The Delicate Acts of “Colour Balancing”: Multiculturalism and Canadian Television Broadcasting Polic...

<jats:p> As a symbolic demonstration of the Government of Canada’s attitude toward minorities’ communication rights, the Multiculturalism Act (1988) and the Broadcasting Policy Reflecting Canada’s Linguistic and Cultural Diversity (1985) are paradigms of state intervention which encourage the public production, programming, and protection of certain forms of ethnicity. After critically outlining the content and historical struggle around these two policies, this paper focuses on how multiculturalism and ethnic broadcasting privilege ethnocultural and racial “diversity” as an integral aspect of Canadian society. “Colour-balanced” media requires the actual implementation, supervision, and monitoring by the CRTC of section 3(1)(d)(iii) of the Canadian Broadcasting Act by people whose minds are open to the recognition, in practice, of equality rights for minority communicators in Canada. </jats:p>