The Democracy Fund has issued a legal notice to Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath and the Hamilton Police Service over their efforts to prevent the Dominion Society of Canada from holding its inaugural conference in the city.

Sheila Gunn Reid and David Menzies broke it down this latest act of political censorship in Canada on Tuesday's Rebel Roundup livestream.

The Dominion Society describes itself as a nonpartisan advocacy group promoting Canadian identity, heritage, nationalism, and immigration reform. Horwath stated the city would not rent any city-owned venues to the group — and then went further, writing to local private businesses to pressure them not to provide a venue either.

The Hamilton Police Service followed up by visiting venues in person to encourage them to consider the "impact" of hosting the event, and invited members of the public with knowledge of recent venue bookings to contact police. "Deploying police resources against a political organization based on that police force's own political evaluation," The Democracy Fund said, "constitutes an improper use of law enforcement powers."

The police themselves acknowledged the problem with their own actions. A spokesperson confirmed that "the messaging associated with the event does not meet the threshold for criminal or unlawful activity."

This, Sheila said, "should have been the full stop," wondering "what are the police doing here?"

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David contrasted the police's response to the Dominion Society event with that of a story he covered, also in Hamilton, where a neighbour said nothing was being done about a drug house operating next door.

But a political event discussing remigration, he said, was "investigated in a nanosecond" by police. David also pointed out that calls for genocide from those supporting Hamas in its war against Israel are regularly occurring in Hamilton and Toronto, which has resulted in minimal action from police.

Nevertheless, despite the attempts to shut it down, the Dominion Society's conference did go ahead. The people the police actually had to deal with were not the conference attendees; rather, they were the masked Antifa protesters who attempted to force their way into the building. Video showed officers chasing demonstrators away from the venue entrance.

"Inside, people are expressing views that other people don't like," David said, "but they're doing it peacefully, which is what you're supposed to do in a civilized society. Outside, Horwath's radicals are trying to trespass inside the event."

David also noted the Streisand Effect — that the mayor and police's intervention generated far more publicity for the Dominion Society than the conference would ever have attracted on its own.

"If the police and the politicians just shrugged their shoulders," he said, "this would have come and gone without a scintilla of notice."

Both hosts also flagged the selective nature of the enforcement.

Foreign speakers were banned from entering Canada to address the conference — on the basis of views the government deemed odious — while IRGC-linked individuals, members of a designated terrorist organization, continue to operate freely in the country.

"Either we're going to apply the law or we're not going to apply the law," Sheila said. "Selectively applying it sure looks political, doesn't it?"

David closed with a note on the rank hypocrisy of the counter-protesters' banner.

"United Against Hate?" he said. "The only hatred I see is coming from them. Antifa — they're not anti-fa. They're just fa. They use the tools of fascism: intimidation, violence, vandalism. They are the fascists."

Rebel Roundup airs Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.