Ezra Levant has been doing an excellent job of tracking the Alberta Human Rights Commission's disposition of the case of the Rev. Stephen Boissoin, most recently in this post. As Ezra points out, the AHRC has ordered Boissoin to apologize to the complainant in the case, Dr. Darren Lund. Lund is quoted in the Red Deer Advocate as saying "I certainly didn’t request an apology, so that was a bit of a surprise. I don’t see the value in an insincere apology."
In common with other well known HRC complainants, it appears Dr. Lund has trouble with certain aspects of the truth, like telling it, for example. His original complaint expressly asks the AHRC to force Boissoin's apology. The complaint can be found here.
The scent of a rat always gets the corgis going, so they were off on the trail of Dr. Lund before you could say "identifiable group." So who is Dr. Darren Lund?
He's a former high-school teacher and now an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. His homepage can be found here, along with a fetching photograph. In the homepage summary, it states that "His research, activism and teaching focuses on social justice issues in schools and communities."
[Editorial note: I always thought universities were for primarily for education, but apparently that now falls second to 'activism' in order of importance.]
Go read it all... you'll soon figure the good Dr. out. It's the standard human rights industry CV. A couple of highlights stood out for me, however. In the summer 2006 edition of the Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Dr. Lund wrote an article in which the title describes Alberta as "the Heartland of Hate." So much for his 'activism' against sterotyping.
The rest of his work is devoted to encouraging his 'social-justice' agenda in the classrooms of Alberta and the nation. Dressed up in the usual diarrhea-like verbage of his trade, what he's really all about is small l-liberal political indoctrination in the classroom.
The mere fact of the existence of such programs signifies what's wrong with Canada's education systems - never mind the fact that students don't have enough textbooks, or have crumbling schools - the $128,000 that Dr. Lund alone has received for his research over the last three years will ensure that by Gaia, they have social justice and the bloated, bureaucratic, self-important, tin-pot dictators he's educating to enforce it.
Not that Dr. Lund is in favour of just anyone having access to the classrooms of the nation to spread their views, mind you. Diversity is one thing, but you can't let everyone in. He spent a lot of time and effort last year trying to kill the Operation Christmas Child fundraising efforts in Alberta's schools, because, spirit-creator-Allah-God-Jehovah-Gaia-Vishnu forbid, they have a Christian connection. And after the whole sorry Human Rights Commission fiasco we know how Dr. Lund feels about Christians.
Diversity for everyone! Muzzle the Christian!