I am listening to Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto and thinking about Netflix and the end of Canadian culture as I used to know it. And not just Canada’s. Any government that seeks to protect its national culture from the forces of globalization will fail. The digital universe is too powerful.
For this country, the beginning of the end came last Friday, when a Netflix executive told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that it can go to hell. Or words to that effect.
The CRTC is considering whether to fence in the American-owned video streaming service.
John Ibbitson – Globe and Mail – September 25, 2014.
John Ibbitson is a CIGI senior fellow, an award-winning writer and leading political journalist in Canada. Currently on a one-year leave from The Globe and Mail, John is researching, writing and speaking on Canadian foreign policy at CIGI while he works on a new book.