Globalization And Its Impact On Canadian Culture Essay

     First, Canada is being slowly 'Americanized'; in its social identity. When we talk about a country's social identity, we examine a few areas. First is the media, which is constantly bombarding Canadians with images and values of American culture. Through the images we see Americans constantly fighting, either in aspects of global policing in their own backyard with Americans killing Americans.

This unique ability was not only revolutionary for the era in which it occurred in Canada,

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.

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 EXTENT TO WHICH THE US-CANADIAN MAGAZINE DISPUTE WAS MOTIVATED BY GENUINE DESIRE TO PROTECT CANADIAN CULTURE?

ideology (Aulakh, Boyington, Kazarian, & Roberts, 2017, p. 4). In doing, so Canada has become

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.

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 I were the Canadian government, my problem will not be the name of the magazine and where it was published. My major concern will be that, the magazine should carry at least 70% of Canadian life. This will mean, putting in place a medium of censorship. Consequently any magazine that does not fulfill the conditions will be considered a split-run. One of the criteria will be the content of the adverts. A magazine that is carries mainly foreign adverts will be classified as split-run. On the bases of those considerations, all split-run magazines would have to pay higher tariffs or face a ban. It sounds like violation of the freedom of press but a nation must not sit down and watch globalization eat up her culture.

Globalization is the process by which a business or company becomes international or starts to operate on an international level. Globalization does not benefit the majority of the world’s population, including Canadians, and is slowly growing to increasingly deadly proportions. It benefits the wealthy, which are but a minority in comparison to the rest of the population, and leaves the impoverished ones out of the loop. The unsteady flow of invisible money running in and out of countries has our markets operating like roller coasters. Globalization renders our government powerless and leaves them at the mercy of foreign investors. The negative effects of globalization far outweigh and short term gains.

Canada is considered to be a cultural mosaic, where all cultures are embraced opposed to a melting pot where it is expected to adopt one culture. Government regulated media is more favourable than policies based off of self-regulated solutions when addressing Canada’s media industries and cultural needs. Canadians place importance on national identity and without government regulated policies, the content in the media would have minimal Canadian information. According to the Aird Commission, when Canada’s media was operating through private enterprise, many stations expressed conflicting content, however, with state regulated media, broadcasting allows the nation to have a unified vocation. One unified message being sent to the nations citizens is more beneficial than multiple broadcasts on differentiated and insignificant information.

Canadian and American cultural views were different which was proved because one is multicultural and the other is not. Canada was known as “mosaic” which means immigrants from any ethnic group were accepted here and were allowed to practice their religion. Therefore, they have a double identity ,meaning they are their ethnic group before a Canadian citizen as in Japanese-Canadian, Asian Canadian and so on . Whereas ,American culture was known as the “melting pot “, where they accept other cultures however they encouraged their citizens to give up their original culture ( Wells ,10 and 11 ). Canadian’s usually describe themselves as “NOT AMERICAN“(Wells,35) . Many Americans view Canada as a positive nation and as a better environment to live in then the United States . A legal sectary from Gastonia ,North Carolina said “Canada’s such a terrific place, I’d move there tomorrow if I could” (Wells, 35). This proves that Americans want to come to Canada since it is a safer environment due to it’s unique culture. Canadians are recognized as more modest, less aggressive and more down to earth then their southern neighbors (Wells,35).

The Levin Institute (2012) describes the Canadian magazine dispute as an attempt by the Canadian government to protect its culture from the United States and other foreign contributors to magazines. The Canadian government fueled this attempt by imposing extra tariffs, or taxes, on foreign magazine producers. These actions focused highly on the source of content with minimal attention towards the effects of the local culture. The restrictions imposed by the Canadian government, to limit foreign magazines, exhibited a sole desire to limit foreign content. There were no incentives put in place for magazines that supported the culture nor did the government take any action to support the local culture itself.

Having lived in Canada when I was 8 before the US-Canada magazine dispute occurred, I found myself thoroughly engrossed in Canadian culture. It seemed a perfect culture, built to protect domestic interests and despite the potential division between countries, created a safe environment where people were unafraid to leave doors unlocked, due to almost no crime. The peaceful and respectful nature of most Canadians isn’t just a fluke, the country was designed this way, and one of the primary influencers of this strategy is the media. Watching the news in Canada, the focus is positive, the message is positive, there is no forced fear of sense of doom as we see here in the US. Life is about being sustainable, not so much a struggle to the top of the food chain, but working together, instead of separating and segregating groups. That is except the region of French Quebec; however, Quebec is like a whole new country in itself.