Oh, what a difference a single year can make!

Can it be only a year ago that Jason Kenney, Member of Parliament for Calgary-Southeast and Canada’s diligent minister of immigration, was loudly barring the nation’s gates to British Member of Parliament George Galloway, whom he proclaimed to be a grave threat to our national security?

Galloway, after all, had been unstinting in his criticism of the ill-starred and destructive U.S.-U.K. misadventure in Iraq, and, worse, had dared to attempt to bring food, fuel and water to the besieged people of Gaza. Our immigration minister was particularly incensed that Galloway had spoken out in support of the elected government of Gaza, which Kenney deemed to be tantamount to supporting terrorists.

Well, all Canadians rested easier, no doubt, knowing that the articulate Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow (who as far an anyone knows has no criminal record and had spoken in Canada without incident the year before) would not perturb our placid commonweal with his dangerous notions. No kerfuffles would be caused in Canada by angry protesters opposed to Galloway’s controversial views, thank you very much!

But where was our vigilant immigration minister when word leaked out precisely a year later about the imminent arrival of self-described “mean-spirited, bigoted conservative” Ann Coulter, the notorious American advocate of religious persecution, not to mention murderous violence against “liberals,” abortion providers, New York Times reporters and myriad others she finds disagreeable?

Indeed, where were the grim and unrelenting officers of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, who only a year ago so sternly declared Galloway’s inadmissible to our country “on security grounds” as required by the Immigration Act?

Coulter, after all, has been quite clear about her views, which it would be reasonable to infer might incite some Canadians to noisy if law-abiding disagreement — as indeed seems to have occurred last night in Ottawa.

Was it not she, after all, who famously said of the Muslim world that “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”? Or that the United States should be “engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo”? Or of American liberals, that “we need to execute people like (so-called “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too”?

Or — significantly, speaking of our national security, as we were — that citizens of our Dominion had “better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.”

Astonishingly, however, Kenney and Citizenship and Immigration have been nowhere to be found. Not so much as a cross word has been spoken of Coulter and the danger she presents to the realm!

One can only wonder why all of Canadian officialdom has been suddenly struck dumb, and Coulter left to roam the land unmolested, stirring up disorder by uncharacteristically rude Canadians. With Coulter having been given the bum’s rush from the University of Ottawa, what horrors can be next? Will the Honourable Member for Calgary-Southeast fiddle while the University of Calgary, the intellectual heart of the Reform Party, burns?

Or could it be that Kenney was nowhere to be found because he agrees with Coulter’s views? Surely not!

All of Canada is wondering: Where is Jason Kenney when you really need him?

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...