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Communication Technology
Published in association with the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison
University. Information on the Canadian Democratic Audit project can be found at
www.CanadianDemocraticAudit.ca.

Advisory Group
William Cross, Director (Mount Allison University)
R. Kenneth Carty (University of British Columbia)
Elisabeth Gidengil (McGill University)
Richard Sigurdson (University of Manitoba)
Frank Strain (Mount Allison University)
Michael Tucker (Mount Allison University)

Titles
John Courtney, Elections
William Cross, Political Parties
Elisabeth Gidengil, André Blais, Neil Nevitte, and Richard Nadeau, Citizens
Jennifer Smith, Federalism
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt, Advocacy Groups
David Docherty, Legislatures
Graham White, Cabinets and First Ministers
Darin Barney, Communication Technology
Ian Greene, The Courts
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

Darin Barney
© UBC Press 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission
of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic
copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),
www.accesscopyright.ca.

15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 54321

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled, processed chlorine-
free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Barney, Darin David, 1966-

Communication technology / Darin Barney.

(Canadian democratic audit; 8)

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-1101-3 (set). — ISBN 0-7748-1182-X

1. Democracy — Canada. 2. Information technology — Canada — Political aspects.

3. Telecommunication — Canada — Political aspects. 4. Political participation — Canada.
I. Title. II. Series.

JL186.5.B37 2005 321.8'0971 C2005-901911-5

UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of
the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council.

The Centre for Canadian Studies thanks the Harold Crabtree Foundation for its support
of the Canadian Democratic Audit project.

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

Copy editor: Sarah Wight
Text design: Peter Ross, Counterpunch
Typesetter: Artegraphica Design Co. Ltd.
Proofreader: Gail Copeland
Indexer: Aaron Gordon

UBC Press
The University of British Columbia
2029 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
604-822-5959 / Fax: 604-822-6083
www.ubcpress.ca
For Punker and Willie
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii

1 Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada 3

2 The Politics of Communication Technology in Canada 24
3 Communication Technology, Globalization, and Nationalism
in Canada 68
4 Technologies of Political Communication in Canada 108
5 Digital Divides 152
6 The Question 179

Discussion Questions 189

Additional Reading 191
Works Cited 194
Index 208
This page intentionally left blank
Foreword

This volume is part of the Canadian Democratic Audit series. The

objective of this series is to consider how well Canadian democracy is
performing at the outset of the twenty-first century. In recent years,
political and opinion leaders, government commissions, academics,
citizen groups, and the popular press have all identified a “democrat-
ic deficit” and “democratic malaise” in Canada. These characteriza-
tions often are portrayed as the result of a substantial decline in
Canadians’ confidence in their democratic practices and institutions.
Indeed, Canadians are voting in record low numbers, many are turn-
ing away from the traditional political institutions, and a large num-
ber are expressing declining confidence in both their elected politi-
cians and the electoral process.
Nonetheless, Canadian democracy continues to be the envy of much
of the rest of the world. Living in a relatively wealthy and peaceful
society, Canadians hold regular elections in which millions cast bal-
lots. These elections are largely fair, efficient, and orderly events.
They routinely result in the selection of a government with no ques-
tion about its legitimate right to govern. Developing democracies
from around the globe continue to look to Canadian experts for guid-
ance in establishing electoral practices and democratic institutions.
Without a doubt, Canada is widely seen as a leading example of suc-
cessful democratic practice.
Given these apparently competing views, the time is right for a
comprehensive examination of the state of Canadian democracy. Our
purposes are to conduct a systematic review of the operations of
Canadian democracy, to listen to what others have to say about
Canadian democracy, to assess its strengths and weaknesses, to con-
sider where there are opportunities for advancement, and to evaluate
popular reform proposals.
A democratic audit requires the setting of benchmarks for evalua-
tion of the practices and institutions to be considered. This necessar-
ily involves substantial consideration of the meaning of democracy.

ix
x

“Democracy” is a contested term and we are not interested here in

striking a definitive definition. Nor are we interested in a theoretical
model applicable to all parts of the world. Rather, we are interested in
identifying democratic benchmarks relevant to Canada in the twenty-
first century. In selecting these we were guided by the issues raised in
the current literature on Canadian democratic practice and by the
concerns commonly raised by opinion leaders and found in public
opinion data. We have settled on three benchmarks: public participa-
tion, inclusiveness, and responsiveness. We believe that any contem-
porary definition of Canadian democracy must include institutions
and decision-making practices that are defined by public participa-
tion, that this participation must include all Canadians, and that gov-
ernment outcomes must respond to the views of Canadians.
While settling on these guiding principles, we have not imposed a
strict set of democratic criteria on all of the evaluations that together
constitute the Audit. Rather, our approach allows the auditors wide
latitude in their evaluations. While all auditors keep the benchmarks
of participation, inclusiveness, and responsiveness central to their
examinations, each adds additional criteria of particular importance
to the subject he or she is considering. We believe this approach of
identifying unifying themes, while allowing for divergent perspec-
tives, enhances the project by capturing the robustness of the debate
surrounding democratic norms and practices.
We decided at the outset to cover substantial ground and to do so
in a relatively short period. These two considerations, coupled with a
desire to respond to the most commonly raised criticisms of the con-
temporary practice of Canadian democracy, result in a series that
focuses on public institutions, electoral practices, and new phenome-
na that are likely to affect democratic life significantly. The series
includes volumes that examine key public decision-making bodies:
legislatures, the courts, and cabinets and government. The structures
of our democratic system are considered in volumes devoted to ques-
tions of federalism and the electoral system. The ways in which citi-
zens participate in electoral politics and policy making are a crucial
component of the project, and thus we include studies of advocacy

Foreword
 xi

groups and political parties. The desire and capacity of Canadians for
meaningful participation in public life is also the subject of a volume.
Finally, the challenges and opportunities raised by new communica-
tion technologies are also considered. The Audit does not include stud-
ies devoted to the status of particular groups of Canadians. Rather
than separate out Aboriginals, women, new Canadians, and others,
these groups are treated together with all Canadians throughout the
Audit.
In all, this series includes nine volumes examining specific areas
of Canadian democratic life. A tenth, synthetic volume provides an
overall assessment and makes sense out of the different approaches
and findings found in the rest of the series. Our examination is not
exhaustive. Canadian democracy is a vibrant force, the status of which
can never be fully captured at one time. Nonetheless the areas we con-
sider involve many of the pressing issues currently facing democracy
in Canada. We do not expect to have the final word on this subject.
Rather, we hope to encourage others to pursue similar avenues of
inquiry.
A project of this scope cannot be accomplished without the support
of many individuals. At the top of the list of those deserving credit are
the members of the Canadian Democratic Audit team. From the very
beginning, the Audit has been a team effort. This outstanding group
of academics has spent many hours together, defining the scope of
the project, prodding each other on questions of Canadian democracy,
and most importantly, supporting one another throughout the endeav-
our, all with good humour. To Darin Barney, André Blais, Kenneth
Carty, John Courtney, David Docherty, Joanna Everitt, Elisabeth
Gidengil, Ian Greene, Richard Nadeau, Neil Nevitte, Richard
Sigurdson, Jennifer Smith, Frank Strain, Michael Tucker, Graham
White, and Lisa Young I am forever grateful.
The Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University has
been my intellectual home for several years. The Centre, along with
the Harold Crabtree Foundation, has provided the necessary funding
and other assistance necessary to see this project through to fruition.
At Mount Allison University, Peter Ennals provided important support

Foreword
xii

to this project when others were skeptical; Wayne MacKay and

Michael Fox have continued this support since their respective
arrivals on campus; and Joanne Goodrich and Peter Loewen have pro-
vided important technical and administrative help.
The University of British Columbia Press, particularly its senior
acquisitions editor, Emily Andrew, has been a partner in this project
from the very beginning. Emily has been involved in every important
decision and has done much to improve the result. Camilla Blakeley
has overseen the copyediting and production process and in doing so
has made these books better. Scores of Canadian and international
political scientists have participated in the project as commentators
at our public conferences, as critics at our private meetings, as
providers of quiet advice, and as referees of the volumes. The list is
too long to name them all, but David Cameron, Sid Noel, Leslie Seidle,
Jim Bickerton, Alexandra Dobrowolsky, Livianna Tossutti, Janice
Gross Stein, and Frances Abele all deserve special recognition for
their contributions. We are also grateful to the Canadian Study of
Parliament Group, which partnered with us for our inaugural confer-
ence in Ottawa in November 2001.
Finally, this series is dedicated to all of the men and women who
contribute to the practice of Canadian democracy. Whether as active
participants in parties, groups, courts, or legislatures, or in the media
and the universities, without them Canadian democracy would not
survive.

William Cross
Director, The Canadian Democratic Audit
Sackville, New Brunswick

Foreword
Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Bill Cross, for his leadership; to the members of the

Canadian Democratic Audit team, for their intellectual generosity
and scholarship; to Mary Stone for her heart; to Peter Milroy and Ken
Carty, for their vision; to Emily Andrew, for her unique ability and
endless patience; to Camilla Blakeley, for her appreciation of what is
at stake in details; to Sarah Wight, for her fine-toothed comb; to Tim
Plumbtre, Sid Noel, and all invited and occasional critics of the Audit’s
work-in-progress, for their insight and inquiries; to Peter Hodgins, for
his friendship and curiosity; to Leslie Shade, Barbara Crow, Graham
Longford, and all the other scholars of communication in Canada
whose excellent work is mined in these pages; to Jennifer Hefler, for
her detective work; to Aaron Gordon, for a whole list of things; to the
anonymous reviewers of this manuscript, for their critical insight;
and, finally, to Tad Beckman, Dick Olson, Pat Little, and Michael Black
of Harvey Mudd College, where Chapters 2 and 3 were written, for
teaching me the meaning of collegiality.

xiii
This page intentionally left blank
Communication Technology
This page intentionally left blank
 DEMOCRACY, TECHNOLOGY, AND
COMMUNICATION IN CANADA
1

The 2000 Canadian general election, understood at the time to be the

country’s first “Internet election,” also featured the lowest voter turn-
out in the history of these contests at the federal level. Just 61 percent
of registered voters turned out to cast ballots — when measured
against the entire voting-age population, this figure drops to 55 per-
cent (Johnston 2001, 13). Significantly, these numbers are less a blip
than the continuation of a trend that has seen voter turnout in
Canada drop precipitously and consistently from 75 percent of regis-
tered voters in the 1988 election to 71 percent in 1993, to 67 percent in
1997, and finally to the millennial level of 61 percent. This downward
trajectory in this most basic form of political participation has
occurred during the same period of time that formidable new infor-
mation and communication technologies have come to occupy the
Canadian political landscape and fairly saturate the Canadian politi-
cal imagination. In its 1999 speech from the throne, the government
of Canada articulated its goal “to be known around the world as the
government most connected to its citizens” (Canada 1999); two years
later it declared that it had “helped to make Canada one of the most
connected countries in the world” (Canada 2001). This was no idle
boast, as Canada does indeed rank highly among industrialized

3
4

nations on most measures of Internet connectivity. It is also the case

that, as political scientist Richard Johnston (2000, 13) has observed,
recent electoral history “puts Canada near the bottom of the industri-
alized world turnout league tables ... No other G7 country besides the
US has turnout as low as Canada’s.”
Admittedly, voter turnout is neither the only nor, arguably, even the
best measure of the health of a democracy, and many factors combine
to determine its level at any given time. The suggestion here is cer-
tainly not that the explosive growth of new information and commu-
nication technologies directly correlates with the decline in voter
turnout in recent Canadian elections. That being said, the fact of their
coincidence is provocative. One of our deepest liberal democratic
intuitions is that generalized advance in our ability to gather and
share information, and to communicate with one another, invigorates
democratic participation. This intuition has received forceful expres-
sion in relation to the computerized and networked information and
communication technologies (ICTs) that mediate an increasing array
of social, political, and economic activity in Canada. Information and
communication, we believe, are foundational to democracy, and there-
fore technologies that facilitate these contribute positively to democ-
racy’s achievement and enhancement. How could a technology such
as the Internet, which provides widespread instant access to increas-
ing volumes of politically relevant information, and which enables
direct, undistorted communication among citizens (and rulers) be
anything other than complementary to informed, democratic deliber-
ation and self-government?
The coincidence of the rise of the Internet and a historic decline in
voter turnout does not invalidate the hypothesis that ICTs will
enhance democracy in Canada. It does, however, raise the possibility
that recent technological advances in information and communica-
tion capacity are not unambiguously or automatically beneficial to
Canadian democracy, nor capable of overcoming other factors that
may contribute to its current condition. Indeed, one of the nasty little
facts of the coincident growth of mass democracy and mass media in
the twenty-first century is that despite a dramatic trajectory of tech-

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 5

nological expansion in information and communication capacity,

democratic participation has not improved significantly in quantita-
tive or qualitative terms. As Bruce Bimber has written, documenting
the absence of statistical evidence linking Internet use to increased
political engagement (in its various forms) in the United States:

Opportunities to become better informed have apparently

expanded historically, as the informational context of politics
has grown richer and become better endowed with media and
ready access to political communication. Yet none of the major
developments in communication in the twentieth century pro-
duced any aggregate gain in citizen participation. Neither tele-
phones, radio, nor television exerted a net positive effect on
participation, despite the fact that they apparently reduced
information costs and improved citizens’ access to information
(Bimber 2001, 57).

While we must be sensitive to the technical attributes that distin-

guish new from previous mass media, we must also acknowledge the
ways in which they may be the same. Similarly, we must be as open to
the possibility that politics mediated by new technologies will aggra-
vate the disconnection between information/communication and
democratic engagement as we are to our intuition that they will medi-
ate a democratic renaissance.
This suggests that the relationship between ICTs and Canadian
democracy is more of a problem to be explored than a foregone con-
clusion. It is a problem that exists at a very basic philosophical level,
a problem that has manifested itself historically in Canada, and a
problem that surfaces in particular ways in the contemporary context
of new ICTs. For many reasons that will become evident through the
course of this investigation, the problem of democracy, technology,
and communication crystallizes broader dynamics and questions of
democratic citizenship, identity, power, and the public good. In this
sense, democratic questions about technology and communication
are something of a crucible, especially in the Canadian context.

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

6

This exploration of the relationship between ICTs and democracy

in Canada will be framed by the three criteria set out for the Canadian
Democratic Audit: public participation, inclusiveness, and respon-
siveness. Public participation is the sine qua non of democratic poli-
tics and government. Though participation can take many forms and
be enacted in a variety of venues, the degree to which citizens take
part in various processes of political expression, decision making,
and governance is an indispensable measure of democratic legitima-
cy. Participation is an important concept for assessing the politics of
ICTs in several respects. Have political processes surrounding the
development and regulation of these technologies been participatory
or not? Do ICTs provide means for improving or expanding political
participation in Canada? And do ICTs enhance, or undermine, the
socioeconomic equality that supports effective political participation?
Inclusiveness is the second Audit criterion, and it too is related to
the core democratic principle of equality. Exclusivity, or privilege, is
anathema to a democracy, wherein political participation must be at
least available to, and at best undertaken by, as many citizens as pos-
sible without prejudice. A political order that formally or practically
excludes significant segments of its citizenry from effective partici-
pation will be far less democratic than one that provides for inclusion
of as many people as possible in the political process. This criterion is
especially important in Canada, whose population exhibits multiple
diversities that often correspond to systemic forms of disadvantage
and exclusion. Here again, special questions are raised about ICTs.
Has decision making surrounding their development and regulation
included the diversity of views and interests of relevant constituen-
cies in Canada? Do ICTs provide a means of effectively including a
greater diversity of Canadians in political life? And have these tech-
nologies contributed to, or undermined, the socioeconomic basis of
inclusion and political equality in Canada?
The third Audit criterion is responsiveness. It measures the degree
to which various elements of the political system actually address,
and are affected by, the needs, priorities, and preferences expressed

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 7

by citizens in their participatory activities. In democratic polities, a

diverse range of citizens participate not simply to lend the appearance
of legitimacy to processes that may not really take their views into
account; they participate so that political outcomes will reflect, at least
to some degree, their duly expressed interests. In representative sys-
tems such as Canada’s, the responsiveness of political agencies and
institutions is a crucial measure of the democratic acceptability of a
given regime. As with the criteria of participation and inclusiveness,
ICTs have a special bearing on the question of responsiveness, and vice-
versa. Has the development of ICT policy in Canada been sufficiently
responsive to the diversity of interests at stake in it? Has the relation-
ship between ICTs and globalization enhanced or diminished the
capacity of Canadian governments to be responsive to their citizens?
And has the use of ICTs by a variety of political actors made Canadian
political institutions more responsive to public participation?
Taken together, the three criteria of participation, inclusiveness,
and responsiveness focus the investigation that follows on three cen-
tral questions:

M To what extent has the development of digital communication

technology in Canada been subjected to democratic political judg-
ment and control?
M What effect is the increasing mediation of political communica-
tion by digital technologies having on the practices of democratic
politics in Canada?
M How do digital technologies affect the distribution of power in
Canadian society?

These questions derive from an understanding that communication

technology occupies a complex position in the universe of Canadian
democracy. Communication and its mediating technologies are at
once an object and an instrument of democratic practice in Canada.
They also affect the material context in which democratic politics and
citizenship take place. To concentrate on one of these questions to the

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

8

exclusion of the others would be to tell only part of the story. I will
return to consider the rationale that supports these questions later in
this chapter. At this point, some added reflection is in order on the
conception of democracy driving this investigation.

Democracy

Politics admits of many definitions, practices, and expressions.

Nevertheless, at its core, politics involves collective judgment by citi-
zens regarding common goods, and the engagement of authoritative
collective action toward the realization of those goods. Insofar as it
reflects this combination of judgment and action, the ultimate prac-
tice of politics is often specified as governing or government. (These
terms are derived from the ancient Greek kubernetes, or “steersman,”
since to steer, one must form a judgment as to where the ship should
go and take action to guide it there.) Politics, then, is not about strict-
ly individual determinations of right and wrong conduct in personal
affairs (the province of ethics), nor does it comprise simply those indi-
vidual calculations of purely private self-interest that tend to guide
economic behaviour in markets. Despite the many forms its con-
stituent practices can take, genuine politics always has a public, col-
lective character, it always involves judgment and action, and it always
pursues goods identified as common.
Democracy is a particular manner of constituting the various prac-
tices of judgment and action that together make up politics. That is to
say, democracy is a form of self-government. It casts the net of citi-
zenship broadly, extending rights to participate in collective judg-
ment (whether direct, delegated, or representative) on the basis of
principles of equality, and deriving authority for sovereign acts from
majoritarian consent. Within those parameters, existing democratic
practices take many institutional and noninstitutional forms, which
vary in the quality and degree of participation, deliberation, represen-

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 9

tation, inclusiveness, and legitimacy they embody. What unites these

various practices as democratic is that each subjects matters pertain-
ing to the common welfare to some manner of political judgment by
citizens regarded as equals, and each maintains a discernible link
between these judgments and the authoritative actions of government.
The stipulations set out above certainly allow for minimalist con-
structions of liberal democracy. For example, democracy can mean lit-
tle more than periodic elections in which citizens who are formally
equal express their private preferences by voting: a registration of
consent that subsequently legitimizes the actions of a government.
On its better days, however, democracy typically involves somewhat
more. Even in representative democracies in which the main political
activity for most citizens is voting in periodic elections, citizenship
ought to exist as much between elections as it does during them, in
the ongoing ability of people to contribute to common decision mak-
ing in a meaningful manner. The word “meaningful” here means that,
in a democracy, civic participation must be obviously connected to
outcomes and it must be more than merely symbolic. Furthermore,
even in liberal democracies that emphasize opportunity as the pivot
upon which equality turns, there ought to be some recognition that
not all people are equally able to take advantage of the citizenship
opportunities afforded by their constitution. Thus, a robust demo-
cracy will seek out ways to equalize participatory ability so that it
matches opportunity. Finally, while it is certainly possible for a demo-
cracy to serve as nothing more than a means of registering and aggre-
gating private self-interest, a more substantial democracy will make
the effort to orient its politics around civic deliberation on the com-
mon good, slippery though it may be. To adopt the language of one of
democracy’s great thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, democracy does
not reside primarily in the combination of individual particular wills
into the will-of-all, but rather in public-spirited generation of the gen-
eral will.
Together, these stipulations give added substance to the criteria of
participation, inclusiveness, and responsiveness used throughout this

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

10

book. They construct an understanding of democracy that is neither

radical nor foreign to the Canadian experience. Canadians understand
their society to be democratic, and by that I think we can assume they
mean more than that they get to vote occasionally. They probably
mean that theirs is a political system in which inclusiveness, public
participation, and responsiveness — the benchmarks of the Canadian
Democratic Audit — are legitimate demands that citizens can reason-
ably expect will be met. This does not mean that Canadian democracy
is perfectly or even sufficiently inclusive, participatory, and respon-
sive. Rather, Canada is a democracy to the extent that serious deficits
of inclusiveness, participation, and responsiveness are widely under-
stood by its citizens to be illegitimate and intolerable. Far from con-
taining a utopian standard that prejudicially disqualifies Canada as a
democracy, this formulation arguably captures the kind of democracy
Canada and Canadians imagine themselves as striving to be. The
underlying question of this study is whether and to what extent our
current encounter with ICTs contributes to meeting this goal.
These technologies, however, are not the only factor involved in
securing a democratic political order on the terms outlined above.
Indeed, the impact of ICTs on democracy can really be understood
only in light of, or in relation to, a number of other conditions neces-
sary to sustain a democracy. As I will discuss in further detail in
Chapter 5, these conditions include not just a democratic constitu-
tion that distributes effective political power equally, but also an
economy in which the material resources crucial to citizenship are
distributed relatively equally, a culture in which the habits of citizen-
ship are the norm rather than the exception, and a public sphere in
which politics are conspicuous by their presence, rather than by their
absence. Inclusive, participatory, responsive democracies require all
of these conditions, whether or not technology is part of the picture.
As I will argue in Chapter 5, however, when technology is part of the
picture it has a significant impact upon the possibility of these con-
ditions being met, and this has been especially true of ICTs in the con-
temporary period.

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 11

Technology

Canada is not only a democratic society. It is also an unambiguously

technological society. Since at least the Second World War, Canada’s
commitment to democratic politics has been matched by a resolute
commitment to the development of technology as a means to secure
its material economic well-being. Statements from the government of
Canada regarding “the challenge and the urgency” of constructing
the “Information Highway” are but the latest manifestation of this
enduring technological conviction (Industry Canada 1996, 3). But
Canada’s democratic convictions may be at odds with its technologi-
cal commitments on a fundamental level, as a technological society
may not be able to either support or withstand the sort of decision
making and action described above as democratic, and still remain a
technological society.
The tension between technology and democracy has three aspects.
The first is that the complexity of technological issues can undermine
the possibility of either intensive or extensive democratic considera-
tion. Democracies do not demand expertise of their citizens as a con-
dition of participation, but technological complexity can make
demands that exceed the capacities of most citizens, thus reducing
the efficacy of citizenship.
Second, even if the majority of citizens had the capacity to engage
with complicated technological issues, their deliberations would
most certainly undermine the conditions in which technology devel-
ops and is optimized. Democratic decision making tends to be slow,
ponderous, risk averse, prone to reversals, lacking in clarity, easily
seduced by superficial imaginings, and often irrational: qualities
inimical to technological enterprise. It might not be to the material
advantage of a technological society to subject technical determina-
tions to genuine democratic consideration on a routine basis.
Third, modern technology tends to be universal rather than local, a
quality that has been raised to high relief by new ICTs and their rela-
tionship to the phenomenon known as globalization. Technologies,

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

12

especially those whose operation transcends national boundaries,

challenge the applicability and enforceability of democratic political
decisions and actions organized at the national level. Canadians have
experienced this problem for a long time, especially in regard to com-
munication technologies and policies: technologies that tend to tran-
scend constraints of territorial space as a matter of their very design
versus policies that are confined in their application to the territory
over which the Canadian state is sovereign. Put simply, the democrat-
ic political authority of the Canadian state over broadcasting stops at
the country’s southern border, but radio signals originating from
south of that border know no such constraint. Similarly, with regard
to a technology such as the Internet, it could be argued that the wish-
es of the Canadian state — democratically derived or otherwise — are
irrelevant to the terms under which this technology will be developed
as a global phenomenon, and that Canada’s only choice is whether or
not it wishes to be part of the world connected by this technology. In
this case, for a society committed to technological development as a
condition of its material progress, the choice is self-evident.
This suggests that a society that imagines itself as democratic has
to be willing to pay the price of restraint, regression, and inefficiency
in technological matters. It also raises the possibility that a society
devoted to technological progress as a condition of its material pros-
perity may not be able to maintain a commitment to democracy that
is anything more than rhetorical when it comes to technological mat-
ters. Technology recommends technocracy — rule by experts — over
democracy. And technological matters are regularly given over specif-
ically to experts intimate with the imperatives of science, manage-
ment, and the market, regimes whose ends and practices are rarely
accused of being particularly democratic and which typically shield
technological issues from potentially obtrusive democratic consider-
ation. Precisely this tendency prompted Ursula Franklin (1999, 121) to
observe, radically, that in Canada “we now have nothing but a bunch
of managers who run the country to make it safe for technology.”
There seems to be something deeply depoliticizing and fundamental-
ly undemocratic about technology.

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 13

But that is not the whole story. Although democratic political delib-
eration can sometimes slow down technological innovation, technol-
ogy is also irreducibly political. Far from being mere instruments or
tools that accomplish their direct ends and nothing else, technologies
also condition priorities, define possibilities, set limits on practices,
constitute infrastructures and environments, and mediate relation-
ships between individuals and between people and the natural world.
As the American political theorist Langdon Winner (1995, 67) has
written, when it comes to technology “the central issues concern how
the members of society manage their common affairs and seek the
common good. Because technological things so often become central
features in widely shared arrangements and conditions of life in con-
temporary society, there is an urgent need to think of them in a politi-
cal light.” In a similar vein, Franklin (1999, 120) characterizes questions
concerning technology specifically as questions of “governance.” For
example, grain elevators are not simply instruments for handling
grain. They also organize communities economically and spatially, and
provide the material infrastructure for an entire way of living on the
Canadian prairies. Their “progressive” replacement by high-throughput
grain terminals is, consequently, radically restructuring communities
and ways of living that grew up around the previous technology. The
decision to replace the old elevators with the new terminals did not
clearly emerge from an inclusive democratic political process that gen-
uinely engaged and responded to the participation of those citizens
whose lives are most affected by this technological change. Neverthe-
less, a technological moment such as this cannot be said to be without
politics simply because its political aspect has been obscured by a per-
ceived technological imperative. Technologies, in this sense, have a
legislative character, insofar as they enable or encourage certain com-
mon practices and prohibit or discourage others. Technologies repre-
sent decisions about how we will and will not live together. Therefore
no satisfactory meaning of the word “political” can exclude technolo-
gies and their effects.
Thus, technologies are political because they constitute widely
shared social arrangements that frame a broad range of human

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

14

social, political, and economic priorities and practices, and because

they are artifacts in which power is embedded and through which
power is exercised. Consequently, moments of technological change
especially have the potential to be moments of intense democratic
political contest, moments of deliberation over the character and
needs of the common interest relative to the technology in question.
These moments can also be sacrificed to the logic of depoliticization
that is embedded in the technological spirit, which is often called
forth by those who stand to benefit from insulating issues of technol-
ogy from democratic political scrutiny. The history of the deployment
of technologies of mass communication in Canada, and policy mak-
ing surrounding this deployment, is replete with examples of this
dynamic.
The political questions surrounding communication technology
and policy in Canada have remained relatively consistent since at
least the advent of the telegraph. They include questions about the
following:

M the role of the state relative to the market in the distribution of

communication resources
M the priority of either national-cultural or commercial-industrial
objectives, and the tension between them
M the democratic imperative to ensure universal access to commu-
nication services throughout the country and the means to
achieve it
M the liberal imperative of free expression in communication
M the structure of ownership and regulation in Canadian communi-
cation industries, including the possibility of state ownership
M the need to stimulate and secure domestic production and con-
sumption of cultural content
M the role of public consultation in communication policy making
M the importance of separating control over carriage infrastructure
(i.e., the pipes) from control over content (i.e., what goes through
the pipes).

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

 15

What is interesting about these enduring questions of Canadian

communication policy historically is that, just as they begin to reach a
point of settlement in relation to one communication medium, a tech-
nological change reopens them. Just when the politics surrounding the
telegraph, for example, appeared to subside into normalization, the
advent of the telephone repoliticized all the same old questions. It is
also interesting to note the historical regularity with which technolog-
ically determinist arguments and rhetoric surface during times of tech-
nological change in communication — arguments and rhetoric often
aimed at obscuring and depoliticizing the deeply political and highly
contingent character of policy in this area. This strategy extrapolates
from particular characteristics of the technology to specific policy
choices that are presented as necessary outgrowths of the technology
itself and, therefore, non-negotiable. This tactic is most often employed
by those interests that have a great deal to gain in a particular configu-
ration of technological change and a great deal to lose in political, and
especially democratic, consideration of possible options.
A stark example is the “systems integrity” arguments used by tele-
phone companies in the early and middle decades of the twentieth
century to justify structuring the telephone industry in Canada as a
natural monopoly. They argued that the technology involved in the
successful construction and maintenance of a high-quality telephony
system simply required that the system be controlled from end to end
by a single entity, and ruled out other options from political consider-
ation. The degree to which this technologically determinist argument
became policy orthodoxy is suggested in Instant world, the 1971
report of a federal task force on telecommunications, which conceded
that telephone companies had presented “powerful technical argu-
ments for complete control of the public networks, including terminal
devices and attached equipment. To maintain a high quality of service
to all users, they must be able to guard against the technical pollution
of the network from other signal sources” (DOC 1971, 156).
As we will see, there is no shortage of contemporary claims regard-
ing the necessary connection between various technical aspects of

Democracy, Technology, and Communication in Canada

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