Banned in Canada
Monday, 2 May 2005
Mark Steyn
A decade or so back, I was in London and switched on the radio and the top story on the BBC News that morning ran as follows: “A Conservative MP has been found dead in . . . unusual circumstances.”
That’s annoying enough--like those people who rush up to you and say, “You’ll never believe what I just heard . . . no, wait, I’m not supposed to tell you, forget I mentioned it.” But worse was to come. The news bulletin ended and the anchor on the morning show came on and he had with him the chairman of the Tory party, Norman Fowler, and an equivalent panjandrum from Labour, and they proceeded to discuss for 15 minutes the unusual death of the aforementioned MP without giving us a hint as to the aforementioned unusual circumstances. “These are the kind of, ah, circumstances that could occur to, ah, any member in any party,” said Sir Norman, anxious to make plain that whatever the unusual circumstances were the unusualness of them was strictly non-partisan.
I had a headache by the time the segment ended. Here were a bigshot BBC host plus two political heavyweights having a public conversation in which they all knew what they were talking about but the listening millions were entirely in the dark and the conversation was being conducted in a code explicitly intended to keep them in the dark.
Well, the fate of poor Stephen Milligan, MP didn’t stay veiled in obfuscatory unusualness for long. He had been found dead on his kitchen table naked except for a pair of lady’s stockings on his legs and a third one tied round his arm, a satsuma and amphetamines in his mouth, and on his stomach traces of what the FBI crime lab during their analysis of Monica’s black dress took to calling genetic material. The honourable member had died of “auto-erotic asphyxiation,” and that’s too good a story for the Fleet Street tabs to go along with any of this genteel “unusual circumstances” hooey. Mr. Milligan’s notoriety has faded now, but I’ve never forgotten that initial BBC tiptoe round his two lips and the memorable contents within. The political and media class carrying on a private conversation based on their privileged access to facts the citizenry were unaware of seemed to sum up everything that’s wrong with public discourse in too many democratic societies.
You may have noticed something similar is going on with the rulers of our own diseased Dominion right now. I don’t mean that the Liberal Party of Canada has been found dead of auto-erotic asphyxiation with a couple of pharmacologically enhanced Timbits in its mouth and Sheila Copps’ fishnets on its limbs, though it may yet come to that. What I mean is that everybody’s talking about something without really talking about it at all. During the Gomery commission’s investigation into the Liberals’ waste of even more of our money than usual, someone is alleged to have allegedly alleged something. Allegedly. And I can’t put it any plainer than that--or not without the RCMP kicking the door down.
But, as in Britain that morning, much of the media are talking around what they can’t talk about. Indeed, Judge Gomery’s publication ban, while preventing any discussion of the actual substance, nevertheless provides plenty of interesting insights into the inclinations of the press. On CTV, my old comrade Robert Fife is busting to let you in on the Big Secret: the more he talks about not being able to talk about it, the more he talks about it. For Fife, the point of being a journalist is to find stuff out and tell the public: he’s the guy who leaked Chrétien aide Francie Ducros’ sophisticated analysis of President Bush (“moron”). On the other hand, my morning read in Montreal, La Presse, is silent about the court-ordered silence: it has nothing to say about being told to say nothing. Is this curious lack of curiosity anything to do with the paper’s owners, the mysterious Paul Desmarais and Power Corp.? M. Desmarais has very successfully kept himself out of the public prints for decades and it would be understandable if he were now to extend this courtesy to his many friends and former employees who comprise the Government of Canada.
It would be heartening to think that, by the time you read this, the alleged allegations that were alleged will have been made public. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as they say, and that’s what the Gomery commission was supposed to be: a bright light on the murkier corners of the Liberal state. Obviously, that’s not what the Grits themselves saw it as: governments appoint commissions mainly for giving the appearance of letting the sunshine in. But the fact that our rulers feel the need for even a sham shaft of sunshine is itself important to the health of democracy. It’s not a good sign when an inquiry that’s supposed to let the sunshine in instead becomes most famous for pulling down the shutters and plunging the room into darkness. So, although he certainly had the legal power to impose a publication ban, Judge Gomery should not have done so. A publication ban that protects Fred Schmuck in a criminal trial of a big-time mobster is one thing; a publication ban that protects the Liberal party’s reputation in what ought to be a wide-ranging non-legalistic public investigation is quite another.
Besides, anyone who wants to know what the “explosive testimony” actually says can do so by going on the Internet and visiting the American website that first revealed it. Neither I nor the Western Standard is supposed to reveal the identity of the site, and indeed finding it out for yourself is half the fun, isn’t it? The nearest our generation will get to the thrilling frisson of living in Nazi-occupied Europe and listening to the BBC on shortwave in the attic. Then again, why should we have to?
Simply on a point of precedent, two recent cases in Britain and Australia agree that, on the Internet, the place of publication is the place of downloading.
You can be an Irishman with a Norwegian site administrator and a U.S. hosting service and a Tuvaluan web address but, if someone reads your post on the Gomery testimony in Winnipeg, that’s a breach of the publication ban under Canadian law. If Judge Gomery pursues the Minnesota man directly, would a U.S. court enforce any Canadian court decision? Unlikely. But much of the Trudeaupian state has been founded on lack of freedom of information--You’re a Seattle gay and you move to Vancouver and you want to open a gay bookstore? Sorry, you have to be a Canadian citizen to sell books. You’re Bryan Adams and you want your wretched clichéd rock ballad played on the radio in your native land? Sorry, you shouldn’t have hired a British producer or an American arranger or whatever other foreign body caused us to downgrade your CanCon rating. The authorities would love an excuse to do the same to the web. Even a cumbersome and only partially effective policing of the Internet would be useful to the Canadian state, which understands that letting even one tiny area of endeavour go unregulated could set a dangerous precedent.
It would be a grand triumph for the Liberals if an enquiry intended to open them up to scrutiny instead wound up clamping down on the scrutineers. But already the fact that the publication ban was breached by a sinister right-wing American is being touted by the Liberals as evidence that there’s nothing to all this Gomery business--it’s merely some northern branch office of Ken Starr and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. With the Liberals’ luck, they may even be able to say that with a straight face long enough to make it stick. Old-school operators like Warren Kinsella indignantly huff at the lèse-majesté of impertinent extra-jurisdictional bloggers. Warren fancies himself as the James Carville of the great white north and wrote a book called Kicking Ass In Canadian Politics. What a mega-butch title. But, when it comes down to it, he seems to view the Liberal party posterior as some delicate emaciated fine-boned Kate Moss-type bottom that requires vast swathes of protective insulation.
And as a rule they get it. The Grits are always most successful when they’re most ruthless and audacious.
Will outraged Canadians use the “explosive” Gomery testimony to force the Liberals from office? Or will the Liberals use the leaking of the explosive testimony to add another layer to the maple curtain along the forty-ninthth parallel sealing us off from any un-Canadian values? Which would you bet on? |
