U.S. Blogger Breaches Canadian Publication Ban

nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.

I now how to enforce the publication ban!

Get the site linked on Slashdot!

isn't it obvious?

Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program

i misread this as "charles guilté" and was immediately confused as to how he'd not already been convicted.

My perspective

Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.

Yes, there is a publication ban. However, Canadian courts have no jurisdiction outside of Canada's borders. Just as US courts have no pull inside of Canada's borders.

If there was a publication ban on a case in the states - Canadians could feel free to ignore it.

However, if this is a Canadian posting on a US blog site... he should be prepared to spend some time in jail.

Re:My perspective

Currently at least one Canadian blog is in trouble for posting a LINK to captainsquartersblog.com.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/00 4225.php [captainsquartersblog.com]

Begin "Operation: Human Shield" at once

We must liberate Canada from this evil immediately.

Change of Venue?

"The information, I gather, is very, very damaging and very prejudicial," he said. "If it's accessed by large numbers of people in Montreal where the trial will take place it could have a prejudicial effect."

There is an easy solution to this. Have a change of venue to someplace where they haven't been paying much attention to the news. I recomend somewhere in the Northwest Territories.

US citizen acknowledges Canada

Someone from the US is interested in Canadian politics? Weird.

You have to understand the process...

First, we do not have grand juries in Canada and the trappings of secrecy therein, but we do have a process called preliminary inquiry which achieves the same function and is open to the public like all our courts are. Publication bans are routinely ordered to protect the rights of the accused until the conclusion of the trial.

Now the Gomery Inquiry is a legal tribunal initiated by parliament to investigate possible corruption surrounding advertising contracts given to certain agencies that are believed to be loyal to the ruling Liberal Party. Extremely damaging testimony was recently given by witnesses during the inquiry and the judge invoked a publication ban to protect the rights of those witnesses who face certain criminal prosecution. Note that the ban does not remain in force forever and, while I don't agree with it, the testimony will eventually be made public.

The crux of the matter is while the rights of potentially accussed persons are protected we are likely to face another election in the very near future before the information is made public. Without the knowledge of the testimony the public may be heading into an election with more questions than answers. Does the right of the public to know the substance of the allegations made during the inquiry outweigh the rights of accused persons?

I think the publication ban does more harm then good as speculation swirls around the subject and the real truth remains hidden. In the meantime, the Liberal minority goverment is probably happy with things the way they are considering the potential damange to their reputation.

Watch out CmdrTaco!

The RCMP will march to Ann Arbor and demand that you delete the above post!

Politely, of course.

Re:Watch out CmdrTaco!

I hear a lot of bullshit coming from people out there about how this "publication ban" is a suppression of freedom of speech and how "hypocritical" we are up here in Canada.

But not too many seem to have clued in to the fact that, contrary to the catcalls of censorship, all of the testimony was made available to the press which is why we are reading it. The "publication ban" is a temporary measure intended to ensure a fair and impartial jury trial. Providing a fair and impartial jury trial requires either withholding the testimony from the public until the jury has reached a verdict, or disclosing it but keeping it from publication.

You all seem to think that this guy is some sort of "hero" for publishing this stuff. But all he's done is present one portion of the facts and testimony in isolation from the others. Far from informing, this is just leading those who aren't mentally disciplined enough to withhold judgement until getting all the facts to a knee jerk reaction that will be discussed around the water cooler until it has taken on the authority of repetition. It's basically taking us further and further away from any possibility of justice and towards a witch hunt.

Whoever this "secret source" is, I for one am totally disgusted with his or her demonstrated lack of integrity, and am hoping that they go to jail for this and never hold a position of trust again for the rest of their life.

I hope the courts will learn from this, and start preventing the press from being present for these sorts of testimonies at all. They have demonstrated that they can neither be trusted nor compelled not skew the trial, so they just shouldn't be there. They should recieve and report on the complete facts of the case when the court documents are released. Aside from being in the interests of justice, that would be responsible journalism, which this clearly is not.

Re:Watch out CmdrTaco!

You all seem to think that this guy is some sort of "hero" for publishing this stuff. But all he's done is present one portion of the facts and testimony in isolation from the others.

All the more reason NOT to have a publication ban.

Considering that we may be heading into a snap election because the government wants us to vote BEFORE all this stuff leaks out, I think the ban was more harmful to the common good than just disclosing everything.

Would any of this have made slashdot if it HADN'T been banned? Of course not.

The ban was stupid, and it didn't work. It was inevitable that it wouldn't work.

Oh, BTW, the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) has already stated plenty of times that they will NOT regulate the internet. That's because:

1. it's not technically possible
2. pretty much all communication between a server and a client (the current web model) is done based on a request-response, as opposed to a broadcast-receive.

That last point is important - if I am reading a message or page I have requested (which is what happens whenever I click on a link), that is not a general broadcast - it's a one-on-one communication, between me and a server outside the jurisdiction of the Canadian government.

Re:Watch out CmdrTaco!

Hey, read a newspaper once in a while -

Chretien's lawyers tried to have the Gomery inquiry stopped.

Here's http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/1106682011080_102091211 [www.ctv.ca] one of MANY links.

You have no right to subvert the law in this case, and I sincerely hope you get charged for subverting a Justice's edict.

It was already subverted, asswipe. Once it's out, there's no putting it back in the can.

As for his "fair trial", that can still be done - I'm sure we can find a dozen people who've been living in caves the last 5 years.

Re:Watch out CmdrTaco!

Colby Cosh [colbycosh.com] has a very interesting post on this issue (despite being a Canuck, and subject to the ban.) Sample:

...if a ban doesn't work in practice... it can't meet Oakes.[a test of 'constitutionality' under Canadian law.] ...it would actively help free the hands of Canadian webloggers and reporters if our foreign cousins were to be aggressive about "publishing" the substance of the Brault testimony outside the reach of Canadian law.

Re:The article...

Canada is starting to resemble Orwell's 1984. There are all kinds of things you can't say there now.

From TFA:

Gomery slapped a ban on Brault's testimony last week to ensure the Montreal ad exec would be able to find an unbiased jury for his fraud trial set for next month.

This thing actually happens fairly often up here. In some cases, it's fairly reasonable. In this case, however, it does seem to be a bit over the top, and a stretch.

A far cry from 1984, though.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

The idea was to try to provide the defendant with an unbiased jury.

Quaint indeeed...

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

Isn't it ironic. On the one had we hold a jury of our peers in high enough regard, that they are allowed to judge us, on the other we believe that allowing them to read a newspaper makes them unable to be objective in court.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

How quaint.

Canada takes quite seriously the concept of making sure that suspects receive a fair trial. When the publication of evidence in advance of the trial would make it impossible for someone to receive a fair trial, a publication ban is entirely reasonable.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

Yes, a publication ban on an event open to the public. Not quaint, but rather an indication of the vast differences between Canada and the US.

Here in Canada, a fair amount of the law relies on common sense and good will. The intent of these publication bans is to ensure the accused gets a fair trial. This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world hears this testimony before the trial gets fully underway and everything can be put into a proper context, it will be really hard to get a reasonably impartial jury so this person gets a fair trial." They know very well that it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it.

What's more important? Having one newspaper scoop another in an attempt to splash the headlines with more sensationalism? Or having an accused person get a fair trial?

Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do). Sometimes conflicting rights have to be balanced, and most Canadians that I know feel that, in this case, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial outweigh the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

A publication ban is the VERY DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP. People have morphed the word and try to apply it to all kinds of other things (like a bookstore refusing to carry a book), but if the GOVERNMENT is BANNING PUBLICATION of something based on the CONTENT, then that is censorship.

You can make cases for why it's important and a good thing, and you can argue about that if you want, but I don't see how you can possibly claim that this isn't censorship.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

OK, so, here's a little background.

There is currently a royal inquiry going on into some mishandling of federal advertisement contracts. A royal inquiry is similar to congressional hearings in the US, except this one is not lead by congressmen, but by a retired judge. When finished he gets to report back to parliament on his findings.

Now, some of the people subpeonaed to give testimony at the inquiry are also being charged with crimes related to the events under discussion. They will go to court in the next several months on those charges.

The publication ban was put in place to ensure things that these people say at the inquiry will not affect their chances of a fair jury trial. (Compare this to the baseball hearings where they players wanted immunity for their testimony, for many of the same reasons.) The ban will be ended after the jury has been sequestered, at which all that was said during the ban can be made public.

Note that this is only a publication ban -- it doesn't prevent people from actually going to the hearings to hear for themselves; it just attempts to limit what the jury pool will hear outside of the court case.

Publication bans are common in Canada, and typically have a similar duration and purpose -- to prevent the jury on high profile cases from getting the "facts" of the case from anywhere but the courtroom. The media typically fight the ban, and often win certain relaxations on the ban (you can report the events, but not identify the person giving testimony, etc.). In this case, Judge Gomery has said the media can ask at the end of each day what of that day's testimony can be released.

I'm generally in favour of such time limited bans, since they are designed to help ensure a fair trial. However, it looks like maintaining such bans is getting more and more difficult in the era of the Internet. Other cases where Canadian publication bans have been breached by American organizations include the Air India case (IIRC), and the Paul Bernardo case.

E.

Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public

There's a difference between imposing a gag order on parties to the legal action and blocking members of the public from speaking about what they witness. In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.

Re:Role reversal

ssshhh. They beat us once...besides..our army is in the middle east. A perfect time to come and kick our yankee asses.

Re:I Thought This Blogger Looked Reputable...

So, you're saying that because his political beliefs differ from yours anything he says is suspect?

Re:I Thought This Blogger Looked Reputable...

His claims have been verified by The Globe and Mail journalist Jane Tabor (I heard her verify it this morning on my local radio station, 580 CFRA, in Ottawa). She was present during the testimony, so I would be inclined to trust what has been posted.

Re:I Thought This Blogger Looked Reputable...

This is what we skeptics call the ad hominem fallacy. When you critique a viewpoint, statement, or article by questioning the character of the author, or of the author's other works, rather than the content of the work in question itself, you have committed the ad hominem fallacy. It is an invalid criticism. As much as I like bashing neocons - and they do deserve it - one can do much better than attacking the character of the messenger (which in the case of neocons, is always questionable, and a rather moot point as the past two elections have shown).