Jason Kenney, our Minister of Immigration, is poised to slash funds for a resettlement program in Toronto that teaches new immigrants language and job-seeking skills. Was it not functioning properly? Was the money being misspent?Not at all. Kenney is upset because the head of the Canadian Arab Federation, the recipient of the grant, called him a name.
95% of those who benefit from the CAF's Toronto program are non-Arab, not that that is in any way relevant. This petty, vindictive act of tyranny would hardly be more palatable if it struck only at one ethnic group. But it goes to show how cavalierly and arbitrarily the Minister is exercising his remit. It is clearly reminiscent of the cancellation of arts programs before the last election, done explicitly because the Cons didn't like the politics of some of the recipients. Nothing, it seems, has changed.
Of course, the Speech Warriors™ are going to the wall to defend...ah, no, they're not. Demonstrating the unbearable lightness of principle for which they have become notorious, they're lustily cheering on the sidelines for Jason Kenney, presently nursing his hurt feelings. As Ed Anger might say, these folks are having it both ways with more abandon than delegates at a swingers' convention.
So now it's out in the open--recipients of government grants are to be muzzled. They might have met all the written criteria for the programs in which they applied, winning their funding fair and square, but they will be singled out for rejection solely on political grounds.
At least Kenney's being honest and upfront about it. That's more than can be said for the aforementioned self-appointed defenders of free speech, who lose no time defending state suppression of it when it's Muslims rather than their neo-Nazi poster children who are at the receiving end.
