Unless you've been living on another planet I guess most of you are now up to speed with the publication ban in Canada on a number of testimonies before a public inquiry into the misappropriation of public funds (the "Gomery Inquiry" investigating "Adscam" or "Sponsorship Scandal") and American blogger Ed M. (here's a Dutch solution to dealing with publication bans!) had a scoop by publishing some of the banned testimony from an unnamed source on his blog over the weekend and it has now created a cross-border blogging storm. Canadian media picked it up after navigating a challenging legal terrain and Ed explained why he did what he did:

In an interview yesterday, he said he understands the implications of publishing the testimony. He refuses to reveal his source but says that he has a contact who has a contact inside the Montreal room where the testimony is being given.

The publication ban does not restrict Americans from publishing or broadcasting the details of the in camera hearings. Still, the blogger joked that he isn't planning any vacations soon to Canada.

"It's an interesting story. It's fascinating," he said. "First off, I think it's a terrible thing that you guys can't publish this. This is the type of thing that a free press exists for is to hold their government accountable. ..... It should be you guys reporting this."

Legal Implications
Since I do not want to reinvent the wheel I recommend you read Joe Katzman's comprehensive post on the Gomery inquiry, the publication ban and equally important the underlying political dynamics. Colby Cosh takes the issue head on by asking what it is that Canadian bloggers are supposed to be doing and provides - as usual - some common sense although The Monger (an equal provider of common sense) points out that as blogging is essentially journalism, Canadian bloggers are bound by the Gomery publication ban. Tim Worstall concurs in a must-read post:

I think we English can understand all of that, let a bunch of French speaking politicians near a sack of tax money and you’re going to have problems, some of it will disappear over the horizon, and we are entirely used to the idea of bans on publication before trial. From the moment charges are laid until the trial is finished there are severe restrictions on what may be said about the case or people involved in our jurisdiction.

And whether you like it or not the same applies in Canada. It's everyone's right to argue that free speech in Canada is under severe pressure, a notion I would probably second and Mike Brock comes up with some good arguments to support that. But if you want to change the law, breaking it is not the most sensible course of action, unless you are eager to spend a lot on legal fees to try and find out what exactly it is that is wrong with the law.

Without delving into the legal aspects, which I think are clear, let's get straight to the political fall-out and the attempts to thwart free speech.

The Politics
On the political side I doubt the Adscam scandal will result in a ballot-box obliteration for the Liberals, an outcome you would probably see in any other country. Adscam has been frontpage news in Canada for more than a year and recent polls even recorded an uptick in support for the Liberals. Furthermore, the scandal is as Joe Katzman correctly notes, largely a Quebec one and the Liberal Party already paid a heavy price for it during the 2004 general election, by loosing their national majority, largely because of an electoral shift in Quebec. Outside Quebec Canadians will primarily look to both the economy and the alternative to Liberal hegemony: the Conservative Party. In the first case things are going well with reasonable GDP growth, low interest rates and Canada being the only G-7 country still producing budget surpluses, in the second case the Conservatives have still not been able to overcome the negatives that are associated with them. They are where Michael Howard is in Britain today: they’re credible material but nobody has any good reason to make an effort to see it. Only a severe recession or a natural change after being in power for too long (and with only 12 years on the clock we’re hardly there, believe it or not) will see to it that the Liberals are defeated. (Note: if statist tax and spenders can come up with this decent a record imagine the long-term economic potential if free marketeers can have their say in Ottawa).

The Moral Issue
On to free speech. Gag orders are tricky stuff at any time and I question the wisdom apart from rare cases where privacy in for instance a rape or murder case is at stake. In those cases, courts should take testimony in secrecy and expect the media to keep its distance in a respectful matter, a standard all free societies should adhere to. Anything beyond that is curbing free speech and the public's right to know. Given the highly-charged political nature of the investigation only a fool could have expected a watertight publication ban. Instead there have probably been leaks to two interested parties: the public and the Liberal party with the worst possible outcome: the gag order may have been manipulated for political ends by the party's shrewd operatives. It makes you wonder if an election call in Canada under these circumstances could be challenged in the courts, but I doubt it.

In Summary
There is however in all of this a parallel with the Schiavo case. No matter how strong the argument was against starving Terri, the courts had spoken and all judicial avenues were exhausted. If there were fundamental errors then Terri’s passing was instructive on how to proceed next time around and on how to fix the laws that judges interpret. Sending in the national guard and circumvent the rule of law was not the wisest option.

And it’s the same here. American and Canadian bloggers were again out in front of the MSM by drawing attention to the Gomery publication ban, but breaking the terms of the ban is skating on extremely thin ice. Again, the golden opportunity now is to demonstrate why these bans are not in the public interest. At the same time the very discussion about it should have given Canadians, even without knowing the facts, enough to ponder about the next time they go to the polls.