Does Harder support Kenney attack on Netflix kids movie?

By Letter to the Editor on March 25, 2021.

Editor: On 12th May 2020, MP Rachael Harder produced and shared a FaceBook assault on the then Heritage Minister’s attempt to stifle COVID 19 misinformation (according to Harder).
Her main point was to defend free speech.
I am not questioning the correctness of her position, rather I am wondering whether she supports Premier Kenney’s recent denouncement of a children’s animated film depicting allegedly, “big, bad oil”? (“Bigfoot Family”.) All in the interest of “freedom of expression” of course!
Further, the so called Canadian Energy Centre or “War Room” which was founded to counter perceived foreign funding of groups opposing further oil-sand expansion, was complicit in the barrage of negativity toward the film.
Vilifying Netflix because of the film’s contents strikes me as strange and yet, quite comical.
As with most public denouncements of anything (in this case a film), it has precisely the opposite effect.
Remember the religious outrage directed at the “Last Temptation Of Christ” over three decades ago? The film’s box office receipts soared because of the outcry.
“Free speech” is an essential component of democracy and in that I concur with Ms Harder. I therefore hope Ms. Harder and Mr Kenney understand that those opponents of oil sands operations are simply exercising their free speech rights no matter where their funding is sourced from.
Likewise, Netflix is well within its rights to broadcast a family orientated animated film.
So to continue, no doubt Kenney and possibly Harder, will maintain that it is their right to decry in a very public way, their own displeasure with the film’s release.
And “so it goes”. (Courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut.)
John P Nightingale
Lethbridge