I wrote this in response to Blake Batson's post.
http://www.blakebatson.ca/?p=781&cpage=1#comment-28895
Maybe I'll flesh it out later
1. If you read Houle’s letter, it was very deferential, and not threatening at all. It did remind Coulter that there’s no constitutional right to freedom of speech in Canada, and that things she might say could get her (and more importantly), the University, arrested and charged. Not a threat, but a statement of fact from a bureaucrat afraid to get his institution in hot water.
2. This sentence from the Ottawa Citizen kinda says it all:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/speech+cancelled/2718270/story.html
Ezra Levant [...] told the half-filled hall that no more people would be able to enter and that Coulter had been advised it would not be safe for her to appear. Coulter’s bodyguard ultimately made the judgment.
Coulter wasn’t barred from appearing. She *chose* not to appear. Freedom of Speech, in my books, means that if you’re saying unpopular things, you should have to face the consequences of that unpopular speech. Coulter’s speech is so odious to Canadians that we don’t want to hear it, and obviously, she doesn’t think it’s important enough to say if there’s enough opposition.
She was invited to speak, she chose not to. That’s not a freedom of speech issue, that’s a courage issue.
Oh, and the milking it for all it’s worth? It’s already started. I’m sure it’ll play well to her coward “base”.