The Government Took 102 Minutes to Do What I Could Do in 12

Terrorist-funding George Galloway inadmissable to Canada

A recent report by the Globe and Mail maintains that Citizenship and Immigration Canada took less than two hours to rule that British MP George Galloway was inadmissable to enter Canada to give a series of speeches.

Many Canadians, knowing the facts of the case, would have taken less than two hours to make such a decision.

The story alleges that Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was involved in the decision, via an email sent by his communications director to bureaucrats at the ministry.

The report will almost certainly help those predisposed to argue that Galloway was ruled inadmissable due to political reasons snowball this story into a freedom of speech outrage.

And the truth be told, they may be right about whether or not politics played a role in his inadmissability. Sorta.

As Terry Glavin points out, Galloway has been far less than truthful about his decision to donate 25,000 pounds sterling to Hamas.

More recently, Galloway has claimed the money was given to the Gazan ministry of health. It seems that doctors salaries had been going unpaid until Galloway's intervention.

"I didn’t give any money to Hamas, I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza to pay for the salaries of the doctors and nurses who hadn’t been paid," Galloway insisted. "By the way, we’re talking about 20 odd thousand pounds, not millions. It’s a symbolic donation. I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza and I’m proud to have done so."

The problem is that Galloway was lying.

When Galloway actually made the donation, he portrayed it rather differently.

I, now, here, on behalf of myself, my sister Yvonne Ridley, and the two Respect councillors – Muhammad Ishtiaq and Naim Khan – are giving three cars and 25,000 pounds in cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh," Galloway announced in a televised address. "Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics."

Considering that Hamas is a banned terrorist organization in Canada, providing them with 25,000 pounds violates both the letter and spirit of the law.

Moreover, Haniyeh was not the Prime Minister at the time when he accepted that money from Galloway. He had been fired as PM by Gaza President Mahmoud Abbas, and has been unlawfully occupying that office ever since.

At the time of Haniyeh's dismissal, Hamas was known to be torturing and murdering Fatah members that had been scapegoated for the 2007 setback experienced by Palestinian militants when Israel responded to a number of rocket attacks with military incursions into the Gaza strip.

(For their own part, Fatah wasn't any better during the conflict.)

But as it stands, it turns out that it very much was politics that influenced the decision to rule George Galloway inadmissable to Canada. Trick is that it was Gallowya's own politics, as he himself defined them, not Jason Kenney's.

It shouldn't have taken nearly 102 minutes for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to rule George Galloway inadmissable. It should have taken approximately 12 minutes -- maybe even less.