By Lorne Gunter

Sunday, 18 July 2004

Has Canada become the most ideologically fragile nation in the western world?

Certainly, it seems as though robust debates of sensitive issues are not only to be avoided here, they are to be feared; as if the mere mention of a handful of topics might send the population into fits and seizures.

In just the past two months, we have witnessed the Supreme Court of Canada uphold the election gag law that forbids everyone but registered parties and their official candidates from spending more than a pittance to make their messages heard during a federal campaign.

The ruling effectively turned our elections into gated communities for incumbency and the status quo.

We have seen social issues in a federal election raised only for the way they permitted the ruling political and media caste to portray their rivals as unsuited for power. And we have seen a scurrilous scare campaign that insisted that even raising health care and tax cuts as topics is unCanadian - not merely bad policy but traitorous. And we have watched the CRTC order the closure of Quebec City's CHOI because the station's hosts were politically incorrect.

The underlying message of all these actions is that ordinary Canadians are too dense to understand complex issues, so debate on them must be stamped out before it can even take place. Those who would impose such limitations have no confidence in the common citizen's ability to choose wisely.

While these are typically tactics employed by the liberal-left establishment, one recent example shows the right can be seduced into using the same, wrong strategies.

A group of young conservatives, the Ontario Campus Conservatives (OCC), with the encouragement of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), want American producer/director Michael Moore (of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 infamy) charged with violating Canada's Elections Act.

There is no doubt Moore is a pompous ass and a creator of clever propaganda - not documentaries, propaganda. A lot of savvy, self-satisfied folks believe Moore's presentation of the "facts" to be impeccable, his research unparalleled, but that's pretty much because Moore reassures them that the worst things they wanted to believe - about guns, corporate greed and George W. Bush, among others - are all true.

There is little doubt that Moore is guilty of breaking Canadian law. While in Toronto for a promotional appearance flogging his new film Fahrenheit 9/11, during our just concluded election, the crude Moore likened electing Stephen Harper prime minister to "taking a piss on yourself." He added: "I really need you to make sure that Mr. Harper does not take over....He has a big pair of scissors....He wants to snip away at your social safety net. He'd like (Canada) to be the 51st state."

As the OCC points out (check out their website at www.chargemoore.com), Section 331 of the act reads, "No person who does not reside in Canada shall, during an election period, in any way induce electors to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate unless the person is (a) a Canadian citizen; or (b) a permanent resident."

Moore doesn't live here and isn't a citizen or permanent resident, yet he clearly did "during an election period," seek to "induce electors to ...refrain from voting for a particular candidate."

Seems straightforward enough.

But in this case it is the law that is an ass, not Michael Moore. And by pushing for Moore to be charged under this supercilious law, the OCC is strengthening the law's arbitrary and anti-democratic curtailments of free speech.

By restricting third-party advertising during elections or seeking to muzzle non-residents, the law presupposes that many voters will cast their ballots unwisely if subjected to these influences.

But in elections, the voter must be the ultimate adjudicator. Any law that seeks to limit the information he or she may view during a campaign places the limiter above the voter as the guardian of what is or is not truly important in a democracy. It unseats the citizen from what should be his or her apex in our system of government.

No doubt the OCC and the NCC enjoyed a revenge-is-sweet, gotcha moment when they realized what Moore had done. The NCC had been the target of the gag law approved by the Supreme Court. When it saw the chance to punch back at one of liberaldom's current poster boys, the opportunity was no doubt too much to resist.

It's human instinct to want to make others suffer the same punishments we have suffered for the same offences. But while it may seem fair to those pushing charges against Moore, it isn't going to advance the cause of free speech to advocate more persecutions under an unjust law.

Just as two wrongs cannot make a right, infringing on someone else's freedom of expression, just because yours has been trampled, will not make anyone freer.