Censorship In Canada

In Canada, appeals by the judiciary to community standards and the public interest are the ultimate determinants of which forms of expression may legally be published, broadcast, or otherwise publicly disseminated. Other public organisations with the authority to censor include some tribunals and courts under provincial human rights laws, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, along with self-policing associations of private corporations such as the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.

Over the 20th century, legal standards for censorship in Canada shifted from a "strong state-centred practice", intended to protect the community from perceived social degradation, to a more decentralised form of censorship often instigated by societal groups invoking the state to restrict the public expression of political and ideological opponents.''Interpreting Censorship in Canada''
Klaus Petersen and Allen C. Hutchinson, University of Toronto Press, 1999, 438 p., .

Visual arts

Corridart

The demolition of the Corridart exhibit in Montreal by former mayor Jean Drapeau on the 13 June 1976, two days before the commencement of the Montreal Olympic Games, was considered an act of censorship by the artists involved and resulted in a lengthy court trial wherein the artistic and aesthetic merit of the project was questioned. The collaborative efforts of a significant portion of the Montreal arts community was ordered destroyed by the mayor and was done so by municipal workers with police escort. The 16 main installations and dozens of smaller installations were taken to a municipal impound lot, in some cases left outside to be destroyed by the elements. The actions of the mayor were condemned by the provincial cultural affairs minister, principally because the mayor lacked legal authority over the Olympics as a whole. Corridart was intended to showcase Canadian and Montreal arts to an international audience.

Mercer Union Art Gallery

In 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that obscene pornography was not protected expression in R v Butler, arguing that while a direct causal link from obscenity to real world harm may be "difficult, if not impossible, to establish" it was reasonable to presume a causal link to "changes in attitudes and beliefs". In 1993, Prime Minister Kim Campbell's Progressive Conservatives made child pornography and its fictional works a crime, adopting Liberal Justice Minister Jean Chretien's proposal from 1982.

In December 1993, the Metropolitan Toronto Police's Morality Bureau raided the Mercer Union Gallery and confiscated fictional works consisting of five paintings and thirty-five drawings from Eli Langer's exhibit. The exhibit had been described by the Mercer Union as "sexual ambiguity that inadvertently addresses our cultural taboos" and some of the art depicted fictional children engaged in sexual acts. Langer was arrested and charged with the crime of making and distributing child pornography. Langer claimed to be surprised by the charges and that he did not know art could be illegal. The director of Mercer Union, Sharon Brooks, was also arrested and charged. All charges on these two individuals were later withdrawn but the artwork remained confiscated for years. The event drew controversy in several news outlets. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association condemned parliament for the fast speed in which the legislation was passed without amending it enough to account for adverse outcomes. Two years later, the artwork was returned to Langer after a judge ruled that his art did not meet the criteria of pornography.

Following the Supreme Court trial R v Sharpe in 2001, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin maintained that "Parliament was justified in concluding that visual works of the imagination would harm children". In 2002, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Liberals criminalized online access to child pornography, including fictional art as well. In 2005, Gordon Chin was the first Canadian criminally convicted under this law for importing and possessing explicit cartoons depicting fictional children.

"Will and Representation"

In 2006, Ryan McCourt was the first artist selected to display sculpture for one year outside Edmonton's Shaw Conference Centre. McCourt's exhibition, ''Will and Representation,'' was an installation of four large sculptures based on Ganesha,Avenue Edmonton: Top 40 Under 40
/ref> a deity from Hindu mythology. Ten months into the exhibition, then-Mayor of Edmonton Stephen Mandel ordered the works removed after reportedly receiving a 700-name petition complaining of the sculptures' "disrespectful" nudity. When asked for comment, McCourt stated that "Nudity seems like a rather quaint thing to get one's knickers in a bunch over, in the 21st century. Besides, there's lots of art that I don't like, I don't go around gathering signatures of people who agree with me, and try to force the art to come down. That would be truly offensive, especially in a democracy like Canada."

Broadly, the public reaction to Mandel's censorship decree was one of disapproval. In an interview with the Edmonton Journal's Paula Simons, David Goa, religious scholar, cultural anthropologist, and director of the University of Alberta's Ronning Centre for Study of Religion and Public Life, states "In India, Lord Ganesha is on everything — playing cards, advertising signs, lotto tickets, even diapers, I suspect." Within the traditional Thirty-two forms of Ganesha in Hinduism, Ganesha is sometimes presented nude, in both infant (Bala Ganapati) and erotic (Uchchhishta Ganapati) forms. Simons concludes, "In his haste to appease a few protesters, the mayor, usually a champion of the arts, made a serious error in judgment. Instead of giving McCourt's divinely inspired statues the bum's rush, we should be celebrating this Canadian cross-pollination of cultures and aesthetic forms". ''The Globe and Mail''s columnist Margaret Wente agreed with Simons: "The mayor, of course, was quite wrong. Mr. McCourt's sculptures did not insult the Hindu community. They insulted a small but vocal conservative religious group that is about as representative of Hindus as Hassidic Jews are of Jews.... There's a big difference between respecting different cultures and caving in to illiberalism and superstition."

Despite such negative responses in the media to visual art censorship in Canada, in 2014 the Edmonton Arts Council subsequently refused a donation of one of McCourt's sculptures, ''Destroyer of Obstacles'', evidently because the sculpture had genitalia "beneath its clothes". After meeting with seven Hindu community group representative to seek out their opinion of the donation, the Edmonton Arts Council received a response that McCourt's sculpture was "an offense to their religion" and that the ban enacted by Mayor Mandel should remain in place. As a result of this consultation, "the Public Art Committee unanimously voted to decline acceptance of the gift, as the artwork did not meet "community or civic suitability" criteria." In McCourt's view, "It is not the purpose of a city's public art collection to placate special interests," he says. "I want Edmonton to build the best civic art collection that we can get, never mind the politics, the religion, etc. of the artists making the work."

Print

Under the ''War Measures Act'', the Canadian government imposed strict censorship of news related to World War I. 250 publications and periodicals, including many from the United States, were banned in the country. The censorship was expanded in 1918 in response to the Bolshevik success in the Russian Revolution and fears that Communism would spread to the rest of the world.

In 1937, under Maurice Duplessis, Quebec's Union Nationale government passed the ''Act to protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda'' (commonly known as the "Padlock Law"), which banned the printing, publishing or distributing of "any newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, circular, document or writing, propagating Communism or Bolshevism". The law was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada as an attempt to legislate criminal law ''ultra vires'' of the provincial legislature in the 1957 '' Switzman v Elbling'' decision.

In 1949, spearheaded by the campaigning of MP Davie Fulton, crime comics were banned in Canada in Bill 10 of the 21st Canadian Parliament's 1st session (informally known as the Fulton Bill).

In 1955, the importation of American ''The Atom Spy Hoax'' was deemed seditious as it questioned the Canadian government's handling of the Igor Gouzenko affair.

''Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada''

One of the most famous ongoing censorship controversies in Canada has been the dispute between Canada Customs and LGBT retail bookstores such as Little Sister's in Vancouver and Glad Day in Toronto. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Canada Customs frequently stopped material being shipped to the two stores on the grounds of "obscenity". Both stores frequently had to resort to the legal system to challenge the confiscation of their property.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canada Customs did not have the authority to make its own judgments about the permissibility of material being shipped to the stores but was permitted to confiscate only material that had specifically been ruled by the courts to constitute an offence under the Criminal Code.

In addition a report from 2013, reports that over 100 books, magazine, and other written works were challenged for removal in schools and libraries. Some of these challenges were upheld; however, some were rejected.

''Hansel et Gretel''

Prime Minister Paul Martin's 38th Canadian Parliament expanded child pornography law to also include literary descriptions in 2005.

Quebec author Yvan Godbout was arrested and charged with making and distributing child pornography due to his horror novel ''Hansel et Gretel'' featuring writing of fictional child sexual abuse. Godbout was acquitted and found not guilty in 2020. Godbout felt compelled to stop writing altogether and ended his career in 2023 citing his prosecution as the cause.

Film

In the early 1910s, motion pictures were rising in popularity. It was decided nationally that censorship of them was necessary in order to be suitable for a wide, general audience of varying ages, mental, and educational levels. However, since national censorship for such a large and diverse country was unworkable, each province would censor according to their own provincial community standards. However, Ontario would be the "main" censor in that theatrical prints would be censored/edited by the Ontario censors then distributed throughout Ontario and the other provinces. The other provinces would provide additional censorship/editing if it was necessary for their own province. The Ontario board was formed in 1911; other provinces followed shortly thereafter. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland never formed any boards but instead took their advice from the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia boards.

The censors had no strict rules however; they often took advice from the British Board of Film Censors in the early years. In the 1920s, the Ontario censor board objected to content such as:''Take 30'', October 11, 1968, CBC Television
digitized episode

* actors pointing guns directly at the camera, or at other actors due to the possible negative effects on children and mentally weaker individuals
* machine guns
* scenes with women smoking
* profanity, vulgarity, and obscenity
* disrespect for officers of the law
* depiction and patriotic waving of the American flag, this was so the boards could promote a sense of Canadian nationalism
* illicit sexual relations
* nudity
* cruelty to animals
* drinking
* drug use

In the 1920s, the Canadian film boards removed American patriotism from imported films, citing their damage to a pro-British sentiment. The Hicklin test was used as the standard for film censorship until 1959, when the Criminal Code was amended and the Supreme Court of Canada overruled a ruling by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal that held that the Hicklin test was still in effect.

Eventually, six of the provincial censor boards adopted classification in 1953 though films were still censored for certain categories. The idea of classification was first proposed by Ottawa child welfare advocate, and future mayor, Charlotte Whitton in 1920; however, at the time it was criticized with one newspaper editor claiming "A film that's not suitable for a ten-year-old should not be seen at all." It was in the 1950s that the censorship standards became more permissive. For example, ''A Farewell to Arms'' contained an intense birth scene, a character yells "Damn!" in '' Witness for the Prosecution'', and '' Peyton Place'' contained "pungent language". All of which was passed, in Ontario at least.

''Last Tango in Paris'' was banned in Nova Scotia in 1974. Gerard McNeil, the editor of the Dartmouth Free Press, opposed the film's censorship and he filed a lawsuit in which he argued that the censors were acting illegally when they banned the film, citizens have a right to view uncensored films regardless of its content, and that the taxes and fees collected by the Amusements Board was to continue its illegal activities. The censors argued that McNeil had no standing to sue as he had no direct interest in the case, but the Nova Scotia Supreme Court stated that "there could be a large number of persons with a valid desire to challenge". The court ruled on 2 February 1976, that the provinces had no power to censor films under the British North America Acts. However, the Supreme Court of Canada overruled the court on 19 January 1978, in a five to four decision.

The romantic comedy ''Young People Fucking'' prompted the Government of Canada to introduce Bill '' Income Tax Amendments Act, 2006'' (C-10), to allow revoking government funds from films the government deemed offensive. Strong public backlash led to the bill dying on the order paper.

Alberta

The ''Theatres Act'' was passed in Alberta in 1913, and it required that all films have a stamp from the provincial censorship board. R.B. Chadwick served as the censor from 1913 to 1916, when Howard Douglas, who served until 1928, was appointed following Chadwick's death. Robert Pearson, who served from 1928 to 1946, censored films "practically on individual whim" and banned 150 films in the first six years of sound movies. P.J.A. Fleming, who served from 1946 to 1964, banned almost 100 films and made over 4,000 alterations to films.

In the 1930s the Catholic Church wanted all scenes depicting divorce censored while the National Council of Women of Canada wanted of all scenes including alcohol censored.

Ernest Manning believed that the film industry in the United States was dominated by communists and sought to ban multiple films including Frank Sinatra's '' The House I Live In''. Cornelia Wood, stated that ''Tom Jones'', which was banned in Alberta, should be destroyed. Alberta was the only place to ban ''A Clockwork Orange'' in North America, but the ban was lifted in 1973, when the film was rated as "Restricted Adult".

Alberta had one of the earliest rating systems in the 1920s. The U rating allowed for "unaccompanied children under fourteen years of age permitted" while the Adult rating required adult accompaniment. Comedies and newsreels were excluded from the ratings system. The Adult Only rating was created in 1964.

British Columbia

The ''Act to Regulate Theatres'', by William John Bowser, was passed in 1913, and C.L. Gordon was selected as the first censor. Censorship powers were increased by the ''Theatres Act'' in 1914, which allowed films to be seized, theatres required licenses, and Sunday showings were banned. '' The Spoilers'' was banned, but Bowser overturned the ruling making it the first time a decision by a censorship board was successfully overturn. J. Bernard Hughes, the chief censor in British Columbia, banned ''Diary of a Nazi'' stating that it was "purely Russian propaganda" that depicted "the Nazis at their worst". The censorship board was transitioned into a classification board in 1970. Audiences in Vancouver circumvented film censorship by attending showings in the U.S. state of Washington. Mary-Louise McCausland appointment as censor in 1978 made her the first woman to hold the position. She was known for her liberal attitudes during her tenure such as when she allowed ''Pretty Baby'', which was banned in Ontario, to be shown in British Columbia.

Manitoba

Manitoba's censorship board was initially based in Winnipeg and it was shared with Saskatchewan. The board was divided into two in 1916, but Saskatchewan still used Winnipeg. Alberta's rating system was adopted in Manitoba in 1930, with the Universal and Adult ratings.

Six minutes from ''The Stewardesses'' were removed in 1971, but Attorney General Al Mackling ordered for the film to be seized, threatened to increase censorship laws, and filed charges against the Metropolitan Theatre for obscenity. The New Democratic Party of Manitoba abolished the censor board in 1972, and replaced it with the Film Classification Board. The new board was not able to censor films and would only be allowed to classify them. ''Last Tango in Paris'' was seized by police in Winnipeg in 1973, but a three to two court ruling decided that the film was not obscene. The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba fired all fifteen members of the board after gaining power in 1978. Hope Carroll, whose husband served in Dufferin Roblin's government, was selected as the new chair and was described as "an active Conservative worker".

Ontario

The ''Theatres and Cinematographs Act'' was passed on 24 March 1911. A provision in the legislation which prohibited police officers from preventing the showing of approved films was repealed in 1914. Ontario banned all war films in 1914. In 1919, legislation was passed that allowed censors to ban any film that glorified other nations and the British national anthem was required to be played at the end of all performances. Ontario film censors were brought in by American companies to advise them on films with A.S. Hamilton, the chair of the censorship board from 1920 to 1926, being asked by Universal Pictures to review ''Foolish Wives''.

'' Damaged Goods'', a film about sexually transmitted infection, was banned in Ontario in 1916. Mutual Film screened the film to a selected audience, as a private showing it was exempt from the provincial censorship laws, and asked them if the film should be released. The audience approved of the film and Mutual Film appealed the ruling, but were unsuccessful. To combat the spread of sexual diseases a government campaign was initiated in the late 1910s. The Canadian National Council for Combating Venereal Disease, which was led by William Renwick Riddell and Gordon Bates, sought to distribute '' The End of the Road'' in Ontario in 1919. The censorship board was conflicted over maintaining its earlier ruling or allowing a government campaign to continue. The board rejected the film and the ruling was maintained on appeal. However, the ruling was reversed in 1920, and over 20,000 people saw the film within five days of its release and 40,000 by 1932. Other films about sexual diseases were allowed to be shown as well.

Omri J. Silverthorne served as the chair of the censorship board from 1934 to 1974, with him gaining the position after his friend, Mitchell Hepburn, became Ontario's premier. Hepburn, after becoming the minister of finance, banned all of ''The March of Time'' newsreels in 1942, without the board watching it, due to a ''Time'' article about him that he did not like. Previous censors required all films to be suitable for children while Silverthorne judged films individually causing the Ontario censorship board to be considered the most liberal in the country. The amount of films rejected declined from twenty-four in 1933, to zero in 1940.

Silverthorne stated in 1967, that "Canada is the most over-censored country in the world". In 1971, he stated that he wanted "to see censorship as it is presently being practised abolished in Canada within the next two years". A grand jury investigation into the Ontario censorship board in 1972 criticized its "concern for cultivating a reputation for liberality". Donald Sims replaced Silverthorne in 1974, and increased censorship activates. The Stratford Film Festival was ordered to censor its films for the first time in its history and ''Pretty Baby'' was banned. The rejection of ''The Tin Drum'' resulted in mass protests that called for the abolition of the censorship board. The Writers' Union of Canada and Festival of Festivals called the board to be converted into one for classification. Sims left the board during the protests in 1980.

Quebec

A censorship board was established in Quebec in 1911. The deaths of seventy-eight children from the Laurier Palace Theatre fire in 1927, and opposition to film from the Catholic Church led to a ban on minors attending movie theatres. J.A. Cooper, the president of the Motion Picture Distributors and Exhibitors of Canada, stated that Quebec censors were "the worst in the world" in 1926. ''Maclean's'' reported that the amount of films banned in Canada fell from one hundred one in 1932, to nineteen in 1940, with nine being banned in Quebec. Quebec censors rejected all films the dealt with divorce. By the 1960s the Quebec censorship board was one of the largest with eighteen full-time staff employed compared to other provincial boards which had two to five full-time staff.

When the Montreal International Film Festival

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