Eliminate or Radically Downsize the Department of Canadian Heritage

 A 30-Year Experiment That Has Largely Failed

Pragmatic Canadian – Revised January 2025

In December 2023, Argentina’s new president cut the number of federal ministries from 18 to 9 and eliminated tens of thousands of public-service positions in a matter of weeks. The exercise forced a simple question: which parts of our own federal government actually deliver more value than they cost—and which do the opposite?

Canada now has 42 federal departments and separate ministries (not counting agencies and Crown corporations). Few Canadians can name more than a dozen. One that rarely makes the list, yet wields outsized influence, is the Department of Canadian Heritage (PCH). Created only in 1993, it has grown into a $1.7 billion-per-year department (2024–25 Main Estimates, excluding CBC) with 1,850 employees and oversight of 11 Crown corporations.

Most Canadians assume a “Heritage” department preserves museums, promotes the arts, and protects national symbols. In reality, its current footprint is far broader—and far more controversial.

Three high-profile failures in 18 months

1. Bill C-18 (Online News Act) – 2023 Intended to force Google and Meta to pay Canadian media for links. Meta responded by blocking all news for 35 million Canadian users. Google eventually agreed to pay ≈$100 million annually into a fund. Net result according to most independent analyses: less news circulation, no new sustainable revenue model for most outlets, and a precedent for state-managed news compensation.
2. Bill C-11 (Online Streaming Act) – 2022–2024 Extended 20th-century Canadian-content rules to YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Netflix, etc. The CRTC is still writing thousands of pages of regulations that will determine discoverability, mandatory financial contributions, and (in some cases) what individual user-generated content is promoted or demoted. Critics across the political spectrum—from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to the Michael Geist law clinic—warn of inevitable free-expression chill and bureaucratic overreach.
3. Ongoing CBC “modernization” mandate, PCH is the sponsoring department for a Crown corporation that receives ≈$1.4 billion annually, while its English television audience has fallen below 2 % nationally in most prime-time slots. The department’s 2024–25 plan lists “support the transformation of CBC/Radio-Canada” as a core objective—meaning the same ministry that regulates private broadcasters is now in charge of restructuring its largest publicly funded competitor.

A mandate that overlaps everywhere

The department’s own 2023–24 Departmental Plan lists five “core responsibilities”:

1. Creativity, arts and culture
2. Heritage and celebration
3. Sport
4. Diversity and inclusion
5. Official languages

At least 60 % of these already belong to other full departments or ministries:

• Sport → Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs + separate Minister of Sport
• Diversity & Inclusion → separate Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities
• Official languages → Treasury Board + Justice + separate coordination secretariat
• Indigenous cultural heritage → Indigenous Services + Crown-Indigenous Relations
• Gender equality and 2SLGBTQI+ issues → Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE)

In other words, Canadian Heritage duplicates work that six other organizations are already paid to do.

The commemorative-days test

Perhaps the clearest window into the department’s current priorities is its official list of “National Days, Weeks, Months and Observances.” As of 2024, the list contains 62 separate recognitions.

• 12 focus on gender, sexual orientation or women (with dedicated months/weeks for International Women’s Day, Pride, Trans Day of Visibility, etc.)
• 30 celebrate specific ethnic, racial or Indigenous identities or histories
• 8 are framed around overcoming historic or ongoing oppression
• 19 lasts an entire week or month (Pride is a full season in some regions)

By contrast, only five single days are dedicated to the country as a whole: Canada Day, National Flag Day, Victoria Day, Remembrance Day, and Sir John A. Macdonald Day.

Whatever one thinks of each individual observance, a department whose statutory mission is to “foster Canadian identity and values” now formally recognizes a new identity-based commemoration roughly once every six days while giving only five days to shared national moments. That ratio speaks for itself.

A modest proposal

Canada functioned perfectly well for its first 126 years without a standalone Department of Canadian Heritage. Its legitimate functions (museums, national parks, historic sites, archives, grants to arms-length arts organizations) were handled by smaller, more focused entities.

There is no compelling reason that those functions require:

• a regulator of internet speech (C-11)
• a negotiator of link taxes with global tech platforms (C-18)
• a $1.4 billion annual subsidy to one broadcaster plus oversight of its “transformation.”
• a sixth bureaucracy doing diversity, sport, and official languages work already done elsewhere

A future government could, with a single piece of legislation, dissolve the department and redistribute the few genuinely necessary pieces:

• Museums, Library and Archives Canada, and historic sites → a strengthened Parks Canada or a new arm’s-length National Heritage Agency
• Core arts-granting councils (Canada Council, Telefilm) → independent again, as they were before 1993
• Broadcasting policy and internet regulation → either eliminated entirely or moved to a slimmed-down Industry Canada
• CBC funding and oversight → direct reporting to Parliament or sunset over a fixed transition period

Argentina showed that large-scale government downsizing is politically possible when the case is clear. The Department of Canadian Heritage is one place where the case is overwhelming: three decades of mission creep, repeated policy debacles, and a track record of amplifying division rather than shared identity.

It is time to admit the 1993 experiment has run its course.