…but stories like this remind me why you couldn’t pay me to live there:
“The University of Ottawa is really easy to get into, isn’t it?” she said in an interview after the cancelled event. “I never get any trouble at the Ivy League schools. It’s always the bush league schools.”
Coulter said she has been speaking regularly at university campuses for a decade. While she has certainly been heckled, she said this is the first time an engagement has been cancelled because of protesters.
“This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university,”
There are quite a few American universities that might be jealous, shame about that pesky first amendment isn’t it? Smitty comments:
Mark Steyn will no doubt have something blistering on this one, but Canada, you really have wet yourself. Your osteoporosis has reached a point where a woman with long hair and pointed remarks cannot offer them without you fearing for ’safety’. For crying out loud in the dark, I hope all honest Canucks, who can remember a time before the last hair was shaved off their public bottom in the name of some bogus ‘empathy’ god, just come South of the border right now.
Over at Atlas Pam is her normal quiet self:
These same savages welcome the most hate speech sponsors with open arms and open legs, but truth is verboten….
…They welcome Israel Apartheid Week and its accompanying violence. They welcome Robert Fisk. They welcome George Galloway, today’s Oswald Mosley….no protest except when he was barred from Canada by the Feds for supporting Hamas…..he is a hero of free speech……They embrace inciter to genocide, George Galloway.
They employ a Muslim terrorist wanted in France for blowing up a synagogue.
Don’t be shy Pam, tell us how you really feel.
Canadians, if you aren’t embarrassed you ought to be. If you are embarrassed but aren’t going to do anything about it then you ought to consider Smitty’s suggestion above. Oh and he’s right about Steyn:
This is the pitiful state one of the oldest free societies on the planet has been reduced to, and this is why our free speech campaign matters – because those who preside over what should be arenas of honest debate and open inquiry instead wish to imprison public discourse within ever narrower bounds – and in this case aren’t above threatening legal action against those who dissent from the orthodoxies. Lots of Americans loathe Ann Coulter but it takes a Canadian like François Houle to criminalize her. The strictures he attempts to place around her, despite his appeal to “Canadian law”, are at odds with the eight centuries of Canada’s legal inheritance.
It’s not a coincidence that Mark is typing this from the US, Ann again.
I would like to know when this sort of violence, this sort of protest, has been inflicted upon a Muslim — who appear to be, from what I’ve read of the human rights complaints, the only protected group in Canada. I think I’ll give my speech tomorrow night in a burka. That will protect me.
I feel bad for those Canadian vets at Normandy who game their lives for this. I suspect they would be asking someone to explain how it came to pass that the only person with balls in Canada is an American woman?
UPDATE: At 12:16 A.M. Glenn Reynolds linked to a poll at CBC news on if Ann’s speech. As of 5:35 a.m. the poll is inaccessible. I wonder why? Perhaps they don’t like the results.
Update 2: Alinsky when he was not clogging restrooms suggested people use their own rules against them. Ann obliges.
The “[i]nflammatory right-wing pundit” spoke at the University of Western Ontario yesterday. In a move that has to be tongue-in-cheek, Coulter said she will file a human rights complaint alleging that University of Ottawa vice-president academic and provost Francois Houle’s e-mail to her constituted “hate speech.”
I hope it is not tongue-in-cheek I say use their own courts against them. Make them defend their rules and spend their money to do it.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 
To all dem dum yanks who think this is a big issue in Canada – it’s not. Wer’e not going to go on a long soul searching journey because an idiot had to keep her mouth shut for an extra day. Don’t overestimate her effect here. Maybe other idiots south of the 49th will take the hint and stay away as well.
If you think basic freedoms are unimportant, hey it’s your country.
I fail to understand either why Coulter’s move is tongue-in-cheek or reminiscent of Alinsky. As I’ve pointed out before, one of the best ways to ensure just laws is to ensure that they are applied equitably.
“Hate speech” is a classic Leftist line, meant solely to shut down conservatives. They themselves are not willing to shut up about Catholics, Christians, pro-lifers, or conservative women, but think that we ought to treat their tender feelings with care.
Those who also have a burden imposed upon them are more apt to think long and hard about whether that burden is appropriate. Ann’s move is like forcing Congress to be subject to the health care that it is trying to force on the rest of America.
When you are in our country you obey our laws. Frankly I think the University was doing her a favour by pointing that out.
There is a big difference between restricting freedom of speech and criminalizing promotion of hatred. If you don’t understand the difference try making a death threat against a public official down in the states and see how much freedom of speech you have. Our hate laws are no different.
No one stopped her from saying some pretty vile things at her speech two nights before the Ottawa event, and I expect she will be able to speak her mind in Calgary tomorrow night too.
People who think she was prevented from speaking might want to read this:
http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/2010/03/ann-coulter-in-ottawa-shrinking-violet.html
Her own people pulled the plug on the event.
You bring me back to the days of the communist block or maybe to today’s Burma or Saudi Arabia where the argument is that of course we must respect the laws in place, even if those laws and those rules restrict basic freedoms.
if that’s the country Canadians want for themselves that’s certainly your prerogative, it just seems a shame that a once great country has fallen so low.
I trust you will have the same reaction when you are dealing with Islamic extremists?
Like I said, if you try making a few threats, or publishing something that someone else thinks they own (like posting Oregon’s laws online), you will find out how much freedom of speech you have in the U.S. Even if something ISN’T copyrighted, all a company has to do is threaten a webhost and it is yanked. Lots of U.S. companies use that tactic for muzzling fair comment.
For that matter, I am happy to live in a country where my government doesn’t get to just open my private records or force ISPs to turn over my net activities – laws put in place in the U.S. under a Republican administration.
So yes, we have laws in Canada that allow us to prosecute someone for promoting murder, discrimination or genocide, but you might be surprised at how much a person CAN say and still not break that law (google David Ahenakew and see what he was able to get away with).
For that matter, no one prevented Ann Coulter from saying anything. She spoke the night before, and she is speaking tonight in Calgary. Her people cancelled the event and this is probably the best publicity she could possibly want.
So now it is a debate about copyright law? Amazing! Then again maybe not so:
Yup move along, nothing to see here.
[…] a little more from Mark Steyn By datechguy As the debate about Canada continues in my comments Mark Steyn points to another gem in Canada’s love affair with free speech: On Monday Mr. […]
Nobody prevented Sariri from speaking at all. If you go back to the original article he actually did speak. The blogger you quote from screwed it up. OPIRG just turned down a request to help pay for him.
There’s a link to it on this page:
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/nationalupdates/081211news.html
Now do I think there are some infringements of free speech in Canada? Absolutely.
But the U.S. is at least as bad:
http://newworldorderreport.com/Articles/tabid/266/ID/2122/European-Anarchist-Author-Gabriel-Kuhn-Barred-From-Entering-United-States-to-Complete-Book-Tour.aspx
And free speech is free speech. If someone can prevent newsworthy information from being posted that is muzzling free speech:
http://gawker.com/5403691/fox-news-declares-cyberwar-on-liberal-blogosphere
Copyright law, as well as media concerntration do just as much if not more to limit free speech than any law.
But really, this orchestrated stunt was just that. They were talking about cancelling hours before the crowds showed up outside that too-small venue, and when people showed up to protest they did just that and now they are wailing about being oppressed.
As for her being prevented from speaking… that has been proven wrong already, and I expect she will be plastered all over the news tomorrow after she speaks tonight.
f she actually shut up for a bit she might be justified in claiming her free speech was being infringed upon…. but that is clearly never going to happen.
I’m glad that Canada reacted so nobly when 3,000 of its citizens – including the six-year-old child of a friend of a woman I know – several years ago.
Oh, wait, 9/11 killed people in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, none of which are in America. In fact, the only connection that Canada has to 9/11 is that the murderers came over your border.
Last time I took constitutional criminal procedure, which, granted, was a while back, I learned that the Supreme Court precedent for those cases was made by liberal justices and opposed by Antonin Scalia.
First paragraph should included “died” after the second emdash.
@ Roxeanne
Even if it’s completely irrelevant we’re supposed to take evoking the spirit of 9-11 as an argument-stopper, eh?
Maybe you should check your facts.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090421/USA_Border_090421/20090421
You are partially right though – about two dozen Canadians were killed in the bombing, along with many people who were not U.S. citizens.
The only thing that Canada did on 9 11 is give your airplanes a safe place to land when the U.S. shut down its airspace. Your people would have had a long way to go back to Asia and Europe without us.
And I think criminals are caught by both of our border guards. You might remember the millenium bomber, but there are plenty of others, like this genius just this week:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/03/19/sk-bike-charges-1003.html
The flow of illegal firearms from the U.S. has been the cause of far more violence and death in our country than these myths about terrorism being imported from Canada.
And the only actual terrorist act I am aware of involved FLQ terrorists in 1970 who trained and armed themselves in the U.S. before they came back to Canada, kidnapped a british envoy and killed one of our politicians.
Now be nice, or we’ll have to send Sarah Palin a bill for all that free Canadian healthcare she took advantage of as a kid.
Now is this supposed to have anything to do with the topic at hand?
FYI:
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20050815_110483_110483
And sorry for extending the off-topic tangent, but the notion that Canada is exporting violence to the states is simply ridiculous.
Though I’m sure Ms. Coulter would disagree, and she’s free to say so.
And I just remembered this terrorist who has been charged with coming to Canada and shooting people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Charles_Kopp