The Canadian “sponsorship scandal” provides an opportunity to examine how communications in the federal government has become an increasingly strategic function that has shifted from information provision to promotion, and from substance to image. This article traces how government communications became institutionalized and centralized, using the sponsorship program as an example of how strategic government communications has become embedded in government structures and practices. It finds that the sponsorship program, like other government strategic communications efforts, is a product of politicized government communications practices and activities. The article suggests that strategic communications has led public policymaking and, as demonstrated in the sponsorship program, may have additional impacts on what has been called the “democratic deficit.” Résumé: Le scandale des commandites au Canada offre l’occasion d’examiner le rôle stratégique joué aujourd’hui par les communications du gouvernement fédéral, un rôle qui passe de plus en plus de l’information vers la promotion et du contenu vers l’image. Cet article prend appui sur l’exemple du programme des commandites afin d’examiner la manière dont la communication stratégique s’est intégrée dans les structures et les pratiques du gouvernement et décrit comment les communications gouvernementales sont devenues institutionnalisés et centralisées. L’article conclut que le programme de commandites, comme d’autres efforts de communication stratégique de la part du gouvernement, est le produit de pratiques et d’activités de communication gouvernementale qui sont politisées. Il suggère, en outre, que les communications stratégiques ont influencées la formulation de politiques publiques et qu’elles peuvent avoir un impact additionnel sur ce qui a été appelé le « déficit démocratique » dans le programme des commandites.

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Several recent reports seek to evaluate the impact of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Canadian democracy by documenting his government's efforts to curtail established democratic processes and mechanisms for public debate. However, this article uses examples of the Harper government's changes to legislative and parliamentary norms to demonstrate that this government's efforts to curtail multi-directional public debate were importantly accompanied by efforts to amplify unidirectional communication of the government's partisan messages. The paper finds that this corresponding emphasis on communication exemplified a “photo-op” approach to democracy, which highlights points of compatibility between the seemingly contradictory authoritarian-populist “publicity state” and neoliberal democratic ideals. This research demonstrates the necessity of attention to government communication in analysis of the Harper government's impact on the Canadian public sphere. It also illustrates the pragmatic rather than doctrinaire nature of New Right politics in Canada and the affinity between neoliberal and authoritarian-populist approaches to governance.

The struggles of subjugated communities against the status quo often find their only visibility in alternative media. These are media that function outside traditional market-based routines, servicing small, neglected audiences whose experiences challenge or destabilise hegemonic discourses. Their marginalised political and cultural status is largely what makes them alternative: these are the articulations of activist citizens whose exclusion from dominant media has driven them into the production of their own cultural texts. Yet alternative media texts like news texts generally quickly lose their cultural currency. Archives exist as an apparatus of cultural preservation and legitimisation, but they traditionally have been the purview of large state-run or private institutions with little interest in preserving alternative media. This article examines the practices and preservation of alternative media archives in Canada. By mapping archival practices at sites of independent media production across Canada, and also archiving practices at a sample of provincial, municipal, independent and community archives in relation to alternative media holdings, this research assesses the current state of archiving alternative media records in a Canadian setting. The findings of the study suggest that while institutional archives often overlook alternative media records as falling outside of their explicit mandates, alternative media organisations are struggling to preserve their histories due to financial, technological and expertise deficiencies. Our findings suggest that a broad national strategy to help Canada deal with an alarming loss of alternative cultural records is long overdue, and that a partnership of archivists, activists, librarians and alternative media practitioners would constitute an important path forward at a time when our forgotten activist media are close to being lost.

This paper examines the key legitimating role of communication and the media, and the role of taming-labour, in constructing the Ontario neo-liberal hegemonic project in 1995. Media-content analysis and examination of the communication strategies of the Ontario government in the 1996 public-service strike show that the government relied on constructing the perception of a hegemonic crisis and framing labour as oppositional to the public interest of resolving the crisis. The government's general strategy of quick-attack communications offensives curtailed media and opposition scrutiny, increasing the likelihood of policy success and media dependence on its framing of issues. A strong challenge to the government led by labour and social justice groups failed in the face of state public relations, media silence, and internal dissension. Examination of a second strike in 2002 suggests that even without a crisis, the government continued its attack on labour.Résumé : Cet article examine le rôle clé de légitimation joué par les communications et les médias, ainsi que les efforts déployés pour calmer la main-d'oeuvre, lors de l'exécution d'un projet hégémonique néo-libéral en Ontario en 1995. Une analyse de contenu médiatique et l'examen des stratégies communicationnelles du gouvernement ontarien lors de la grève du service public en 1996 montrent que le gouvernement a tenté de faire croire à une crise hégémonique et a suggéré que la main-d'oeuvre s'opposait à l'intérêt public en entravant la résolution de la crise. La stratégie du gouvernement, qui consistait en de rapides attaques communicationnelles, a empêché l'opposition et les médias de faire leur travail, augmentant à la fois la dépendance que les médias avaient de la version gouvernementale des faits, et ainsi augmentant les chances de succès du gouvernement. Des groupes de main-d'oeuvre et de justice sociale se sont fortement opposés au gouvernement, mais ont échoué face à la campagne de relations publiques de l'État, au silence des médias et à cause de différends internes. L'examen d'une seconde grève en 2002 suggère que, même sans crise, le gouvernement a continué à attaquer la main-d'oeuvre syndiquée.