Canada's Shame!
Canada is the laughing stock of the world over the banning of British MP George Galloway and yet he thanked Canada's immigration minister "for giving the anti-war movement such a tremendous boost."
Via the internet, Galloway lashed out at Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney when he was beamed into a nearly full 588-seat theatre at the University of Toronto. Mr. Galloway was speaking from New York City because the Canada Border Service Agency ruled he was a threat to our national security and banned him from entering the country.
"What was meant as a four-city tour has turned into a national and international story. Mr. Kenney, thank-you for giving the anti-war movement such a tremendous boost with your eternal blundering," said Galloway.
Robert Fisk asked questions more Canadians should be asking of themselves in his article "Galloway a Victim of Canada's Baffling Approach to Fighting Terror" published in The Independent today.
"But this is no laughing matter. How could the Canadian embassy in London have believed Mr Galloway's food and medicine shipment to Gaza, made with Israel's agreement, and its delivery to the Hamas government was a "terrorist" act, even if Stephen Harper's Canadian government regards Hamas as a "terrorist organisation".
"Mr. Galloway wasn't shipping guns and is touring the US with his anti-war, pro-Palestinian, non-terrorist speeches. "It's just not credible, Mr Kenney," Mr Galloway shouted, "to call a man touring the United States, playing to packed audiences... a terrorist or a security threat."
"But there's a bigger issue. Canada helped the US send an innocent Canadian citizen, Mahar Arar, to "rendition" in Syria, where he was savagely tortured. Only a few days ago, another Canadian Muslim told me how he was whipped with steel cables in Damascus as his torturers read out questions from the Canadian embassy. Yet another Canadian Muslim citizen, Abousfian Abdelrazik, has been living in the reception of the US embassy in Khartoum for 10 months after Canadian agents asked the enormously democratic Sudanese government to imprison him for terrorism. Now the government won't let him come home unless he's taken off not a Canadian, but a UN "terrorist" list. Cromwellian isn't the word for it. But the mystery is this: how did so many millions of decent Canadians come to be ruled by such a weird government?"
It is time for Canadians to ask themselves if this is how we want to be seen around the world.
I don't think we do. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to speak up.
