Better late than never?

How could I have been so suspicious of our government in my last post? They would never hide behind the bureaucracy to prevent an opposing viewpoint from being heard.

GM foods expert gets visa ? late

A last-minute decision to grant a visa to a prominent African scientist has some accusing Canada of abusing its position as host nation for the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity.

Ethiopia's Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher is the African Union's chief negotiator on biosafety and biodiversity. He is an outspoken critic of genetically modified foods.
...
This week, Tewolde missed the opening of talks on the biotechnology industry, in Montreal, because Canadian officials did not give him a visa.

He finally received his visa Tuesday morning. He says Canada appears to have abused its role as host nation, to try to exclude opposing views. He now says he hopes to arrive in Montreal for the last day of talks.

See? We didn't prevent him from being heard. It was just a bureaucratic snafu and a complete coincidence that Tewolde's views won't be heard until the action's all but over.

Can you say plausible deniability?

Canadian officials declined to discuss the case, citing privacy laws. But a government official says her information differs from Tewolde's.

They won't discuss it, but they made sure they got the last word. This still doesn't pass the smell test. Even if Tewolde's application was late (and he still insists it wasn't), you'd think that for an international conference on an important issue they would have been able to fast-track a visa for an acknowledged expert instead of coming up with reasons to delay it that have never applied before.

Update moments later:

I should read all the links that Google gives me before posting. Like this one:

At least four other would-be participants in the meeting are known to have been refused visas and there are likely others, said Eric Darier, a Greenpeace activist in Montreal.

He said all the delegates who have encountered visa problems are from poor countries and all are critics of Canada's policies promoting the trade in genetically modified foods and crops.

Tewolde has written to the executive director of the UN Environment Program asking that the Secretariat for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity be moved from Montreal to another country. So much for the world needing more Canada.