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I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.
“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)
Pattison’s in-house advertising code does allow the company to engage in “post-publication review,” which must necessarily involve just dismantling ads if enough people raise hell about them, and this is what has now happened. This has not stopped people from threatening boycotts against the Pattison corporate empire for accepting the ad in the first place, or for bowing to pressure from the people who were angry about the ad. Take your pick if that’s your idea of a good time.
Let’s accept the view for the sake of argument, or just for the sake of sanity, that there is no general freedom-of-expression issue involved here. A vendor of advertising space cannot completely disavow responsibility for the ads it accepts, and any ad will be condemned if the social force aligned against it is commercially unbearable. My question is whether it was sensible for individuals (ah, remember them?) to oppose the display of this particular ad, as opposed to walking past it, perhaps frowning, and going about one’s business. Bernier has said he has no connection with the billboard, but that he agrees with its message; and now he accuses a “leftist mob” of trying “to censor any discussion of immigration”.
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