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Doug Christie, Jr. (April 24, 1946 – March 11, 2013) was a Canadian lawyer and political activist based in Victoria, British Columbia, who was known nationally for his defence of clients such as Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, former Nazi prison guard Michael Seifert and right-wing extremist Paul Fromm among others.
Doug Christie was brought into the world in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved on from the graduate school of the University of British Columbia in 1970. He was the originator and general advice of the Canadian Free Speech League and was most popular for guarding people blamed for Nazi atrocities or bigot, against Semitic or neo-Nazi action. He was additionally the originator and head of the Western Canada Concept, a rebel party which ran in British Columbia and government ally, and the Western Block Party, a traditional bureaucratic ideological group supporting the division of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba from Canadian Confederation.
He initially came to public consideration as a legal counselor in 1983 when he became James Keegstra’s lawyer after the teacher was terminated from his work and criminally accused of unyieldingly advancing contempt by showing his understudies that there was a Jewish scheme, alongside spreading other bigoted thoughts. His guard of Keegstra carried him to the consideration of Ernst Zndel who held Christie in September 1984 to shield him against criminal allegations identified with Holocaust refusal with co-counsel Barbara Kulaszka. Christie enrolled the help of frank common freedom supporter Dr. Gary Botting, who in 1984 had distributed a book on George Orwell and Jehovah’s Witnesses.[1] Christie summoned Dr. Botting as a specialist observer to both the Zndel preliminary in Toronto and the Keegstra preliminary in Red Deer Alberta, where Botting had directed a study exhibiting that Keegstra couldn’t get a reasonable preliminary in Red Deer due to pretrial exposure. The Alberta Court of Appeal decided that the adjudicator ought to have permitted Botting’s proof to be heard. Afterward, Botting turned into the primary beneficiary of the George Orwell Free Speech Award subsequent to surrendering his showing post as a teacher of English at Red Deer College and entering graduate school. He at last articled for Doug Christie in Victoria, from where he chipped away at a few of Christie’s most infamous cases. Notwithstanding, Botting in this way took incredible measures to separate himself from Christie. “It is obvious to me that your Canadian Free Speech League is simply a front for an enemy of semitic, Pro-Nazi plan.” Botting wrote in a public letter to Christie, proceeding: “In the Canadian Free Speech League, the main assessments genuinely permitted are those which adjust to your own. Also, those suppositions, as you understand, are racist and outrightly supportive of Nazi. It is no fortuitous event that both you and Ernst Zndel for the most part commend your birthday celebrations [Both are on April 24] on April 20, Hitler’s Birthday. It is no occurrence that a large portion of the Canadian Free Speech League yearly honors functions have been held as near that date as possible.”[2] Christie would go about as Zndel’s lawyer in a few cases over the resulting twenty years up to Zndel’s extradition from Canada in 2005. Christie’s support in the interest of Keegstra and Zndel prompted him going about as lawful direction in various outstanding cases including extreme right figures including:
Ernst Zndel
Terry Long, previous head of the Aryan Nations in Canada;
Malcolm Ross of New Brunswick who, as Keegstra, was an instructor terminated for against Semitic movement;
three affirmed heads of the Ku Klux Klan in Manitoba;
Rudy Stanko of the World Church of the Creator;
Tony McAleer after he was accused of broadcasting disdain discourse via telephone and on the web;
John Ross Taylor of the Western Guard Party and Aryan Nations;
Imre Finta who was claimed to be a Nazi conflict criminal and associate (see R. v. Finta);
Doug Collins, a late paper reporter brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Commission for anti-Jewish and bigoted remarks;
Paul Fromm, top of the extreme right “Residents for Foreign Aid Reform” and “Canadians for Freedom of Expression”, and member in neo-Nazi and bigoted social occasions, who was terminated from his occupation as an educator for his political movement;
Woman Jane Birdwood, a British adherent of Oswald Mosley and wholesaler of disdain promulgation;
Wolfgang Droege of the Heritage Front;
David Ahenakew, who recognized offering anti-Jewish remarks in a 2002 meeting with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Jack Klundert, a Windsor, Ontario optometrist who doesn’t completely accept that the Constitution of Canada concedes the Federal Government the capacity to gather pay tax[3]
Christie posted material on the previous site worked by Bernard Klatt, on what had been called[by whom?] “Canada’s most famous wellspring of disdain propaganda”.[4][5]
Notwithstanding his broad work on opportunity of articulation cases, Christie took part in wide scope of causes addressing issues of individual freedoms all the more by and large. He addressed various people in common activities against the police, with an end goal to guarantee police responsibility, and in 1987 effectively addressed Gary Botting in a maligning suit against Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
“There is a developing inlet between the police and public trust, which must be fixed and crossed with any expectation of rebuilding of confidence when the police are decided for their lead by the actual public and not by their consistent collaborators in the actual framework”, Doug Christie wrote in a letter to the Victoria Times-Colonist. “The fundamental element of a general public where residents and police are in settlement on the requirement of the law is basically that the law applies to police and residents in equivalent measure. The police can’t be exempt from the laws that apply to everyone else. With the current arrangement of responsibility, that impression is well-founded.”[6]
Doug Christie additionally acted in kid misgiving cases, most outstandingly that of Paul and Zabeth Bayne, a Hope, BC couple whose kids were seized by the Ministry of Children and Family Development for a very long time, then, at that point, in the end returned.[7][8]
From 2007 to 2010, Christie addressed Bruce and Donna Montague in a sacred test of Canada’s weapon vault and different guns laws.[citation needed] The protected test was eventually excused by the Ontario Court of Appeal, yet Christie kept on addressing the Montagues in their endeavors to oppose common and criminal relinquishment applications by the Crown.[citation needed]
In January 2012, Christie turned into the primary legal advisor to effectively challenge an application under British Columbia’s Civil Forfeiture Act, when the BC Supreme Court found that the retroactive relinquishment of a truck ensuing to a criminal arraignment was “obviously not in light of a legitimate concern for justice”.[9] This choice was maintained on appeal.[10]
In September, 2012, Christie effectively guarded Terry Tremaine, a Regina math educator charged under Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code, by building up that there had been absurd postponement in carrying the body of evidence against him to preliminary
