HALIFAX—Espousing anti-immigration views at the Apple Blossom Festival parade resulted in a lifetime ban from the festival for a new Canadian political party, but the group says their nationalist railings don’t count as hate speech.

Members of the National Citizens Alliance (NCA) – a political party that says they’ll run candidates in the 2019 federal election – marched in the Apple Blossom Festival parade in Kentville, N.S. on Saturday and called out to parade goers about “protecting Canada’s identity, heritage, and culture.”

On Sunday, the group appeared in Halifax’s Victoria Park sharing similar messages. On their Facebook page they called that event a “peaceful information session.”

“We need to stand up to being Canadian in this country. We don’t want to become a globalist village,” said NCA leader Stephen Garvey Sunday in Halifax.

Though slightly abashed with their statements at the parade in Kentville and the gathering in Halifax, the NCA is more explicit with their beliefs on their website.

The platform on the NCA website describes their wish to limit immigration into Canada.

One of their platform tenets reads: “Implement strong no nonsense immigration policy that puts the well-being and safety of the Canadian people first and implementing a temporary pause and substantial reduction in immigration.”

And in a video posted to the NCA website titled “Extreme Multiculturalism,” Garvey says immigration into Canada “is turning into a fast death to the host culture.”

The board of directors of the Apple Blossom Festival apologized in a news release Sunday for allowing an unnamed group to march in the parade and “spread inappropriate political messages in the realm of what the Festival Board of Directors and many public attendees consider hate speech.”

They said that the festival doesn’t support any one political party, but they regularly welcome parties to join the parade. Their only caveat is that the party shouldn’t “use the parade as a platform to announce their political views.”

It added that the group didn’t indicate their political views when it applied to march in this year’s parade.

Garvey responded to the ban Monday in a Facebook video, defending the nationalist views he shared at the parade and decrying an alleged infringement on his right to free speech.

“The NCA believes that the Apple Blossom Parade’s board’s false and apparently politically-charged accusations and ban are rooted in a politically correct culture that is suffocating Canadians’ basic freedoms and civil rights, and ultimately harming our country and our people’s prosperity.”

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