Banned In China / Canada

While similar to the United States, Canadian censors sometimes deviate and go further. Some notable context and differences include:

• Canadian federal law considers material depicting any sexual activity by any character under 18 as child pornography, whether drawn, live-action, or written. Although there is a clause excluding material with an "artistic purpose", the line isn't very clearly defined. Furthermore, the age of consent in Canada is 16, meaning that it is entirely possible for material to be banned because it depicts an otherwise legal sexual act involving a character between 16 and 18 years old.
• In the past, Canada's national customs authority had this reputation for being homophobic bluenoses; it used court rulings about material depicting "violence against women" as somehow encompassing male gay erotica.
• Oddly, the influence of Moral Guardians causes a frequent inversion of this trope. Canadian private broadcasters self-regulate through the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council; this entity can easily bow to pressure to refuse to air certain content. The state broadcaster, the CBC, does not participate in this scheme, and they can thus get away with more than the private networks can. (It and other public broadcasters are directly regulated by the CRTC.)

Examples

Anime And Manga

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's tenth episode, "Jungle Cruise", was skipped by YTV due to its graphic content on the show's first rotation (particularly, a serial killer who skins his victims alive and plugs his eyes into them so they can watch themselves being killed). However, due to angry fan response, it was later played in a marathon of episodes, and on the show's second run, albeit with a special Content Warning that the level of violence was above the usual level for something allowed on YTV.
• Sailor Moon: The entire Viz Media redub, having been produced in Los Angeles, was banned from online distribution in Canada for violating federal regulations requiring a minimum of content to have been produced in Canada, one of the first casualties of the Online Streaming Act.

Comic Books

• Crime comics were banned from 1949 to 2018.

Film

The first Canadian censor board was formed in Ontario in 1911; each province followed suit shortly afterwards, but Ontario became the "main" censor where films would go first for approval and cuts before being handed down to other provinces for their own approval and cuts. While most of the things they deemed unacceptable closely mirrored those of The Hays Code, a few were peculiar to Canada, such as any depiction of American flags and patriotism (to avoid hurting Canadian nationalism and pro-British sentiments). As censorship standards became more relaxed in the 1950s, provinces began turning to classification, with Manitoba the first to fully abandon censorship for classification in the 1960s.

• The Wild One was banned in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec. Those bans were eventually overturned, at least in the case of Quebec where the film was rated 14+ in 1968 and re-rated G in 2013.
• Blue Velvet was banned in New Brunswick, but the ban became moot when the province began using the ratings provided by the Maritime Film Classification Board, which gave it an R rating.
• Exit to Eden was temporarily banned in Saskatchewan, but the backlash proved so fierce that the Saskatchewan Film and Video Classification Board quit classifying movies on its own and struck an agreement with the British Columbia Film Classification Office in 1997 to use their ratings.
• The Tin Drum was banned in Ontario due to their film board deeming it child pornography.

Internet

• In April 2023, it was noticed that guns.com was blocked on Canadian servers. However, by September of that year, it became unblocked.

Live Action TV

• TV Ontario refused to broadcast the Doctor Who story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" after Chinese-Canadian groups who were given precautionary test screenings were angered by its Yellow Peril content.
• Disney's The Swamp Fox, which aired circa 1968 on "Walt Disney Presents", was banned because the government didn't like the portrayal of the Tory/Loyalist characters as complete villains. Ironically, Canada is the home of the series' star, Leslie Nielsen.

Music

Click here for a YouTube playlist of these songs.

• The album version of Dire Straits' song "Money For Nothing" on Brothers in Arms was temporarily banned from commercial broadcast in Canada in 2011 for its use of the word "faggot". The ban was rescinded after cries of censorship, while Mark Knopfler tried to soften the blow by claiming that the song was sung in character and was meant to be a mocking portrait of someone who would be ignorant and prejudiced enough to use that kind of language. In late 2020, however, classic rock stations that are expected to play the full version stopped playing the song regularly, up to the point where the song was missing from an August long weekend marathon in 2022. One month later, however, the song was aired uncensored as part of a "30 greatest album sides" countdown.
• While dealing with a couple of unrelated complaints about Edmonton's K-Rock Morning Show, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council decided that the Bob & Tom songs "Dear Penthouse" and "Prisoner of Love" were too sexually explicit for non-watershed radio.
• The song "The Twelve Days of a Guido Christmas" by The How You Doin' Boys is banned on Canadian radio due to the repeated line "two guinea tees", with the second word in that phrase being, in the words of the CBSC, "a disparaging racial epithet referring to Italians". (However, a Canadian station could theoretically air G Fella's 2011 cover of the song, which changes some lyrics including the offending one.)
• The song "Kill All the White Man" by NOFX is banned on Canadian radio due to the repetition of the title lyric, which, in the words of the CBSC, "constituted the promotion or sanctioning of violence".
• Sirius XM Canada once got in trouble because the American station Willie's Roadhouse aired the 1958 Hank Thompson song "Squaws Along the Yukon" on July 12, 2016. The CBSC said that the song contains "discriminatory, degrading and derogatory references to Indigenous women", especially the title.
• A radio station once got in trouble for airing the uncensored live recording of "Highway Girl" by The Tragically Hip, performed at The Roxy on May 3, 1991. This was not only because of the uncensored F-bomb, but also because of Gord Downie's improvised description of a double suicide attempt. However, this has not stopped Canadian radio stations from occasionally airing this recording outside the watershed with only the word "fucking" being censored.
• A radio station once got in trouble for airing the first two verses of "My Ex-Boyfriend" by The Hairy Aureolas due to the song's "accumulation of epithets" being "unduly sexually explicit".
• A radio station once got in trouble for airing Dynamite Hack's cover of "Boyz-n-the-Hood" due to "abusive lyrics that had the effect of sanctioning, promoting and glamorizing violence against women".
• Another song that was deemed "unduly sexually explicit" (meaning that it isn't allowed at any time on the radio) was a spoof of 1960's crooners that is probably titled "Blow Me". It is unknown if the song has been released to the public other than that one airing on February 22, 2003.

Radio

• The first Canadian airing of The Howard Stern Show was on Tuesday, September 2, 1997, where it was aired by CHOM-FM in Montreal and by CILQ-FM in Toronto. CHOM-FM only aired the show until 1998, while CILQ-FM continued to air the show until 2001. Both stations edited out certain parts due to derogatory, misogynistic and sexually explicit comments. In 1997, the chair of the CBSC cited the show as proof of why Canada needs broadcast standards. Nowadays, Canadians can access Howard Stern's two uncensored satellite radio channels on SiriusXM Canada.
• A radio station once got in trouble for airing a YouTube Poop-style edited audio clip of George W. Bush due to one part where Bush is edited to mention fourth-grade girls in a sexual context.
• The only Canadian broadcaster of The Tom Leykis Show stopped airing it after his Valentine's Day 2003 broadcast was considered "degrading to women and unduly sexually explicit". Tom Leykis later discussed this on his show, where he mentioned that the document on the decision essentially brags that Canada has higher broadcast standards than the United States.

Video Games

• The gratuitously gory Soldier of Fortune was classified as an "adult movie" in Canada, as was Manhunt and its sequel.

Western Animation

• The 1939 Looney Tunes cartoon "Thugs With Dirty Mugs" was banned back then in Winnipeg, Manitoba, because of a joke near the end of the cartoon where a criminal declares himself to be "a naughty little boy". The censors felt this ending was "not sincere and just an excuse to show criminal activity."
• The Comedy Network series Kevin Spencer had its eighth episode banned due to violence and disgusting humor.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "The Rowdyruff Boys" did not air in the original YTV broadcast of the series, but it was shown as part of reruns later.
• The 1954 Bugs Bunny short "Bewitched Bunny", which ends with Bugs transforming Witch Hazel into a lady bunny with a more feminine voice but retaining Hazel's Evil Laugh, was banned by the National Film Board for Bugs' closing Breaking the Fourth Wall line "Ah sure, I know. But aren't they all witches inside?", being perceived as misogynistic. The ban was lifted three days later, but the line was edited out of later broadcasts in the 1980s and replaced with "Sure uh, I know. But after all, who wants to be alone on Halloween?" The edited version has since ceased airing, having been replaced by the original version.