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OTTAWA, Apr 2, 2001 (LSN.ca) – The CRTC has recently acknowledged its inability to monitor and, therefore, censor violent and degrading pornography that is supposedly illegal in Canada. A Fifth Estate expose last Wednesday dealing with the substance of two hard core pornography channels made available by Bell Express Vu, showed Bob Warren of the Ontario Film Review Board visibly disturbed while responding to questions and viewing content, reports Thomas Langan of the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL). CRTC representative, Pierre Blais, said that there are far too many channels to monitor.

He did say, however, that they would look into the evidence produced by Fifth Estate regarding Bell ExpressVu which is owned by Bell Canada’s parent BCE. “Only after Gartner pressed him several times did he indicate the CRTC would look into the matter,” wrote Sid Adilman in the Toronto Star. “This proved to be academic because BCE, informed about The Fifth Estate’s report, pulled the channels off Bell ExpressVu a few hours before the program aired. Licence renewal application hearings for BCE’s CTV take place next month. Renewal is a shoo-in, but BCE would not want embarrassing questions about its other broadcasting service.”

The hard-core pornography is troubling enough by itself, but what makes the current revelations even more disturbing for Canadian Christians is that they come in a context of aggressive anti-Christian discrimination by Canada’s communications regulator. “What we find most disturbing is that [the] CRTC has been rejecting application after application for religious programming,” notes Mr. Langan. “EWTN, the largest religious broadcasting service in the world, applied at the same time as Playboy four years ago. Though Playboy was accepted on the first round of applications, EWTN is in need of support to be licensed now. The CRTC felt it necessary to protect Canadians not from disturbing pornographic images, but from programming that is based on the moral values and principals upon which Canada was founded. Where is the balance that Heritage Minister Sheila Copps speaks of so regularly and so proudly?”

For more, see:  https://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=13657 https://www.thestar.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=thestar/  Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=985890433329&call_page=TS_Entertainment_Columnists&call_pageid=970599111101&call_pagepath=Entertainment,Life/Columnists