Canadian cultural protectionism

Studies and Recommendations

Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada's most famous prime ministers, well expressed the sentiment many Canadians feel about living with the United States: Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or temperate the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

One of the first such responses to perceived American cultural invasion was through the National Film Act of 1950 that strengthened the National Film Board. Its purpose was to help promote Canadian films and give money to projects that would help promote Canadian culture. This, unfortunately, had very little true impact on the situation and led to the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, also known as the Massey Commission.

The Massey Commission advocated the creation of a government sponsored organization that would distribute grants to Canadian artists. This organization, named the Canada Council, helps distribute large sums of money in hopes of promoting Canadian culture. The Council had a greater impact than its parent, and continues to support emerging Canadian cultural talent through grants and other support.

The Massey Commission also foregrounded a general sense that Canada risks being swamped by an invasion of foreign culture, most notably that of the United States. This led to an increased fear that Canada might well lose a distinct, national culture.

Broadcasting Standards

In 1955, with this fear in mind, the government appointed Robert Fowler to chair a Royal Commission that is known as the Fowler Commission. The Fowler Commission reported that the majority of Canadian stations, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, used not Canadian material, but American. It was the Commission's belief that a quota system should be enacted to protect Canadian content on the airwaves.

This recommendation, passed in 1958, shaped Canadian media significantly. It affirmed the CBC as Canada's official broadcasting station and, more importantly, it initiated the quota system. In its inception, the quota system said that 45% of all content broadcast on the airwaves must be Canadian in origin. While this number has fluctuated over the years, it has generally required that approximately half of all programming on Canadian airwaves be Canadian in origin. However, Canadian content includes not only arts and drama, but news and sports, and most private broadcast networks skew towards the latter rather than the former, to allow for large quantities of foreign dramas. To the dismay of many Canadians, this leaves more "culturally" oriented Canadian programming off the major-network airwaves.

This reformation of the Canadian airwaves, according to some, did not have the desired impact on Canadians. T. B. Symons, shortly after the Fowler report's installation in Canadian law, released a report entitled "To Know Ourselves". The report looked at Canadian high-school history books and found that while the Winnipeg General Strike went without mention, the books contained two chapters on Abraham Lincoln. The report also looked at Canadian children's general knowledge of their government and most could not identify the Canadian head of state (Queen Elizabeth II) and the basis for Canada's law and founding (the British North America Act 1867).

This cultural protectionism by the Canadian government has raised the hackles of certain companies, specifically Reader's Digest and TIME.

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