Lame Canada

I hear such wonderful things about our northern neighbor, Canada, and what it has to offer the world: free government-sponsored healthcare (if you survive the wait), hockey (well, most years), and uh...

Anyway, freedom of speech is not apparently one of the wonderful things Canada has to offer. If you are Canadian and dare link to American blog Captain's Quarters, you could face legal action from your government. Shockingly enough, liberal message board Democratic Underground failed to mention freedom of speech issues in Demotopia when they advocated fleeing northward after November 2.

Who the hell does Canada think they are restricting free speech, San Francisco?

If you've missed the backstory, tens of millions of dollars of government contracts were funneled into advertising firms connected to the Liberal government for little or no work, and the money apparently went right back into the pockets of Liberal politicians. There is a corruption investigation, but there has been a publication ban in Canada on the testimony of three witnesses whose testimony maybe damning enough to threaten the entire Liberal government.

Being American, Captain's Quarter's is not subject to the publication ban, and so ran an expose on some of the testimony that the Liberal Canadian government doesn't want the world to see, testimony saying that the corruption ran to the highest levels of the government.

Now Canadian bloggers who merely link to Captain's Quarters are being threatened with legal action for simply linking to those trying to expose the truth.

Massive amounts of web traffic are now flowing southward to Captain's Quarters as Canadians trying to find out what their government is trying to hide.

I'd expect this kind of behavior from China or Cuba, but to have such a restriction on free speech in a theoretically free Canada is unsettling, to say the least.