A former Chilliwack School Board trustee has lawyered up as he faces two weeks of hearings before a BC Human Rights Tribunal prompted by comments made seven years ago.In 2017, Barry Neufeld posted to Facebook, "At the risk of being labelled a bigoted homophobe, I have to say that I support traditional family values and I agree with the College of Pediatricians that letting little children choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse."Two days later, he apologized to “those who felt hurt” by his decision. Regardless, the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association filed a complaint against him with the BC Human Rights Commission. The complaint sat unaddressed for six years..Former BC trustee faces hate speech complaint, six years after calling transitions 'child abuse'.The Western Standard previously reported that Neufeld would represent himself. However, the article prompted lawyer James Kitchen to offer his services. Kitchen discussed the case on Derek Sloan’s Rumble Channel Funding the Fight.“They're saying that there's been discrimination against some of their teachers on the basis of gender identity. And they're also saying that Barry is engaged in hate speech because he said things like transing kids is child abuse, which, of course, obviously it is. And it's not hateful to say that.”Kitchen said the workplace discrimination claim is “nonsense” because trustees only employ the superintendent.“He has no employment connection to these teachers. So that claim doesn't even get off the ground on a technicality. And technicalities matter. Our law is built on that,” Kitchen explained.As for the hate speech complaint, Kitchen said Neufeld legitimately opposed ideas and practices, not people.“It is junk to say you can switch your genders and all that, and we should be able to say that. That's free speech, it's not discrimination. That's what this is ultimately going to come down to.”The BC Human Rights Commission has made itself an intervenor in the tribunal hearing.“This is a really big cultural, ideological battle right now, sort of truth and free speech versus always trans madness, and the commission's on the side of the trans-madness,” Kitchen said.“I think they're wrong, very wrong, but they really do believe it's hate speech to say things like 'Transing kids is child abuse,' or, 'Boys don't belong in the girls' washrooms', or ‘You can't actually switch your gender successfully,’” the lawyer added.According to Kitchen, the complainant’s main witness was to testify that Neufeld was creating an unjustified moral panic by his comments. That witness recently “backed out." Kitchen says the complainants are trying to get judicial notice to accept this claim as a fact. Kitchen argues that point is inadmissible without a witness to back it.The hearings began in Vancouver on Monday November 25 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time in a room that can only accommodate ten of Neufeld’s supporters. The retired former trustee is posting a link to a live audio stream of the hearing at BarryNeufeld.com.The first week of hearings is expected to include testimony from Neufeld’s opponents, while his defense witnesses will talk in the second week. Neufeld expects to speak on Friday December 6, which should be the final day of hearings.“I should be paying James [Kitchen] a quarter of a million dollars, but he's doing it for an estimated 60 grand, and we're about a quarter of the way to raising that at this point,” Neufeld said.“The BC Teachers Federation is trying to control public education, and they have done everything in their power to try and shut me up, but it hasn't worked,” Neufeld added.Kitchen believes the law is on Neufeld’s side, but expects the tribunal to rule against him anyway.“If you're a judge or a tribunal member or whatever, you get promotions when you side with the right people…with the government or with the elite society,” Kitchen said.“I hope that the BC Supreme Court, or maybe even the BC Court of Appeal, would get this right at law, but we'll have to see. So I think ultimately, this is probably heading for the courts. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.”UPDATE: In response to Kitchen's allegation the commission supported "trans-madness," a spokesperson for the commission told the Western Standard by email "that intervenors (like our Office in this case) do not represent either side in a case; their submissions must be different from the arguments being made by the parties to the case, and submissions must not advocate for either side to win or lose.An email from the tribunal to Kitchen on November 24, later shared with Western Standard, said that November 18 was the deadline for requests to join the audio live stream of proceedings.
