My Joust with Senators over Free Speech in Film by Mark Leiren-Young over at The Tyee.

Kady O’Malley covered the Senate Banking Trade and Commerce Committee hearing today, let’s just say Charles McVety and Brian Rushfeldt of Canada Family Action Coalition got heard.  Best Little Upper House in Canada:

4:23:20 PM
Okay, what the heck was that? McVety just went on a tear about a woman he knows with an autistic child, who has to wear a football helmet to handle her kid, and doesn’t get a cent of support from the government. Except - funding for ABA, IBA and other treatment programs is handled provincially, and has nothing to do with this bill. Does he not know that? He then takes a few shots at Dion and the Liberals, and concludes by telling the committee that if it doesn’t pass this bill, he won’t be able to face his ten year old daughter.

4:26:01 PM
That’s it for the prepared statement. Onto the questions.

4:26:40 PM
First up: David Tkachuk, whose name I can never spell. He gives The Globe and Mail a shoutout, and then asks whether McVety is a registered lobbyist. No, he’s not - he’s a volunteer, although Rushfeldt pipes up that he is. He also grumbles that this isn’t relevant to the subject at hand, but Tkachuk smoothly brings it back to the bill. He asks whether the group had meetings with ministers on the bill - cabinet ministers, that is - and McVety claims that he didn’t. “We’re irrelevant in this process,” he claims, and rather unconvincingly claims that the first time he heard about this provision was when he picked up The Globe and Mail, and there it was all over the front page.

…4:53:47 PM
Now the senators are kind of ganging up on him, and daring him to do tricky things like define pornography, or come up with a single pornographic film that has received government funding.

McVety is going on and on about the survey from Compas, which, as it turns out, to no one’s surprise at all, was commissioned by… Focus on the Family. Canada Family Action Coalition. I do love how McVety pretends to have been surprised by the results.

…5:21:36 PM
Having had a chance to look at the survey*, the chair is now picking it apart, much to McVety’s discomfort. He brings up another survey by Angus Reid that asked specifically about the bill, and found 47% were against C-10 being passed in its current form. McVety tries to interrupt, and the chair smacks him down.  “I didn’t interrupt you,” he reminds McVety.

“I’m not,” McVety interrupts, sulkily.

The exchange then descends into utter farce when McVety is forced to admit that the only way he got his poll to say what it did was by asking a ridiculous question like, “Should the government fund child pornography?”

Prior - Charles McVety warns Tories

When you really do believe:

Taxpayers - it appears the Senate is trying to stonewall the wishes of the elected parliament…The arts industry does not rule this country - it seems it might rule the Senate though…Heritage Canada ministry should have done many things back then…Now they are trying to improve things: the howling of the wolves begins…The arts community needs to learn what censorship is.

Why in the world would Brian Rushfeldt of Canada Family Action Coalition be whining about coming all the way from Calgary to the Senate to answer questions and make his case? Don’t you just love participatory democracy? Why, just think, if one of your board members hadn’t piped up to media this clause in this bill would have slipped though without a notice.  How dare a Senate do it’s job.

*The survey says: 72 per cent were opposed to “subsidies for films considered X-rated or pornographic.” (500 people were push polled by Compas Inc.)

Scott Tribe
Rusty Idols
unrepentant old hippie and unrepentant old hippie (Breakfast with Scott?) -top notch posts - JJ generates solid discussion in her comments sections and worth the reads
The Ottawa Citizen gives Charles McVety his own article to pound his one tone points: We don’t want to pay for pr0n (you don’t have too, sir)