{"id":1175,"date":"2016-05-19T00:09:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T04:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1175"},"modified":"2016-05-19T00:09:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T04:09:19","slug":"controversial-speaker-denied-access-to-parliament-for-a-second-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1175","title":{"rendered":"Controversial speaker denied access to Parliament for a second time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Controversial speaker denied access to Parliament for a second time<\/span><\/h1>\n
\"THE<\/div>\n
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Just over an hour before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to rise in the House of Commons Wednesday and\u00a0deliver an apology<\/a>\u00a0to Canada\u2019s Sikh population for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, Paul Fromm \u2014 anti-immigration activist previously banned from entering Parliament \u2014 was scheduled to hold a press conference opposing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though his press conference was ultimately cancelled and Fromm was denied access to the Parliamentary precinct late Wednesday morning, that only came after some eleventh hour scrambling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPrime Minister Trudeau\u2019s apology to Sikhs for the Dominion Government\u2019s decision 102 years ago to turn back the \u2018Komagata Maru\u2019, a ship carrying 376 Indians, mostly Sikhs, is humiliating and wrong,\u201d Fromm, who heads up something called the\u00a0Canada First Immigration Reform Committee<\/a>, was quoted in a media advisory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fromm was previously connected to Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and has been criticized by human rights groups for his racist views.<\/span><\/p>\n

His press conference was supposed to take place at 1:30, but just before 11 a notification was sent to the press gallery advising that it had been cancelled, without an explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The office of the speaker of the house of commons confirmed to\u00a0iPolitics<\/em>\u00a0that, \u201cfurther to a recommendation from the Deputy Sergeant at Arms, and based on past practice\u201d, Fromm had been denied access to the precinct.<\/span><\/p>\n

That past practice referred to a motion brought by Conservative MP Jason Kenney in 2007, which ordered Paul Fromm and an individual named Alexan Kulbashian \u201cbe denied admittance to the precincts of the House of Commons during the present session to preserve the dignity and integrity of the House.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was unanimously adopted by the House and applauded by Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Jewish Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good day for Canadian politics when all three parties can come together and recognize that Paul Fromm doesn\u2019t deserve to be on Parliament Hill,\u201d\u00a0Farber said at the time<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kenney couldn\u2019t be reached Wednesday, but in 2007 he said Fromm and Kulbashian were free to express their views outside of Parliament, but had no right to do so inside.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf they want to get a soapbox and go out in front of the Parliament Buildings in this free country, they\u2019re welcome to do so, but this House isn\u2019t going to let them use public, taxpayer-funded resources,\u201d he said then.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fromm responded by calling it\u00a0\u201cpreemptive censorship\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in a blog post.<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole episode\u00a0got quite a bit of attention<\/a>\u00a0and drew comparisons to when Zundel himself was prevented from giving a press conference in Parliament 1998 after a MPs adopted a motion presented by then Liberal House leader Don Boudria.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, several MPs told\u00a0iPolitics<\/em>\u00a0following question period Wednesday they were unaware Fromm was even supposed to hold a press conference earlier in the day.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Controversial speaker denied access to Parliament for a second time Just over an hour before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to rise in the House of Commons Wednesday and\u00a0deliver an apology\u00a0to Canada\u2019s Sikh population for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[558,556,559,557,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}