One of my favorite and former professors at CMU is Richard Florida, who has spent many years studying the relationships between creative work and economic productivity. Recently he moved from George Mason University in D.C. to the University of Toronto in… well… Toronto. Apparently Canada offers the kinds of intellectual freedoms and diversity that support creative work, and that many see vanishing from the U.S.

Now it seems that Stephen Hawking, frustrated with the stagnating pace of scientific creativity in England, is now considering a move to Canada.

I think what resonates with folks like Florida and Hawking, and so many more whose names don’t grab headlines, is that Canada is an incredibly tolerant place. And that’s pretty important when you’re in the business of thinking up crazy ideas–crazy ideas being the heart of creativity.

The dangerous counter current to this is exemplified in bill C-61(1)(2) — an intellectual iron curtain of sorts. The bill appears to assume that everyone carrying an electronic device or storage medium across our borders is a criminal mule for contraband bits. Should the bill pass into law here in Canada, border guards will likely be expected to confiscate property like laptops and cellphones on the slightest suspicion that they may contain such contraband bits.

What counts as contraband bits? Well the backup application you use to safeguard your work counts, because it technically circumvents DRM on your iTunes songs in backing them up. Reading the bill, it doesn’t seem that you would actually have to have made a backup of a DRM protected song to have committed a crime–merely possessing the software capable of doing so would be illegal. Sounds insane? I agree. It is.

Welcome to Canada Mr. Hawking, we will be taking your laptop now because it seems to contain documents that quote copyrighted material. Quoting, even in an academic context, is mostly illegal here Canada. We’ll take your wheel chair too, because we notice it has a USB port, which means it might also contain such illegal data and we can’t take any chances. Feel free to dispute our decision with… what’s that? you can’t communicate without your laptop? That’s unfortunate Mr. Hawking, but rules is rules.

So will Canada become a lightening rod for the world’s creative class, or an intellectual police state? The two are mutually exclusive, and I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that our future prosperity and democracy depends on the answer.

Update: Looks like the rumours may have been a little premature, and Hawking might stay in Cambridge.