Massey
Report
Claude Bélanger,
Department of History,
Marianopolis College
The
first fifty years of the 20th century witnessed a profound transformation in the
outlook of English-speaking Canadians. From a rather colonial mentality, where
King, Country and Empire were inextricably mixed to create a sentiment of confused
nationality, English Canada became more conscious of its own distinct identity
and moved closer to the views held previously by French Canadians on the nature
of their country. This process was a slow and often painful one: for over a century
English Canada had defined itself as a British community bent on orderly development
and opposed to the American way of life. But, as the old ties with Britain were
slowly eroded, it became evident that the vacuum created was being filled increasingly
by cultural importations from the United States. The economy of Canada came to
be dominated by the Americans and with it came American culture. It was very difficult
for English Canada to resist the trend: Canada shared a long frontier with the
United States; many people had crossed the border, in both directions, and kept in contact with the people bach home. This had led to an intermingling of population particularly in the Western provinces; there was a desire to attain a high standard of living and, above all, English
Canadians spoke the same language as the Americans. The development of the new
mass media, especially television, made it difficult for English Canadians to
resist the American cultural invasion and to express, in cultural forms, their
newly defined identity. It was too easy to import almost everything from the United
States and too difficult, futile and costly to try to emulate and compete effectively
with the Americans. The experience
was doubly crippling because English Canadians had, before their eyes, the example
of French Canada which seemed to find it so much easier to express its own individuality
and culture and to resist, much more successfully, American cultural pressures.
Provincial governments were either too poor or incapable to help build what was
then commonly called "a genuine Canadian culture." Under these
circumstances, English Canadians turned instinctively to the national government-
the federal government- for help. This process of looking upon the federal government
as the depositor of the hopes and aspirations of Canadians gathered momentum during
the Depression and the 1940's. The Depression had demonstrated to most Canadians
the utter incapacity of the provinces to deal effectively with real problems and
the War had shown what a powerful federal government could do. This process of
focusing increasingly on the State, and especially on the federal government,
has been documented very well by Doug Owram in his The Government Generation.
Canadian Intellectuals and the State, 1900-1945 (University of Toronto
Press, 1986). This focus on the federal government led inevitably to centralisationand, thus to demands that the federal government becomes involved in the cultural
sector. The notion of federal
involvement in cultural affairs worried considerably the people and government
of Quebec. After all, federalism had been created so that the individuality of
the provinces- their local cultures in particular, -would not be interfered with;
Quebec had been on the front line of those demanding such a system. Furthermore,
there was deep distrust in Quebec about entrusting cultural matters to a level
of government where the culture of the majority was not the same as that of Quebec,
especially in light of the repeated attacks that the French language had had to
suffer in the past at the hands of anglophone majorities in various provinces
and where the federal government had stood idly by... The
federal government responded eventually to the call for intervention from intellectual
circles in English Canada (there were also some voices heard from Quebec who welcomed
Ottawa's initiatives in the cultural sphere; after all, the Duplessis regime was
not well known to support intellectual ventures...). The federal government appointed
a Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences -
commonly called the Massey Commission- in 1949. Its report was issued in 1951
and, on the whole, the hopes of the interventionists were not disappointed. The
Commission proposed the revamping of the CBC and the involvement of the federal
government in national television; funds would come from the federal government.
The Commission also proposed the creation of the National Library, of Radio-Canada
International and to enlarge the mandate of the National Film Board. A Canada
Council for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities would also be set up and its task
would be to distribute funds so that national cultures would emerge. Finally,
the Commission recommended the introduction of federal bursaries for university
students and federal funding for Higher Education. Most recommendations, in one way or another, encroached on provincial spheres of jurisdiction, especially on education; culture had, to this point, been reserved to the provinces. The Commission justified this intrusion into provincial matters by making a rather unconvincing distinction between culture and education. Despite the strenuous opposition of Quebec (which fought to protect what we would call today its "cultural sovereignty"), all of the major recommendations of the Commission were implemented by the federal government over the next few years. The report led to the establishment, by Quebec, of the Tremblay Commission and
to years of federal-provincial disputes, especially on the subject of university
financing.
©
1998 Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College
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