The Censorship Of Canadian Content

Canada as a nation has been striving to characterize itself as more ?Canadian? for decades. This has included numerous struggles and events such as protests, bans, and the creation of the Massey Commission, to encourage national development in the arts, and support major companies like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and National Film Board (NFB). However, this has not been an easy task for the Canadian government, as major influences from below the border (the United States) have been captivating the Canadian audiences by large. American media has had a momentous revolutionizing effect on Canada, even through efforts made to define Canada with its own cultural identity.

Canada’s media industries have played a huge role in the Canadian culture. The Canadian culture has integrated with other countries forming a successful globalization. Many countries including the United States have contributed to the success in Canada’s media industries. The success of globalization between all of the countries was predicted by Marshall McLuhan and ever since his prediction, the world can be depicted as a global village. The global village can be viewed as a tool, a tool that is bringing the world together, despite the different languages, locations, and diverse cultures. With new technologies being developed more often, the communication skills between different countries are very successful. Canada’s diversity in their media and policies has established a global village with people around the world, allowing them to relate to the Canadian culture.

The recent Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC) (2013c) 'Broadcasting Regulatory Policy on the Distribution of Canadian Category C national news speciality services' marks a new regulatory approach to distributing competitive news and sports programming in Canada. This policy is a response to Canadians' concerns over consumer choice due to program bundling and an inability to select news and sports programs on a stand-alone basis (CRTC, 2013c; CRTC, 2014). Based on the Commission's public notice on 'Regulatory Framework for Broadcasting Distribution Undertakings and Discretionary Programming Services', the new regulation demonstrates an effort to reduce national news and sports program regulations and to

     Since this country was founded, we have had a set of unalienable rights that our constitution guarantees us to as Americans. One of the most important rights that is mentioned in our constitution is the right to free speech. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the

Having lived in Canada when I was 8 before the US-Canada magazine dispute occurred, I found myself thoroughly engrossed in Canadian culture. It seemed a perfect culture, built to protect domestic interests and despite the potential division between countries, created a safe environment where people were unafraid to leave doors unlocked, due to almost no crime. The peaceful and respectful nature of most Canadians isn’t just a fluke, the country was designed this way, and one of the primary influencers of this strategy is the media. Watching the news in Canada, the focus is positive, the message is positive, there is no forced fear of sense of doom as we see here in the US. Life is about being sustainable, not so much a struggle to the top of the food chain, but working together, instead of separating and segregating groups. That is except the region of French Quebec; however, Quebec is like a whole new country in itself.

Tremblay uses some significant points to establish his argument and prove his position and opinion. The first issue he raises is the presence of American programs on Quebec television, where he mentions that about one third of the total television supply is of foreign origin mainly American, which is not so bad but he does reveal that the presence of foreign products is much higher in Canada compared to the United States. He also states that during the evenings, between six o’clock and midnight, the situation is even better because “the proportion of Canadian content attains 73%”6. He mentions that the French-language television stations for the most part, respect the “Commission’s regulatory quota fixing a 60% minimum for Canadian content during prime time”7. The part that Canadians should be concerned with is the area of entertainment, particularly drama programming such as series, films and cartoons. He indicates that the percentage of drama programming broadcast produced locally by francophone Quebecois television stations decreased from 16.9% in 1982, to less than 10% in 1989, which is quite a significant plunge. An entertainment sector that is really vulnerable to American culture is the production of films. In 1990, Tremblay states that according to The Social Communication Board, compared to 55% American films, there were

Censorship has evolved over time in America, from TV, books, and even the internet. America has prohibited specific things from citizen’s beliefs. The role that censorship plays in America is taken from personal beliefs, such as voting for certain things to be banned from books, TV, internet, and articles. This allows and denies things that are used for public use, due to personal preferences on things that are appropriate and inappropriate for public users.

At the end, the crew and captain of Estai were released from prison and the boat was returned back to the Spanish. But, this only happened after they paid $500,000 to the Canadians for what they had done. Canada wanted to make sure that all the trawlers in its zone had left but the Spanish didn’t agree to that and acted fast by sending many of trawlers back. Things began getting very tense and Canada cut the nets of Spanish vessels. On April 15th in 1995, Canada and Spain decided to finally sort out the turbot war and come to a solution that would prevent overfishing of the turbot fish. In the end, Spain had to leave Canada's zone and Canada had the right to remove any vessels from other countries in its zone. On the other hand, the Estai

*Douglas, Ann. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Canda in the 80's. Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc., 1999.

Transparency in the Canadian Government is being used inefficiently and unfairly. Over many years since Canada has been a country their have been many different censorship laws. Censorship has been included, in film, broadcasting, print, art, and the internet. As years pass the Canadian Government has been lenient towards censorship towards film, broadcasting and the arts. However, with the expansion of technology the Government still censors and denies multiple files and information from the General Public. The Harper Conservative government and CSIS have denied access to multiple government files and even censored out files allowed viewing by the general Public and now Canada has had the most files censored currently in the history of the

The history of the world has undoubtedly been dominated by an endless struggle for power. However, after a brief glimpse into the pages of history it should not take long to realize that the trick to maintaining power lies in the control of information. Even the most fearsome military generals of the past acknowledge the power of the mind and ideas over lethal force. Former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once said “… [Ideas] are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, then why should we let them have ideas.” Stalin’s quote personifies the main concept of this literature review which will be discussing the history of government censorship and its effects that are

Censorship in America is about the freedom of speech. And how people in America are limited the freedom of speech people who are Muslim can’t draw a picture of Muhammad. If Muhammad knew who drew his picture then the person would get executed. In America people are limited the freedom of speech. In schools people try to block out what other people are saying. Kids in schools are proble scared about what other people

Canada is considered to be a cultural mosaic, where all cultures are embraced opposed to a melting pot where it is expected to adopt one culture. Government regulated media is more favourable than policies based off of self-regulated solutions when addressing Canada’s media industries and cultural needs. Canadians place importance on national identity and without government regulated policies, the content in the media would have minimal Canadian information. According to the Aird Commission, when Canada’s media was operating through private enterprise, many stations expressed conflicting content, however, with state regulated media, broadcasting allows the nation to have a unified vocation. One unified message being sent to the nations citizens is more beneficial than multiple broadcasts on differentiated and insignificant information.

Imagine a scenario where Kanye West is in his Los Angeles home with his wife and daughter and the police knock on his door. They arrest him based on exposing the American population to vulgarity, indecency, racist and sexist comments that offend many people. The government does not want America to be subjected to this type of music and turn the American culture into something more bigoted than it already is. However, a situation like this would never occur in the present day American society. That does not mean it could not happen in the future. Many American citizens are promoting censorship to an extreme that it could possibly become a reality. The American citizens claim that censorship is needed to shelter America’s citizens, but

One of the major reasons that Canada needs public broadcasters to enhance democracy is because Canadians are heavily influenced by the media. One of the arguments against this notion is that Canada as a nation has been able to retain democracy before the introduction of media, according to Attallah (2008) there is no need for public broadcasting because democracy was able to thrive prior to the introduction of media (p.1). Attallah, however, has neglected the fact that the Canadian society like every other active society is forever evolving and changing. As we move into an era where the media plays a major role, it is imperative that our way of thinking about the society evolves as well. This means that though the nation was able to thrive without public broadcasting 2000 years ago, this is not the case now.