The Canadian Radio-Television Commission came into being as a result of federal government legislation enacted in 1967 and coming into force in 1968. It was the culmination of more than 30 years of wrangling amongst radio and television broadcasters, their stakeholders, and politicians, and it has since become the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
Many committees and commissions had been struck by Canada's Parliament since 1928 to address the issues of radio, and eventually television, broadcasting. During the period 1936 to 1958 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was both the national broadcaster and regulator of other broadcasting undertakings. Being both a broadcaster and regulator was seen as a conflict of interest and the Board of Broadcast Governors was created to oversee the regulatory side of the broadcasting industry. Even the BBG had problems with political gerrymandering and, eventually, in 1965, the Fowler Committee was struck to see if anything could be done to remove political clout from the regulatory process. Fowler noted in his report that the Broadcasting Act of 1958 gave only five words of instruction to the CBC as to its mission. The CBC was charged with "operating a national broadcasting service" and, Fowler continues, "this is all the guidance given to those charged with the responsibility for administering the public broadcasting agency. If this interpretation has failed to conform to the wishes of Parliament, it is clear where the responsibility rests."
The final document prior to the creation of the CRTC was the White Paper produced by the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films, and Assistance to the Arts and released in March 1967. The paper made several points. First, there were problems with the regulatory structure. The powers of the BBG were ill-defined and the role of the CBC was unclear. Second, the Committee rejected the Fowler proposal that the CBC and the BBG be reconstituted as one board.
Finally, the Paper made an explicit mention that the "Canadian broadcasting system, comprising public and private sectors, must be regarded as a single system which should be regulated and controlled by a single independent authority." This was in direct contradiction to the thoughts of Alphonse Ouimet who, in particular, had been urging for years that the Government give "de jure" recognition to the fact that Canada had a dual system of broadcasting and also in contradiction to Dr. Stewart, who felt that the regulator was to be formally acknowledged as the regulator of the private sector only.
This contradiction of thoughts was a repetition of the contradictions incurred in the development of broadcasting policy over the forty years from 1928 to 1968. The government's first broadcast venture, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, was created by a Conservative government; dismantled by a successor Liberal government and replaced with a much stronger and more effective operating body, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The first separate regulatory body, the Board of Broadcast Governors, was created by a Conservative government; dismantled by a successor Liberal government and replaced with a much stronger and more effective regulatory body, the Canadian Radio-Television Commission.