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Edmonton MP Peter Goldring and his “unity table” get snubbed on Canada Day

Edmonton MP Peter Goldring is outraged after he was barred from setting up a "unity table" at a Canada Day celebration on the grounds of Alberta's legislature.

Goldring, a former Conservative who now sits as an independent, is the founder of the Edmonton Chapter of the Special Committee for Canadian Unity.

Since 1996, the organization had set up the unity booth to hand out Maple Leaf pins and flags, "O Canada" bookmarks and an information pamphlet about the federal government.

But, after 16 years, organizers have somehow deemed the booth "too political."

"We wouldn't allow any particular partisan cause to be present on the grounds on [Canada] Day," Sergeant-at-Arms Brian Hodgson told Global News.

"I mean this is a day for all Canadians and it's not a place we would typically use for campaigns of any sort."

Goldring, however, insists unity is not a 'partisan cause'; for him it's an important cause.

"As a businessman I had only a passing interest in politics, however being in Quebec City for the October 1995 referendum that almost saw Quebec vote to leave Canada changed all that. What I saw disturbed me and caused me to dedicate my future to working for Canada and Canadian unity," he notes on his website.

"Following the Quebec Referendum I organized the Western Canada Branch of the Special Committee For Canadian Unity, starting on a journey that would see me getting involved in party politics, then as a politician taking the unity message to Quebec and standing up against the separatists on behalf of Canada."

In an interview Sunday, Goldring said celebrating and promoting Canadian unity is crucial, especially in the face of increasingly ambivalent attitudes toward the possibility of Quebec seceding from the rest of Canada.

"Otherwise we'll fall into the same problem we had in 1995 when we just about lost our country. And why? Because we were ambivalent, we didn't stand up for Canadian unity,"he told the Edmonton Journal.

Goldring has sent a letter to the Speaker of legislature demanding an apology and an official explanation for why his Canada Day display was rejected.