How Did American Magazines Protect Canada's Pop Culture

Canada as a nation has been striving to characterize itself as more ?Canadian? for decades. This has included numerous struggles and events such as protests, bans, and the creation of the Massey Commission, to encourage national development in the arts, and support major companies like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and National Film Board (NFB). However, this has not been an easy task for the Canadian government, as major influences from below the border (the United States) have been captivating the Canadian audiences by large. American media has had a momentous revolutionizing effect on Canada, even through efforts made to define Canada with its own cultural identity.

For example, most magazines focus on American celebrities and American trends. People’s magazine is very popular, with 3 527 541 copies paid and verified. It’s an American magazine that talks about celebrity gossip. Reader’s Digest is also quite popular, with 4 288 529 copies paid and verified. It’s a general interest family based magazine.1 There is also Twist, a magazine popular among teens. It teaches them about all the different beauty and fashion trends that are currently popular.2 However, these magazines almost never touch upon what’s happening in Canada, as people assume that what’s going on in the USA must also be happening in Canada. While that’s not completely true, events happening in the USA will likely affect Canada in one way or another. Pierre Elliotte Trudeau even stated, “Living next to the United States in some way like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered the beast: one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”3 Finally, Canada covers a lot of what’s happening in the USA but the states don’t do the same with Canada. As Canadian author Margaret Atwood said, “The boarder separating the two countries is like a one-way mirror through which Canadians can see the United States but Americans can’t see

The Canadian government identified magazines as an important touchstone of Canadian natural identify. If the government recognizes this as a national identify, then those who purchase it are showing loyalty to their father land and preserving their culture for the younger generation.

Today Canada and the United States are major trading partners, allies, and two neighboring countries with a long history of cooperation with each other. But is it possible for Canada to protect its independence and culture living next door to the country so powerful and rich as the United States. Since the Canadian confederation, Canada started developing relations with the U.S. As the years passed by, Canada began to relay on the United States in the national defense. Many Canadians think that the military, political and economical dependence would not make a difference to their daily life. But today more then even Canadian culture is affected by the American influence. Media, American artists,

Rules revolving around Canadian Content (CanCon) have been set in place since the 1920’s. In 2005, revisions to the 1991 Broadcasting Act were made. Since this revision was made there have been further changes to the Act trying to create the best set of rules for CanCon to be broadcasted (Dewing, 2011). CanCon is an outdated concept that is causing consumers to switch to other forms of media. The CanCon rules cannot determine what is considered Canadian and they cannot keep up with the ever-changing forms of media. Canadian producers are only getting a slim portion of the industry even with the rules in place. Therefore CanCon rules should be totally eliminated.

Ever since the 1950’s more of the American culture has been known to influence Canadian ways of living through the media.

The government had to find a drastic solution to protect the already low market of domestic magazines in order to avoid the closure of many publishing companies. In front of this danger and under the strong pressure from publishers and employees in the magazine industry, the government of Canada adopted some measures to prevent the entrance of foreign magazines in the Canadian market. The pressure was very strong because the government had to choose between the rights of Canadian business and the agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO) for free market. The numbers speak for themselves and that means that this small percent of consumers cannot express the general culture and the habits of people in Canada.

Canada’s media industries have played a huge role in the Canadian culture. The Canadian culture has integrated with other countries forming a successful globalization. Many countries including the United States have contributed to the success in Canada’s media industries. The success of globalization between all of the countries was predicted by Marshall McLuhan and ever since his prediction, the world can be depicted as a global village. The global village can be viewed as a tool, a tool that is bringing the world together, despite the different languages, locations, and diverse cultures. With new technologies being developed more often, the communication skills between different countries are very successful. Canada’s diversity in their media and policies has established a global village with people around the world, allowing them to relate to the Canadian culture.

I suspect that the real motive of the Canadian government was not to protect Canadian culture in this dispute with the US. But rather, it seemed to concern more with political and economic factors. As appeared in the article, the Canadian government finally gave in and went on to settle the dispute (The Levin Institute, [1]). To me, that seems somewhat irrational to suddenly give up on one’s culture like they did, when the US threated to retaliate with trade barriers. As a speculation, I believe the dispute was motived by political and economic concerns. The Canadian government was attempting to defend the local media from a total domination by foreign media since it implies that Canadian businesses will be paying foreign corporations to have their products and services advertised on a magazine, even when local magazines have the capacity to provide the same type of service. Simply put, the concern seems to be related to the higher outflows of capital.

After the passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, Canada and the other British Dominions gained much independence from Great Britain. For Canada, this newfound independence eventually led to a less dependent relationship with Britain and a stronger relationship with the United States. The United States, partly due to its close geographical proximity to Canada, has influenced and shaped many Canadian cultural and societal components, such as sports, seasonal traditions, music, and social media. Since the passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, Canada’s culture has irrefutably become highly influenced by the United States.

If Canada wants to protect their national identity, they must all embrace each other’s cultures, instead of creating multiple broadcasts that preach one view or culture. Without state governed media, the dominance of US products in Canada would diminish its identity as a nation, fail to serve the public interest and create less profits causing more advertising and less content in the media. Government regulated media proves to be more favourable and beneficial than policies based off of self-regulated solutions when addressing Canada’s media industries and cultural

The Canadian and American magazine dispute about culture is one of the cons of globalization. With globalization, there is a new world culture and it is influenced mostly by America. Some countries can keep their culture while adding other cultures to compliment theirs. Print media being a powerful influencer of a country's culture, Canada saw the United States influence as too strong and wanted to keep their culture intact. The desire to protect Canadian culture was genuine.

It’s a pretty standard sociological equation that Canada has mastered. Free market proponents seem to think that if Canadians want US media, they shouldn’t have a legal choice, and should be forced to accept the violence and crime that seems to follow it. The argument goes that it should be an individual’s choice to view these things and they should also have the decisiveness and discernment to know what is acceptable in society, which makes sense, however, Western influence has a tendency to flood markets without leaving much of a choice in how to make such a decision. Thus, those who would wish to avoid such smut would be forced to see it every time they leave the house as we are here in the

I think that the government could definitely have been pressured to seek protection from for-eign magazines to insure financial stability in the Canadian magazine industry. Even, “As far back as the 1920s, the Canadian government imposed protective tariffs on foreign magazines” (Culture and Globalization n.d.). I think Canada was intimidated by the sales of foreign magazines, so in order for their market to keep up with the others, they had to place a hindrance for the foreign importers. 3 Given that Canadian magazines constitute only 11 percent magazine sales in Canada, how important is this matter to Canadian culture?

Surely, Canadian magazine dispute was motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture. In fact, I heard about several similar occasions of government protection of the culture of a nation. In those cases, it was not the magazines, but movies and tv shows, because they have a greater impact on the culture. So, it is usual for governments to try to protect their culture by reducing an influence of others. I believe that Canada had the same intentions. They wanted to preserve an own culture and were afraid of greater "Americanization" of the country. At the same time, culture protection clearly was not the only reason in Canadian magazine dispute.