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The Ottawa Public Library has cancelled this weekend’s screening of a controversial documentary, Killing Europe, after complaints the film was thinly disguised hate speech against Muslims and immigrants.

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“I am letting you know that I have been working with the city solicitor about concerns brought forward by the Ottawa district labour council, unions, residents, board members and friends,” Coun. Tim Tierney, who is chairman of the library’s board of directors, said in an email. “I had asked the CEO to review and address the concerns expressed.”

“I can now report that the rental of the room will not take place.”

The documentary was to have been screened Saturday afternoon at the library’s main branch on Metcalfe Street. The screening was to have been hosted by the group ACT! for Canada, a group dedicated “to speaking out about the clear and present dangers emerging from those who do not embrace Canada’s values …”

Killing Europe, by Danish ex-patriate Michael Hansen, purports to warn of the dangers of the “Islamification” of Europe.

But even a “30-second Google search” by the library would have revealed it to be hate speech, says human rights lawyer Richard Warman, who was one of the people to complain to the library about the screening.

Screening the film is “in clear violation of the library’s own rental policy prohibiting the use of space for discriminatory purposes,” Warman wrote in an email to the library and its board members, Mayor Jim Watson, and others.

“When I looked at the three-minute trailer, it was clear it was going to be an all-out assault on immigrants and the Muslim community,” Warman said Friday.

“The messages contained even in just the trailer is that ‘immigrants are coming to swamp and devastate Europe and that Muslims are engaged in perpetual massacres of the white populations.’ Obviously, it set off alarms.”