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Speech not so free in Canada

In March, when American provocateur and political comedienne Ann Coulter came to visit Canada, her gig at the University of Ottawa was called off at the last minute, in what was trumpeted as an abridgement of her right to free speech.
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In March, when American provocateur and political comedienne Ann Coulter came to visit Canada, her gig at the University of Ottawa was called off at the last minute, in what was trumpeted as an abridgement of her right to free speech.

The result was a stage-managed slur on Canadians, painting Ottawa as a second-rate hick town, and its university, too — and from there, anyone who didn’t like Ann Coulter.

Eventually, as the saying goes, the dogs barked and the caravan moved on. However, it remains that free speech is not really a given in Canada. Canadians have far less of it than they think, or at least that group of Canadians who cannot afford to take on the power elites who might want to shut them up.

Recently, University of Calgary student Jeremy Zhao was served a cease-and-desist order by the City of Calgary’s lawyer — in person, no less. He was told to take down his website promoting the city’s Ward 15, of which he is (or was) the alderman.

That, of course, is not true. Zhao did run for mayor in the last election, at age 19, getting just under four per cent of the vote, but he is no alderman for Ward 15.

Truth is, Calgary has only 14 wards. There. Now you know more about Calgary civic politics than thousands of Calgary voters.

He was ordered to shut down his site because it looks too much like the official City of Calgary website. It even has the same copyright notice.

The public is expected to believe that jealous protection of copyright was behind the order, not any embarrassment over what a spoof municipal website might contain, with an election coming up this fall.

But Alberta is setting a pattern here. Rocky View County also sent cease-and-desist letters to a pair of websites operated by Bearspaw and Springbank residents. According to the Calgary Herald, both sites lampooned the county’s logo and its slogan: “cultivating communities.”

So, it appears that when an extreme right-wing American is prevented from insulting Canadians, it’s an abridgement of free speech that ought to shame us all. But when a student pokes fun at civic politics, the powers that be can simply unleash the lawyers.

Obviously, both cases injure free speech. But one group has the wealth to say so, and the student does not.

Right and wrong do not matter here. Ann Coulter got her say, and likely picked up a healthy fee for her trouble. Jeremy Zhao told newspaper and radio reporters he does not have the means to fight this order, and will have to just forfeit his right to free speech.

In Canada you can be restricted from telling the truth if an aggrieved party can say you maliciously tarnished their reputation by doing so. It’s one of the reasons there’s so little investigative journalism done in Canada. Litigation chill.

But even just to get to the point of ascertaining the truth, Canadians are kept severely under wraps.

Canadians do not have access to the truth, wherever that touches power. Legislation and practice governing access to information in Canada is restrictive, to put it mildly.

Albertans like to view themselves as rugged individualists. After all, we hosted — nay, applauded — Ann Coulter. But in fact, we are so conformist, so deferential to power that we can’t even bring ourselves to change governments more than once in a generation, or even to allow an opposition to form.

We are quite happy to allow governments to walk over our right to free speech, and to keep us from knowing what they do with our money.

And we all sleep better knowing the integrity of municipal logos is fully preserved.

Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.