A Northern Irish band that has called on its followers to kill British politicians and has allegedly expressed support for Islamist terrorist groups is slated to come to Canada for four now sold-out shows scheduled for Toronto on October 14 and 15 at History and in Vancouver on October 22 and 23 at the Vogue Theatre.

The group performed earlier this year at the Coachella music festival in California, where during their show, they projected slogans such as “F*** Israel” onto a giant screen, but other videos which recently came to light are even more damning.

One video from 2023 purportedly shows one of the band members telling the crowd “the only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP,” while a clip from a 2024 show – where Hezbollah flags were present – featured one of the three singers yelling “up Hamas, up Hezbollah.”

While the band has denied supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, saying in recent days that “we condemn all attacks on civilians,” it is difficult to put much stock in such words given that they came out only after their previous comments were made public and sparked such a furor.

As a result of these controversies, the band has been dropped by major music festivals in Germany, has had its US booking agency cancel work with them, and now British counter-terrorism police are investigating the group, with the British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper calling the band’s rhetoric “a total disgrace.”

And yet they are still scheduled to visit Canada. Why?

This is not a matter of free expression, but of ensuring the safety of Canadians. For nearly 19 months following the Palestinian terrorist massacres in Israel, Canadians have borne witness to a lamentable display of ongoing extremism on display on campuses, on our streets, and elsewhere.

The planned visit by Kneecap is just the latest in a long string of such instances where Canadians have watched as radical messages have been de facto treated as normal and just part of our landscape.

Samidoun, a Vancouver-based group that has been designated a terrorist group in Canada, hosted a protest last October where the Canadian flag was burned and where “death to Canada” was chanted.

In February, Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s head, traveled to Lebanon for a memorial to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, a banned terrorist organization in Canada. She returned to Canada, apparently without any legal consequences whatsoever.

It’s one thing to permit radical voices an unfettered platform in our own midst, in Canada and in Vancouver. But it’s quite another to actively bring in a group that has expressed such statements that are indisputably anathema to the vast majority of Canadians, and for good reason.

There has been some notable media attention covering Kneecap’s proposed visit by the Globe and Mail, and a petition signed by close to 4,000 people is circulating online calling on organizers to cancel their show in Vancouver, and this is indeed a good start, and it’s time for the organizers in British Columbia and Ontario to do the right thing and cancel the group’s performances and for Canada Border Security Agency (CBSC) to deny them entry to Canada.

For more than a year-and-a-half, in the face of loud demonstrations from a marginal minority of anti-Israel extremists, elected officials have told Canadians that “hate has no place here.” Here is a chance to actually show Canadians if those words are a promise, or simply empty rhetoric. We will be watching.