Book censorship in Canada

Canada Border Services Agency is able to block materials considered to be inappropriate from entering the country, although this practice has become less frequent since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was put into place.

[1] Canadian customs officials are empowered to block the import of any material considered to be hateful, obscene, seditious, or treasonous.

[6] The goal of these restrictions is largely to protect from the social harm that encouraging hateful and obscene behaviors can create.

In the words of Justice Kenneth Smith “There are many examples of inconsistencies in Custom’s treatment of publications.” Because there are no hard limits to what is or is not banned, the law can be applied unevenly.

[8] Obscenity is a difficult term to define concretely, so the application of the law depends upon whether or not the material questioned would offend community standards.

[7] The most prominent example of a school board ban happened in Surrey BC in 2003, where two teachers were “accused of promulgating a gay agenda” because they wanted to teach using picture books that included same-sex couples.

Should an individual decide to print censored material anyways, they would be presumed guilty until proven innocent and could be subject to a fine and/or jail time.

The suitability of these materials was primarily determined by Chief Censor Ernest Chambers, who then sought out approval from the secretary of state and postmaster general.

However, the restrictions provided were less strict than they were in the First World War and often relied on cooperation from editors to emphasize patriotic viewpoints.

[1] Throughout the 1940s and 50s, many countries in the Western world began to devote their attentions to the threat of moral degradation from comic books, and Canada was no exception.

The opinion of the Judge in this case, as published by the Peace River Block News, was that the actions of these boys were to be blamed on the influence of comic books that glorify criminal activities.

In 1954, the same year that the US Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency concluded that comic books were a moral evil, The Advisory Board on Objectionable Publications (ABOP) was formed in Alberta.

[1] However, Section 1 states that the charter "guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”.

The court ruled that customs officials had applied the law unfairly when they targeted the bookstore due to its queer content and that some of the materials detained had not been obscene.