CANADA IN CONTEXT - AN OVERVIEW OF INFORM ATION POLICIES IN 4 INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES

Information policy is a broad area of public policy that governs all a spects of the information life cycle and its related activities. This paper compares historical tendencies in the creation of information po licy in the three countries that have most influenced the Canadian app roach: tire United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The content of policies in industrialized countries has typically been determined by each country's national perspective on economic, cultural, and soc ial issues. In the last two decades nations have experienced a shift f rom these more internally directed policies to policies reflecting ext ernal influences. Thus, analysis of past trends provides a setting for an investigation of recent information infrastructure policy proposal s and an opportunity to compare past and present directions. Current p roposals for the information infrastructure illustrate the departure f rom the national outlook to an international approach, which is driven primarily by a pervasive market-oriented ideology and the interests o f transnational corporations. These proposals, considered in the conte xt of past trends, may precipitate the most dramatic changes in inform ation policy directions for France and Canada.