How Did Canadian Government Use The Pressure To Protect Canadian 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.

The 1920s was an exciting time for broadcasting technology in the west; the possibilities of all that this era had to offer were infinite and with it came much needed regulatory policies. Radio and television broadcasting were at their infancy and no one knew how big this idea of instant, national connection would become. Soon after this, it became apparent that Canadians prominently turned their attention to American broadcasting and, in turn, overlooked their own. This piece of information sparked the birth of regulatory policies and the Canadian Broadcasting Act which would control percentages of original Canadian and foreign content to see to it that Canadians would not lose sight of their culture and that the Canadian broadcasting industries could stay in business. Then again, why should the government have say over what their people are allowed and not allowed to watch, listen to, or enjoy? As it is, times are changing and more and more people are able to download or stream movies to which the government has very little control over. Is the idea that the Canadian Broadcasting Act was originally implemented for, even still necessary? New media has taken over the world, social media is a constant, and even if attempted, people would not be able to get away from the hundreds of advertisements that they see each and every day. The essential control needed to keep Canadian content, culture, and industry thriving is found in the Canadian Broadcasting Act (CBA) to which

Magazines serve as a learning tool to acquire knowledge. Consequently, American magazine mostly portray and promote American’s pop culture and way of life. The Canadian government understands that their domestic magazines needed to be encouraged to promote their own culture as an important touchstone towards protecting their national identity and the cultural values of its citizenry. At that time, only 11 percent sales of domestically published magazines was obtainable in Canada because citizen tends to buy more of American Magazine which sells its own culture and social values to the Canadian citizenry. Therefore, measures adopted such as increase in import tariff, absolute prohibition were applied at their port of entry to further reduce in influx of foreign magazine into their country to protect their drowning magazine industry and their linguistic and cultural

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

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.

Cultural issues are complicated ones to solve. Sometimes it is even tough to express opinions about them. It is an area where one has had to establish one's bona fides before weighing in. The audience has to be assured that the commentator loves Canada more or at least as much as the next person and is willing to stop at nothing to protect our culture. Trade consultants wanting to mine the cultural field are well advised to have a Can-lit or artistic icon as an immediate family member. Otherwise, they need not even bother hanging up a shingle.

Q.2: To what extent do you think the government of Canada was pressured to seek to protect its market because of the financial interests of the Canadian magazine industry?

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

If we take a deeper look, we can see these examples of Canadian reactions against the American tradition of individualism throughout the history of these two countries. For example, when we look at the United States, we can see that Settlers of the American West staked their claims years before a government was around to protect their lives and their property. The people who traveled west for potential profit did so without the comfort of knowing the government would be able to protect them. As a result, personal firearms became a necessity when making the journey in order to protect themselves from Native American attack and possible criminals. However, compared to the Canadian frontier experience, we can see that law came to the Canadian

The early 20th century was a time where many canadians began to be more vocal with their opinions towards the government. Canada’s involvement in the war led many citizens to question whether their government was really looking out for their best interests. To ensure that the people of Canada would continue to support the war effort, Canada began to employ the use of propaganda, mainly in the form of posters. These posters would often depict our enemies to be ruthless savages who were intent on destroying our nation. The government would also hide the many of the negative aspects of war, and would instead focus heavily on the better aspects such as heroic acts

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?