Source : Toronto Star

Aside from concerns about how it is being covered, it is difficult if not impossible to know what the Harper government is thinking about media reform. Yet, there are indications that it is preparing to act in the area of media policy.

Last June, the government made rare use of its powers to issue a directive to the CRTC instructing the regulator to prepare a report on the future of Canadian broadcasting. In mid-September, Heritage Minister Bev Oda met informally in London, England, with a group of British academics to pick their brains about directions to take regarding the CBC.

The industry minister, Maxime Bernier, is said to be well disposed toward considering a move to liberalize foreign ownership restrictions in broadcast media.

In fact, steering the media has been on the Canadian public policy agenda since Mackenzie King decided to license radio stations in the 1920s.

There is no shortage of big issues on the table: concentration of media ownership; the funding of public broadcasting; to regulate or not to regulate; how to integrate the so-called new media into an increasingly complex media system.

And it is a system: "a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole." As with any system, this one depends on a complex and delicate ecology, in which the well-being of any one sector depends on the health and flourishing of the others.

In the past five years, a number of blue-ribbon committees have recommended substantial measures to protect this ecology, most recently a Senate committee on the Canadian news media that reported last June. A common theme runs through these documents: The Canadian media are in need of a long overdue tune-up. Not the content, which is rightly considered beyond the reach of government. The structure, the framework, the chassis if you will.

The idea of governments tampering with the media is anathema to many. And rightly so. But governments - and the arm's-length agencies that they create - have a vital role in structuring the media environment. They always have, and the media that we have in democratic countries today are the result. Where governments abdicate, experience shows, the system runs amok and the individual parts have a harder and harder time to do their job.

In Canada, as in most comparable countries, the press operates freely according to the rules of the marketplace. But elsewhere (including the U.S.), ownership is regulated in order to ensure that the press behaves responsibly. Here, Canada stands apart, despite blueprints for keeping the newspaper industry on track going back as far as Senator Keith Davey's committee that reported in 1970. Ownership, autonomy from business interests and accessibility remain issues confronting the press today. The point may be moot, as some believe that technology and changing public habits will eventually settle these questions.

Broadcasting, on the other hand, is deemed - by law and by convention - to be a public service. The Canadian broadcasting system has a number of key components that have made it what it is: a national public broadcaster mandated to provide programming that informs, enlightens and entertains; a public regulator whose job is to see that the system fulfills the social and cultural objectives of the Broadcasting Act; a network of public subsidies and regulations that aim to ensure that Canadian content is produced, distributed and above all consumed by Canadians.

Three years ago, a parliamentary committee chaired by then-MP Clifford Lincoln concluded that the Broadcasting Act was still valid, but that the institutions it created are in sore need of repair. The CBC, the CRTC, the funding bodies, are operating under conditions appropriate to an earlier era. They are underfunded, unfocused, and lacking in accountability. Their goals remain essential - indeed, vital - but the tool kit needs to be revamped. The Lincoln Committee made 97 recommendations. None has been followed. The Senate committee that reported last June probably faces a similar fate.

A cynical soul might wonder why Canadians invest so much time, money and effort in studying their media system and so little in addressing the problems the studies have identified. We prefer a more optimistic view. Canadians have created a media system that is in many respects the envy of the world. With a little bit of creative energy, intelligent use of resources and a strong dose of political will, we can keep it that way.

Marc Raboy holds the Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications at McGill University. He served as an adviser to the Lincoln Committee.

© Toronto Star