Personally, I'm not offended that the CBC bought some French soft-core porn comedy. Lots of television, in some cases rather good television, like the Starz Spartacus series, contains graphic sex that would have been considered pornographic until quite recently.
The issue of whether a publicly funded network should broadcast something of this nature is a bit disingenuous. I understand that the material may be offensive, but most of the people objecting to it have never even watched it, other than the brief clips that Sun TV broadcast, and no one is forcing anyone to watch them. I have never seen the programs in question in their entirety, so I cannot possibly comment on their merit, although as a professional in the film industry, I will comment that the clips don't suggest 'high art' or great talent.
Nonetheless, what is startling about the whole affair is that a video juxtaposing the scenes from the racy CBC show with CBC Executive Kirstine Stewart talking about the CBC's values is something that the state broadcaster found so objectionable, it tried to suppress it. The terminology used by CBC's legal counsel was, "Placing Ms. Stewart on the same screen as graphic sex scenes is indefensible morally and legally.”
So remarkably, the CBC was deeply offended that Sun TV had the temerity to show a CBC executive along side a CBC program. Evidently the ability to understand irony is a quality lacking in the Light Entertainment division of the civil service. That accounts for such alleged comedies as Little Mosque on the Prairie, which is about as funny as gangrene.
The CBC went so far as to file a complaint with YouTube to prevent the video from being seen. However, in a small victory for the forces of goodness, blogger Blazing Cat Fur was able to prevail in his counterclaim, and so, in all its glory, here is the video the CBC doesn't want you to see:
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