1.2 Rationale for a National Digital Strategy
In part, the rationale for a national digital strategy lies in the positions and statements emerging from key stakeholders. There is a growing chorus calling for a national digital strategy, but each stakeholder has a different slant on what it should contain. In general, we find that the viewpoints of most represent only part of the overall set of issues to address.
In the federal budget for 2009, Canada’s Economic Action Plan, funding was allocated to areas relevant to a national digital strategy. The budget addressed some of the elements of a national digital strategy, including investments in broadband infrastructure, education, and the cultural industries.
After the Canada 3.0 Conference – held in June 2009 in Stratford, Ontario – federal Industry Canada Minister, Tony Clement, offered more specific priorities for a digital Canada: copyright reform; new privacy legislation; broadband extension to undeserved areas; and determining the parameters of the upcoming spectrum auction.2 Again, these issues are not the whole story.
The Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) understands the importance of digital media to the future of the Canadian economy. In its 2008/2009 Annual Review, ITAC states that “... as business restructures, ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) will drive much of the change. Countries that understand this and strategize accordingly will do much better than those who miss this crucial shift.” ITAC, in a June 2009 strategy paper, went on to suggest that to achieve a strong leadership position in the global digital economy Canada would need to address issues of talent, infrastructure, innovation and technical adoption, taxation, access to capital, and regulation. The group also concluded that these issues should be addressed in the context of a national ICT strategy.3 While ITAC’s approach mirrors in some ways that taken by this discussion paper, the “digital net” should be cast wider than in ITAC’s vision to include the content side of the equation – the cultural industries – which are deeply affected by digital technologies.
Among cultural industries stakeholders several prominent organizations have called for the coordination of decisions affecting the digital transformation. In addressing the Banff International TV Festival and Canada 3.0 conferences, CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finkenstein made the direct appeal for a national digital strategy. In fact, after a lengthy public hearing on the subject of regulating new media, the resulting CRTC policy decision recommended that a national strategy was needed to sort out broader issues that were beyond the scope of the Commission.4
Another cultural stakeholder that has expressed an interest in the impact of digital technologies on the cultural sector in Canada is the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC). One CHRC report identifies training gaps caused by the digital transition in Canada’s cultural industries. Another lays out a technology roadmap that assists content producers in anticipating future market demands.5 In this way, the CRHC begins to knit together the human capital (training), cultural (content creation) and infrastructural (technology) issues.
For their part, provinces seem to appreciate the need for a digital strategy at the sub-national level as well. For example, Ontario's Innovation Agenda recognized in its 2008 budget the linkages between R&D, innovation, and the creative industries. It was followed up in the 2009 spring’s Ontario budget with a specific pilot program to stimulate more “R&D” in the creative industries,6 and the announcement of an upcoming study of potential demand for an ultra broadband (UBB) infrastructure investment.7 In fact, because provincial motivation for supporting the cultural industries has a pronounced economic development rationale, there are explicit attempts to link “creative industries” with technology-based development.8
There is also action at the regional and local level, based on the positive economic benefits from the development of industrial clusters. Whether focused on technology and/or the creative industries, municipalities have banded together in regional “clusters” to promote their development, and so become digital strategy stakeholders.9
As illustrated by the brief discussion above, stakeholders from different perspectives expound the need for a national digital strategy and frame the issues from their point of view. This issues discussion paper attempts to sort out the different issues, and identify what a national digital strategy should include and what not to include. We group the relevant issues in three parts: (i) an overarching societal need for digital literacy and skills in the modern world, (ii) the need for a transformation of our support for the creation and distribution of cultural content, and (iii) the need for appropriate investment in our broadband and communications infrastructure to provide Canadians access to broadband services.
2 Clement vows to revisit copyright, Playback, July 6, 2009 http://www.playbackonline.ca/articles/magazine/20090706/copyright.html?word=broadband
3 ITAC, Upping our Game: A National ICT Strategy for Canada. June 2009.
4 The chair cited NFB head Tom Perlmutter who had called for a national strategy that would include: more funds to be allocated to the creation of original Canadian digital media content, greater expansion of existing programming into multiplatform content, additional training needs to be able to traditional content producers in order to ensure that they are able to adapt, culturally relevant heritage collections such as those held by the NFB should be digitized in their entirety and made available to all Canadians online. (Tom Perlmutter, National Film Board of Canada, “Broadcasting in the New Media Environment,” presented before the CRTC on February 25, 2009.)
5 See CHRC, Training Gaps Analysis: Interactive Media Producers, (Prepared by kisquared), February 2009, and CHRC, Digital Media Content Creation Technology Roadmap (Prepared by the Centre for Public Management), January 2009.
6 The purpose of a new $10 million pilot program is to “support the development of intellectual property by Ontario-based companies in the screen-based sector” (Ontario Budget 2009, pg 29).
7 Study on Ultra Broadband Infrastructure, Services, Usage and Needs in Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, August 2009.
8 However, there may be another issue; while “Digital Media” is often identified as a priority in provincial initiatives, it can be lumped together with clean technologies, bio-medical innovations and other more R&D-focused disciplines.
9 One good example of a regional cluster that facilitates innovation is Canada’s “Technology Triangle” in south western Ontario comprising Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge. Other examples of such clusters include the content creation cluster centred in Toronto, the aerospace cluster in Quebec, and the cleantech and digital media clusters in British Columbia.
Table of Contents
- Part 1: Preamble
- 1.1 Origin, Purpose and Outline of the Issues Discussion Paper
- 1.2 Rationale for a National Digital Strategy
- Part 2: Digital Literacy and Skills
- Part 3: Cultural Industries Issues
- Part 4: Infrastructure Development and Technology Issues
- Part 5: International Comparison
- Part 6: Setting the Agenda in Canada
