The Ontario Provincial Police have an ongoing operation called Project Pornography, or Project "P" for short. Unlike Canada Customs, they require a search warrant. Project "P" officers announced that their interpretation of the Butler decision indicated that explicit sex was going to be permissible if, and only if, there was romance, no close-ups and a story line. Given Butlers' "Artistic Defense", does Project "P" know art when they see it?

Following the lukewarm review by Kate Taylor, critic for "The Globe and Mail," Langer's work was seized on Dec. 16, 1993, by the police Morality Squad under the authority of John Ferguson, who stated: "It is our feeling that the exhibit is simply not art and falls under the category of child pornography." Project "P" laid charges against Toronto artist Eli Langer and Sharon Brooks, the director of the Mercer Union Gallery, for producing, possessing, and showing child pornography. Five paintings and thirty five sketches were pulled from the gallery walls and seized. Following a vociferous outcry from the Toronto arts community the charges against Langer and Brooks were dropped. In a hearing held in October 1994, art experts agreed that Langer's art which deals with children's sexuality, abuse, and trauma have artistic merit - one described them as "important, serious and passionate." Crown "experts" testified the art would interest pedophiles and increase the risk they'd act on fantasies involving children.* The paintings and sketches remained on trail and were considered guilty until April 20th 1995 when Justice David McCombs declared them to be art. Arts groups called the ruling an important precedent, but many wanted the judge to go further and strike down Canada's child pornography law, which violates artistic freedom. Even with the favourable ruling, the case sent a clear message to artists and galleries about the risks involved in making or showing depictions of sexuality, specifically of where sexuality and children intersect.

Glad Day Book Shop continued to sell Bad Attitude, a magazine produced by and for lesbians, after it was declared illegal by Canada Customs. This resulted in the first charge laid on the basis of the new Butler Decision, which was ostensibly made to protect women from the allegedly harmful effects of pornography on men. The charge was laid by Project "P" against the owner of Glad Day (Regina v. Glad Day Book Shop) .*

La Hacienda Restaurant's show of Ron Gii's Photographs was seized by Project "P", and later returned.

In the Woomer's Case a group of feminist artists who did a display at Pages Bookstore were summarily prosecuted for exhibiting an offensive object, a tampon.*

No Skin off My Ass, a black&white super 8 film by Bruce La Bruce was seized by the laboratory and handed over to Project "P" in June 1990. It is interesting to note that there is only one place in Toronto that develops black&white Super 8 film, and the bulk of their business is from the police who use the handy 400 ASA film to collect evidence in low light.

Footage for Pedagogy by prostitute/performance artist Gwendolyn was seized by laboratory and turned over to Project "P". It was later reluctantly released (after the repeated intervention of the sponsoring organization) to promote AIDS education for "the public good".

In the mid-1980s, Toronto police targeted a painting that depicted the rape of a Mayan woman by Guatemalan soldiers even though the painting was reportedly a political statement sympathetic to Guatemalan women.*

In the mid-1970s, police laid charges over the widely acclaimed film Last Tango in Paris and the children's educational book Show Me.*

The inability of the police to evaluate artistic merit and educational purpose has often led to the harassment of perfectly legitimate activity. The following is an illuminating quote from Alan Borovoy's article "Civil liberties Attacked in Mulroney's Final Moments" :

Recently, for example, police charges produced a lengthy trial against a teenage boy in southwestern Ontario. The case concerned a number of magazines the boy had created whose contents included drawings of weird creatures in semi-nude poses. Upon acquitting the accused, the court held "without question" that the publications "were essentially literary and artistic ventures." Indeed the judge even commended the youngster's talent.*