BBC: Canada is often thought of as a land of bland consensus and multicultural harmony - the last place where you would expect to see a religious minority up in arms, and journalists accusing the state of gagging freedom of speech.
Yet in recent months, these have become fixtures of the country's public debate.
The Canadian equivalent of Denmark's cartoonists, or the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is the outspoken conservative columnist Mark Steyn.
In a 2006 article he used demographics to suggest that the West would succumb to Muslim domination.
The piece, entitled "The future belongs to Islam" and published by the Toronto magazine Maclean's, argued that Europe was "too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia".
Mr Steyn summarised the presumed global advantage of militant Islam with a stark equation: "Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way."
To some, he had crossed the line between vigorous polemic and Islamophia.
The notion that Muslims should be feared by virtue of their numbers and purported militancy is "quite inflammatory", says Toronto law student Khurrum Awan. Speech Row Rocks Multi-Ethnic Canada >>> By Henri Astier
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
