An American website has breached the publication ban protecting a Montreal ad execs' explosive and damning testimony at the AdScam inquiry. The U.S. blogger raised the ire of the Gomery commission this weekend by publishing extracts from testimony given in secret by Jean Brault last Thursday.
No really? Where have you guys been for the past 36 hours? This is supposed to be a 24 hours news cycle, not a 24 hour news delay.
"We never thought someone would violate the publication ban," Perreault said yesterday. "Maybe we were more confident than we should have been."For these people not to have known this testimony was going to get breached in a week's time is borderline lunacy. How could they not know what every other blogger took for granted within minutes of having read this testimony? This is the most explosive evidence ever that the government of Canada used tax payer money for political gain. There was no way of containing this.
Let me try to explain something to you Americans out there. You live in a democracy. In Canada we have something called a "Friendly Dictatorship." We have all the corruption and bribery of a full blown dictatorship, only that it's buried so deeply, and the government's power so large that no one dares to expose it. To be honest, those that stand against it are afraid. I know because I'm one of those people. After reading this, I'm considering removing any links to the testimony in question on this blog.
Sun Media lawyer Alan Shanoff said publishing the name of the blog, Canadian news site or providing the Internet address could lead to a contempt charge.
This is a direct threat to bloggers everywhere. The Canadian government wants to silence this testimony until they can go to the polls. Because of this a publication ban is a violation of the right of Canadians to freedom of the press. This is an unjustifiable violation of our right to free dissemination of information, because the information is only useful for Canadians during a federal election. The Government wants to keep control of this information, and that is an unreasonable violation of section 2b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Neale News, and Angry In The Great White North, deserve to be commended for their brave actions. And if they are found in contempt of court I think bloggers everywhere should be outraged. I admire their courage - it's something I don't have.
Email Gomery today, and tell him to uphold our right to freedom of press, freedom of opinion, and freedom of expression.
Preach it!
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