Canada's "progressive" people appear able to hold completely contradictory intellectual positions without discomfort. On the one hand, they believe it's our patriotic duty as Canadians to fund their art projects with no oversight or input into the products they make. Having strings attached would be "censorship." Outrageous violence or pornography is OK until it becomes a criminal code offence, otherwise we taxpayers, regardless of our own personal convictions, should just pony up and shut up.

Director/actress Sarah Polley tells us, "It's the job of artists to provoke and to challenge. Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and, yes, occasionally to offend in order to do so." On the other hand, non-elected but apparently all powerful bureaucrats tell us that the bounds of free speech prohibit us from "provoking" or "challenging" people into examining their "long-held positions."

This is very confusing. Is it that only we, who toil to provide HRC commissars with a paycheque, or who subsidize the dreams of Ms. Polley, are subject to censure and conviction by the state? Are those living off the state somehow exempt from the standards by which we are judged?

This taxpayer wants to tell Canadian artists to produce work that others value enough to pay for, and HRC bureaucrats to get real jobs - like the rest of us.

Randy O'Donnell, Nanaimo, B.C.