At Naw-Ruz 1974, the Universal House of Justice called upon the Canadian Baha’i community as one of their goals in the Five Year Plan to:
'Cultivate opportunities for formal presentations, courses and lectureships on the Baha'i Faith in Canadian universities and other institutions of higher learning.'
In January, 1975, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Canada invited some thirty individuals to a 'policy conference', a device which the Assembly had frequently and successfully used to find a way of meeting various new challenges. The participants were from various backgrounds and from all parts of Canada, and were selected because it was felt they might contribute effectively to an examination of this particular subject. The conference, which was held at the University of Ottawa …The first and second annual meetings were held at Cedar Glen in Bolton, Ontario from 2-4 January 1976 and 31 December 1976-2 January 1977 respectively, and each was attended by more than one hundred individuals. The third annual meeting took place in Surrey, British Columbia from 30 December 1977-1 January 1978 and the fourth at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto from 26-27 January 1979, This latter meeting was open to the public … (The Baha’i World, volume 15, 1976-1979, pp. 197-198)