TORONTO — Canada's broadcast regulator is inviting public comments beginning Friday on proposals to import the signal of the Quatar-based Al-Jazeera news network, sometimes referred to as the Arab world's CNN during the Iraq conflict.

Calling Al-Jazeera's coverage in the Middle East anti-Semitic, the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada have promised to intervene against it. "By granting them a licence, the kind of stories that they carry could contravene the Criminal Code," warns Keith Landy, CJC president, referring to what he calls the network's racist and hate content.

Ron Singer, the CJC communications spokesman, says they are still putting the final touches on their formal brief.

The National Council on Canada-Arab Relations, though, has argued that carriage in Canada would "broaden the horizon of the Canadian public" on Middle Eastern issues. The organization has also made the point that many Canadians are already spending up to $100 a month using the TV black market to watch the channel via the EchoStar's Dish Network in the U.S.

"Opposition to Al-Jazeera's presence undermines Canadian core values of freedom of thought and speech," NCCAR executive director Mazen Chouaib said Wednesday.

"Keeping Al-Jazeera from the Canadian market would serve extremists, alienate moderates and deal a blow to our collective freedoms."

The Canadian Arab Federation also calls the CJC's opposition extreme and disingenuous.

"Allowing Al-Jazeera to broadcast in Canada tests our fundamental commitment to free speech," says Raja Khouri, the federation's national president.

"A free and healthy society is one in which all voices may be heard."

But Landy asks what Khouri might say to a station that referred to Arabs as apes and pigs and Muslims as murderers and worms to be exterminated.

"For that is how Jewish people are described on Al-Jazeera."

But Khouri says Al-Jazeera's policy is to get both sides of the story.

"While any hateful speech is contemptible, the views of the people who make the news should not be confused as the views of the station that airs it."

Videotron, the Montreal-based cable company, was one of the first to apply to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for carriage last February after it was persuaded by Al-Jazeera representatives that there was a customer demand. The cableco application is supported by the Canadian Cable Television Association.

However, Taanta Gupta, communications vice-president for Rogers Cable, says there hasn't been a huge demand for them to pick up the Arab-language service. And Tim McGee, president of Bell ExpressVu direct-to-home satellite service, says the same.

"There are applications into the CRTC to put it on the available list. We will monitor that and make a decision if and when the CRTC makes it available."

Al-Jazeera incurred criticism from Muslim countries during the recent war that it was too pro-Western, others were impressed by its balance, while still other critics denounced the news channel's broadcast of inflammatory taped statements from Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Originally a proposed creation of the BBC and a Saudi private interest, the idea collapsed over the issue of Saudi censorship. In 1996, the Emir of Qatar and other Arab financiers provided the necessary funding, although much of the network's revenues are said to come from the sale of images to U.S. and other western broadcasters.