While British MP George Galloway remains barred from Canada, some argue the decision to do so furthered more interest in his cause.
“Thanks to Jason Kenney, we’ve had more awareness brought to the case than we could have possibly predicted,” said Dylan Penner, an organizer for the Ottawa Peace Assembly.
Although Galloway was expected to speak in person at the Bronson Centre Theatre April 2, his speech titled “Resisting Imperialism from Gaza to Kandahar” will instead be broadcast through a live video link from New York.
Tickets are being sold on campuses at Carleton and the University of Ottawa through the student associations.
Galloway’s speech has already been delivered to a sold out venue in Toronto where the link was also broadcast live to 20 cities across the country, Penner noted.
“In fact, we’ll have been able to reach by the end of this week about five or six times as many venues as we would have otherwise,” he said.
However, Penner also said that while he feels they have reached more people, it would have still been good to see him in person.
“There’s a qualitative difference between talking via video and actually being somewhere in person,” he said, noting the argument has been upheld in U.S. courts as well.
Galloway was banned from Canada after he was alleged to have given $45,000 in aid to Hamas, who Canada identifies as a terrorist organization. His actions were then considered an offence under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, an article from the CBC stated. However, the Ottawa Peace Assembly claims that the move to ban Galloway was instead an attempt to silence Galloway.
“Clearly this is a fundamental attack on free speech by Jason Kenney and the Harper minority conservative government,” Penner said.
Kenney, the minister of immigration for the Canadian government, was able to overturn the decision to ban Galloway, but decided he would not use his power to do so.
“The minister will not give a special exemption from Canada’s security laws to Mr. Galloway, nor will he provide special treatment to a man who brags about giving financial support to Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada, or who offers sympathy for Canada’s enemies in Afghanistan,” a statement from Kenney to the CBC said.
While Galloway’s legal counsel attempted to overturn the court’s decision on the matter, he still plans on speaking through video broadcast to have his message heard.