Quebec Pretty Much Shunned French Right-Winger Marine Le Pen During Her Visit

Kicked out of the Montreal hotel where she was meant to speak as part of a six-day Canadian pilgrimage, France's controversial Marine Le Pen was instead forced on Tuesday to hold court in a sports bar.

The failed gathering was the culmination of a hostile visit during which the leader of France's extreme right-wing Front National party was shunned by politicians and lambasted by protesters.

On Tuesday, in the wake of the Brussels attack, Le Pen called off all public appearances citing safety concerns. An update on her website indicated that a second hotel had cancelled the hall she had booked for her press conference.

The French politician's visit, which coincided with International Francophonie Day, was publicized as an effort to "honor" Canada's francophone heritage. "I thought it was my responsibility to pay tribute to the ideals and values of the Francophonie by outlining my doctrine regarding the great value of the Francophonie for France as well as the entire Francophone world," Le Pen wrote on her website.

French media reported Le Pen was visiting North America to boost her international appeal and fix what they referred to as her "reputation problems." In Europe, Le Pen has been heavily criticized for running a campaign based on intolerance and xenophobia, and allegedly using the Paris attacks to gain political capital.

While Le Pen had expressed a desire to discuss her anti-immigration, anti-free trade views directly with Canadian politicians, her networking efforts were mostly fruitless. Quebec politicians, including Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard and François Legault, the leader of center-right party Coalition Avenir Quebec, refused to meet with her.

A spokesperson for Montreal mayor Denis Coderre told Le Devoir their team had not been approached by Le Pen's people but that they had "no intention of meeting with her."

Parti Quebecois leader Pierre-Karl Péladeau also condemned a small faction of PQ youth whose picture was posted with Le Pen. "On behalf of the Parti Québécois, I want to formally dissociate our political party and party authorities from any activity or meeting, a result of personal initiatives, with representatives of this party, whose history, doctrine and propositions are diametrically opposed to the values of the Parti Québécois," Péladeau wrote on Facebook.

In 2014, the Parti Quebecois' efforts to implement a secular Charter of Values had earned the party unflattering comparisons to the Front National.

Le Pen did appear on various Quebec media outlets, using the soapbox to warn viewers about the "dangers" of Canada's immigration policies. She went on to call Justin Trudeau a "fake humanist" and deemed Canada the "land of Care Bears" for being so "naive" about immigration issues.

"Canada has a problem with fundamentalist islam. To not see it, to refuse to see it, is in my opinion a serious problem," she told Radio-Canada.

She also attempted to pander to Quebec's sovereignty movement, saying that immigration and trade liberalization were threatening the French language. "Mass immigration, complete openness, and submission to all these free trade agreements, are directly contrary to the defense of sovereignty," she said.

Énorme succès de — sebastien chenu (@sebchenu)March 22, 2016

Le Pen explained that she thought Quebec politicians were reluctant to meet with her because she represented an uncomfortable reality. "I am kind of a symbol of everything they've subjected themselves to, of everything they've disowned in their struggle for identity, sovereignty," she said. "Maybe that's why they are trying to escape me."

Tuesday morning, Le Pen appeared on TVA, Quebec's largest television network, to comment on the Brussels attacks, reiterating her anti-immigration views to warn viewers that "we are all in danger." On her website, she called for the closure of the France-Belgian border.

"We have to launch a major police operation right away to besiege all neighborhoods on the fringe of the French Republic and finally retrieve all the weapons, warfare weapons and explosives found there. We have to empty out the basements, this laxity has been going on for too long," she wrote.

Le Pen is now due to travel to French overseas collectivity Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago located off the coast of Newfoundland.

Follow Brigitte Noël on Twitter: @Brige_Noel