The municipal IT staffer under city investigation over his neo-Nazi past has brushed it off as a phase of his teenage years.

Marc Lemire, an information technology analyst in his 40s, says he is not a Nazi or white supremacist and hasn't been affiliated with the now-defunct Heritage Front for many years.

But court cases have established Lemire publicly promoted racist and homophobic views well into adulthood.

Such views were on display during a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal case in which an Ottawa lawyer took Lemire to task over material on his website.

In 2003, Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman spotted a diatribe entitled "AIDS Secrets" on Lemire's website, freedomsite.org, and filed a complaint.

The purported transcript of a speech given on a U.S. radio program spoke of "sick and sleazy pleasure houses of the 'liberated' homosexuals," denigrated black people and described both as "killers."

Lemire, who didn't author the article, argued the "assertions are based on true facts," a 2009 tribunal ruling recounts. The tribunal member rejected that, concluding the material was "likely to expose homosexuals and blacks to hatred and contempt."

On Thursday, Lemire told The Spectator via email that he "did not write, approve, or condone the article."

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City councillors got a confidential update about the controversy Wednesday night after a Vice News story revealed Lemire is working for the city. It also questioned whether city hall deliberately shielded him from scrutiny, noting Lemire had a rare unlisted phone extension and no name attached to his voicemail.

New city manager Janette Smith emerged from the closed-door meeting to announce the city will probe concerns about a non-unionized city worker.

But she did not offer any other insight into Lemire's job responsibilities, exactly when he was hired or what senior managers knew about his background — at the time of his hiring or later.

"I will be ensuring it's a very thorough investigation because the concerns are serious," she said.

Anti-racism advocates, including former city councillor Matthew Green, have expressed alarm over Lemire's potential access to sensitive information in his IT position.

Smith acknowledged those concerns, but would not comment on whether the employee would continue working during her investigation. "We will make sure there are no risks (to anyone)."

She declined to reveal how senior staffers responded to past concerns raised about Lemire — including at least two from citizens last fall.

Hamilton's new city manager, Janette Smith | Bryon Johnson, Metroland file photo

Some angry residents argue the city must have learned about Lemire's background sooner or later, and have questioned why he remains an employee.

The city could, in theory, fire a non-unionized employee "without cause" relatively easily — "so long as you're willing to give that person money to go away," said lawyer Jim Fyshe, an Edmonton employment law expert who used to practise in Hamilton.

He said a 15-year employee, for example, could expect the equivalent of 10 to 12 months of "income security" if fired without cause, noting the exact amount of notice and severance depends on position, seniority and salary.

But finding grounds to fire with cause — and therefore without a payout — is more difficult unless the city can prove an individual's actions hurt the city's reputation or "fundamentally undermined the employment relationship," Fyshe suggested.

"If you're worried about someone's past (online) history or extreme views, sure, that might be a reason to want to let someone go, but it wouldn't necessarily be a legal cause for termination."

Lemire told The Spectator via email he hasn't been involved in "any politics for many years."

He also said his Heritage Front activity "dates back to when I was a teenager," which echoes a 2011 interview with far-right media personality Ezra Levant, to whom Lemire told he'd only been "peripherally" involved with the hate group.

Warman disputes this, pointing to how in 2005 a federal court justice found Lemire to be the "last known president of the Heritage Front" and to have worked for Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

Warman describes Lemire's account of his peripheral involvement with neo-Nazis as "delusional and revisionist history like his former boss Zundel."

On Thursday, Lemire denied that he ever led the Heritage Front, calling the 2005 federal court case a "secret hearing" to which he wasn't a party.

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"To be clear: I reject what they stand for. Period. The leader was, and was always, a person named Wolfgang Droege."

He didn't, however, respond to The Spectator's questions about his relationship with Zundel.

This week, former neo-Nazi Elisa Hategan told The Spectator she and Lemire did data-entry work for Zundel in the early 1990s.

"Hate brought us together. That was a unifying force," said Hategan, who has long since renounced her past life and hasn't seen her former colleague for years.

Hategan, who now gives anti-racism talks, says she was shocked to learn about Lemire's position at city hall.

City officials have declined to say when he was hired, but a departmental organizational chart online lists him as a staffer in 2012. Quoting a source, the Vice article says the city hired Lemire around 2005.

That period overlaps with Lemire's court battle with Warman over the material on his website and Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

In 2009, the tribunal found Lemire responsible for hate speech relating to the "AIDS Secrets" post, but struck down Canada's internet hate speech law.

"What this means is that I can write about controversial topics without Big Brother looking over my shoulder," he says in a Toronto Star article at the time.

Lemire remained involved with the Section 13 issue until 2014, when the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the tribunal's ruling.

Marc Lemire is pictured in this undated photo when he was a member of the Heritage Front. | Fred Thornhill, The Canadian Press file photo

Three years later, he attended a memorial gathering in Toronto for his lawyer, Barbara Kulaszka, who also represented Zundel and Paul Fromm, a white nationalist who made an unsuccessful run for mayor in Hamilton's last municipal election.

Lemire and Fromm knew each other from years earlier. In 2001, the pair distributed "Community Health Alert" pamphlets near the former Henderson hospital on the Mountain after an ebola scare that warned, "Immigration can kill you."

This week, Lemire described his website, freedomsite.org, as "an archive" that tracks the history of internet censorship in Canada until 2015. The registered domain was renewed on April 11.

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