Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, its equivalent of the U.S. Bill of Rights, can be overridden by any provincial government at will. Majority French-speaking Quebec, for example, curtails the free-speech rights of English-speakers in an attempt to preserve the province's French character by force of law.
Disgusting.
That embarassingly cavalier treatment of civil rights is one reason I was delighted to move to the United States years ago, and delighted to take American citizenship more recently.
But just when I thought my birthplace could humiliate me no more, this happens:
When it comes to Canadian identity, Fox News Channel is apparently a threat. Al-Jazeera, on the other hand, is just another point of view enriching Canadian culture. That's the message sent last week when the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) granted the Qatar-based, anti-American al-Jazeera a Canadian license. Fox has wanted into Canada since 1999 but has so far been shut out -- except in Ottawa, at the Canadian Parliament, which requested and got a Fox feed last August.
Fox News is ostensibly shut out because it carries insufficient Candian content, but CNN and Al-Jazeera are allowed in despite having no more Canadian content than Fox.
The purported reason for this unfair play is that CNN was around before Canada decided to enforce the Canadian content restrictions.
So what? What possible difference does that make?
Al-Jazeera supposedly gets a pass because it doesn't compete with any home-grown Canadian stations.
Uh, DUH! Given that Fox News carries virtually no Canadian content, except for Bill O'Reilly's periodic attacks on Canadian immigration policy, what domestic news source could it possibly be competing with? Its programming is totally different from that of the CBC, CTV, Radio Canada, etc.
A culture that tries to protect itself by trampling on the rights of its citizens to choose their own media sources is not worth protecting.
Here in the U.S.A., folks can watch all the CBC, BBC, and Al-Jazeera they want.