Did you miss Barry? BCTF v. Neufeld at B.C. Human Rights Tribunal continues & wraps up Wednesday
A reminder of what we’ve seen so far in the hearing into hate speech allegations against former Chilliwack school trustee
Was disgraced former Chilliwack school board trustee Barry Neufeld’s ongoing discriminatory speech merely offensive or did it violate the Human Rights Code?
This is the ongoing question that is the focus of BC Teachers Federation (BCTF) versus Barry Neufeld at the BC Human Rights Tribunal, which started in November with dates in December, February, March, and resumes today, May 21, 2025.
The BCTF filed the complaint against Neufeld back in 2023 alleging that he engaged in speech that is likely to expose people to hatred or contempt on the basis of gender identity or expression and sexual orientation.
Neufeld is an infamous homophobe who has been posting offensive screeds against the LGBTQ community since he first lost his marbles in 2017 with a long and ignorant Facebook post. This is what started all of this seven and a half years ago, Oct. 23, 2017.
Again, the central question being considered is: Do the ongoing comments and interviews and speeches and statements Neufeld made since then regarding the trans community constitute hate speech or free speech?
Tuning in via phone to the hearing for most dates (I missed the very start in November), here's a summary of what we've seen so far as the closing arguments begin this morning.
November
November 26: To start this day was former BCTF president Glen Hansman questioned by BCTF counsel and then cross-examined by Neufeld's lawyer James Kitchen.
Hansman provided some of the history of the implementation of SOGI 123 across B.C., from his time in an anti-homophobia role at the Vancouver school board up until the BC Liberal government's implementation of SOGI 123 under several education ministers ending with Mike Bernier.
Hansman explained a crucial point that is intentionally overlooked by people such as Neufeld, namely, that SOGI 123 is not curriculum. It is not social studies or math or history, it is a program to help acceptance and inclusiveness in schools using resources that teachers can go to as needed to help let students know that people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer are here, always have been, and the time for hatred against the community is long past.
"They exist," Hansman succinctly pointed out in response to repeated harassing questioning from Kitchen. "They are here."
Kitchen tried to get Hansman to admit that accepting that transgender people exist is a "belief" system somehow equivalent to Barry Neufeld's belief that trans people don't exist.
Kitchen was getting very frustrated because Hansman wouldn't answer the questions in a way that followed his narrative.
"There are students enrolled in public schools who are transgender and non-binary," Hansman said. "Likewise there are employees in school districts who are trans and non-binary and gay and lesbian."
To summarize, Kitchen tried to equate Barry Neufeld’s beliefs (e.g. the world is 6,000 years old – his example), which are based on his understanding of his Orthodox Christian church’s leaders’ interpretations of what they read in ancient, translated texts, with the fact that trans people exist and there are more than two genders.
December
December 4: Conspiracy theorist and Chilliwack Secondary School teacher Rob Bogunovic was on the stand and surprisingly invoked yours truly. He accused me of being in cahoots with the Chilliwack Teachers Association and LGBTQ activists to pick on Neufeld.
“The BCTF and CTA and The Progress newspaper and other activists focused on Barry he became the centre of a firestorm," he said in part. “It seemed like a co-ordinated effort to make social conservatives intimidated and afraid. It was a very vitriolic climate."
Bogunovic then claimed that I made decisions about who voters should choose in elections.
"The trustee has less power than the editor of The Chillliwack Progress. You could see who the paper wanted you to vote for."
In addition to Jordan Peterson, in defending Barry Neufeld's persistent anti-LGBTQ comments today to the tribunal, Bogunovic repeatedly evoked Kenneth Zucker who is generally shunned by the mental-health community because of his decades of promotion of conversion therapy. Zucker was psychologist-in-chief at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), but was fired and his gender identity clinic shut down after several complaints in 2015.
Dec. 5: This day started with former school trustee and young-Earth creationist Darrell Furgason on the witness stand who began with one of the best quotes so far.
"My pronoun is doctor," he said with a straight face.
Furgason allegedly has a PhD from a university not in North America in an unknown subject. Even if he really does have a PhD, he should not be referred to as "Dr." as per Canadian Press style. The title is reserved for medical professionals.
One exchange between Kitchen and Furgason on the topic of when Barry made a post saying that teachers and trans ideologues are using "mafia and bolshevik techniques... [the teachers who testified] say this was attacking teachers, they felt unsafe."
Darrell Furgason: “Teachers are not supposed to be trans ideologues. There’s no mention in any of this thing of individuals. If a teacher happens to identify as a trans ideologue, do they open themselves up to question? It’s no different than a holocaust denier.”
Furgason also got upset about having his feelings hurt when his creepiness regarding how young girls were dressing was called out in public. He referenced a discussion about dress codes at the school board, which led to him being accused of promoting rape culture.
"I said dress codes were existent in every workplace. You can’t turn up naked. In the debate I said I was in favour of the teachers having the authority to set the tone in their own workplace. I said words that were red flags to a bull. I said modesty and decency in dress should be the main criteria.
"I ended up being accused by Glen Hansman and the longshoreman union of promoting a rape culture. I was downtown and [someone] said you are in The Province. Glen Hansman and the misuse of power. We are victims in this. In 2019 I'm accused of promoting a rape culture. Talk about slander. Talk about hate speech. Talk about bullying. My kids said to get out of the board right away. They are going to bomb your house.
“I was promoting a rape culture to talk about modesty. I must have a problem as a dirty old man without seeing naked flesh without some temptation. This is blatant intimidation of a trustee.
“This is what the communist does to punish opposition. I’m not promoting a rape culture according to Glen Hansman. It’s slander. I should have taken him to the human rights tribunal."
Dec. 6: Most long stretches of what Neufeld said on this day didn't warrant repeating or paraphrasing or even discussing, but I share this 120-word anachronistic rant without comment:
“I have no problem with boys taking ballet lessons or learning to figure skate. That doesn’t mean they are a girl trapped in a man’s body. We used to have tomboys and they used to like wrestling with the boys and to carve things. That doesn’t mean they are a boy trapped in a girl’s body. Quite often the atypical behaviour is a sign that this child should be encouraged to live as the opposite gender or make body modifications to match their favourite activity, and then it changed over the years. A lot of tomboys were rough and tumble and then changed and they get married and have a beautiful wedding dress and are stay-at-home moms and really enjoy their work.”
February
On Feb. 24, Neufeld's statements ranged from his claim that he is an expert regarding gender dysphoria to his repeated denial that he's a child molester to testimony that he sold his townhouse because of things I wrote.
It was one wacky thing after another.
Neufeld poorly explained why he improperly posted materials from the hearing so far publicly on YouTube, including the names of three teachers testifying at the hearing whose names are protected by a publication ban.
He discussed his daughter and that the possible gender dysphoria she was going through, how he said it was over, crisis averted. He then gave a physical description of her that was a tad too detailed for some people: "She’s a gorgeous looking young woman now with all the feminine curves and her short boy butch cut has now grown to beautiful shoulder-length hair."
Neufeld shared how he thinks white heterosexuals are the real victims in modern society: "Anyone with traditional family values are treated with disdain. White people are treated with derision.... I went on a long trip [to the U.S.] and didn’t see very many white people in what are very lucrative government jobs. Everyone is doing well. Diversity, equity and inclusion is creating anything but a harmonious society."
"Nobody is born in the wrong body," Neufeld explained to the hearing. "It’s an ancient Christian doctrine that the soul is genderless and the identity is in the body that we are born with."
During some of the testimony where he went into detail about his vast knowledge of transgenderism based on Christian doctrine, the BCTF lawyer objected on the record to make it clear that what Neufeld was saying was not fact but was his opinion.
His lawyer agreed, but Neufeld piped up: "I self-identify as an expert on gender dysphoria."
Neufeld insisted the implication in the community was that he is a child molester, and he repeatedly set the record straight: “I have no desire to molest children”
One of the witnesses for the BCTF was his next-door neighbour who identified as queer and felt bullied and harassed by Neufeld.
"Oh baloney," Neufeld said, and was asked by Kitchen why he sold his townhouse and moved.
"I was afraid of her," he replied, then claiming yours truly was at least indirectly to blame. "I saw this article from Paul Henderson. He talked to [teacher B] and she said I was probably a drunk because my car had a lot of dents in it. I was afraid she was feeding him information because he was writing horrible articles about me.”
March
No, Barry Neufeld never spoke at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. But would he? Also "no," he says.
Neufeld was asked if he ever spoke at a KKK meeting by a lawyer for the BCTF on March 10..
"It's because of this phoney brochure," Neufeld said. "I think that was a phoney news report generated by a very hostile news reporter that was determined to ruin my reputation.... You've fallen right into his trap."
BCTF lawyer Lindsay Waddell said the fear some teachers felt at the time was real, and she wanted to explore a possible connection between Neufeld and the KKK. She said a note from his previous lawyer, Paul Jaffe, mentioned the dying U.S. hate group.
“This flyer is connected to Mr. Neufeld," Waddell said. "He made a lengthy post quoting from the Old Testament, a very long one, and three days later these were thrown onto lawns in Chilliwack”
"These" referred to flyers that showed up on some lawns and driveways in Sardis one day in December 2017, two months after Neufeld's infamous anti-LGBTQ social media rant about SOGI 123, an anti-bullying gender identity resource used in B.C. schools.
And Neufeld was to have us believe it was a coincidence that three days before the flyers showed up, Neufeld quoted the same passage from Deuteronomy on his Facebook page that says cross-dressing is an "abomination."
The offensive flyer that referred to transgender people as "freaks" and an "abomination" also coincidentally landed on former MLA and school board chair Dan Coulter's lawn a month after he called for Neufeld to resign.
Waddell pushed back. She said that Neufeld and his counsel have failed to appreciate the level of fear among some LGBTQ teachers at the time, real fear stemming from angry rhetoric and protests following Neufeld's now infamous October 2017 Facebook post. That post was the start of his campaign pushing for action to oppose SOGI 123.
Whether that campaign was and still is simply a democratic urge for citizens to get engaged or a campaign to foment fear and hate is essentially what is at issue in this case, in my opinion.
Needless to say, Neufeld has no respect for the BCHRT or the outcome of this hearing, nor any understanding or self-reflection into the pain and suffering his hate speech caused members of the school communities in Chilliwack who identify as LGBTQ.
"It’s a kangaroo court," Neufeld said in February. "I know you’ve already found me guilty. The [BCHRT] has evolved into the most hateful organization we have in our province."
The hearing is scheduled to wrap up today, May 21, 2025 with closing arguments from both sides.
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Paul J. Henderson
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