Welcome to Canada - Glorious and Free. We are proud to have far reaching censorship legislation and implementation to protect you all from harmful information. Your sensibilities are free from being challenged by the deviant because Canada believes in "community standards". Anyone or anything that oversteps the bounds of common decency is stomped out... Unfortunately, there will always be radicals who disagree with Canada's policies on censorship. These citizens include a few racists, misogynists, xenophobes, pornographers, civil libertarians, medical professionals, librarians, individualists, educators, intellectuals, feminists, homosexuals and artists.

 
Abstract

This hypertext is a product of my 1994 survey of the place where Canadian censorship and the arts intersect. It is not comprehensive. I have examined censorship in my home province of Ontario in particular and from my gay perspective. I do not presume to know all the answers with regard to this difficult personal and political issue; but having said that, I object to those who presume that they do. Herein I examine the legislation which makes censorship legal in Canada despite our constitutional right to freedom of speech. I study the institutions which enforce censorship and their tools of implementation. I analyze the inherent hypocrisy of our system. I investigate responses from artists and art distributors and finally I share a few conclusions about censorship and offer my own.

Leif Harmsen
Site Launched June 1995