If you had told me Parks Canada declined to give Liam Neeson’s next movie a permit to film in Jasper and Banff because officials had seen the Irish actor’s last few films, I could understand why. “Non-Stop,” “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” “Taken 3,” “Battleship.” Ugh.

Neeson’s last wilderness flick alone – 2011’s “The Grey” about survivors of a plane crash being stalked by wolves in Alaska – would have been enough for Parks Canada to turn down the Hollywood producers who want to shoot in our mountain parks.

I might not object if the guardians of our national parks had turned down “Hard Powder” (that’s the rumoured working title) on the grounds of good taste.

But that’s not the reason. Our national parks department refused to let the Neeson-starring movie film in our most popular parks because one of the characters – a gang leader – is indigenous.

Parks Canada has told reporters that this decision is in keeping with its mandate and priorities.

So in addition to protecting wildlife and conserving our natural and historic places, Parks Canada now has taken it upon itself to enforce political correctness in film.

This isn’t exactly censorship. The federal department is not saying the film cannot be made at all. Instead, it is saying the film cannot be made in a national park.

But call it soft censorship – making production difficult enough for a film company that its movie may or may not get made. It is a dangerous precedent and power to give to politicians or bureaucrats.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, Hollywood was governed by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America’s (MPPDA) “Hays Code.”

The Hays Code was soft censorship, too. It didn’t forbid making movies that violated its strict moral standards. Rather it threatened such movies would have trouble being shown in theatres.

The Hays standards forbid the portrayal of gay characters and any suggestion two hetero characters had had pre-marital sex. Even when a married couple sat together on a shared bed (twin beds were preferred by the MPPDA), at least one partner had to have a foot on the floor.

In the famous 1941 film, “The Maltese Falcon,” Humphrey Bogart’s character, Sam Spade, was forbidden for disclosing he was having an affair with Iva Archer. This was not because the plot called for the affair to be secret to create suspense. In Dashiell Hammett’s novel on which the film is based, the liaison is quite open.

It was the MPPDA’s fear of corrupting the public through the depiction of immoral behaviour that prevented any mention of the affair.

Oh, yeah, and Peter Lorre’s character, Joel Cairo, was almost certainly gay in the book but merely eccentric on screen.

That sort of misshaping of reality is exactly what comes when institutions try to enforce politically correct images in movies.

According to reports, “Hard Powder” producers had been working on a filming permit for three months and were close to getting Parks Canada to sign off. Then a government official phoned and asked whether it was the producers’ intent to cast a First Nations actor in the role of the gang leader?

When producers said it was, negotiations ceased and the permit was denied.

Really!? Do we truly want government officials – elected or unelected – deciding what characters are fit for us to watch?

If you suspect a movie’s depiction of First Peoples is unfair, don’t go. That will send a signal that the public is disturbed by such stereotyping much faster than a bureaucratic committee can.

Speech codes, anti-Islamophobia motions, hate speech laws; it is clear government doesn’t trust the public’s judgment. And that truly is dangerous.