Al-Jazeera compromise

Editorial

The Arabic-language cable news service Al-Jazeera will be available in Canada – subject to complying with Canadian laws regarding the incitement of hatred.

Canadian cable providers will be required to closely monitor al-Jazeera's broadcasts and censor what the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) deems "abusive content." Failure to adequately do so could result in serious financial and legal repercussions. At least one major Canadian cable provider told Vancouver's Province newspaper last week that the process of safeguarding al-Jazeera's feed to conform to Canadian broadcast standards is simply too daunting and they will pass up the opportunity to carry the channel. Though this may be unfortunate, the CRTC's decision imposes a cost of doing business that is comparable to the laws in the 1960s requiring auto manufacturers to instal seatbelts. Costly, sure, but an important social investment inevitably passed on to the consumer.

Like so much of this country's human rights and civil liberties infrastructures, the CRTC decision is unwieldy and ambiguous. Defenders of al-Jazeera say that when, for instance, Jews are described on air as "the sons of apes and pigs" and when viewers are called upon to "take revenge" on Jews, it is in the context of coverage of an al-Qaeda leader's comments. Critics say such comments contravene Canadian broadcast (and legal) standards and are not limited to reportage, but infect the very nature of coverage, which is explicitly slanted toward Holocaust denial, base Jew-hatred and incitement to kill.

As worrying as these reports are, there is another valid concern, which is the converse danger of whitewashing anti-Semitism. While al-Jazeera has unflinchingly broadcast gross anti-Semitic expressions, there is a converse danger in burying such views with censorship. Far too many Canadians continue in blissful ignorance of such hatred, which leads to the rose-tinted view that growing Jew-hatred is a natural, if unfortunate, result of Israeli government policies.

At a time when French Jews are under attack largely, according to reports, by immigrants from predominantly Islamic countries, Canada needs to be vigilant in preventing sources of incitement from reaching our shores.

At the same time, Canadians have seen, in the Little Sister's bookstore case, in which books were seized by Canada Customs, the alarming potential inherent in giving censorship powers to bureaucrats. The al-Jazeera decision seems to expand these powers to private-sector individuals whose experience with these issues is anyone's guess.

Despite all this, the CRTC decision is more right than wrong. Opponents of the CRTC decision, who cite free speech considerations, ignore the balanced approach Canada has tended to take between protection of minorities and the right to incite as an inherent human freedom.

Irwin Cotler, the federal minister of justice, has said that Canada's human rights and multicultural infrastructure has acted as a "firewall" against the sort of hatred seen recently in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. The CRTC decision must be seen as an integral part of that firewall.

The CRTC decision on al-Jazeera is a difficult, flawed and potentially dangerous one. But it is probably the best decision our broadcast regulators could have made. Yet it must not be the final word. As al-Jazeera joins Home and Garden Television, the Comedy Network and Spike on Canadian televisions, its contents will be closely watched. The CRTC decision is not the end of this debate, it is just the beginning of a new chapter of our ongoing evolution of justice, free expression and social cohesion. As challenging and painful as this debate might be to our national values and self-identity, it is an inescapable and necessary one. Canada's multicultural fabric is one of our greatest virtues, but virtue never tested is no virtue at all.

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