Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has never been shy about expressing his opinions. Through the course of his long political career, he has referred to U.S. war resistors as "bogus refugee claimants", compared Hezbollah to the Nazi Party, and made the curious argument that marriage laws did not discriminate against homosexuals because they were always free to marry someone of the opposite sex.
More recently, Mr. Kenny has been engaged in a cat fight with the Canadian Arab Federation, discontinuing funding for their immigrant language programs after their equally outspoken president called him a "professional whore". Kenney has accused both the CAF and the Canadian Islamic Congress of being "anti-Semitic" groups that "support terrorism", and has stated that he is taking "public comments" into account when reviewing all funding to such groups.
The latest casualty of Jason Kenney's crusade is Scottish MP George Galloway.
Outspoken anti-war MP George Galloway has vowed to fight an 'outrageous decision' to ban him from Canada on the grounds of national security.
Mr Galloway said the ban was 'not something I'm prepared to accept' and pledged to use all means at his disposal to challenge the ruling.
But a spokesman for Canada's immigration minister Jason Kenney insisted the decision, taken by border security officials, would not be overturned for a 'infandous* street-corner Cromwell' (*'infandous: too odious to be expressed or mentioned).
Mr Galloway was due to give a speech in Toronto on March 30 but has been deemed 'inadmissible' to Canada under section 34(1) of the country's immigration act.
... Mr Velshi said: 'We're going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infandous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada.
'I'm sure Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won't be one of them.'
Regardless of what you think of Galloway, barring a sitting Member of the British Parliament as a 'terrorist sympathizer' can only be described as absurd. Especially when the Obama administration is reaching out to some of the very groups and governments that Galloway and others targeted by Kenney are accused of supporting.
Mr. Kenney seems to think it's still 2002. Or maybe 1950.
Although I certainly agree that the banning of Mr. Galloway is absurd. He is (sadly) saying some things I agree with:
ReplyDeletehttp://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2009/03/20/8825056-cp.html
I do think when someone wants permanent citizenship they should be able to speak fluent English or French. And the credentials thing is a total no brainer that should have been fixed eons ago.
Other than that, this guy seems like a total dolt.
I can't help but wonder how many first generation Italian, Ukrainian or German immigrants were 'fluent' in either of our official languages. However, if Jason Kenney was really so concerned with new immigrants learning French or English, then maybe he shouldn't have cut the funding for a major program devoted to language training for immigrants.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough. But then is not now. And there is truth in the fact that there is no legitimate reason why they cannot learn our language. At least. There wasn't. ;)
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I don't much care for the guy, but those are issues that do (I feel anyways) need resolving.