Ontario Mayor Harold McQuaker, who refused to pay damages ordered against him by a human rights tribunal, has had the funds garnished from his bank account – despite his protest.
The local pride organization of Emo, Ont., Borderland Pride, won a tribunal hearing against the city and its 77-year-old mayor for allegedly “discriminating” against the LGBTQ+ community. The decision followed after the township voted against an official Pride Month proclamation in June.
The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal found that McQuaker voted against the motion “in bad faith” and thus was liable to pay damages of $5,000 and was also ordered to undergo DEI training. The township was also fined $10,000 with other councillors who voted against the motion required to undergo training.
After McQuaker publicly protested the tribunal’s orders as “extortion,” Borderland Pride posted to its Facebook group to celebrate that they garnished the mayor’s bank account.
“Sure, sex is great, but have you ever garnished your mayor’s bank account after he publicly refused to comply with a Tribunal’s order to pay damages?” the group said In response to a GiveSendGo fundraiser, claiming that the mayor had his account garnished.
In a separate post, Borderland Pride defended the decision to force the mayor to pay the damages ordered against him, saying if orders from courts and tribunals couldn’t be enforced, “our legal system would collapse.”
Another post by the group applauded the city council’s phone line being overwhelmed, dubbing the town’s community line “Antifa customer care.” The group also expressed disbelief that anyone claiming they are gay but disagreeing with Borderland Pride’s lawsuit is genuine.
Josh Dehaas, a civil liberties lawyer at the Canadian Constitution Foundation and co-author of a new book on free speech, says this case will impact civil liberties in Canada.
In an interview, he told True North that he disagreed with the tribunal’s decision to find that a proclamation is a service and the decision to say that the mayor was not performing his role in public office in “good faith.”
“The point of a proclamation or raising a flag is to endorse a particular political idea,” he said. “What they’re saying is, if you don’t endorse the right idea here, you’re going to have to pay money to the people who asked you to endorse the idea that you disagree with.”
Borderland Pride successfully argued to the tribunal that a proclamation is a service provided by a municipality and cannot discriminate against any group protected under the Human Rights Code. The group’s argument was backed up by case law, but Dehaas believes the case law is wrong.
“It’s political speech when you make a proclamation or raise a particular flag, and so you’re forcing compelled speech onto the mayor and councillors by doing this,” Dehaas said.
He argued that mandating towns use the exact phrasing of any Code-protected activist group would allow any organization of any nationality to force towns to fly its flag or proclaim its celebrations.
Dehaas said using the same logic as the tribunal, a Chinese national could demand that towns raise Chinese communist flags to mark the day communists took over China. In a column written in the National Post, he made a similar argument using the Palestinian flag as an example.
The only way the decision could be overturned is through a re-review by the same tribunal or if, through appeal, it was found to be unreasonable. McQuaker would be protected from the orders if it could be argued that the mayor’s comments were not “in bad faith,” as the tribunal initially found.
The tribunal relied on comments made by McQuaker outside of the council, where he made the point that there shouldn’t be a Pride proclamation if there isn’t a proclamation or flag waving for straight town residents.
Dehaas, a self-described gay man, doesn’t find the comments discriminatory, and he agrees that governments should treat people equally.
He said the case would disincentivize Ontarians from volunteering for public office, as they will be compelled to make any proclamation an activist group demands of them, irrespective of their conscience and free expression.
“It’s a little bit absurd in a democracy,” Dehaas said. “Voters should decide what they want their municipal city counsellors to do, and if they don’t like a decision they make, they should just vote them out and not run to some tribunal or some court.”