photo supplied
The BC Human Rights Tribunal has quashed the complaint of District of a North Vancouver council watcher and frequent critic who alleged the district was discriminating against him for being gay.
Hazen Colbert, who ran for council in 2014, filed a complaint with the tribunal in January 2017, a little over a year after the district established a policy to restrict some of Colbert’s emails from going to council or staff because of inappropriate comments in them.
Colbert alleged the district only came up with and applied the policy to him because he advocated for LGBTQ causes at council, including requesting a Pride flag be raised for Pride celebrations in the Lower Mainland, raising the Trans flag, forming an LGBTQ advisory committee and the creation of LGBTQ supportive seniors housing.
Blocking or redacting his emails would amount to a violation of the B.C. Human Rights Code, which forbids denying a service or facility customarily available to the public based on sexual orientation, he argued.
Colbert argued the district was trying to insulate itself from and avoid input from a “brash, loud and obnoxious gay male who has enough self-education to self-represent in the justice system including with the BCHRT.”
The district denied it was being discriminatory and said the policy was only put in place after Colbert refused to stop sending “inappropriate, offensive, misleading, harassing and threatening correspondence.”
Some examples cited in the Feb. 14 ruling: calling the mayor an “old whore,” and a later email referring to a “bulge in [the mayor’s] trousers” during a public presentation to youth, an email to a council member congratulating her “on the success of your breast augmentation surgery,” telling her to hold back on excessive makeup because it made her “look like a drag queen,” a message sent to a councillor’s personal email account saying “You were so stupid tonight :?)” and “Yes I will fuck up your life. And if [woman] tries to obstruct me… hey I have photos of her :?).”
Colbert also sent an email to a council member in which he asks for the councillor’s kids’ soccer schedules “so I can chat with their mother, or even your wife, directly about your poor judgment,” and he left a message on Mayor Richard Walton’s stepson’s Facebook page saying “I have a lengthy file on you and your family – every person. Richard is best to resign as Mayor.”
Colbert argued the district was being “extraordinarily selective” from 635 pieces of correspondence he’d sent, and that amounted to a “smear campaign.”
Council reviewed the policy in December 2016 and decided to renew it for another year.
The district applied to have the complaint dismissed by the tribunal on the grounds there was no link between the policy and Colbert’s sexuality. Tribunal member Devyn Cousineau agreed.
“I have reviewed all of the extensive material filed in this case. I find that there is nothing within it that is capable of establishing a connection between Mr. Colbert’s sexual orientation and the district’s decision to apply the policy to him. On the contrary, the information provided unambiguously supports the district’s characterization of his communications as inappropriate, harassing, and threatening,” Cousineau wrote, adding later, “In these circumstances, his apparent attempt to claim protection under the code because of his sexual orientation in order to shield himself from any sanction arising from his conduct, trivializes the genuine discrimination that members of the LGBTQ community continue to face on a daily basis. Mr. Colbert’s sexual orientation does not insulate him from the expectation that he treat people with basic courtesy and respect.”
Cousineau agreed with the district’s position that it must provide its employees and members of council with a workplace free of harassment.
“No one should be required to come to their workplace and endure the types of communications to which Mr. Colbert appears to have subjected district council and staff,” she wrote.
In closing the ruling, Cousineau ordered Colbert to pay $750 in costs to the district for his continued improper behavior, including “attacks and insults” emailed to the district’s lawyer after the complaint was filed and threats to escalate the legal dispute and seek higher damages if the district didn’t engage in settlement discussions with him.
After the ruling was posted on the Human Rights Tribunal website, Colbert wrote to request it be pulled down until certain “errors” had been corrected, specifically, that he was watching the home of a municipal councillor, that he had sexualized women, that he acted in a manner that was opportunistic and disingenuous, and trivialized discrimination that members of the LGBTQ community face, and that he used the human rights process as a weapon.
“I can live with the BCHRT’s decision to dismiss and the cost decisions. I cannot live with a wholly inaccurate representation of who I am. Please edit the narrative to accurately reflect fact,” he wrote.
That request was denied in another decision posted on Feb. 22.
“The corrections that Mr. Colbert seeks go beyond technical errors in the decision, into the substance of the analysis. He has not shown why considerations of fairness or justice require the decision to be reopened and, in my view, doing so runs counter to the principle of finality in administrative proceedings,” Cousineau wrote.
