Russian-Canadians banned from Edmonton Heritage Festival — why bring the war over here?

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On last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra discussed the decision by the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association (EHFA) to exclude the Russian pavilion from its Edmonton Heritage Festival. 

The EHFA board said that the decision was made due to safety concerns. "Following a long consultative process that culminated in a meeting with both pavilions together in the same meeting space last week, it became very clear to the EHFA that it was not possible for the two pavilions to come up with a solution together despite best efforts," they wrote in a news release.

"As much as we do our best to stay out of the politics that are reflected in the countries that represent the cultures that make up our festival, conflicts do exist and can escalate to the point where they cannot be ignored."

The Ukrainian ambassador to Canada approved of the decision. "We think that there shouldn't be any Russian culture promotion here because this is the culture that brought up the generation of people who turned out to be invaders, looters, killers, rapers," Yuliya Kovaliv said. "That’s unfortunately what we as Ukrainians feel, and the whole world sees that suffering." 

Lorne Gunter joined the show to discuss his piece reacting to the Russian cultural ban. "Russian-Canadians and Ukrainian-Canadians can have strong opinions about what’s going on in their legacy countries, but here they owe one another the respect they owe every other Canadian," Lorne wrote.

"That is foundational to our identity as a multicultural democracy and fundamental to the equal application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

This is only an excerpt of yesterday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show. To watch the full episode, become a subscriber to RebelNews+.