Controversial British MP George Galloway is vowing to take the Canadian government to court for barring him from entering the country for a speaking tour about the Middle East.
Although he has visited Canada before, the Canada Border Services Agency declared him inadmissible on national-security grounds and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decided he would not use his power to let Mr. Galloway in.
“We're not going to seek to overturn that [CBSA] assessment in order to let into the country someone who has provided financial support to Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada, and someone who is, in a sense, a popinjay for those Taliban fighters who are trying to kill Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan,” said Mr. Kenney's spokesman, Alykhan Velshi.
Mr. Galloway, a Scottish-born MP who was bounced from Tony Blair's Labour Party in 2003 for vitriolic opposition to the Iraq war, led a postwar aid convoy to Gaza this month, declaring he would to hand over the supplies to the territory's Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
The decision to bar Mr. Galloway from Canada led the NDP to accuse the Conservatives of censorship, but was applauded by two of Canada's large Jewish community groups.
The British MP, meanwhile, promised to challenge it in Canadian courts.
“Canada remains a free country, and although Mr. Kenney says end of story, alas for him it's not,” Mr. Galloway said in a telephone interview.
He accused Mr. Kenney of trampling free speech to make political hay, likening it to the Minister's decision to cut support for the Canadian Arab Federation, whose leader called him a “professional whore who supports war.”
“These are wedge issues being created by a neo-con, Bush-ite, outgoing Canadian government that's about to be gutted in the polls,” Mr. Galloway said.
“Flag-waving, or in the case of Canada, shroud-waving of the brave Canadian soldiers who gave their lives for this miserably failed policy of the Canadian government is despicable beyond words.”
Mr. Velshi would not say precisely why the Canada Border Services Agency barred Mr. Galloway on national security grounds, although one official said it was not for his views on Afghanistan but for other reasons, including statements that he would provide financial support to Hamas.
“But I don't raise money for Hamas. That's just a false statement,” Mr. Galloway insisted. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a supporter of Hamas.”
When Mr. Galloway arrived in Gaza on March 10 at the head of an aid convoy, he pledged to hand the vehicles, medicine and equipment to “Ismail Haniyeh, the elected prime minister of Palestine.”
(Mr. Haniyeh became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority when Hamas won a 2006 election there, but he was dismissed by Fatah president Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, leading to a civil war that split Hamas-controlled Gaza from the Fatah-controlled West Bank.) “He's made no bones about the fact that when he has collected funds, that's where they go,” said Bernie Farber, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
In Winnipeg, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he never agrees with Mr. Galloway, but that's not a reason for barring him from the country. However, he said, if security officials have found he's a threat, he should not be allowed in.
“If he's being barred on free-speech grounds, that's an outrage. You can come to Canada and talk rubbish all day long as far as I'm concerned. If there's a security threat, that's another matter, and I've heard no evidence yet that he presents a security threat. And of course if there is one, as a responsible public official I will accept what security services say on Mr. Galloway.”
New Democrat MP Olivia Chow said the decision to bar Mr. Galloway is part of a Conservative government pattern of barring people whose views they disagree with, like anti-war activists from the group Code Pink.
“Once you start censoring people, then it's a slippery slope,” she said.
With a report from Patrick White in Winnipeg
