Punishing personal beliefs

On its way to the USA

[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 25, 2002]

More bad news from Canada, where most pretenses to upholding individual rights are gradually being dropped. In prior commentaries, we described a "board of inquiry" that ruled against a man who used Bible verses in a newspaper advertisement, told of a case where just the distribution of literature was equated to a "hate crime," and described some of the bizarre stipulations of the country's "Human Rights Act."

Now comes the story of Paul Fromm, a Canadian nationalist, who, for years, has been outspoken against Canada's liberal and lax immigration laws. He is founder and director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE), and is a well-known critic of the government's multicultural policies, that prescribe, even demand preferential treatment for some groups, at the expense of others.

From 1973, he was a teacher of Latin and English in the Canadian school system. According to his superiors, his work was considered outstanding, and he always received high ratings from his students. But in the eyes of those who pressured the Peel Board of Education to fire him, his failing lay in his extracurricular activities. On several occasions, Fromm participated in events and conferences sponsored by groups that forthrightly advocate for the rights of white Canadians, which in today's PC climate, automatically puts them into the "racist" camp--"racism" being a de facto crime in Canada.

In 1993, he was warned in a letter that his teacher's contract might be terminated if he did not stop participating in events that "contradict the school board's values of multiculturalism and ethnocultural diversity." From 1997, when he was fired, until this month, the system's education bureaucrats kicked his case around and struggled to justify their action, since he had done nothing illegal. It was especially frustrating, since there was never any evidence, and no complaint from students, either colored or white, that Fromm had ever brought up political matters in his classes or attempted to recruit anyone to a cause. Undaunted by these facts, the Board of Education put an end to his 24-year teaching career.

Fromm is supported by his teachers union that challenged his firing and, in 1998, an arbitration hearing began. This month, he learned that a three-man arbitration panel ruled against his reinstatement, 2-1.

Here is some news coverage from the National Post (3/13/02):

An Ontario arbitration board has upheld the firing of a teacher who participated in conferences held by white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups. The firing came even though the board acknowledged the teacher never expressed racist views in the classroom or discriminated against any student.

Mr. Fromm, who calls himself a "nationalist" and a "populist," said yesterday he will appeal the ruling. "What this tells teachers is they do not have the right to freedom of speech on their own time, if the board doesn't like it. It is telling teachers with unpopular political views to shut up," he said. "I was there to teach English, not to make a political statement. That was my job, that's what I did. And I did it very well."

Mr. Fromm was defended by his union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, which argued the board failed to make clear a standard of acceptable off-duty conduct. The union added none of the statements made by Mr. Fromm fell within the category of hate speech as defined in Canada's Criminal Code. Anticipating the delicacy of the ruling, the board concluded: "Nothing in this award is to be taken as suggesting that a teacher can be disciplined for privately held beliefs."

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