<strong>Written By:</strong> sthompson
<strong>Date:</strong> 2006-01-19 11:42:46
<a href="/article/114246689-tory-majority-would-make-canada-boring-again">Article Link</a>

Canada is frequently ridiculed in the US and the UK press as a dull inconsequential country. In Escape to Canada, one US TV commentator says Canada is “like Honduras except colder and less interesting.”
“I’m not saying the Conservatives don’t have interesting ideas,” says
Nerenberg. “In fact as campaigners, the other parties have been more boring. I’m just a dumb hoser, but it seems to me the Conservatives have clearly come out specifically against the things that have put Canada on the map: same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization and their orbiting freedom issues.”

DON’T FORGET THE BORING FACTOR

In Escape to Canada, which will be released in Canada in March and the US later on, Bruce McDonald, co-founder of Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce says the flood of US couples marrying in Canada has had a significant economical impact and has created worldwide goodwill towards Canada among Gays and Lesbians.

The director says he doesn’t necessarily support the Liberals.

“Contrary to what they often suggest. The Liberals didn’t necessarily bring these things about,” said Nerenberg. “The Canadian courts and the Canadian people did; the Liberals just got out of the way, which is not what the Conservatives would probably do. I understand the desire to punish the Liberals. But handing the untested Conservatives a majority is cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

Stephen Harper portrays himself as mildly concerned about gay marriage, but the film reveals he is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. In Escape to Canada, Harper attends a spring anti-same sex marriage rally where he makes a rousing emotional speech.

CANADA MADE IMPRESSION ON YOUTH CULTURE

In another surprising sequence, seconds after he became leader of the Conservative Party, Nerenberg asks Harper in the midst of cheers “if he thinks Canada is cool.”

“It has been one of the coldest winters on record,” Harper replies.

Escape to Canada demonstrates how the world took notice of Canada in 2003 during something called “The Summer of Legalization,” when same-sex marriage and marijuana were legalized on the same day in Ontario. Marijuana would be later re-criminalized, but not before Canada’s new freedoms were featured in various international magazines and heavily in world youth culture.

Canada was the third country in the world to begin legalizing same-sex
Marriage, but is currently the only country in the world, which makes it easy for people from other countries to get married here. Escape to Canada profiles the arrival of American AWOL soldiers straight from Iraq, and tells the story of reefer refugees, fleeing American drug laws, escaping to a new land of the free.

US based Variety magazine has given Escape to Canada strong reviews.
“Escape to Canada is a proud, benevolent, and altogether winning portrait of a country,” said Variety’s Eddie Cockrell. Canada’s Montreal Mirror said the film “makes for fantastic drama.”

Nerenberg is the founder of the internationally acclaimed film
website Trailervision, and director of the hit documentary Stupidity, which was Canada’s top-grossing documentary in 2003.

Escape to Canada will be released in Canada in March by Epidemic.
Clips from the film appear on Trailervision.com and at <a href="http://www.escapetocanada.ca">http://www.escapetocanada.ca</a>


ESCAPE TO CANADA: 416-926-8886

   

"There’s been a boom in gay tourism, pot tourism, youth tourism, as well as
new medical and scientific research with all its side benefits. Freedom pays. ”

Unless of course you have CANCER, and you want THALIDOMIDE. Then you're
shit out of luck.

Or if you need to have a surgery in which you can even consider the idea of
WALKING again...I guess the "side benefits" are WAITING YEARS for it to
happen.

when the bullshit piles up so high...you sometimes need WINGS to stay above
it.


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Want the lowdown on all these 'Progressive' websites? Check out my blog at:
http://canadianliberals.blogspot.com/ - A blog that always "Follows the money"

   

Rabblewatch, what does that have to do with tourism? Or, in fact, social freedom?

I am fully aware that you don't like the health care system in Canada because Thalidomide has not yet been approved as a cancer treatment. That has nothing to do with an opinion piece saying that Canada is getting more tourism because of our recent increases in personal freedom.

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Your mantra has been your opinions are stifled due to their contrary nature, when they are actually stifled for being without perceivable foundation.

   

While gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization (should be legalization) are two good steps toward freedom, we shamefully have taken 10 steps back with these two steps forward.

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Dave Ruston

   

How are they two steps towards freedom?

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"A Liberal is someone who refuses to take his own side in a fight".

-Robert Frost

   

The simplest definition of freedom is to do what you want to do without interference from other people (and without interfering with others).

Racists are determined to prevent non-whites from having freedom of religion or freedom to live wherever they want.

People against gay marriage are trying to keep homosexuals from having the freedom to get married.

People against pot are trying to keep others from smoking what they want.

If you are one of those people who likes interfering in the lives of others, then I can see how you might see these as a loss of freedom to interfere. But for everyone who just wants to live their own life without having people yell at them about how they are destroying Canada's "traditional values", decriminalising pot and legalising gay marriage are *both* increasing the freedom of canadians.

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Your mantra has been your opinions are stifled due to their contrary nature, when they are actually stifled for being without perceivable foundation.

   

Right on, Jesse!

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Dave Ruston

   

The simplest definition of freedom is to do what you want to do without interference from other people (and without interfering with others)

The government dosen't have to provide you with that choice. I left (actualy my wife and I escaped) the big city bought fourty acres in the middle of no-where and etched out a home here. We left jobs and created our own here. Tough to live without a new TV but I can piss on my front lawn without getting a ticket. That's freedom and the government don't care. Don't curse out you neighbours nisy lawn mower unless you want to pay the price of freedom. Believe me, it's not expensive when you'd sooner have a goat then a BMW.

   

"The simplest definition of freedom is to do what you want to do without interference from other people (and without interfering with others)."

How admirably libertarian of you. But it's funny how you're so willing to promote certain freedoms (the ones you listed regarding non-whites, gay marriage, pot-smoking) but seem to consider economic freedoms to be a less noble thing.

I believe that an individual should have the right to smoke pot *and* make a lot of money in business.

I believe in freedom of (and from) religion *and* in property rights.

I believe that Person A should be free to marry someone of the same sex *and* that Person B should be free to call gay marriage a sin. Disapproving of something is not the same as interfering with it.

   

I'm all for personal freedom, but is the concern that a Conservative government would prevent Canada from becoming the New World's Amsterdam really a good reason to vote a particular way?

   

Ya nailed it Jess!

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"There is no reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia."
Kurt Vonnegut

   

I guess if you vote, then you put in power a dictatorship, what is the difference between any of them?
Think about it for a minute, put in a Conservative Governing Party, the the party will govern and cater to the wishes of the card carrying member.

All others who have voted to give them power and are not members, are voiceless, we are outcasts, the party is not required to listen to anyone of us. Keep in mind you must be a card carrying member to have a voice that will be heard by those who are elected to power.

Anyone outside the party are meaning less , excepet when it comes to paying taxes.



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Good government is not a party government

   

Please don't interpret my ommision as intentional; I support economic freedoms as well, to an extent, but they had not yet been mentioned and I didn't want to muddy the waters further.

My main concern with a "right to make a lot of money" is that making money is, by definition, taking it from someone else (or taking resources from the environment). As such, economic freedoms are not nearly so easy to define, and any discussion of such needs to have well-defined boundaries of where one person's freedom starts infringing on the freedom of others. Freedom to access a common resource is a good example; at what point does your freedom to bottle an entire river and sell the water for a profit infringe on my freedom to use the river on my own? Intellectual property is another very sticky topic; at which point does Disney's freedom to copyright things taken from the public domain infringe on my freedom to tell a story about cinderella? Very sticky topics, with wide-ranging consequences.

The conservatives are quite clearly on the christian-values and unfettered-capitalism side of the debate, which make it questionable whether they should be in charge of Canada and all of its resources and laws. I would be fine with them forming a government, IF we first had proper definitions for economic freedom.

As for calling something a sin, that's all well and good, so long as you don't try codifying your own belief system into the laws of this (or any other) country. You can think that I'm going to hell for doing something, but that doesn't mean I should be a criminal for it, nor does it mean that you should tell *me* that I am going to hell. It's interfering as soon as you decide to make my actions illegal just because they go against your religion.

(note that I'm not accusing you in particular of any of this, I'm pretty certain that we are both talking hypothetically here)

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"Beer Garden'? You mean, a real garden of beer? I thought they only had those in Canada!" --Largo

   

"My main concern with a 'right to make a lot of money' is that making money is, by definition, taking it from someone else (or taking resources from the environment)."

This is where we part company. You believe in the economy as zero-sum game. I do not. My properity takes nothing from you, and yours takes nothing from me. Some people can take a set of resources and become fabulously wealthy. Others can take that same set of resources and end up poor. I do not accept your "definition".

   

As I said, we lack good definitions. How can we make proper laws about something when we can't even discuss it in broad terms? Why should the governming party (*any* party) be allowed to pass laws based on economic definitions that a large proportion of the population feel are vague and ill-defined?

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"Beer Garden'? You mean, a real garden of beer? I thought they only had those in Canada!" --Largo