[quidnunc]

Quote:

Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that unscrambling foreign satellite signals (read transmissions of “Rugrats” reruns on American Nickelodeon or “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News) is against the law. And I don’t mean against the law in the way that littering is against the law, with violations punished by sternly disapproving looks from elderly fellow citizens. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are actually actively engaged in raiding satellite television shops, seizing DirecTV satellite equipment, and hanging onto it for months before finally levying charges of “conspiracy to sell and distribute American satellite systems.”

Wouldn't want anything subversive (read: American) to contaminate Canada's moral superiority, eh?

[cmsgop]

Canada is a wacky place. When I vacationed there last summer it was like all the people were on thorizine.

[Alberta's Child]

For all it's flaws, it's hard to knock Canadian TV when it comes to hockey. When I was living in Calgary the Stanley Cup Finals could be seen on any one of four stations -- CBC (English), CBC (French), the local Calgary station, and the Spokane, Wash. affiliate of whichever U.S. network was carrying the games at the time.

[NorthGA]

I thought only communist countries did this ... oops ... Nevermind...

[Liberals are Evil Socialists!]

You mean they can't buy DISH or other satellite TV?

[Malsua]

A good friend who happens to be Canadian was here yesterday.

She is from Vancouver....She was _BOGGLED_ that our basic cable included 90 channels. She complained that she couldn't get HBO. Their movie channel is "Cinemax".

That said, Cable modem + premium channels + basic cabel was $90 Canadian dollars....which is a nice deal.

-Mal

[Range Rover]

Perhaps there is a Canadian lurking here that can clarify:

Canadian Broadcasting regs have a Domestic Content quota which I believe amounts to something like 30% of broadcast material must be Canadian. Got a vivid demonstration of this the last time I ventured North and the radio had a disproportionate amount of Neil Young, Avril Lavigne and others hailing from Canada. A lot of the stuff was, in all probability, NOT something you would hear unless they had that provision in place. Not all of it was bad, mind you, but I would guess that many acts wouldn't make it in a more free market system.

[Welsh Rabbit]

The CRTC is not going to let Canadians watch America’s Comedy Central because they’d probably realize what absolute crud is shown on the Canadian Comedy Network (man cannot live by SCTV reruns alone) and they’d never tune in again.

They're not missing much. I'd trade same stale SCTV reruns for some lame SNL reruns. Actually, the Canadian govt would probably love Comedy Central; they never miss an opportunuty to bash Bush and Republicans, particularly that whiney little pansy Jon Stewart.

[SunStar]

Satellite dishes are also illegal in Canada... just like in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[tophat9000]

bump

[Billthedrill]

Man, I dunno. I'm all for free choice, but it strikes me that not a great deal is gained by choosing voluminous American crap over less voluminous Canadian crap.

But I gotta hurry home. Perfessional Rasslin's on tonight...

[mc5cents]

Did I read that correctly, they can arrest you for selling DirecTV dishes up there? I mean, if I lived there I couldn't the NFL Package? WTH! Oh Canada!! Glorious and Free?? I don't think so.

[mtbopfuyn]

The Commission is currently considering an application by Canadian cable companies to add Arabic language news network al-Jazeera to the selection of television channels available for Canadian consumption. It’s just the American stuff the cultural puritans at the CRTC can’t stomach.

What happened to the nice quiet friendly neighbor to the north that we considered extended family? This sounds like some third world dictatorship. That's scary.

[Snake65]

extensive social safety net and universal health care system

Just saying it doesn't make it true.

I was just in Toronto over Labor Day Weekend for the World Science Fiction Convention. Heard lots of Canadians b!tching about their health care--women basically have to pay through the nose to get to see a gynecologist, and anyone requiring expert assisstance heads to the States. Also I tripped over panhandlers every thirty feet while walking through downtown Toronto.

But on the other hand, the streets were clean. Just like Moscow!

[nutmeg]

FoxFan ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my FoxFan list. *Warning: This can be a high-volume ping list at times.

[Jeff Gordon]

Just when you think the Evil Empire has been defeated, the Union of Canadian Socialist States (UCSS) pops up on our own border. How long will it be before their very own KGB starts assinations in the USA?

[Steely Tom]

Was in Ottawa last weekend.

Never thought of the thorazine connection, but it sounds about right. My thought was that Canadians are sort of cattle-like. Comes to about the same thing, I guess.

Many dish antennas in Ottawa. On houses, on apartment balconies. If they're illegal, not too many are following the law.

Canadians are all right, I guess. It's just that they spend an awful lot of time thinking about America, and how they don't want to be like us. As a result, they make some rather strange trade-offs.

(steely)

[Porterville]

This is going to be such an interesting world-revolution...

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Here is the article in it's entirety....as a transplanted American here in Canada I find this article SO TRUE!!!!. Thanks for leading me to the article! :-)

- ConservativeStLouisGuy
____________________________________________________

If You Like Fox News, You'll Hate Canada

A couple of months ago, columnist Doug Patton penned an article titled, "If You Like Canada, You'll Love Howard Dean." His point was that the far left Democratic Presidential candidate's collectivist leanings on issues such as healthcare and taxes bear a strong resemblance to the near-socialist government setup in nearby Canada. Indeed, Dean's surprising popularity is a good indicator of the trend amongst many left-libs in the U.S. to openly envy, admire, and aspire to Canada's big government, model with its extensive social safety net and universal health care system. They marvel at Canada where people are free and taken care of.

Well, as a born and raised Canadian who has returned to her native land after a decade in the States, I'm here to pose an important question to these liberal Democrats: How free can a people be if they’re not allowed to choose what they watch on TV?

You see, what Canadians really want to watch is American television. The professors and stuffed shirts who make up Canada's cultural elite do not like to admit this fact (CBC-loving Canadian nationalists will be the last people on the planet to notice that every remotely amusing Canadian ends up in Hollywood), but it's true. Canadians thirst for timely episodes of Ozzie cursing a blue streak on "The Osbournes." They crave the ability to flip on ESPN and catch a ballgame no one else is carrying. They long for the novel pleasure of watching current events discussed by right-wing pundits on a conservative-slanted network like Fox News. (Well, okay, maybe that last one applies mostly to members of my immediate family, but you get the picture.) Yet, in all of these cases, Canadian viewers are denied.

Why? It all boils down to the disturbingly powerful Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), a quasi government agency that regulates what can be shown on Canadian airwaves and decides which TV channels Canadians may access.

The CRTC has decided, in its infinite cultural wisdom, that American stations such as HBO and MTV are simply not healthy for Canadians because they would steal viewers away from Canadian television offerings. Music videos? There's no excuse for a healthy Canadian teenage girl drooling over imperialist MTV VJ Carson Daly when she could just as easily be drooling over an equally young, attractive, vacuous Canadian VJ on Canada's Much Music network. Funny stuff? The CRTC is not going to let Canadians watch America's Comedy Central because they'd probably realize what absolute crud is shown on the Canadian Comedy Network (man cannot live by SCTV reruns alone) and they'd never tune in again.

It's not that the CRTC is opposed to everything foreign, of course. The Commission is currently considering an application by Canadian cable companies to add Arabic language news network al-Jazeera to the selection of television channels available for Canadian consumption. It's just the American stuff the cultural puritans at the CRTC can't stomach.

Video of Osama bin Laden covertly cuing his sleeper cells to take terrorist action in North America? No problem. Tony Soprano talking about whacking someone at the Bada Bing? No way.

So, we Canadians find ourselves in the absurd position of potentially being able to tune into the latest news on the jihad against the imperialist, murderous, blood-sucking Jewish Zionist conspiracy, but unable to catch an episode of "Hannity and Colmes" because a bureaucrat at the CRTC has decided the former is more culturally acceptable than the latter. The Canadian government just doesn't trust its citizens to make their own decisions about what content—be it fluff or high art—they want to grace their own personal boob tubes.

Of course, if Canadians don't like their current cable television offerings, they might be tempted to shell out some bucks for a foreign satellite dish (read an American DirecTV satellite system) and pick up some of the juicy American signals (Look, there's Carson Daly showing Angelina Jolie his tattoo!) drifting across the border. But the CRTC tells us that this - as Richard Nixon once put it - would be wrong. It would also be illegal.

Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that unscrambling foreign satellite signals (read transmissions of "Rugrats" reruns on American Nickelodeon or "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News) is against the law. And I don't mean against the law in the way that littering is against the law, with violations punished by sternly disapproving looks from elderly fellow citizens. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are actually actively engaged in raiding satellite television shops, seizing DirecTV satellite equipment, and hanging onto it for months before finally levying charges of "conspiracy to sell and distribute American satellite systems."

It's a scenario that would impress 1984's Big Brother, but it does little for the cultural freedom and independence of Canadian citizens, 83 percent of whom say they want good quality programming available regardless of where it comes from, and 64 percent of whom say they think there should be no restrictions on access to non-Canadian channels.

So, the next time you're thinking about emigrating to Canada to take advantage of all those cheap government-capped prices on prescription drugs or the cradle-to-grave universal health care system, just remember this: No regime of extensive government regulation comes without its price: a tax on personal choice and freedom.

And the Canadian government doesn't care if you want your MTV.

(Marni Soupcoff sneaks in some Fox News viewing during her trips to the U.S. Her column appears Mondays on TAEmag.com.)

[IvanT]

Welcome to my repressed country. Repressed and brainwashed is what we are, and the sad thing is, it took place slowly, over 40 years of Liberal government. It was so slow, in fact, that no one noticed it. People up here are wrong about a great many issues, but the truly scary part is, they don't even know they're wrong. Only a precious few have thoughts of their own (I.e. thoughts that stray from Liberal rhetoric and propaganda) and for the most part, we get ostracised and labelled racists. I am an outcast with all my team mates on my football (soccer) team because of voicing my conservative ideas. Scary indeed.

[Ichneumon]

. They long for the novel pleasure of watching current events discussed by right-wing pundits on a conservative-slanted network like Fox News. (Well, okay, maybe that last one applies mostly to members of my immediate family, but you get the picture.)

Not just her family. Like the US, different regions of Canada have differing political leanings. Conservatives (or the Canadian equivalent, anyway) are thick as flies in the province of Alberta, for example, as well as most of British Columbia away from the coastline.