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Toronto comedian’s not playing for laughs today, he standup act before the B.C. Human Rights tribunal. Now the case dates back to 2007, when the comedian was accused of making homophobic remarks to a same sex couple while I’m saying a show to. But he says his comments won’t discriminatory, and that they come with the comedy show territory if you know what I mean. Lisa Johnson ‘s been following this story from Vancouver, she joins me now with more. Lisa just remind me first of all the detail of what happened to that night, take me back.


Well, the instant happened in a restaurant with hosting at opening of mid night. So it was kind of functioning as a comedy club for the night. Comedian guy always on stage and complainer in the party was in the audients sitting with friends and her lesbian partner. And the owner said they were having drinks at the patio and moved inside. And the comedian says she started heckling him, so he shout back doing the argues what comedians do which is trying to say whatever they can and insulting or not to shut down that heckler. The complainer says what he said to her was intentionally humiliating and that was that she’s called tired rate sex homophobic remarks and directed her and her lesbian partner, insulting to them as same sex couple speculating their sex life and also insulting to them as women. Now the comedian has said since then he got heated, he regret what he said but that if you heckle, you should expect to be heckled back.

You know, I’m interested to know what the lawyer on both sides are arguing, because when you talking about a comedy acts, we are not really known as being politically correct. What tare their arguments?

Well, this is where gets tricky. Because the lawyer at the complainer side isn’t talking about a comedy club, she’s talking about a restaurant, relying on part of the BC human rights codes, it says, any person has right to access the service, the facility at without the discrimination on the basis of sex rate, sexual orientation. So their description of this case is someone who’s in a restaurant and who’s discriminated against on the basis of sex and sexual orientation by the people who should be providing a service to her. Now the lawyer for the comedian side says, he was not an employee of the restaurant, he was not providing a service, he was an artist who’s performing. And so if he’s found the remarks was found discriminatory, he could be subject to finds another punishment, if that what happen he says that will be eliminating his right to free expression under the charter. So you can imagine this is the case, not just comedians, but other performers are watching carefully.