Part I
Building Heritage: The Policy Framework

Welcome to HERM 327: Heritage Policy in Canada. The first section of the course sets out the social and historical framework upon which Canadian heritage policy developed and continues to evolve under changing conditions. This course will examine dominant ideas about Canadian history as they are reflected in the mandates and activities of Canadian heritage institutions and organizations, and as they are manifested in the daily lives of Canadians, whose streetscapes and landscapes are being shaped by economic concerns. Economic and social forces interact to produce ideas about, first, the meaning of history itself and, second, the meaning that history’s tangible relics hold in contemporary life. Against this background, policy is a blueprint, or guide, that helps Canadians select from a complex of ideas, values, properties, objects, and people to construct what is referred to as “heritage.”

Throughout the course, heritage resource management will be examined in terms of three main topic areas:

• process (consultation, reports, draft bills, activism, and advocacy)
• policy (expression of the state’s will; organizational mandates, goals, and principles)
• practice (implementation, legislation, regulations, challenges, and revisions leading back to the policy process).

Central to the course are Canadian federal policies; built and tangible heritage, as opposed to intangible aspects of cultural legacies; cultural rather than natural heritage and conservation; and public and not-for-profit institutions and organizations. It is important to keep in mind what is at stake in the often contradictory field of policy-making. Heritage and related policy have broad relevance for cultural democracy, in terms of the influence of citizen and stakeholder interest groups, and public influence on official ideas about the place of heritage in everyday life. The course also touches on intangible heritage, provincial and municipal policy, and parks and natural areas. You will be given scope to explore these in more detail in the course assignments.

Course Objectives

When you have completed the course, you should be familiar with:

• key policies related to the heritage sector, along with the positive and negative impacts of those policies on preservation and conservation
• how the broader cultural policy environment at each government level has shaped heritage policy
• outstanding or emerging issues for the heritage sector that need to be addressed at the policy level
• the role that is played, and/or should be played, by the state in making cultural policy in Canada
• how federal policy shapes cultural institutions and practices
• social, industrial, political, economic, and technological issues that affect cultural institutions
• how policy strategies address the social, industrial, political, economic, and technological issues that affect cultural institutions.

Unit 1 looks at cultural policy, of which heritage policy is a branch. Unit 2 provides historical background of public sector involvement in heritage management, and Unit 3 surveys the core workings of the federal government departments and agencies. Unit 4 closely examines the significant impact that economic structures and priorities have on heritage preservation and commemoration.