Canadian Magazines

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.

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

The U.S.’ negative dominance has been so damaging to Canadian culture that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, also known as the CRTC has had to step in and implement laws under the 1991 Broadcasting Act of Canada (Branch, Legislative Services). The CRTC says, “One of our goals is to ensure that Canadian broadcasting content meets the needs and interests of Canadians by delivering compelling, high-quality Canadian-made creative content from diverse sources on a variety of platforms (“Content Made by Canadians,” 2016). The role of the CRTC is to ensure that the United States, being the mega country that it is does not overshadow Canadian talent and does not limit the opportunities that Canadians may have when

I think Canada’s own government pressured itself to self-preserve the publishing industry with Canadian driven material along with local publishers in efforts to continue to provide local culture and issues for its citizens. The article doesn’t mention how the Canadian government is helping the publishing industry to reorganize, in order to compete with American magazines. This area may be where the problem lies and probably wasn’t assessed until US magazines came into the picture. But if Canada wants to continue to maintain the small percentage of Canadian magazines they should be looking at

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

Canada is a nation that is at risk of losing its own unique culture as a direct result of the globalization of popular culture. Canadian identity is defined by Canadian culture, but as Canada becomes increasingly international, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a specific, distinctive Canadian identity. The spread of popular culture has proved to be challenging to Canadian identity as Canadian culture is being eroded due to the forces of globalization. Canadian books, magazines, songs, films, radio, and television are slowly fading into the background as they are taken over by more mainstream media. Specifically, much of the media that is taking over Canadian content originates from the United States.

Another important aspect of Canada is socioeconomics of culture. Historically, Canada had major economically ties with French, American and British countries which has had major influences on their cultural traditions. Canada is a melting pot of different nationalities, ethnic groups, and languages. However, Canada's cultural traditions, languages, and religious beliefs are directly link to British and the French. The most prevalent religious beliefs and practices in Canada is deeply rooted in Christianity, although Atheism is on the rise (“Guide To Canada - Etiquette, Customs, Culture & Business.” n.d.). Canada's value principles are ingrained into the economic systems which promotes fairness, equality, and social justices for all citizens.

Is it fair to levy extra taxes against foreign magazines—which have the effect of forcing Canadian purchasers of foreign magazines to subsidize local publications?

Some people—almost exclusively non-Canadians—refer to Canada as “America’s hat.” Many shared aspects of national identity characterize the relationship between the two nations: security, language, culture, media, even the foundation of the two countries, each springing from different times and in different capacities from the bonds of British rule. Canadian institutions, hoping to maintain a distinct Canadian identity, have set to preserving inherently Canadian features of culture. For example, as per the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), 35% of broadcasts on Popular Music radio must be Canadian content. The Commission also offers incentives to TV networks that encourage airing Canadian television content during

According to the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, in Section 2 a) and b) “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms a) freedom of conscience and religion; b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” (Government of Canada). Canada is a unique and different by the several cultures the nation is surrounded by. Religion has a huge impact on numerous Canadians in general. “We put an offering in the water and pray, and we don’t pray like Christians either,” the grandmother and the boy thought there was a creator not a Christian god (Bruyere, 94). Canada is an exceptionally supportive nation to its citizens.

So magazines can lead to culture and culture being lost. 2. To what extent do you think the government of Canada was pressured to seek to protect its market because of the

Due to the much larger market the American magazines cater too, American magazines can provide much lower advertisement prices, making it harder for the meagre Canadian domestically run magazine market to compete. For this reason, Canada has to resort to protective tariffs to protect it. However, even that was not enough with the advent of global media, forcing Canada to redefine what they considered a split-run magazine and impose even harsher taxes to prevent their Canadian run magazines to be forced out of

“To what extent do you think the U.S.-Canadian magazine dispute was motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture?”(Uopeopleedu, 2016)

The US-Canadian magazine dispute had absolutely nothing to do with any "genuine desire to protect Canadian culture". What is "Canadian culture" anyway. I'm sure if I ask a Franco-phone, an Anglo-phone and a Metis, I'll get three widely divergent answers that will never come close to compromise. The Canadian Government was merely seeking to protect the bank accounts of certain Canadian publishing wigs, bottom line.

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.