Wellsprings of Knowledge: Beyond the CBC Policy Trap

<jats:p>The CBC/Radio Canada is in a policy trap which is endemic to all cultural policy today. A casualty of the 1990s policy focus on the cultural industries, the traditional public interest discourse has failed to gain a toehold in arguments favouring a continued state role in the development of cultural capital. This paper explores a cultural capital perspective and argues for a closer link with and co-ordination between education and culture in policy fields at both the theoretical and operational levels. The paper concludes that the instrumental utility of a cultural capital approach is ultimately too limiting. What is needed is a theoretical shift from public interest rhetoric to a democratic rights-based discourse. Such a shift in the conceptual underpinnings of cultural policy implies radical decentralization and deconcentration of control within the CBC. New models of democratic cultural governance are needed to reclaim public broadcasting.</jats:p>