One gets let in, one gets left out. Photos: Michael Falco/The Globe and Mail and Chicago Sun-Times Photo Archive

Good news, Conrad Black, you’re an ex-con now and you’re allowed back in Canada!

Bad news, Gary Freeman, you can’t come in because you’re still a cop-killing (sic) bastard!

A Parliamentary page must have alerted NDP leader Thomas Mulcair to the breaking news this afternoon. Having already delivered a blustery five questions on the F35 boondoggle at the outset of Question Period, the opposition leader stood again to deliver some improvised outrage over Black’s return to Canada.

Mulcair was unhappy that another black, as it were, won’t be receiving quite the same welcoming mat.

Gary Freeman, you see, is a national security risk to Canada. Conrad Black, on the other hand, is a convicted fraudster who actually renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to receive some royal British accolades. The perfect Canadian.

The danger of letting Freeman into the country, it seems, stems from an incident in 1969 when Freeman shot a cop three times. To hear Minister Kenney to explain it, Freeman is a radical member of the Black Panther Party who killed a cop as a part of war against whitey. At least, that’s what he said today in the House of Commons. To hear Freeman tell it, he shot a cop in self defence after being racially profiled, and the witch-hunt surrounding the shooting was at the bequest of J Edgar Hoover. He also denies – with some supporting evidence – that he was ever a member of the Black Panther Party.

The facts? Freeman, born Joseph Pannell, shot the cop – who survived with only damage in his arm – and subsequently fled to Canada, where he lived up until 2008 when he traveled back to Chicago amidst extradition hearings in Toronto. Freeman confessed to aggravated battery, spending 30 days in jail, two years of probation and a large contribution to a Chicago police fund.  Since then, he has been trying to get back to Canada.

Both Olivia Chow and former Liberal MP Alan Tonks have presented petitions asking the Minister of Immigration to allow him back into the country. That idea was a non-starter, it seems.

Kenney was quick to label Freeman as a “cop killer” today, a statement for which he later apologized; it being flagrantly untrue and all. Kenney, however, said neither decision was to be made by him, but instead by department staff. The Globe & Mail, who broke the Conrad Black story, seems to back up this statement in that instance, writing that Kenney specifically asked to be left out of this political hand grenade of a case.

But Mulcair, speaking off the cuff, wouldn’t accept that this decision wasn’t driven by the Conservative Party. Using every word short of “racist,” Mulcair pointed out that the esteemed white British citizen – Black – was approved out of hand, whereas the government has fought tooth-and-nail against the father-of-two – Freeman, black – making a thinly-veiled accusation of discrimination on the part of the minister.

Kenney, of course, was having none of it. Reddening in the face and launching his index finger like a tactical missile of indignation, the minister demanded to know why the leader of the opposition was painting our “highly-trained” bureaucrats as racists.

Indeed, one can easily envision NDP communications staffers grabbing clumps of hair and launching papers across a disheveled war room – never mind the “union bosses” that the NDP are supposedly beholden to, who are the ones representing those racists in the Immigration ministry. Kenney, on the other hand, has already had the dubious title of “embattled” added to his name before, and is not doubt nervous of having “racist” stitched on.

But this isn’t the first skirmish the two parties have had regarding undue political influence on immigration cases. Take George Galloway, for example, the Labour-MP-turned-Respect MP-turned-retired-turned-Respect-MP-again who was denied entry to Canada due to his “support” for Hamas. The Government said that support constitutes funding terrorism. The reality was a bit more mundane. Galloway provided humanitarian supplies for Hamas who do have a military wing, but who are also known for their humanitarian work in the slums of Palestine. That decision was later upheld by a federal court. Nonetheless, he was later let into Canada by the order of another Federal Court judge.  That case later spilled over into a lawsuit against the soon-to-be-ex spokesman for Kenney, a one Alykhan Velshi. That’s the same Velshi who went on to found Ethical Oil, an Ezra Levant-sponsored think-tank. Velshi is now in the Prime Minister’s Office.

But if you think the Conservatives are the only ones guilty of trying to block political adversaries from entering the country, think again. As Kenney pointed out in today’s Question Period, the NDP’s Don Davies – while serving as critic for immigration – had called for former US Vice President Dick Cheney to be stopped and turned away before entering the Great White Socialist North. Cheney authorized torture, said Davies, and therefore was in violation with Canadian law. That event was concerned just the same, due to Cheney’s concerns over security.

In the view of this humble journalist, there’s a striking hypocrisy in allowing one criminal in, and refusing the other. Painting Freeman’s 43-year-old crime as ongoing proof of his threat to national safety is as absurd as saying that allowing Dick Cheney into the country equates a tacit support for torture. Similarly, allowing in a fraudster that has been embroiled in multi-million dollar theft should be a precedent to welcome a sitting MP who bought medical supplies for a group the government doesn’t consider to be legitimate.