By Christine Cooling
When Canadians tuned into their first radio broadcasts within the Nineteen Twenties, a lot of what they listened to wasn’t Canadian. American stations with stronger alerts and flashier programming initially dominated the airwaves. The radio viewers developed over time because the medium entered the home area, however Canadian listeners had been a part of a transnational media surroundings from the very begin.
Politicians and cultural advocates shortly anxious that Canada’s nascent nationwide id can be drowned out by its louder neighbour. One answer was daring: create a publicly funded, nationally regulated broadcasting system to inform Canadian tales and shield Canadian tradition.
A century later, the talk isn’t lifeless. It’s simply moved on-line. Canada’s 2023 On-line Streaming Act (Invoice C-11) introduced platforms akin to Netflix below the identical regulatory equipment as soon as constructed for radio. The controversy it sparked on social media exhibits how deeply broadcasting coverage stays tethered to cultural id—and the way tough it’s to future-proof a system designed for a radically totally different period.
A Nation on the Airwaves
Canada’s broadcasting coverage formally started with the Wi-fi Telegraphy Act of 1905, however radio laws introduced it to life. In 1922, business radio stations had been first licensed. Many Canadians—particularly these residing close to the border—typically tuned in to American stations, drawn by stronger alerts, slicker manufacturing, and a wider vary of programming. In 1929, the federal authorities launched the Royal Fee on Broadcasting (higher referred to as the Aird Fee) to handle fears that Canadian tradition was below risk by American business broadcasters.
The Aird Fee really helpful a publicly owned, nationwide broadcasting system. Graham Spry of the Canadian Radio League famously argued that the selection was “between the State and the US.”
Canada by no means totally nationalized its broadcasting system, however due to the Aird Report and the efforts of public figures like Spry, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Fee was launched in 1932, and only a few years later, in 1936, it grew to become the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC).
CBC emblem (1940–1958). Picture by Hortence Binette, through Wikimedia Commons
This early transfer imagined broadcasting as a device for nation-building: programming in each English and French, a public service ethos, and federal management over a know-how that would bind area and unite an enormous, sparsely populated nation.
Tv, Variety, and Stress
Tv quickly got here alongside to remodel the broadcasting system within the Fifties. New Royal Commissions debated the function of public broadcasting versus business networks, and by 1958 regulatory authority shifted from the CBC to the brand new Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG). The BBG was later changed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Fee (CRTC), the regulatory physique Canadians know right this moment. In the meantime, the CBC—a beloved cultural establishment—continues to tell, entertain, and educate as our nationwide broadcaster.
Because the system expanded, so did tensions. Northern and Indigenous communities resisted southern-centric programming, whereas Québec demanded larger provincial sovereignty. Broadcasting coverage promised variety however systemically sidelined marginalized voices. Indigenous broadcasting rights weren’t formally acknowledged till the 1991 Broadcasting Act, which additionally emphasised Canada’s official coverage of multiculturalism inside a bilingual framework.
By the mid-to-late Twentieth century, Canadian content material (CanCon) rules had been central to the broadcasting system: radio and TV stations needed to air a sure proportion of Canadian programming to assist home creators. But critics argued that broadcasting coverage and regulation mirrored a slender, cultural nationalist imaginative and prescient of Canada, privileging dominant political and cultural voices even because it claimed to advertise numerous illustration.
Globalization and the Digital Shift
Cable tv, neoliberal reforms, and commerce agreements within the Eighties and Nineties reshaped Canadian broadcasting. The 1991 Act was the final main overhaul of the system earlier than the Web disrupted every part.
Streaming platforms like Netflix, working inside and past Canadian borders, challenged practically a century of conventional regulation. They provide content material abundance, personalised suggestions, however make no materials contribution to Canadian tradition. Students and policymakers warned that this new platform period had fractured the connection between nationwide id and media regulation.
Nonetheless, Canadian policymakers had been reluctant to behave. The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Assessment panel, appointed in 2018, lastly really helpful bringing streaming companies below the Broadcasting Act—a name that in the end resulted in Invoice C-11.
Invoice C-11: Regulation in a Borderless Period
Handed in April 2023, Invoice C-11 redefines “broadcasting” to incorporate streaming companies. It empowers the CRTC to require platforms to contribute financially to Canadian cultural manufacturing, echoing the rationale behind CanCon guidelines for radio and TV. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez argued: “Canada’s sturdy tradition is not any accident.”
However C-11 (and its earlier iteration, C-10) confronted fierce backlash on-line. Critics accused it of threatening freedom of expression, significantly for unbiased creators and customers. Others noticed it as outdated regulation—an try and retrofit a Twentieth-century coverage mannequin onto a worldwide, algorithmic-driven system.
Digital discourse mirrored this divide. Social media customers questioned whether or not Canadian id may or ought to be legislated in a borderless digital world, whereas conventional information shops typically defended the precept of cultural sovereignty. The controversy revealed a recurring theme: Canadians stay deeply invested in cultural coverage however persistently divided on the way it ought to be enacted.
What Broadcasting Coverage Reveals About Canada
Canadian broadcasting coverage has all the time been greater than technical regulation. It’s a mirror of the nation’s anxieties and aspirations over:
Nationalism vs. Globalization: From fears of American cultural imperialism within the Nineteen Twenties and ‘30s to issues about Netflix’s dominance right this moment, cultural sovereignty has been a central narrative.
Public vs. Non-public Pursuits: The system has all the time claimed to stability public service beliefs with business realities.
Illustration and Inclusion: Broadcasting coverage has regularly acknowledged Indigenous, Francophone, and multicultural views, although critics argue a lot stays unresolved, on display screen and behind display screen.
Expertise and Lag: Regulation persistently lags behind technological innovation, resulting in intervals of cultural upheaval and reactive, versus proactive, policymaking.
A Century-Lengthy Challenge
When Spry warned Parliament in 1932 that Canada’s selection was “between the State and the US,” he couldn’t have imagined Netflix algorithms and platform economies. But his underlying query—how a small nation maintains cultural sovereignty in an enormous media ecosystem—nonetheless drives the cultural goals of Canadian broadcasting coverage.
Invoice C-11 is the newest chapter in a century-long story: one the place communication applied sciences repeatedly drive Canadians to renegotiate what “nationwide tradition” means and the way a lot it ought to be protected by the nation-state. Whether or not laws can sustain with the tempo of digital change stays unsure, however the dialog itself is a defining function of what appears to be an more and more elusive Canadian id.
Christine Cooling is a PhD Pupil in Communication and Tradition at York College.
This put up is a part of an activehistory.ca sequence on media and historical past in Canada. Media have been each remarkably essential and intensely theorized but additionally traditionally understudied. We hope this sequence highlights the range of how the examine of media historical past informs and contributes to our information of the previous and our understanding of the function of media within the current. The editors encourage different submissions on subjects associated to media historical past, conceived of broadly. In case you are involved in contributing and even simply discovering out extra about this sequence, please be happy to jot down to Andrew Nurse at anurse@mta.ca, Hannah Cooley at hannah.cooley@mail.utoronto.ca, or Christine Cooling at ccools@yorku.ca.
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