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Re: the tyranny of canadian 'democracy'

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On 2019-01-29 6:36 p.m., Byker wrote:
> "A Moose in Love"  wrote in message
> news:df83f638-9cab-40b0-87ae-83c1c5193b24@googlegroups.com...
> 
> On Tuesday, January 29, 2019 at 2:59:14 PM UTC-5, Greg Carr wrote:
>>>
>>> You are free to leave the country and settle somewhere else and if I was
>>> a millionaire I would buy you a plane ticket.
>>
>> sorry.  i'm not leaving.  that doesn't mean that we need to take the
>> jackboot that's stomping on our necks.
> 
> Here's a little something I posted as "Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian
> country" back in 2000. Have things gotten any better?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "We don't have the hang-up you Americans have with free speech."  And
> Canadians don't have the Bill of Rights, either.  All these whiney Liberals
> point to the Great White North as an example for the U.S. to follow, but in
> reality, they conveniently stay on the Yank side of the border...
> 
> 
> In Canada, Free Speech Has Its Restrictions
> 
> Government Limits Discourse That Some May Find Offensive
> 
> By Steven Pearlstein Washington Post Foreign Service
> 
> TORONTO: New Yorker Harold Mollin thought it was a pretty clever way to
> market his new "weather insurance" to Canadians planning weddings or
> vacations: a 30-second TV spot featuring a huckster dressed in an Indian
> headdress leading a bunch of senior citizens in a rain dance.
> 
> But to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), the ad was an affront to
> Native Americans and the elderly. The government-owned broadcaster refused
> to run it.
> 
> "This is political correctness run amok," said an incredulous Mollin, 
> noting
> that the seniors in the spot included his 89-year-old father, his aunt and
> his best friend's parents.
> 
> Or take the case of Stephani the cow. This fall, after a visitor to the
> government's experimental farm complained that she didn't like sharing the
> same name with the animal, the farm's director declared that, henceforth,
> government cows would get only names like Rhubarb and Dynamite.
> 
> Whether you call it over-sensitive political correctness or an abiding 
> sense
> of fairness and decency, Canada has embraced it like a ... well, never 
> mind.
> Through its human rights laws and hate speech codes, broadcast standards 
> and
> myriad "voluntary" industry guidelines, Canada makes no bones about its
> determination to impose liberal-minded limits on public discourse.
> 
> Although the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms put free speech and a free
> press into the bedrock of Canadian law, neither the public nor Canada's
> courts views these rights as absolutely as Americans have come to view the
> First Amendment. The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled in a series of cases
> that the government may limit free speech in the name of other worthwhile
> goals, such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony or promoting
> equality of the sexes.
> 
> "In Canada," said Ron Cohen, chairman of the Canadian Broadcast Standards
> Council, "we respect free speech but we don't worship it. It is one 
> thing we
> value, but not the only thing."
> 
> Cohen said that Canada seems to have survived reasonably well without Don
> Imus or Rush Limbaugh on any of its radio stations. (Howard Stern is heard
> only in Montreal--and then only censored on tape delay.)
> 
> Last month, the Global Television network pulled the "Jerry Springer" show
> from its lineup after the standards council found that it had violated the
> restrictions on sex and violence.
> 
> Canada's most powerful tool against politically incorrect speech is its 
> hate
> speech code, which prohibits any statement that is "likely to expose a
> person or group of persons to hatred or contempt" because of "race, color,
> ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, 
> physical
> or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age."
> 
> Prosecutors are not required to show proof of malicious intent or actual
> harm to win convictions in hate speech cases, and courts in some
> jurisdictions have ruled that it does not matter whether the statements are
> truthful.
> 
> One person who has run afoul of the code is Hugh Owens, a Christian
> fundamentalist who took out a small display ad in the Saskatoon newspaper
> featuring a stick figure drawing of two men holding hands inside a circle
> with a slash through it--a statement of his disapproval of homosexuality.
> 
> What made it worse, said the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, was that
> the graphic was accompanied by citations from the Biblical books of
> Leviticus, Romans and First Corinthians that, in some translations, call 
> for
> sodomy to be punished by death by stoning.
> 
> If a hearing officer agrees that this display violates the code, Owens 
> could
> become the first modern-day Canadian punished by the government for citing
> the Bible.
> 
> "Our position is that you can't rely simply on the free exchange of 
> ideas to
> cleanse the environment of hate and intolerance," said John Hucker,
> secretary general of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
> 
> For the Canadian press, however, a more serious challenge to free speech is
> posed by a case brought by the Human Rights Commission of British Columbia
> against Douglas Collins, a former columnist for the North Shore News in
> Vancouver.
> 
> In 1994, Collins wrote four columns that questioned whether as many as 6
> million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and criticized Hollywood for
> contributing to the "Holocaust propaganda" with movies such as "Swindler's
> List," as he called Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." Acting on a
> complaint by the Canadian Jewish Congress, a commission tribunal ruled that
> the columns had expressed his "hatred and contempt...subtly and indirectly"
> by "reinforcing negative stereotypes" about Jews.
> 
> CAFE Demonstration - "Tribunals are a Travesty"
> 
> The tribunal imposed $2,000 fines each on Collins and the newspaper and
> ordered the paper to publish a summary of its decision--the first time that
> any Canadian government agency or court had dictated editorial content to a
> newspaper and ordered that it be published. The case has been appealed to
> the British Columbia Supreme Court.
> 
> The electronic media operate under even tighter content restrictions. Last
> month, in the midst of violent protests in New Brunswick over Indian 
> fishing
> rights, CBC reporters on orders from network officials, began referring to
> participants as "native fishers" and "non-native fishers."
> 
> The Fishing Dispute in Eastern Canada
> 
> "Why can't we call them what they call themselves?" complained CBC producer
> Dan Leger in an internal e-mail leaked to the National Post. "Mik'maqs call
> each other Indians. Fishermen call themselves, well, fishermen." Leger
> called the new designations "urban, technocratic, precious, racist and,
> above all, imprecise."
> 
> Failing to follow such guidelines, however, can have consequences. In
> Winnipeg last year, radio talk show host John Collison lost his job after
> the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) complained to station
> owners about his repeated and sometimes salty diatribes against Glen 
> Murray,
> who eventually became the first openly gay mayor in Canada. Collison also
> used his show to stir up opposition to a program proposed by some school
> board members to eliminate homophobia in the city's schools.
> 
> Collison concedes he was playing the role of "shock jock." In response to
> threats from the CRTC, Collison said, the station not only fired him, but
> also gave up its all-talk format in favor of easy-listening music.
> 
> "This is the way things run in Canada," Collison said. "There is no way of
> escaping the mandarins of political correctness."
> 
> Andrea Wylie, a member of the CRTC, disagrees. "We are not the thought
> police," she said. "We use our power lightly."
> 
> Wylie cited figures showing that the commission and its broadcast standards
> council took action in only about a dozen of the 14,000 viewer complaints
> lodged last year. While acknowledging that the very existence of the codes
> might have a chilling effect on public discourse, she called it "a
> reasonable chill," reflecting what Canadians are willing to hear.
> 
> "We don't have the hang-up you Americans have with free speech," Wylie 
> said.
> 
> Advertisers in Canada also must adhere to a strict set of guidelines 
> adopted
> voluntarily by the industry, but no less effective than the government
> regulations. Under their dicta, a national restaurant chain was recently
> forced to pull a television spot showing a helpless dad trying to prepare
> dinner for the kids (he eventually gives up and takes them out for burgers
> and fries). A hearing officer ruled that the commercial "reinforced 
> negative
> stereotypes" about men that "cannot be excused by an attempt to engage in
> humor."
> 
> There are a few Canadians who worry about these limits, but, as Alan
> Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has
> discovered, it's a very few. Despite 30 years of crisscrossing the country
> warning of the dangers of speech codes and laws, Borovoy's organization has
> a mere 6,000 members and a budget of less than $300,000. Typically, he can
> take on fewer than 10 cases a year.
> 
> Sitting in his cramped office in a rundown office building in downtown
> Toronto, Borovoy is philosophical in describing American and Canadian
> attitudes toward civil liberties. While Americans are suspicious of
> government and rally to the cry of "life, liberty and the pursuit of
> happiness," Canadians, he said, tend to respect authority and set their
> sights on the more modest goals of "peace, order and good government."
> 
> "In this country, we give the government too much power and trust them not
> to abuse it," said Borovoy, noting that, for the most part, voters have not
> been disappointed. "I tell people that Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian
> country."
> 
> http://www.freedomsite.org/cafe/updates/canadian_censorship_from_ny_times.html 
> 

who cares what canada does

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Re: the tyranny of canadian 'democracy' "Byker" <byker@do~rag.net> - 2019-01-29 19:36 -0600
  Re: the tyranny of canadian 'democracy' % <persent@gmail.com> - 2019-01-29 18:39 -0700

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