Border guards to turn away church group aiming to picket bus victim's funeral

This is some good news,in a bad week.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office sent an alert to border patrol to "look out" for people with signs and pamphlets consistent with the messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country, Winnipeg MP Pat Martin told CBC News on Friday.

"Entering Canada by a U.S. citizen isn't an absolute right, and if you're coming here only to disrupt the social order and to promote what we consider to be bordering on hate crimes or hate language, they shouldn't come into Canada," Martin said.

"We're not going to allow these people to compound the tragedy of the McLean family loss, and Canadians simply won't tolerate these lunatics disrupting what should be a respectful service."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/08/08/westboro-protest.html

Denying them entry is both more effective and less vulnerable than denying them free speech.

Starting off the day with some good news for a change. As you say, it's been a bad week.

My favourite picture of the Phelps crew is them standing on the peace bridge, trying to stop Americans from entering Canada...after they'd been denied entry as a "hate group." They were trying to come into canada to protest the gay marriage decision.

Learn something every day, I guess.

This is a first for me,posting something good about Mr. Day.

now they'll stay in America.

It'd be nice if North Korea would take a very tolerant stance towards homosexuality, I'd like to see them try to sneak across that border.

And summarily assassinated/executed.

scumbags with a disgusting message. What if Canada decides some other messages are divisive?

Better they should be allowed in and perhaps subjected to nonstop derision while being kept far away from the funeral. There must be some place in the Yukon to set up a "protest zone."

and "freedom of speech" isn't part of our constitution.