Some of rabble's staff spent the week-end poring through federal court documents in the upcoming court date on the George Galloway ban from Canada (The court date is April 26th)
Two stories - that we think are big stories - have come out of the review. In the first, despite Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney's comments that his office was not involved in the banning of the British MP from Canada, the emails presented to the court show his staff's direct involvement, and point to the Minister's awareness of this. We've included all of the emails as attachments in the articles so you can read yourself - but there is some pretty intense stuff in there, including the Minister's communications director madly searching for George Galloway's whereabouts to ensure that he would not be mistakingly allowed to cross the border. A big question revealed in these emails is that the news of Galloway's banning was leaked to the British media before Galloway was informed. This could be a violation of Canada's Privacy Act - and the documents and testimony reveal some serious questions about where the source of the leak came from.
The second story follows another intrigue: how these emails that make up the first story were mistakingly released to Galloway's lawyers in the first place. The Canadian government attempted to have the documents returned, unopened and unread, in order to redact what they described as large parts of the documents for issues of national security. This claim that was rejected by the court (with the minor exceptions related to revealing direct contact info of some individuals).
Have a look. We're curious to know what you think of the information.