Over the course of my reading week, I explored the issue of how politics affect archival and other heritage institutions in Canada while writing an essay for my Archives Course. For this essay, I decided to focus on how the Harper government's decisions and budget-cuts affected Canada's largest archival institution- Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
I was interested in pursuing this topic for several reasons. Firstly, in my Archives course and Digital Public History course we had read and discussed about how politics and people in charge can effect historical narratives. Secondly, I have personal experience working at LAC as a researcher during my undergrad and in the summer of 2022. Lastly, any chance I can get to criticize Stephen Harper is a win for me.
Before starting this essay, I had some background knowledge on the topic, but still struggled to know where to look for sources, especially primary sources. I wanted to know more about personal experiences of staff, or researchers who had worked or visited Library and Archives during the time Harper was Prime Minister. For this purpose, I joined the Canadian Council of Archive's listserv and reached out to members across Canada to see if anyone had any stories they would like to share from the Harper era. Unfortunately, I only received one response, which was helpful, but I needed more experiences to piece together the story. Luckily, blogging was very popular in the 2010s when a lot of changes were occurring at LAC and I was able to find several blog posts to use in my essay. I must admit, as someone who is used to writing about topics from the 1800s to 1900s, using a primary source from 2012-2013 felt quite weird. Here are the blog posts I ended up using in my essay:
Besides blog posts and personal experiences, I turned to government documents for additional primary sources to understand what was happening at the top of the chain. I looked at LAC's yearly reports on plans and priorities from 2011 to 2013, LAC's code of conduct for their staff created in 2011, and a document titled Shaping our continuing memory collectively: A representative documentary heritage, written by Daniel Caron, LAC's head archivist of the time. These government sources were extremely interesting to go through, especially after reading blog posts and secondary sources about LAC during the Harper government, as these documents were so formal and attempted to make everything sound like a good idea.. including the extreme budget cuts. These documents were also written by, or oversaw by people from the conservative party chosen by Stephen Harper to control LAC and Canada's heritage institutions. Daniel Caron's role as head archivist was quite controversial as he had no archival background or archive or library related education and James Moore was Harper's Minister of Heritage, but mostly had a background in economics. Reading through these government documents made it clear that neither of these men had any background in archives or the heritage sector.
Through these blog posts, government documents, and other secondary sources, I was able to focus on a few key decisions that were made by the Conservative government and how this negatively affected LAC and other heritage institutions throughout Canada. I firstly commented on how LAC's acquisition and collections policy became increasingly strict as it reflected what Conservatives believed was important to keep for Canada's history. This usually included documents that focused on the European settlers of Canada, military history, ties to Britain, key political events etc. Although these themes are still important to Canada's history, they diminish the voices of Canada's indigenous and other minority populations. Next, I looked at the Conservative government's prioritization on the modernization policy and digitization and how this had great consequences for researchers. It also meant that the Conservatives turned to other private companies to outsource help for digitization projects because their increasingly shrinking budget to LAC could not fulfil the demands of a large digitization project. Finally, I looked at the employees of LAC as hundreds were fired due to budget cuts, and the others who continued to work at LAC worked under strict rules outlined in the 2011 LAC staff code of conduct. This code essentially sought to control staff's freedom of speech and activities they were allowed to attend outside of work, such as conferences, because they were marked as "high risk activities."
Although this topic was extremely interesting to dive into, it also made me very upset and scared. The budget cuts and policy changes made by Harper and the Conservatives ultimately affected how LAC operated from 2006 to 2015. This is almost 10 years and in this period researchers lost access to documents, incredibly knowledgeable staff were forced to take an early retirement, and thousands of historical documents were turned away from being preserved by the archives because they no longer fit the Conservative government's idea of what should be preserved. As someone who is in Public History and hopes to work in a museum, archive or some sort of heritage institution across Canada soon, it makes me hope something like this never happens again.