Canada’s Telecommission Studies: Present at the Creation

One of the particularities of public policy debates in Canadian communications is the recurrence of a consistent group of themes that have preoccupied communication historians, theorists, and researchers since the 1930s. These themes—technological nationalism; regulation versus deregulation; centralization versus decentralization; and state versus private ownership—have tended to stress the technological aspects of communications. However, there was a time during the 1960s and early 1970s when the Canadian understanding of communications public policy shifted dramatically, and there was a concerted attempt to focus on the human, social, and cultural dimensions of communications policy—in short, the public interest. This temporary shift occurred, this book argues, through the pioneering efforts of the Telecommission Studies from September 1969 to April 1971, and the resulting final report Instant World. This book provides a detailed examination of a brief moment in Canadian communications history and the period following it, when Canada missed an opportunity to sustain a new kind of public policy discourse by ignoring the recommendations of the Telecommission, in particular the idea of the “right to communicate.” Although it is argued here that this concept was historically presented in Canada, through the work of the Telecommission Studies, it details how and why it turned out to be a missed opportunity for Canadian communications public policy in subsequent years.