OTTAWA (Reuters)
Ottawa and the province of Ontario paid $760,000 to help O'Brien -- who appears on the NBC television network -- bring his show to Toronto for a week to boost the city's profile after a deadly SARS (news - web sites) outbreak last year.
But the federal government said O'Brien had gone far too far with the show broadcast on Thursday in which he went to Quebec, a province which has had separatist governments for much of the last 20 years and is a delicate political topic in Canada.
At one point in the show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog -- a hand puppet that is a regular on the show -- said to a Quebecer: "You're French, you're obnoxious and you no speekay English." It told another: "I can smell your crotch from here."
O'Brien's team were also shown replacing street signs in the province with those that read "Quebecqueer Street" and "Rue des Pussies."
Alexa McDonough, a legislator for the left-leaning New Democrats, described the program as "racist filth" and "utterly vile" and demanded the government seek the return of the C$1 million subsidy.
"There may be those who would say, 'Isn't this interfering with freedom of expression?' It's not interfering to say we will not publicly fund this kind of vile, vicious hatemongering," McDonough told reporters.
