Chapter 7 Chapter Overview

This chapter begins by demonstrating that communication is a structured activity that takes place within an environment constructed by laws, policies, conventions, economic imperatives, guiding ideals, and public pressures. These factors influence the rights and responsibilities of individuals, societies, content creators, and media owners in terms of media creation and distribution.  Communications policy establishes the rules by which mediated communication occurs; it dates back to the first days of the printing press in the fifteenth century, when books began being produced on a large scale and were traded across borders. Today, policy is developed at both the local and global levels, as governments must respect international covenants dealing with the circulation of cultural products while addressing their own particular exigencies.

The chapter explains that communications policy in Canada frames the media, culture, and society in terms of the nation-state so that communications policy is also national policy. Priorities, however, can shift through time, and this chapter traces policy development through four key moments of the twentieth century, focusing on government commissions that shaped this policy. Initially, policy was driven by the need to develop within Canadians a strong sense of nation and national culture, which treated commercialization and Americanization as threats to those aims; however, the thematic rationale began to shift beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. The financial burdens of state intervention became much more apparent and worrisome, regionalism became a rival sentiment to nationalism, and Canadians became accustomed to both the commercialization and the Americanization of media. To a great extent, by the 1970s, American commercial popular culture was less foreign to Canadians than the products of their own indigenous culture.

While American domination of the Canadian communications marketplace continues to be defined as a problem by policy analysts, it no longer resonates the same way with Canadian governments or the Canadian people. Current challenges to Canadian media policy coalesce around three factors:  fiscal, technological, and philosophical. Additionally, balancing individual and collective needs, along with national and regional needs, proves difficult in the ever-evolving digital age.