Hate speech or ignorance? Human rights hearing into former school trustee's anti-2SLGBTQ+ publications wraps up
BC Teachers Federation seeking $750,000 if tribunal rules Barry Neufeld’s ongoing comments violated act
Almost nobody disagrees that disgraced former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld has expressed numerous objectively terrible thoughts ever since he went off the rails on a homophobic tirade on Facebook on Oct. 23, 2017.
Even his lawyers through various legal proceedings have admitted as such. But did his comments while in elected office constitute hate speech and did they violate the BC Human Rights Code?
The BC Teachers Federation says “yes.” He says “no.”
During eight days of testimony in a BC Human Rights Tribunal hearing spread over six months, Neufeld argued that all he ever did was criticize a teaching resource and a “woke” cultural fad. And he’s the victim.
The BCTF, on the other hand, argued that Neufeld’s ongoing publication and broadcast of attacks on the 2SLGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender people, and specifically the Ministry of Education’s anti-bullying SOGI 123 classroom resource, did indeed subject members of the affected community to discrimination.
“He is entitled to his views but he is not, in our respectful submissions, entitled to attack or to suppress the very educational materials and information that is aimed at combating prejudices like his in the first place.”
That from lead lawyer for the BCTF Lindsay Waddell in her closing arguments on the final day of the hearing on Wednesday (May 21, 2025).
“An attack on the notion that more than two genders exist is de facto an attack on people whose gender is not restricted to the two binaries.”
Don’t move the goal posts, make your own
Barry Neufeld’s defence at the BC Human Rights Tribunal (the Tribunal) mostly came down to his religious-based, right-wing criticism of 2SLGBTQ+ rights and gender issues where his lawyer uses the term “gender ideology,” a catch-all insult used by anti-gender activists, according to scholars.
In his closing arguments, Neufeld’s lawyer James Kitchen set up the goal posts right where he wanted, nice and low and wide, so he could kick the ball through and claim he scored his point.
Within the first 20 words of his closing statement, Kitchen claimed the entire dispute was about “gender ideology,” again, an empty term used by Neufeld-style conspiracy theorists who spread moral panic as part of a campaign to attack gender inclusion.
“Mr. Neufeld and others have said over and over and over there is this thing called ‘gender ideology’ that they disagree with,” Kitchen said (Note: quote might not be perfectly accurate).
“They oppose this. They think it is wrong, inaccurate, untruthful.”
Kitchen’s tidy goalposts compared this supposed “ideology” and “beliefs” shared by the 2SLGBTQ+ community to Neufeld’s belief in an eternal soul and the fact that his sky god created humans and the Earth 6,000 years ago.
“Believers of this ideology don’t believe it to be an ideology at all,” Kitchen continued, then, mentioning one of the witnesses who is a teacher who lived next door to Neufeld: “The teacher witness repeatedly testified to the inescapable fact that beliefs such as beliefs that gender identities exist other than [the two sexes] are just that, they are beliefs….
“No different than other belief systems, for example, that people are created by a spirit being, god, and have a spirit and this will live on.”
On the other hand
What brought this case to the BCHRT is the fact that Neufeld’s comments about the 2SLGBTQ+ community, particularly trans people, create fear and discrimination especially when he calls trans people liars and deceitful and can’t be trusted and their lives are somehow worth less than others. (Note: I intentionally use the ongoing active voice here because he hasn’t stopped.)
Waddell began her closing arguments saying that it is a “gross misapprehension” to say that members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community are making bad moral choices and in doing so somehow denigrate their own integrity.
“Being 2SLGBTQ+ or trans is not akin to pedophilia,” Waddell said. “Education or health-care on that subject is not akin to child abuse.
“Above all, the fact that transgender people exist and are equally deserving of respect and tolerance and love and a workplace and a learning environment free from discrimination is not an ideology. It may be in Mr. Neufeld’s view, but it is not an ideology.”
A BCTF lawyer before Waddell started gave an introduction outlining many of the statements Neufeld made about teachers and trans people while he was a school trustee, including:
• SOGI 123 is an ‘evil’ ideology more predatory than was seen in the residential school era;
• Parents should remove children from public schools;
• Teachers are ‘grooming’ children;
• Transgenderism is a ‘biologically absurd theory’; and
• Trans people are deceivers and delusional and it is often 'caused' by autism.
Neufeld ironically claimed he wanted to “protect children” all along as he put put more and more people at risk with his words and actions.
“Mr. Neufeld has not made anyone safer not least of which the students of Chilliwack.”
Waddell explained the specific statutes at play in the hearing, and pointed out that while Neufeld has said much about his supposed good intentions with his public utterances, that doesn’t matter.
“What matters is what flows from it or what is likely to flow from it,” she said.
Section 7(1)(a) of the BC Human Rights Code says that prohibits expression that: has a discriminatory effect; is likely to have a discriminatory effect; or is meant to have a discriminatory effect.
And while Waddell said it is perfectly acceptable to criticize elements of the content of SOGI 123 or the age-appropriateness, going on homophobic tirades (my words not hers) while criticizing a learning resource aimed at stopping homophobic bullying is ironic and constitutes a human rights violation.
“Freedom of expression is not absolute,” she said.
“[Mr. Neufeld] has repeatedly said [his criticism] is just about the resource but when he does that, he does it by attacking the people the equality is for.“
Waddell told the panel that if they decide in the favour of the BCTF, the financial remedy sought is in the order of $750,000.
How that would be divvied up among class members is unclear, particularly given some need for anonymity among teachers, the private nature of sexual identity, and the fact that members of the community self-identify.
Defence
Much of Kitchen’s closing argument focused on a framework based on the notion explained above that being gay or trans is a moral choice. The 2SLGBTQ+ community are cultural nihilists trying to tear apart the nuclear family, traditional ways, and good Christian values.
The more practical legal arguments are twofold: freedom of expression, and there is no “victim” of the supposed discrimination.
Kitchen started with a devil’s advocate/straw man argument claiming that the complainant in the case is frustrated because “I’m not arguing the freedom of expression that he thinks I should.”
Kitchen won’t take the bait to make the argument that the “discriminatory speech” is protected because that assumes there is discriminatory speech. He said this was based on a Marxist approach that is “taking over Canada, which is why we are here.”
What is not permitted is attacking individuals but Kitchen said “we have no trans person who is offended.”
In a classic move from earlier in the hearing when he mentioned current Chilliwack school trustee Teri Westerby, who is a trans man where Kitchen pretended he didn’t know existed, he intentionally misgendered Morgane Oger who was involved in a successful 2018 BCHRT case against William Whatcott, the leading piece of case law, according to the tribunal chair.
“We don’t allow attacking the person,” he said. “You have the additional step of Mr. Whatcott going up to Mr. Oger and…”
Interrupted by a member of the panel: “Miss Oger.”
Long pause: “Sorry, I was trying to get it right,” Kitchen said. “I couldn’t remember.”
Kitchen went on to explain how Whatcott specifically targeted Oger, an individual, a trans person he thought should be excluded.
“We don’t have that here. I wouldn’t have been here if Mr. Neufeld said ‘all the tranny teachers have to go’ because that didn’t happen here and we don’t have to defend all the trans teachers.”
Before he could catch himself and realize he was wrong, I thought of Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam who is a specific human being and who Neufeld specifically mocked and insulted. But Kitchen remembered that Neufeld decided Tam is transgender so: “If this person, who has spent a major portion of their life deceiving people as to who she/he truly is and is now a major player in the corrupt World Health Organization, why should we believe anything he/she says?”
Kitchen’s logical gymnastics are epic.
He said that social media posts about Tam didn’t count because Tam isn’t a teacher. And, wait, when he said when gay couples shouldn’t be able to adopt, it wasn’t about the gay couples per se, he was saying he didn’t support gay people adopting because every child should have a mother and father.
Again, Kitchen’s focus is on the claim that all of Neufeld’s terrible things said were not about “LGBT people, it is about LGBT beliefs.”
Kitchen argued that Neufeld was and is talking about ideology and belief, mansplaining to the panel that they need to “get out of this ivory tower and see feminist theory or critical race theory or whatever left-wing fad” as it is.
“He criticized the idea and the belief that a female can identify as a male. He said that’s not true and we shouldn’t do that. He is not saying that a person who identifies as trans can’t teach.”
Who has the power really?
Asked if he was not accepting the social context in which members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community exists, Kitchen said “we need to be careful not to blow it out of proportion.”
He argued that in the historical context, it is much better today, which is of course true. But he continued, if the “massive” BCTF are backing “them” and “sidewalks are being painted for them,” the power has shifted.
“Who has the social power? Who has the political power? Is it Mr. Neufeld? Obviously not.”
Wrapping up, Kitchen said the $750,000 remedy sought if the tribunal found against him, is “of course absurd” and he didn’t have a response because he was focused on how the case should be dismissed. He also pointed out that the matter of money is not “a live issue in reality” because “Mr. Neufeld is impecunious.”
“This case is not about discrimination,” Kitchen ended with. “What it is really about is an attempt to censor and silence under the guise of discrimination and to use [the BCHRT] to affect that censorship.”
The panel chair said they would have a written decision issued within six months.
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Paul J. Henderson
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