Chapter 8 Chapter Overview

This chapter begins by outlining how factors such as convergence, new approaches to global trade, and the need for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples have impacted the media landscape in recent years and how these changes have far-reaching implications for Canadian communications policy. These issues put pressure on Canada to ensure that its policies, laws, and regulations conform to international trade agreements. What has not changed is Canada’s central policy priority of ensuring that Canadians benefit as both citizens and consumers from the opportunities that mass communication affords.

The chapter provides a profile of each major communications sector—telecommunications, broadcasting, the internet, recorded music, cinema, publishing, and postal service—and outlines their respective policy challenges, providing current information about these industries and policy responses by governments. These sectors have similarities (such as new services and digitization) as well as distinctions particular to their respective fields, both of which influence how policy governs each sector in Canada.

Clearly, each of these sectors remains in a transitional phase between analog or hard-copy platforms and new digital platforms. This transition implicates communications companies that are seeking emergent revenue streams while still relying on traditional income sources; it implicates individuals transitioning to new ways of communicating, and it implicates policy-makers striving to serve the interests of both Canadian communications industries and Canadian citizens in a context characterized by an increasing amount of global governance.