The pro-"intelligent design" movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, opened June 27, 2008 in theaters across Canada. The opening is significantly smaller than the movie's April debut in the United States, with only 36 theaters in 7 provinces showing the movie, according to Expelled's official website. It is not playing in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, or the territories.
Canadian reviewers have been no more sympathetic than their American colleagues. The Globe & Mail (June 27, 2008), which gave the movie a score of 0, calls Expelled "an appallingly unscrupulous example of hack propaganda", while Maclean's Magazine's senior entertainment writer and film critic writes (June 26, 2008), "I found this film so distasteful I hesitate to dignify it with even a thumbnail review." Independent Edmonton newspaper Vue Weekly (June 26, 2008) describes it as "anti-science propaganda masquerading as a Michael Moore-ish fool's journey, full of disingenuous ploys, cheap tricks, and outright mendacity" and calls the film's failure to back up its claims "poisonous cleverness."
To promote the movie, Ben Stein participated in a number of interviews across the country. Vancouver Sun writer Peter McKnight asked (June 21, 2008) for Stein's reaction to the Anti-Defamation League's statement condeming the use of the Holocaust to further an anti-evolution agenda, to which Stein replied, "It's none of their f---ing business." City blog Torontoist, part of the New York-based Gothamist network, also interviewed (June 23, 2008) Stein; in that interview he dismissed criticism of the movie as being from "the self-selected atheist elite."
A story in the June 13 National Post tells of a group of protesters who left a private screening of Expelled and marched to the Royal Ontario Museum, which is currently hosting an exhibit on the life of Charles Darwin. The leader of the group, Canada Christian College president Charles McVety, said that Darwin "taught hatred and devaluation of life and death." His group hopes that Expelled will spark discussion about the issue in Canada.