Two pioneers of Christian radio believe the future of religious broadcasting is looking better than ever, despite Canada’s reputation as one of the hardest places in the world to get a broadcast licence.

“They’re the Caesar of today,” says Galcom International president Allan McGuirl, referring to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). “But God moves the kings’ hearts—those who are in power—and I believe God’s going to do some great things in the days ahead for Christian broadcasting in Canada.”

“Ninety per cent of the applications for Christian radio stations across Canada have been approved,” adds Prescott Sandhu, who has applied to the CRTC to launch Vancouver’s first multi-ethnic Christian station.

Within recent years, he says, the number of Christian stations has jumped “from a handful to almost two dozen.”

But getting this far has been a struggle.

Based in Hamilton, Ontario, Galcom develops leading-edge broadcast technologies—including a small, solar-powered radio that is tuned permanently to an indigenous Christian station. To date, Galcom has sent a half million radios to pastors and missionaries in 118 countries.

Within Canada, Galcom provides the technological know-how to Christian radio licence applicants. But compared to other countries, McGuirl—interviewed during Vancouver’s Missionsfest 2005—says the CRTC’s approval process can be painfully slow.

“It took us two-and-a-half years to get the licence [for the first station in Fort Vermilion in northern Alberta]. It was only 50 watts. Other countries, in three, six months, we have the whole station licenced,” he says.

Yet when the station was finally approved two years ago in December, McGuirl says they were given only 30 days to get it on the air. “We had to go up and work in 45º Fahrenheit weather, but God gave us the strength and the wisdom, and we [did it].”

One of Galcom’s latest projects is to help the Ojibway Christians of Pickle Lake in northwest Ontario set up Canada’s first-ever domestic medium-wave radio station.

Sandhu, who lives in Edmonton, has launched two low-power, non-profit Christian radio stations—CIAJ in Prince Rupert and CIAY in Whitehorse. Both are part of NewLifeFM.

Sandhu is also awaiting word from the CRTC on an application to bring Christian radio to Kelowna. “We’re praying that it will be a favourable decision. I don’t see why not.”

The Vancouver application, which goes before a public hearing on February 28, promises to broadcast 61 per cent of the time in one of 30 languages other than English. (The CRTC requires multi-ethnic stations devote at least 60 per cent of their broadcasting to ethnic languages.)

“What we’re trying to do,” says Sandhu, “is provide as much music as possible in all those languages and put in little testimonies, so that people will know what a Christian is.”

Sandhu believes Christians need their own radio stations as a way of nurturing one another. “Going to church once a week doesn’t cut it. We need to have music built from the Scriptures that will edify our soul,” he says

But Ned Vankevich, an associate professor of communications at Trinity Western University, doubts whether the government is inclined to help Christians meet that need.

“Secularism in Canadian culture is so strong that I would have a hard time believing that it’s that easy [to get a Christian broadcast licence],” he says.

“If you play Christian music, that’s less upsetting. But once you cross over into the moral marketplace, once you take your religion and bring it to the political sphere, well, then you’re going to have counter-voices arise who don’t want that to happen.”

Still, Vankevich says the type of licence applications McGuirl and Sandhu are pursuing might stand a better chance of approval than some others.

“It’s a trumping of the multicultural card,” he says. “I think the multicultural card trumps the fears that some people might have [about religious broadcasting], or at least allows a stronger form of tolerance.”