Canadians, Americans and the British take their freedoms very seriously and of all the freedoms, they cherish free speech most. Free speech covers much more than just being able to get up on a box and say what you like about the government but extends to things like the right to have counsel speak for you and the right to assemble and protest. It goes to habeas corpus which, after all, is simply the right to demand your right to face your accusers and to make a full defence. That s why Canadians, Americans and the British get so upset when they see this precious freedom taken away in other lands. That s also why it was astonishing to learn that recently, when a member of the UK parliament asked a pertinent question of a minister about an oil company accused of dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast, the company managed to get what is called a super injunction (which meant they got a gag order then another one to prevent anyone from reporting the fact of the first one!) against the Guardian newspaper preventing them from reporting these proceedings. The Lord Chief Justice, in trashing the orders, said that the absolute privilege for MPs to speak freely in parliament was a fundamental principle.

What s astonishing is that any judge could have given these orders in the first place in the land of the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights and which spawned John Wilkes, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.

But there s worse.

The London Daily Telegraph reported recently that every phone call, text message, and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies. In Britain where a man s home is his castle it can now invaded by a snooping government without the need for a warrant! George Orwell s only mistake was to call his book 1984 instead of 2009.

Since 9/11 Constitutional protections in the US have been ignored at the behest of the White House. Suspected terrorists have been held incommunicado for 8 years. This enforced silence has brought official torture into the American justice system.

Canadians have no reason to be smug. We have seriously constrained speech as much, if more subtly, as have places where we expect dictators to punish those who express opinions they don t care for. There are no laws censoring what a citizen or media outlet can say there don t need to be because while we don t have formal or institutional censorship we have rampant self censorship.

Until 1976 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation / Radio Canada, formed under an act of parliament, controlled all radio and TV stations including licensing them, dictating what genre they ll have, and with power to suspend and cancel licenses for what they saw as naughty behaviour. In short the CBC determined who its competitors would be and how they would behave.

In 1976 this power was given to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) whose mandate says it s an independent public authority in charge of regulating and supervising Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications. However much they try to tart it up, the CRTC is run by friends of the government who hold the sword of Damocles over all broadcasters. Any sales or amalgamations of licenses are subject to CRTC permission which also controls how much Canadian content must be part of the broadcasting day. It s the government s poodle. As Lord Acton said Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely and the CRTC is no exception.

Newspapers are similarly controlled by self-censorship. In my home in Vancouver there are two daily newspapers, both owned by CanWest. There are two national papers one of which is owned by CanWest which also controls the leading local and national TV Channel.

The other national paper, the Globe and Mail, owns the country s second largest national TV network. Only 1% of our newspapers are privately owned with CanWest and The Globe and Mail even dominating small community papers.

Here s the key question when large conglomerates owning most of the newspapers also own radio and TV stations, and depend upon the government for new and renewed licenses, how critical are they likely to be of that government? When the government controls and funds the national broadcaster, how much trouble do you suppose it will pose for that government?

I m not being picky here for there have been real consequences. In 1998, the office of Prime Minister Jean Chretien complained that Terry Milewski, a top CBC reporter, had been " biased" in his coverage of protests at the 1997 Asian Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) summit in Vancouver, and Milewski was suspended for three days from the CBC. The penalty is not the point which is that prime ministerial complaints trump any independence the CBC may claim.

Another case involves Andrew McIntosh who, as a National Post reporter, broke a scandal in 2001 involving Mr Chretien and ownership of a golf course in his riding. The next thing we knew McIntosh was no longer on the parliamentary beat and a short time later was with the Sacramento Bee in California!

In conclusion, two personal stories.

A few years ago a student from Ryerson School of journalism, perhaps # 1 in the country, asked me to do an article for their Annual which I did on free speech. I talked about of John Wilkes, Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson concluding that someone going into journalism today would either self censor or be censored.

A couple of weeks later the student told me that my article was unsuitable. To whom? I asked knowing full well how much money the school got from the big media companies. The student mumbled that while my column was well written, the subject of free speech was offensive and unacceptable to the country s leading journalism school!

In 2000 I financed a scholarship at the University of BC Journalism School. When I presented the first award I spoke of active and self censorship in Canadian journalism. I ve never been asked back to present my own scholarship!

Free speech is underpinning of all freedoms and Canadians roundly criticize countries that censor.

They would do better to deal with it at home.