The Canadian government has given itself the power to deny entrance into the country for the reason that a person might give a speech that the government doesn’t like:
“Several factors are used in determining admissibility into Canada, including: involvement in criminal activity, in human rights violations, in organized crime, security, health or financial reasons,” spokeswoman Vanessa Barrasa said in an email.
But recent changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act also allow the immigration minister to deny entry over “public policy considerations,” a standard some experts say has been ill-defined.
Under the previous rules, “it was very clear that the offence in question had to be equivalent to a criminal offence in Canada,” said Sharryn Aiken, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston.
“The whole problem with the public policy grounds is it vests an enormous amount of discretion in the minister to define what are these exceptional circumstances that warrant the exercise of this power,” she said.
A government backgrounder issued earlier this year said the minister could use his authority to bar anyone “who has a history of promoting violence against a particular religious group.”
The National Counsel of Canadian Muslims (that’s Canada’s CAIR) wants the government to deny Pamela Gellar a visa in order to stop her from giving a scheduled speech on the danger of militant Islam.
I guess it’s really true that free speech is an “American concept”, without value in Canada.
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