A Child’s Live: Learning, Literacy and the Role of Media International Perspectives Caroline Fortier, Executive Director, The Alliance for Children and Television, Canada

ACT Since 1974 the Alliance for Children & Television, a Canadian non-profit organization works to enrich children’s television experience by increasing the quality and quantity of Canadian programs intended for them in cooperation with youth programming creators and craftspeople.

Canadian Population Landscape Canada’s population is composed of a majority of English language and French language (Quebec) people with a significant proportion of people from multiple origins essentially living in the largest cities.

Télévision Landscape Throughout Canada there are both public and private broadcasters. Public Broadcasters have a general mandate such as the national broadcaster CBC Radio- Canada, which has both a French speaking and English speaking network. Provincial public broadcasters such as TVOntario or Tele-Quebec that also have a general mandate. Private networks and broadcasters, some have a general mandate and many are specialized including many children specialty TV both in English and French.

Advertising to Children in Canadian Television vs Quebec’s Specificity In Canada, there are many levels of regulations of advertising to children in television including some that will particularly rule on the Broadcasters. These Canadian codes of advertising have very specific rules for advertising to children such as, for example, a complete ban of advertising that is targeting children from 9 am till noon, during school days. On the other hand, is it permitted to advertise to family, parents or adults during these hours as long as the advertiser has obtained an authorization from the Canadian agency that has the task of reviewing all advertising.

The origins of the regulations regarding advertising in Canada, especially advertising intended for children, comes from a report from the US Federal Trade Commission that had to address the need for some regulations regarding advertising to children up to 11 years of age but especially to those under 8 years of age, based on the assumption that they are particularly vulnerable to advertising. In Canada, since the 70s, advertising to children was a great concern for many groups of people and this has resulted in the regulations mentioned earlier. In Quebec, the movement was even stronger among associations of parents, teachers, consumers, syndicates of workers and other specific groups that were working together toward the abolition of advertising on television. The pressure from these groups has resulted in an even more restrictive law that completely bans advertising to children under 13 years of age during the broadcast of all programs intended for children. This law is often mentionned as very unique and presented as an exemple to be imitated by other countries. I believe that only Sweden has some regulations that are similar.

The regulation mentions that : No person may make use of commercial advertising directed at persons under thirteen years of age. To determine whether or not an advertisement is directed to a person under thirteen years of age, account must be taken of the context of its presentation, and in particular of the nature and intended purpose of the goods advertised; the manner of presenting such advertisement; the time and place it is shown.

Advertising in schools In 1999, in Quebec some companies tried to integrate some type of advertisement into schools in exchange for some very needed material such as computers, sport installation, etc. For a while it did work in some schools mostly in English speaking schools but finally the pressure from parents and other groups was so important that it all stopped.

Media education in Canada Media education is in the curriculum of every level of primary school and high school in Canada except for Quebec that has included media education only into primary school curriculum. Starting in September 2005, it will also be intergrated in the high school curriculum.