader narrative of Jewish diaspora and resilience, as families bearing the name navigated various social roles and challenges throughout history.44
Chapter 11: Torches and pitchforks