Steven Guilbeault is sworn in as the the Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity, Parks Canada during a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on March 14.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The Minister of Canadian Heritage is dead. Long live the Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity, Parks Canada.
In revealing a smaller streamlined cabinet on Friday, newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced that change in terminology in how to refer to Steven Guilbeault, who will oversee the Department of Canadian Heritage anew after previously having done so from 2019 to 2021.
The department itself, for the time being, remains under its original name – a name that has confused Canadians for over three decades now. What exactly does it do?
First created in 1993, Canadian Heritage is the sprawling federal government bureaucracy that oversees arts and culture, as well as much to do with broadcasting and digital, multiculturalism, sport, official languages, national battlefields and, indeed, Parks Canada. All the stuff that makes Canada Canada.
What’s in a name? In a statement responding to e-mailed questions about what the ministerial rebrand signified and how it might affect policy, Mr. Guilbeault emphasized that his appointment was made at a time “when our national unity and shared identity have never been more important.”
“Our culture and values define who we are as a country,” he wrote. “In a period of political uncertainty, I will make strengthening our Canadian identity a priority to safeguard our sovereignty.”
As for the reasons behind ditching “Canadian Heritage,” Mr. Guilbeault did not elaborate but it is dated terminology, like “Cancon,” that turns most Canadians off. It has always been an oddly past-tense word for a department that deals with a living and vibrant culture.
Heritage is what we inherit from the past, something non-Indigenous Canadians or their ancestors brought with them to this country. Canadian Heritage sounds like something we could bring with us as new Americans living in a 51st state.
It’s a word too that, outside of the federal government, comes across as a euphemism – which is why more than one Canadian white supremacist group has had “heritage” in its name.
South of the border, the Heritage Foundation is the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025 that seems to have informed President Donald Trump’s extreme cuts to the federal bureaucracy and consolidation of power in the executive branch.
How did Canada’s federal government come to adopt the word “heritage” in the way it did? From a scholarly article on the subject by Susan L.T. Ashley, I learned this has been unique within English-speaking countries. The word “heritage” does not appear in the 1951 Massey Report that made the recommendations that resulted in the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the conservation of Canada’s historic places.
From the 1960s through to the end of Brian Mulroney’s time as prime minister, arts and culture and the public broadcaster were part of the portfolio of a Minister of Communications.
Prime minister Kim Campbell changed that in 1993. Taking over the Progressive Conservatives from a deeply unpopular leader, she announced a smaller streamlined cabinet – is there an echo in here? – and created a number of “superministries” that combined the responsibility of several federal departments, one of which was Canadian Heritage.
In this, Ms. Campbell likely took inspiration from then British prime minister John Major, who, in taking over the Conservatives from a deeply unpopular leader a year before, had created a Department of National Heritage to amalgamate government functions related to the arts, broadcasting, film, sport, historic sites and tourism.
Unlike Mr. Major, Ms. Campbell’s moves didn’t stop her party from being wiped out in the next election.
Canadian Heritage stuck around, however, despite grumbles about the name from the likes of philosopher John Ralston Saul. He wrote in The Globe and Mail that “heritage” was a word of the New Right: “Culture is reduced to a warm, patriotic sentiment that casts a glow over the past.”
With a second Quebec referendum on the way, however, a warm, patriotic sentiment that cast a glow over the past didn’t sound so bad to the newly elected Liberals under prime minister Jean Chrétien.
It was Mr. Chrétien who opted to keep a Minister of Canadian Heritage in cabinet – and, indeed, formalized the Department of Canadian Heritage in 1995. “The Heritage department would be a central cultural intervention to support a united nation and Canadian identity,” writes Dr. Ashley, in “Institutional Production of Heritage within the Culture Sector in Canada.”
When the Labour government of Tony Blair came to power in Britain in 1997, it recognized the error right away – replacing the Department of National Heritage with the more clearly named Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Who expected it would take almost three more decades and a threat of annexation for a Canadian prime minister to do the same. Canadian identity is its own Pandora’s box, but it’s a good move by Mr. Carney. Though I do look forward, some day, to the Heritage Minute about the Department of Canadian Heritage.
