Blood from a stone? Chilliwack teachers unlikely to ever see a nickel from Barry Neufeld despite $750,000 human rights violation decision
Chilliwack Teachers’ Association lauds BC Human Rights Tribunal ruling a year after hearing was held into Neufeld’s decade of discrimination
Nine years after a now infamous social media rant, eight years after BCTF president Glen Hansman called him a bigot, six years after he was censured by the Chilliwack school board, four years after he lost re-election and called me the ‘R’ word, three years after the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed his defamation lawsuit against the BCTF president, one year after he lost a defamation lawsuit to a trustee, three months after he was ordered to spend a day in jail for refusing to pay that lawsuit’s settlement, and two months after he “thanked” me for writing so much about him, the BC Human Rights Tribunal has concluded that, yes, Barry Neufeld violated three sections of the BC Human Rights Code with his ongoing public posts about the LGBTQ community.
Phew. I have indeed written a lot about Neufeld over the last decade. He’s been a newsworthy public figure. A metric crap ton of ink and digital bytes have been spilled ever since his infamous 2017 Facebook post that kicked off years of teeth-gnashing over what kids in school learn about the LGBTQ community or if it is “gender ideology,” depending what side of the fracas you land on.
The Chilliwack Teachers’ Association (CTA) and the BC Teachers Federation (BCTF) initiated a human rights complaint against Barry Neufeld after his very public Facebook post from Oct. 23, 2017, where he said he could “no longer sit on [his] hands” and he had to “stand up and be counted” by expressing his angry opposition to the (ahem, BC Liberal) government’s implementation of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) 123 program meant as an anti-bullying resource teachers could use if anti-LGBTQ issues arose in classrooms.
The rant was riddled with inaccuracies (e.g. “Teachers must not refer to ‘boys and girls’” and SOGI is a “weapon of propaganda”), but also the unjustified self-aggrandizing notion that people give a shit about his opinion on anything much less his admiration for “traditional family values” and whether or not Russia and Paraguay did a good job standing up to “these radical cultural nihilists.”
The most telling of all in his 221-screed 8.5 years ago was the caveat often shoehorned in before a homophobic rant. You know the one, “at the risk of being labelled a bigoted homophobe...”
He was labelled a bigoted homophobe by then BCTF president Glen Hansman. He sued for defamation in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which tossed out the suit because the insults were fair comment and his lawsuit is now a precedent in Canada for so-called anti-SLAPP legislation.
He also said a lot more, a lot, and it got him into trouble over and over again. When he called school trustee Carin Bondar a “striptease artist” for a video she made satirizing Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball video, he then lost a defamation suit to her.
When he posted on Facebook that “the three re- - - -s: Jessica Peters, Paul Henderson and Tara Hiebert have to work from their homes” he didn’t face a defamation lawsuit, although he could have. What he did face was much worse in the form of relentless public and media scorn for using that word that shalt not be spoken. (In Canada at least. American comedians use it all the time.)
As often happens with someone who is both controversial, radical on whatever end of the political spectrum, and narcissistic, Barry just wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t help himself. And by the time the shit storm grew to a shit hurricane, he had hero status in a small subset of bored bigoted blowhards who, to this day, like to stand on street corners and bridge overpasses to make sure everyone knows how stupid they are.
Barry did it over and over and over again. His sustained a public campaign mostly via Facebook posts (that I rarely saw because he blocked me so long ago) that narrowed to focus on the transgender community.
That got individual teachers and their union riled up enough to file the human rights complaint. It took forever to get to the BC Human Rights Tribunal but was finally heard by the three-member panel (Robin Dean, Laila Said, and Devyn Cousineau), over several days at the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, concluding in May 2025.
In a decision released to the public on Wednesday, (Feb. 18, 2026), the tribunal found that Neufeld violated sections 7(1)(a), 7(1)(b), and 13 of the BC Human Rights Code. The panel found that six of Neufeld's “publications” were likely to expose trans, gay, and lesbian people to hatred or contempt based on their gender identity and/or sexual orientation, with the potential to lead to their discriminatory treatment, a violation of s. 7(1)(b). The Tribunal also found his conduct created a discriminatory work environment for LGBTQ+ teachers (s. 7(1)(a)) and violated the discriminatory publications provision (s. 13).
For its part, the BCTF was ready with two press releases written (at least I suspect for good planning, depending on how it went), celebrating the “significant decision” affirming the rights of LGBTQ teachers and others “to be free from discrimination, including attacks on trans identity as ‘gender ideology,’” the BCTF said in its news release.
“Critically, the decision affirms that trans people exist – and that claiming to ‘believe’ that gender identity is not separate from sex assigned at birth is a form of existential denial,” the BCTF continued, quoting directly from the tribunal’s decision to say that this denial “pushes the idea that trans people have an agenda rather than being just another demographic group. As this decision illustrates, such terms can create the conditions for discrimination and hatred to flourish.”
CTA president Reid Clark's comment provided in the news release focused on inclusive work environments.
“This ruling recognizes the very real harm experienced by 2SLGBTQIA+ teachers in Chilliwack and reinforces that they have the right to work in an environment free from discrimination and fear. We are hopeful that this ruling will lead to more inclusive working and learning environments for all 2SLGBTQIA+ folks in schools and beyond.”
What’s that? $750,000? Bwa, ha, ha, ha!
As a remedy for his human rights violations, the tribunal ordered Neufeld to pay $750,000 in costs to the Chilliwack Teachers' Association, plus an additional $10,000 for improper conduct during the proceedings. If you watched or listened to the proceedings, much of which I did, this latter award makes good sense. “Improper conduct” is the polite way of pointing out that Neufeld was, ahem, a bit of a dick.
If the CTA is celebrating this remedy it’s most certainly doing so in its symbolic nature alone. That's because it’s widely known that Neufeld might have one nickel but he’s looking for a second one to have two to rub together.
When he lost his defamation suit to Bondar, Neufeld was ordered to pay her $45,000 and he publicly laughed about that because he had no money to possibly pay that. That’s why he was ceremoniously “arrested” on the Chilliwack courthouse steps on Nov. 24, 2025, and ordered to spend one day in jail for his lack of payments to Bondar.
If this were to be the end of the Neufeld saga, few would shed a tear. But he’ll be back. His supporters will lift him up on his throne of misplaced virtue signalling to keep the message alive, whatever it is next. As with Donald Trump, you never quite know what Neufeld will say next but when he does, there is a collective, “Ya, that sounds like something he'd say.”
Given that he now owes more than $800,000, and given that his stories have garnered national attention, his Supreme Court of Canada case even now serving as a precedent because of its relevance to the nascent anti-SLAPP legislation, maybe he should write a book to drum up some cash.
Hey Barry, if you’re looking for a ghost writer, gimme a call.
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Paul J. Henderson
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