Bring back the federal department of communications: O’Farrell

Canada should recreate a federal department of culture and communications, Glenn O’Farrell, former president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), said Saturday during a panel at the Liberal Party’s Canada at 150 conference in Montreal. O’Farrell, now CEO and principal at GPOcorp, said the dissolution of the Canadian department of communications, which ended in 1993 with the creation of Canadian Heritage, divided the mandate of Canada’s main culture and communications body between Industry Canada and the Heritage Department. Canada’s original department of communications was created in 1969 and was responsible for telecommunications, broadcasting, radio, satellite, radar, and national and international communications policy. O'Farrell said Industry Canada should be united with Canadian Heritage to “bring them back into a unified department, and call it the department of Canadian culture and communications.” O’Farrell added that the federal government should work more closely with the provinces on Canadian culture issues. O’Farrell’s comments were made at a panel titled “Culture and the Digital World,” available on the conference website. André Provencher, president of La Presse Télé, agreed with O’Farrell. “There is currently no minister for culture in Canada,” he said as a panel member. “The culture is brought up in a much broader realm and is sort of touched on through various departments.” He added: “I think it is time to bring these different agencies, their visions, and strategies, together.” The argument for a national digital strategy was also a theme during the discussion. “The Americans have done a lot of thinking about broadband. The Australians have published a digital strategy that touches on the audio-visual sector, as have the New Zealanders and others,” Sheridan Scott, a partner in Bennett Jones LLP and former commissioner of the Competition Bureau, said on the panel. “Where is Canada? Why aren’t we doing something in this area?” she said. Scott said it is essential that Canada develop a national digital strategy that includes a universal service obligation for broadband Internet. “What you do is you create a universal service obligation and you define basic service as including 2 Mbps service,” Scott said. “The Americans are doing it, the Brits are doing it, the Germans are doing it, and the French are doing it.” O’Farrell highlighted the speed of change in the digital landscape and its potential impact on Canadian culture. He cited recent research from Cisco Systems that said video content makes up one third of Internet traffic today. “Cisco is projecting that in 2013, will be 91 per cent,” O’Farrell said. “That’s the size and the speed of the revolution we are in.” Scott said investments in broadband would allow Canada to keep up with the rest of the world as technology evolves. “Investing in broadband is going to bring about opportunities for people to be able to express themselves regionally.” She said government should make infrastructure investments that allow Canadians to share their culture with each other and the rest of the world. jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

Bring back the federal department of communications: O’Farrell

Broadcast | March 29, 2010

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