You might be thinking that opinion has never really been subject to censorship in Canada unless it crosses the line of hateful speech, decency or the promotion of unlawful activity.
Or, as it turns out, renewable fuels.
An update – Jim Pattison responds;
An error was made within our Telecaster Clearance group, by an individual analyst, in asking for copyright compliance beyond our mandate. This error was corrected, and the commercials in question were approved Monday afternoon after some required revisions (not affecting copyright) were made.
I see this as a case of an unaccountable body vastly overstepping it’s mandate and the bounds of law.
Lawsuits to follow??
issue and opinion?
that would can the whole of CBCpravda.
I would like that.
one only has to look at the membership of the CRFA to see why the trough wallowers would try to muzzle it….big bad business is not allowed to communicate in this country, unless of course it is bombardion….then please, air all the soft and mushy librano propaganda you want
OMMAG Hence why less government is good government.
If you actually listen to what most “Extreme” environmentalists say you’ll find out that being green has little to do with reducing green-house gasses or polution but is entirely about attacking the large oil companies. I honestly feel that the massive push behind Kyoto over the past 24 months has far more to do with people feeling bitter at the high cost of oil than with any fear of enviromental fallout.
kingstonlad
If you want to talk about trough wallowers, CRFA represents an industry that wins all the prizes. Bio-fuels are produced and sold only with subsidies, tax-breaks and government fiat mandating their use.
I haven’t taken a close look at the energy balance for bio-diesel production, but ethanol from grain is generally a loser. With corn, there is a slight energy gain in the planting to finished product cycle, but with Canadian wheat you come up short, i.e. you have to burn more energy in the form of farm fuel, fertilizer production and process heat production than you get out of the finished product.
In the U.S., ethanol production is basically a farm support program which falls outside of GATT rules. Do we really want to go down that route? If the government deems it appropriate to subsidize farmers, that can be done much more simply by taking land out of productio (land banking) than by all the unproductive wheel spinning of ethanol production.
Ethanol makes a lot of sense in Brazil where the input is sugar cane which yields much more alcohol per farmed hectare then grain and which is generally produced with minimal fuel input and a lot of cheap labour. Doesn’t grow worth a damn around Moose Jaw though.
at this point in time, that may very well be true…but if I remember correctly, solar panels were very in-efficient at one time…hence the reason for “R & D”…I would rather tax dollars go to that project than to another pie in the sky train to nowhere from bombardion
At the least, I’d say it is opinion that Canada can grow its own fuel.
In the US, there was an article on NPR this morning reporting that cattle and other livestock are being slaughtered because there is no hay to feed them. Normally, farmers would switch to corn after a drought but the price of corn is so high due to the ethanol requirements, the farmers are culling their herds instead.
I can’t help disbelieve the ‘grow our own fuel’ line. Do Canadians have enough farmland to grow enough bio-fuel for all of our needs and still maintain their current share of the food supply? If so, great. But given our thirst for fuel, I don’t see this happening.
Even so, since when have commercials been anything more than the opinion of the advertiser that their product should be bought by me? I don’t like the ad, but I don’t like the censorship either.
“The subject of renewable fuels being a hot topic these days makes it an opinion expressed.”
This whole episode is OUTRAGEOUS.
So, if “a hot topic” makes a subject “an opinion” all anyone has to do to make sure that certain ads can’t be run except as opinion pieces is to get their buddies in the MSM to run a subject up the pole, make it “a hot topic,” and then those wanting to run an ad will be restricted.
Only in Canada.
What’s with Canadians and “opinions”? In my opinion, intelligent people are always expressing opinions, otherwise, what’s a brain for? But Canadians are squeamish about opinionated people.
More than once in my life, I’ve had people ask me, “Are you a Canadian?” When I say “Yes, why do you ask?” they look puzzled and say, “Well, because you don’t look or act like a Canadian.”
What they mean, of course, is that I have strong opinions and I’m not shy about expressing them. I feel far more comfortable in New York City than in most places in Canada, because Noo Yokkers ALL have opinons: taxi drivers, bell boys, waiters and waitresses, bus drivers, etc., etc. and they can give ’em as well as take ’em.
Boy, we’ve got to shake out of our lethargy up here. Blogs are helping–thanks, Kate–but regulatory bodies have got to stop punishing Canadians for a) having opinions, b) expressing them intelligently, and c) labelling facts “opinions” if the facts happen to become “a hot topic.”
We’re becoming a down-the-rabbit-hole Nation. ‘Time to stand up and LOUDLY quote Tom Petty:
Gonna stand my ground, wont be turned around;
And I’ll keep this world from draggin’ me down,
‘Gonna stand my ground, and I wont back down.
Altogether now…
There is now a tortilla tax to cover the rising cost of corn, that is being turned into fuel instead of food. Ever notice that most of those letters from offices saying you can or can’t do something are signed by WOMEN, and dion wants to appoint many liberal candidates, to run, but not to serve in his shadow cabinet.
Canadian Kate
No, even diverting our entire grain crop to ethanol production wouldn’t do it, and we’d still be putting more energy into its production than would be contained in the finished product. Its just another opportunistic scam feeding off of the global warming scare. Ironically, even if the Church of Climatology predictions are 100% accurate (Heh) switching to ethanol would only make things worse.
Kingstonlad
Sorry, but no matter how efficient any operation is, you can’t beat the laws of thermodynamics. That’s why, for example, the finely-tuned, computer managed internal combustion engines of today are only marginally more efficient than engines built 50 years ago.
Law of thermodynamics, Law of gravity?
But I never studied Law. — Bugs Bunny , 1944.
looks like the renewable bioenergy thing is a huge make-work project we can all join.
a) ethanol doesnt contain as much chemical energy as equivalent volume of gasoline,
b) gotta measure ALL the inputs: cost of setting up the ethanol production/distribution system(including the costs of the energy expended then and on an ongoing basis)
c) etc etc
the good news is when all that corn based ethanol production is found to be a bust, we can spend more money of corn fueled stoves for heat and use the corn that way.
wait, thats already been done, so where is that solution now?
Thanks, BATB. I totally agree with you. Wimpy Canadians are letting our once fine country become a a pale imitation of its once robust self. Those who know what we stand for are generally bad mouthed and marginalized. It makes me sick.
Joni Mitchell sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” That’s Canada! Pity.
“Grow our own fuel” ??? I don’t know about the rest of Canada but in Alberta it is being done already. Drive by most fields and there are oil wells and pumps sprouting up everywhere. Sorry, me bad.
Does the Desmeraise (sp?) clan really control Canada as is rumoured?
Are they the royalty that rules this country? In cahoots with the MSM?
Where is Jean? where is Paulie? where is Jean-Dion? Where is Mo Strong?
They don’t call it Power Corp for ‘rien ‘
I see this from both sides.
Yes, it is political and opinion. And, having seen the clips, I disagree vehemently with them. But they have the right to put this crap out. As I also have the right to put out my own crap.
The whole “ethenol” thing is political for two reasons. But first, let me say it is not yet clear to me that there is a net energy gain.
The reasons why it is political?
1: Appease greenies.
2. Find a politically correct way to subsidize farmers.
What, Lookout, are you exactly intending here? I see no BATB.
real conservative: In answer to your plaintive question, “Where is Jean? where is Paulie? … Where is Mo Strong?”
Where, indeed?
In China!
‘Developing the car of the future. Mega-bucks. They’ve definitely got to stay on the good side of the Chinese government, so absolutely no questions about the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. They’re “mature,” see, and, apparently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the CPC are not.
Business as usual for the LPC.
Real conservative, to continue your list:
Where is Steve Lewis and friends; where is that knee dipper from Ontario who’s name I forget (some ex-premier guy)? All connected to the same bloody familly.
Remeber 1837. No more familly compact!
The Television Bureau of Canada – http://www.tvb.ca – is a private organization, not associated with the state; their Telecaster service is apparently voluntarily used by some members of the organization to obtain commercial clearance on proposed advertisements. We are not talking about a state regulatory body, and the ads haven’t been banned, TVB has just told the station that they don’t think they should broadcast the ad without a legal release, and the station has agreed to take that advice.
This is not censorship any more that it would be censorship if, say, the Western Standard refused to run some item because their lawyers had some problem with it. Whether or not the lawyers or other commercial approval folks would be correct can be argued, but I don’t see dragging the state into this matter. We are not talking about the CRTC here.
Unless I’m wrong, of course.
OK, there are lots of problems with this or that alternative/renewable fuel source.
So what. Maybe we do not even yet know which fuel source will fun (VHS vrs beta, coaxial vrs broadband). That’s what research is for; though, not the corrupt “parternership” high tech government solutions of the past: “you give me reseasrch money, I build my retirement home. R&D became R&R.
When Kennedy announced US wanted to put man moon, nobody had a clue how to actually do it. That’s what research is for. It got done because the will was there to do it.
I also disagree with the assinine idea of using more energy to produce ethanol than one gets in return. Than said, I think the renewable fuels group should be free to advertise. The only way this type of approach would work would be if one could hydrolyze cellulose into simple sugars on an industrial scale and then ferment them. This is being researched, but not practical now.
We already have a mature renewable fuel technology aka wood. All the branches I’ve trimmed off trees in my yard get dried and heat my shop in the winter. Let Brazil ferment sugar cane and produce ethanol and we can use wood.
Email response from Jim Patterson…..
“TVB, through our Telecaster Clearance procedures, acts to ensure that news media footage is used appropriately in television commercials within copyright law. We have never intended to have this pre-clearance requirement extend to personalities included in the footage.
An error was made within our Telecaster Clearance group, by an individual analyst, in asking for copyright compliance beyond our stated mandate. This error was corrected, and the commercials in question were approved Monday afternoon after some required revisions (not affecting copyright) were made.
It is never our intention to impede the ability of advertisers to reach interested Canadians with the full communications power of the television medium.
Jim Patterson
President & CEO
Television Bureau of Canada ”
Stephen Taylor is continuing the discussion of this issue at his blog this morning:
(http://www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000775.html)
He’s found a contributor of mucho dinero ($$$) to the LPC by one James D. Patterson, who lives in Lakefield, Ontario and asks a few obvious questions:
1) Is Jim Patterson, President & CEO of the
Television Bureau of Canada, one and the same as James D. Patterson, contributor to the coffers of the LPC? and
2) If Jim Patterson and James D. Patterson are one and the same person, “should a partisan be in charge of approving ads during a time sensitive period (such as an election) where parties depend on television advertising for their most critical rapid responses? Also, would it be appropriate for a partisan to have an advanced look at a competing party’s ads?”
Stephen Sherlock Taylor is hot on the trail of this latest partisan politicking by the LPC.
“at this point in time, that may very well be true…but if I remember correctly, solar panels were very in-efficient at one time…hence the reason for “R & D”…I would rather tax dollars go to that project than to another pie in the sky train to nowhere from bombardion”
There’s a new generation of solar technology (actually several new versions) that show a lot of promise for being price competive. Solar is one of those technologies that’s been improving albiet slowly all the time (price performance has been improving by about 5% a year and that rate is increasing). A new plant is being produced in the states that will quadruple that countries exsisting Solar power generating capacity in its first year of operation.
Biofuels are a loser and they show no promise of improving in performance with improved technology. In many cases they do more harm than good. They’re leveling virgin rainforests to create plantations for palm oil. The conditions aren’t right for long term cultivation of course and the topsoil is flushing away. It makes economic sense for the companies involved but environmentaly its sheer idiocy.
TELECASTER’S PATTERSON IS A LIBERAL – REPORT
Yesterday, on Dave Rutherford’s show, the Calgary radio host had Jim Patterson, CEO of Telecaster (TVB). Rutherford got right to the point which I first raised in this post: Is Jim Patterson a partisan Liberal? …-
http://www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000776.html