When you think of Canada, what do you think of? High taxes? Hockey? Beer? Beavers? But for the most part, of course, Americans--to the extent that they think about Canada at all--think of Canada as a sort of northern United States, where everything is pretty much the same as it is here--except colder.
      But in fact, Canada is a much different country than the United States--and it's becoming more different. It's different because political correctness, combined with an easy willingness to use state power, has created a noxious form of censorship that is profoundly different from what Americans are used to. Yet this rising tide of p.c. censorship has occurred as few Americans noticing. Yes, Canada is a different country, but it is so close to the US, and so similar, that it's worth pausing for a moment to see how it is that Canada slipped into a kind of snowy semi-totalitarianism.
      Consider, for example, the fate of NBC's Conan O'Brien. The late-night funnyman learned during his week broadcasting from Toronto in February that there are some things even a puppet can't joke about. His visit also served to impress upon Canadians-and to any Americans paying attention-that freedom of speech is dead in Canada, never mind what that country's constitution says.
      O'Brien had been enticed to travel north because the city of Toronto offered him a sweet package, including $1 million production costs to be picked up by the local, provincial and federal governments. City leaders knew that their tourism had been damaged by the SARS epidemic--and of course, when Toronto is hurt, Canadian taxpayers are expected to ease the pain.
      Apparently, however, nobody had bothered to explain to O'Brien's people that the Television Broadcasting Regulations, 1987 and the Canadian Human Rights Act required that one of O'Brien's signature schticks, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, would have to be kept in his kennel.
      And so, blithely expressing what Americans would take to his right to free speech--no matter how obnoxious--Triumph pooped all over French Canadians, calling them "obnoxious and dull" and insinuating they are "pussies" and "queers." The studio audience roared with laughter, but Canada's political establishment roared with outrage. Indeed, the desire to put Triumph in the pound stretched across the Canadian political spectrum; former Conservative Party opposition leader Stephen Harper, who by Canadian standards is rated a "libertarian," declared that the canine's routine was "completely unacceptable."
      But the response from Canadian performers was bitter recognition--because they could've told O'Brien what he would be confronting in Canada.
      Don Cherry, Canada's most famous television personality, was typical, in his wistful pessimism about Canada. "It's easy for Conan," Cherry said. "He can leave the city at the end of the week." Cherry, former Boston Bruins coach and a Bill O'Reilly-style populist, had outraged the p.c. authorities (and not for the first time) a month earlier when he had declared during Hockey Night in Canada that "Europeans and French guys" were the most likely to hide behind protective visors while on the ice.
      Such a comment wouldn't even cause a ripple on an American sports show, but Canada is different. The government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation declared Cherry's observation completely unacceptable and decreed that his "Coach's Corner" segment would henceforth air after a seven-second delay. (This was later rejected as impractical.)
      But so onerous are Canadian broadcasting and human-rights laws that soon, officials seem to be saying, all Canadians might have to be fitted with censorship devices. How else to walk the tiny fine line between freedom of speech (which is protected) and freedom from other people's free speech (which is even more protected).
      Consider: Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees all Canadians "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication." However, this same Charter explicitly guarantees special rights to "disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability." ("Sexual orientation" has since been added by court order.) On the face of it, these groups would seem to comprise everyone except a few, straight, male WASPs.
      Moreover, Canadian broadcasters, including terrestrial and satellite radio, terrestrial, satellite and cable television, are strictly regulated by a government agency, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. No one may broadcast in Canada without a license from this agency. The CRTC imposes strict conditions on licensees, including how much "Canadian content" must be broadcast, the balance of old to new songs on FM radio, and, most important, what may not be said or pictured. (And so, for example, the importing of American cable networks is severely restricted; CNN is permitted; MSNBC must contain "Canadian content"; Fox News and HBO are prohibited.)

      Prohibited speech includes:

      * anything in contravention of the law               
     * any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability
      * any obscene or profane language or pictorial representation; or
      * any false or misleading news

      Failure to abide by these rules leads to a loss of that all-important license. Moreover, Canadian broadcasters (and the Internet) are also subject to the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits, "Any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." And what's an "identifiable person"? That would be anyone identified by "race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted." Got that?
      Maybe you're thinking that these speech codes make it impossible for Canadian broadcasters to say anything bad about anybody-except, again, maybe a few, straight, male WASPs. But wait, it gets better. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has ruled that truth is not a defense. If a statement hurts the feelings of identifiable persons, the commission doesn't care if the statement is true or not.
      So Triumph's anti-French-Canadian rant was no laughing matter in the pure-thinking ranks of Canadian officialdom. Anticipating legal trouble, the broadcaster which owns the Canadian rights to Conan O'Brien's show announced immediately after the outrage that the rant would be excised from future rebroadcasts.
      Indeed, whole shows from America have been excised for fear of legal scrutiny. Syndicated radio host Art Bell was dropped last year by an Ottawa radio station after statements deemed insensitive to Muslims were broadcast. His show is likely doomed on all Canadian airwaves. That's true, too, for Laura Schlessinger. Dr. Laura ran afoul of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (the industry group which administers broadcast speech codes) some years ago for her comments about gays. The Council had already ruled, in a complaint against religious group Focus on the Family, that broadcasters may not criticize the "gay agenda." (Which would make Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in the Lawrence sodomy case "hate speech" in Canada.) Howard Stern disappeared some years ago from Canadian radio following his own insults against French Canadians.
      Canadian broadcasters are terrified of losing their jobs, and their employers are terrified of losing their licenses. Rigorous self-censorship is now routine, and certain subjects-those that tend to involve race, religion or sexual behavior-are, in effect, banned from Canada's airwaves.
      Canada's print media remains formally unregulated. (Except the Internet, which has been made subject to the Canadian Human Rights Act and ex parte censorship under Canada's "anti-terrorism" law.) But the same bony hand of strangulation is extending toward print, too; human rights tribunals in two Canadian provinces have already censored newspapers, the first for publishing columns containing offensive comments about Jews, and the second for publishing an advertisement highlighting Biblical condemnations of homosexual acts.
      Formal regulation is probably not going to come, at least for a while, for two reasons. First, Canadian newspapers and magazines have subjected themselves to the same self-censorship that blights broadcasting. Second, Canadian courts have stripped from the Criminal Code the protections previously granted to any person accused of "inciting hatred" against "identifiable groups." In other words, Canadian newspapers are on notice that they could be next.
      Of course, the first victims of government repression are usually marginal. In one such case, covered by the US-based WorldNetDaily.com, but ignored by the Canadian media, a Protestant lay minister was found guilty of inciting hatred for statements that Islam is a "Satanic" and "violent" religion. The preacher was subject to up to two years' imprisonment, but was sentenced to give himself over to a Muslim group for re-education. It's hard to believe that such free-speech-infringing activities are happening just above the American border. But they are.
      Free speech in Canada may be a dead letter, but this hardly seems to bother Canadians. Even Canada's civil libertarians don't seem to care; Allan Borovoy, long-time general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, confessed to the Washington Post, "I tell people that Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country."
      If we spend $200 billion and 500+ lives to travel over to Iraq to make that distant land into a free country, we might at least give some thought to what's happening north of the border. Because in point of fact, the two countries, America and Canada, are close enough that if something happens on one side of the border, it can happen on the other side.
      But all is not yet lost. Despite Triumph's hounding, comedy is not yet banned in Canada. In 1999, the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council concluded that "The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" were not guilty of propagating "negative or degrading comments on the role and nature of women." So maybe if Triumph were a rabbit instead of a dog.


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