Canada’s third trial this year under the 1970 law against spreading racial and religious hatred opened here last week. The defendants, Donald Andrews, 43, and Robert Smith, 34, are charged with “wilfully promoting hatred” under Section 281 of the Criminal Code.
Both are closely linked with “The Nationalist Report,” an organ of the Nationalist Party of Canada. Smith is editor of the Report which is also known as “The Andrews Report.”
Crown Attorney Michael-Anne MacDonald told Judge E.F. Wren, that the Crown’s case against the two men would rest on the contents of “The National Report”. It contains “a substantial amount of anti-Jewish hatred” but the principal targets are non-white racial groups, MacDonald said.
The trial was adjourned until December 9 to give Judge Wren time to study more than 600 pages of documents, including 20 editions of “The Nationalist Report.” The accused chose to be tried by the judge instead of trial by jury — an option influenced apparently by the fact that two other anti-Semitic hate mongers were convicted in jury trials last January and last March.
In January, Jim Keegstra, a former high school teacher in Eckville, Alberta, was found guilty of disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda in his classroom. In March, a jury convicted publisher Ernst Zundel of “spreading false news”, notably that the Holocaust was a hoax invented by Jews.
According to MacDonald, “The Nationalist Report” contains “everything you always wanted to know about hate propaganda.”
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