By rdnewsNOW staff

Mass immigration discussed at meeting in Red Deer

Nov 24, 2018 | 5:53 PM

About 30 people showed up Saturday to what was touted as a discussion on the pros and cons of mass immigration.

There were no protests, though a handful of people from local pro-diversity groups did attend, including the Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Network (WIC)

That group told National Citizens Alliance leader Stephen Garvey before the meeting what they thought about some of his views. Garvey insisted that all viewpoints were welcome, as long as there were no disruptions.

“I just wanted to get up here because I knows there’s a dozen cameras and tons of people watching. I just wanted to say hello to our community. Thank you for being you and for being strong in the face of negative messages, and know that this is not representative of everyone,” said WIC co-chair Kareen Lambert who got up to speak at a podium much later in the meeting.

“I see a dozen faces I was so heartened to see from our network, from counter protests in the past. We do support immigration, we do support newcomers to Canada. We support our community members regardless of their religion. As proud as some people might be to have made it uncomfortable enough to drive folks out of this room today, we do support our ommunity members and there are lots of people out here that do.”

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Others in attendance included members from the Wolves of Odin, an Edmonton-based group which disbanded from the Soldiers of Odin in October and rebranded. Wolves of Odin is the same group which garnered attention after being seen with a UCP candidate at a pub night earlier this year.

Asked what he thought of their attendance, Garvey repeated that all are welcome.

“This is a public discussion. We want to hear from all Canadians. If there’s racism today, we have security guards and these people will be removed. If they’re promoting hate speech, they will be removed, and there’s police outside to deal with that,” Garvey said. “If someone crosses the line, they will be dealt with, but today this is about free speech.”

Asked what would be crossing the line, he said he didn’t know.

“Obviously if they have swastikas and hate speech written on them, show it to me and we can deal with them now,” Garvey stated. 

When Garvey began his speech by telling those in attendance that no racism would be tolerated, one Wolves of Odin member interrupted him and asked if he meant the dictionary definition of racism or the “new” definition.

Garvey told him they’d be going off the Criminal Code of Canada.

“Trudeau’s called out groups like ours and called them racists,” Garvey went on. “It’s not helping the dialogue in Canada. It’s in our party constitution; zero tolerance for racism.”

Garvey said he’d like to see a cap on immigration at 50,000 per year as opposed to the hundreds of thousands which currently come in annually. But he said there should first be a complete pause on letting any immigrants into Canada.

He also said they wouldn’t discriminate based on country.

Additionally, Garvey praised the Sheraton Hotel, the original location for Saturday’s event. The Sheraton told Garvey the event had to be relocated because the hotel was “overbooked.”

Garvey said the Sheraton told him that the building they ended up in is the hotel’s overflow space.

Hotel management declined comment.