> The perspective of Canada is useful here. Canada is culturally dominated by the US, with a 10x larger population only an hour’s drive from the majority of the Canadian population. Canadians are generally supportive of some level of government protection for the fragile and tiny Canadian cultural industry (music, the press, TV, and film).
Like with anything "cultural", this depends on who you ask. I'm Canadian I don't support any form of government interference in speech and "cultural" matters. I don't feel "dominated" by USA culture, and I live in a border city where it is common for people to live on one side and work on the other, where people have family on either side of the border etc. where our traditional media broadcast (tv and radio) are a mix of local and American.
This is just my personal opinion, of course... but if our "cultural industries" are so fragile that they can't compete with other artists across the border, then that is their own fault and it indicates that haven't earned the right to my attention. I don't base my choice on what media to absorb on superficial criteria like the country of origin. Especially in the age of the Internet where my choices are literally global.
The real cultural difference here, in my opinion, is constitutional. Such media regulations would likely be considered a violation of the First Amendment in the USA. The idea that we have regulatory bodies setting rules around what kinds of information we can be exposed and under what circumstances to is a violation of everything that I believe in and I will never vote for any politician that favours this sort of government overreach.
So while you're not necessarily wrong in your generalization about the "perspective of Canada" (depending on which Canadians you speak of), as an individual Canadian I say "speak for yourself."
>if our "cultural industries" are so fragile that they can't compete with other artists across the border, then that is their own fault and it indicates that haven't earned the right to my attention.
It would be great if the cream would always rise to the top but that's just not how it works. The entertainment industry is marketing driven. More money means more marketing and being US based means more reach. Entertainment industry consolidation among massive US conglomerates becomes a self perpetuating cycle. Once they are big enough, those corporations start lobbying the government to make rules in their favour (ie copyright extension) that affect people globally.
I'm not advocating full protectionism, or anything close to it, but lets be realistic. It's not a level playing field out there.
>where our traditional media broadcast (tv and radio) are a mix of local and American
I'm not sure if this is an argument for, or against. Those local TV and radio stations are huge beneficiaries of certain protectionist measures. And the fact you don't feel "dominated" by US culture could also be seen as a sign the existing measures are working.
(I realize that Canadian media is also dominated by a few big corps, and that deserves its own discussion but the general idea of helping local cultural industries compete with US ones is sound IMHO)
Also Canadian. You seem to be saying "As long as I am entertained I don't care whether the entertainers are my peers, cultural or otherwise, or the serfs in some content factory in some lawless backwater."
You definitely don't speak for us all, whatever the case.
> You definitely don't speak for us all, whatever the case.
That was my point. No one can make broad generalizations about "the Canadian perspective." Like everyone, everywhere, we are all individuals. As such, those who speak of "the Canadian perspective" are not representing everyone in Canada. They can't. They certainly don't speak for me.
> "As long as I am entertained I don't care whether the entertainers are my peers, cultural or otherwise
Pretty much. Although I wouldn't use the words "serfs in some content factory." That choice of language speaks to an ideological bent that is VERY far removed from my own. But if I buy a music album that was recorded by a band based out of British Colombia, for example, they are no more "my peers" than if they were a K-Pop group based out of South Korea.
Culturally? Culture is a matter of individual choices and preferences. One Canadian does not speak for another. So we're going in circles now.
> You definitely don't speak for us all, whatever the case.
Yeah OP doesn't speak for me either. While this might not be implemented in the best way, Canadian culture is a real thing, but only because we are active in trying to protect it.
And it goes double for French Canadian culture! I don't want my province to become another Louisiana, i.e.: a once French speaking region that is now nearly 100% anglophone, but hey there's this great French influence!
Also FB puts news orgs in a bind because in order to compete, they need to give their content away for free on Facebook.
This has put the squeeze on an industry that was already bleeding money from all the ads moving online.
Because we are a small news market, this has been especially damaging to our journalism industry. If we lose it then it will be foreigners telling us what the 'facts' are in our own country, no thanks.
Aren’t the French Canadians notorious for buying and consuming their own culture?
Friend of mine here in the bay area is French Canadian and his teenagers (both full Americans born here) both watch and follow French Canadians on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
He explained to me that under Canadian law, absolutely none of that is Canadian Content or Culture. No subsidies, no quotas. Even a Denis Villeneuve movie isn't either.
Apparently, to watch original content in French he has to VPN in Canada to be allowed to watch content that's only produced in Canada for French Canadians by CBC; they won't even make the smallest attempt at exporting it.
Quebec is basically a confederate state that periodically holds a brexit referendum to threaten the rest of the country, and we all kiss their ass for a while and (so far) the secession No votes win out, for twenty years or so, rinse, repeat.
The cancon rules play out in absurd ways on a regular basis; there was a case where a Bryan Adams album didn't qualify but an Aerosmith album did due to where it was recorded, and while I never looked too closely at either case I'm sure there was some bureaucratic discretion exercised somewhere along the way.
That said, Cancon will always get my vote, I think we do have a distinct set of musical conventions from other places and it's got a lot to do with the government assistance.
Well, they have racist laws aimed mainly at a specific group, and they literally have voted twice in my life about leaving Canada and shortly before I was born they had an IRA style terrorist group called the FLQ.
It's a pretty loaded situation.
Cause we're neither French nor English
Parle Anglais ou Francis
We hate each other like the plague
And we hope it stays that way
That's not at all like the US Confederation or Civil War.
> they had an IRA style terrorist group called the FLQ.
Did they actually get convicted under terrorism laws? From my understanding, it was a series of mailbox bombing, some of them by the feds themselves. [0] Nothing remotely looking like 9/11.
The laws in question are framed as secularist, but aimed at Muslims who dress differently. I daresay nobody who wears a crucifix in that highly catholic province is going to get much hassle, but wear a hijab, on the other hand...
I'm not particularly interested in a contest of anti-wit where you try to convince me the government of Quebec are actually superduper committed anti-religionists and I get increasingly frustrated, but I definitely consider it a law based in racist motivation and which is playing out in a highly racist way, just like the crack laws down there in the 90s were targeted at black people. Superpredators and all that.
Anyways I'm not sure what you're after here - is it that, the Confederate South was the pinnacle of racism? And nothing should ever be compared to it, because that's insulting to the pride of the generations of Southern Racists who have worked very hard to successfully maintain an aura of abject Hun-like barbarism against a tide of woke PCism that grows ever more powerful?
Am I making you feel like maybe, as an American, your racism is maybe not as remarkable as you think it is, and in fact, is just another case of US exceptionalist ego tripping? I mean, let's face it, Jefferson Davis was no Hitler, and neither is whoever is running Quebec right now, they're all just boring assholes throwing red meat to their boring fans.
And lest you think I'm some sort of Anglo nationalist, no, I live on Treaty One Territory and I despise my own government just as much for the exact same reasons. It's the same everywhere, dude - you people just have more guns and less self-control about it.
The law specifically bans the wearing of religious symbols or garb, is my understanding, for gov employees.
But the question is not what the law says, but how it is applied, and to whom, which gets lost in the transition to the paper trail.
edit: A good way to think about it, IMO, is to remember for a moment that everything a politician does is performative - whether they believe it or don't, every public action is actually a pantomime which is intended to please or appease. With that in mind, who is Quebec pleasing or appeasing with this law? Atheists? Please.
Another comparison one could draw, and perhaps a more apt one than the confederacy, would be to Utah, where it's known that if you try to do business there, it is not a secular government and you need to either bribe or work around the church. Quebec enjoys a similar license to pass shit laws/policies that do not pass the Charter, and the feds do nothing because they'll just have another referendum about it.
As an American, it’s strange seeing this discussed so openly.
In the US, any notion of “protecting the culture” is considered taboo. Implying that outside influence would not be your peers, and using terms like “serfs in some content factory in some lawless backwater” would be considered downright racist.
Personally, I can see value in keeping a thriving industry locally (which, again, is almost taboo in the US). I wonder how this compares to countries like, say, Japan or South Korea, which have thriving entertainment sectors of their own. Do they also have protection laws to enable this, or are they able to maintain this organically?
I can see why people steeped in capitalist ideology, using phones built with child slavery, might not want to talk about the lawless backwaters where they do business. Discussing our own personal, sleek, pretty, touchscreen-having artifact of child slavery and how we all have one in our pockets would definitely make the people who own stock in the slave mine (edit: and that would be anyone with a retirement plan, more or less) uncomfortable.
I seem to recall your president talking about "shithole countries" and to be clear, I do not mean countries.
We have lawless backwaters right here in Manitoba. It's not a question of this or that geographical location, but of the willingness of capital to find the most lawless place it can find in which to operate, and the willingness of governments to be bought out of doing anything about it.
My countryman wants his entertainment cheap at any cost, and that's the entirety of the problem we've got right now. The most destructive weapon I've seen in the last forty years is price tags.
Just rereading this, and I have to say, that was the most vague and noncommittal version of "the left are the real fascists" that I ever read lol
Anyone who thinks there should be laws against child slavery, and that we should not do business with people who use child slavery, I'm going to agree with that person on that point. I have a lot of other things that I think we should prohibit people from doing business with as well, but let's start with child slavery, since we are all active users of it, right?
It's timewasting to try to keep going with this, but it is nonetheless fascinating, the level of cognitive dischord in the rhetoric. A ransom is paid to someone who has taken something that belongs to you; implying that Facebook somehow inherently has the right to do whatever they like, wherever they like, and if our appointed public representatives decide they have something to say about that, the brigands are the ones who legitimately have the right to set policy for how business is done in our country.
It's not quite a gish gallop, but the time investment to engage directly is far too high.
>No, I just believe that force is only justified in response to force. Problem?
So yes, I am implying that Facebook has the right to offer an internet service to Canadians, and you are violating the above principle with your ransom. News that hurts your feelings is not force, as much as you’d like it to be.
IMO this is a bogus perspective. Any culture activity ultimately needs curation or you end up with shit.
I am an American that grew up near the border and always listened to Canadian radio because it was so much more diverse musically. The only thing that could compete was local college radio because it was heavily subsidized by student tuition.
Otherwise, you end up with the lowest common denominator of shit with culture competing in an open market.
The alternative is great if you just want to watch super hero movies and listen to pop music all day.
This is a fair comment. I ought to have clarified that I was indeed making a gross generalization. I share your perspective on the creative arts; I don’t care where it comes from, if it’s good.
> I don't base my choice on what media to absorb on superficial criteria like the country of origin
Other countries, including the USA, advertise and hype their own content. Your preferences are deeply influenced by the country of origin, because advertising works.
> Other countries, including the USA, advertise and hype their own content. Your preferences are deeply influenced by the country of origin, because advertising works
This bill isn't blocking American advertising in Canada. It's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Like with anything "cultural", this depends on who you ask. I'm Canadian I don't support any form of government interference in speech and "cultural" matters. I don't feel "dominated" by USA culture, and I live in a border city where it is common for people to live on one side and work on the other, where people have family on either side of the border etc. where our traditional media broadcast (tv and radio) are a mix of local and American.
This is just my personal opinion, of course... but if our "cultural industries" are so fragile that they can't compete with other artists across the border, then that is their own fault and it indicates that haven't earned the right to my attention. I don't base my choice on what media to absorb on superficial criteria like the country of origin. Especially in the age of the Internet where my choices are literally global.
The real cultural difference here, in my opinion, is constitutional. Such media regulations would likely be considered a violation of the First Amendment in the USA. The idea that we have regulatory bodies setting rules around what kinds of information we can be exposed and under what circumstances to is a violation of everything that I believe in and I will never vote for any politician that favours this sort of government overreach.
So while you're not necessarily wrong in your generalization about the "perspective of Canada" (depending on which Canadians you speak of), as an individual Canadian I say "speak for yourself."