Coulter Comes To Canada

Shutting down Ann Coulter isn't the threat to free speech, denying left-wing thinkers entry into the country is.

When an event at the University of Ottawa headlined by the vitriolic American right-wing pundit Ann Coulter was cancelled due to boisterous demonstrations outside the venue, conservative activist and lawyer Ezra Levant said it showed the “shortcomings in Canadian free speech.” This despite the fact that a day earlier, Coulter freely spewed her venom against gays, feminists, and Muslims at the University of Western Ontario.

Canadians taking to the streets in protest of what many consider to be hate speech is not an affront to free speech. If anything, the “shortcomings” were exposed by the actions of our own government, which has banned or otherwise impeded the visits of personalities expressing views diametrically opposed to its own regarding the Middle East.

Ann Coulter, who called for Islamic countries to be invaded and for Muslims to be converted to Christianity after 9/11, has made a career out of bashing Muslims and other minority groups. Yet she was allowed to enter Canada without trouble. Perhaps Prime Minister Stephen Harper's views on the Middle East are closer to hers than to, say, George Galloway's or Amy Goodman's. Let's not forget that when the Liberals kept us out of the invasion of Iraq, our current prime minister wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal bemoaning the fact that Canada would not partake in the bloodletting.

A little over a year ago, George Galloway, a British member of Parliament and an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq, was deemed inadmissible to Canada on security grounds. The office of Canada's immigration minister, Jason Kenney, claimed Galloway had provided financial assistance to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, referring to a humanitarian convoy he had headed to the Gaza Strip. He was meant to speak at the public forum “Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar” hosted by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War. The government's decision came after the Jewish Defence League of Canada asked it to do “everything possible to keep this hater away.” Ironic considering that in 2001 the Federal Bureau of Investigation deemed the Jewish Defense League to be a right-wing terrorist group.

Then, later that year, it was American progressive journalist Amy Goodman's turn to get acquainted with Conservative Canada. Goodman, a critic of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories, was travelling to Vancouver to speak at a benefit for community radio stations at the Vancouver Public Library. She was detained by the authorities and questioned about the content of her planned speech. Interrogators were particularly keen to know whether she would be speaking about the Vancouver Olympics. She was eventually allowed to enter the country.

Only last week, a speaking tour featuring Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian peace activist and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize who advocates non-violence, had to be cancelled because of delays in issuing him a visa. He had been expected to meet with NDP leader Jack Layton, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, and Liberal MP Bob Rae. In the past, Barghouti obtained a visa in days, but this time, he still had not been approved nearly two weeks after having applied. It is unclear what was behind the delay. Certainly he poses no security threat. Last year he was allowed to enter the United States and appeared on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

In 2007, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women's anti-war group Code Pink, and Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and U.S. State Department official who resigned in protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, were detained for several hours by Canadian authorities at the border. They were told they would not be allowed to enter the country because of past arrests in the U.S. for peaceful protests against the war in Iraq.

So while some conservative activists and pundits in Canada shed crocodile tears for free speech because Coulter was not welcomed at the University of Ottawa with open arms, Canadians should be aware of the real threat to free speech. And it isn't a student protest in Ottawa.