Who Is Behind Next Week's Pro-Ford Demo

...the "Stop the bullying:  it will get better for Rob Ford" thingy?  It's Dharminder Kumar, who is either the other member of Ron Banerjee's group  Canadian Hindu Advocacy, or, as some believe, a sock puppet for Ron Banerjee himself.  So you know the event, like so many CHA protests, will be a big...big success.

To get an idea of the kind of folks who might show up, its useful to note the CHA's endorsement of CIR (the Canadian Immigration Report).  CIR were the folks  invited to speak, and then booted from, a recent meeting of  the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, basically because they called the Nazis a great bunch of fellows.

Might be worth showing up at this thing with a camera, to see if one of the Ford's appears and gives everybody a hug.

PS.  In regards to CIR.  The Lussiers, who run the website, keep a very low profile.  One thing that seems clear, though,is that Julien Lussier is not, as he has claimed to be, a lawyer.  Or at least he's not the Que. lawyer with a similar sounding name.

Your Daily Nazi: This Is Floating Around The Quebec Education System??

A few days ago, the Tory government invited reps from the Canadian Immigration Report to testify on government immigration policy.  They were swiftly uninvited when the NDP discovered, via the cirereport website, that these people (Julien and Madi Lussier) were far-right kooks.

I had never heard of the two--they didn't seem to be, or have connections with, the usual suspects.  But the gang at ARC has done some digging, and:

...one of the CIR members who was invited by the Conservatives to act as witnesses is also an author...

[...]

Madi Lussier also promotes the book, which she describes as a, "school book published in Quebec [that] encourages debate on immigration and multiculturalism" on the CIR website...

The screen-cap above (one of several on the ARC site) is from the book, which is entitled English Checkpoint 4: Activity Book.  My first, and second, response to this was to think that it must be some kind of joke.  But as you can see through the link, its in the Quebec archives, and LIDEC (bottom left of screen-cap) is a legitimate publisher.  So I can only echo the question posed by the folks at ARC: is this book actually being used in Quebec?  And, if so, why?

Tories Invite, Then Boot, Racist Group

CBC has the general story, but more can be gleaned from the cireport website:

Earlier today, the webmasters of cireport.ca were scheduled to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Due to apparent interference by Liberal and NDP members of the Committee, our scheduled presentation did not happen. 

It didn't happen because NDP research staff took a look at the website and didn't like what they saw:

The Conservatives invited two witnesses to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration today from  the Canadian Immigration Report, an organisation associating itself with racists and hate groups.

 On the Canadian Immigration Report website, we can find among other things, an interview with well-known Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm.

In the CBC story,  Conservative MP Chungsen Leung, who apparently invited the group, pled ignorance--something, as a Tory MP, I'm sure he can do with aplomb:

...[he] told reporters he had requested the witnesses on the recommendation from people in his Toronto-area riding of Willowdale, but admitted he didn't do due diligence in checking their backgrounds.

"I was told these witnesses were lawyers, I was not told anything else, and I was not aware of the views or the website they are associated with," he read from a statement.

"The views stated in their website are disgusting, and anti-Canadian, and I'm outraged by them. So as a result, I have asked the clerk that they be pulled [from the committee list]."

However, what is interesting is how the Lussier's (Julien and Madi, who run Immigration Report) blame not  Leung, who invited and then dis-invited them, but the opposition parties:

... it seems that the Liberals and NDP did not believe in their immigration policies enough to defend them before us. Along with all the other Canadians we speak for, we were silenced, censored, discarded.

Bad vetting or worse?  A quick google of Cheung and Julien Lussier doesn't bring up anything besides this story.  Still, five seconds playing around the cireport website by Mr. Leung's staff would have saved their boss a whole day of embarrassment.