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Mounties object to TV commercial

A commercial designed to promote Canadian television content has been pulled from the small screen because of complaints from the RCMP.

The 30-second spot was produced by the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

Called Snow Gangsta, it features a fictitious American director named Buck Calder who tries to inject some U.S. street attitude into a movie with an Inuit setting.

The obnoxious filmmaker asks a native actor for the Inuit word for pimp and suggests the mountains of snow be seen as cocaine instead. Calder is played by Winnipeg comic David Huband.

A Mountie can be seen in the background, which is the bone of contention for the RCMP. The group apparently did not ask for permission to include the Mountie figure. The RCMP, which carefully guards its image, asked Friends in a letter to withdraw the ad.

Friends has in turn written to CBC, CTV, Vision TV and CHUM, asking them to stop airing the commercial because it apparently violates "proprietary marks" of the RCMP.

The commercial, which has been running on television and in movie theatres for eight months, is part of a campaign called Tell Canadian Stories, aimed at convincing the public that Canadians should be the ones telling Canadian stories in movies and on TV.

Posted by thinkum at May 11, 2004 04:49 PM