For Immediate Release:
November 16, 2010
Queens Park – Local MPP Toby Barrett is disgusted with the way a group of university protestors prevented Christie Blatchford from delivering a speech November 12th in Waterloo. Blatchford is a renowned journalist and is the writer of ‘Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us’ – an account of what has transpired over the past four years in Caledonia, home of the land dispute.
“Freedom of expression and free speech is important – people have fought to their death for these freedoms. Don’t impose censorship on another because you don’t agree,” Barrett said in the Ontario Legislature today. “Intimidation is wrong and cowardly. If you want to get your message out you need to let others do the same.”
Barrett was angry after seeing an image online where two protestors hold up a banner that reads: “Anti-Racist Action” and bears a swastika.
“Unfortunately there is a small minority that felt that they would win if they’d just sit on the stage and yell ‘racist, racist, racist'”, said Michael Strickland, a media spokesperson for the University of Waterloo.
If the goal of the protestors was to shut down free speech then they did win, Barrett and Blatchford both concluded.
MPP Barrett warned that this won’t be the first and last of the protestors, as the First Nations Solidarity Working Group has issued a call to organize and respond to Blatchford as she makes her way across Canada promoting her book.
Blatchford is set to speak this evening at 7 p.m. in Hamilton at the Chedoke Presbyterian Church, 865 Mohawk Road West, to promote her book.
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For more information, please contact MPP Toby Barrett at
(519) 428-0446 or (905)-765-8413, 1-800-903-8629