A month or two back in Ottawa, ministers from a couple of dozen countries got together for a big forum on “culture”—and, more specifically, on how to protect each “distinctive national culture” from being swamped by the global dominance of America. It might have been interesting to hear the American perspective on this but America wasn’t invited—because, said Canada’s Heritage Minister sniffily, there was no U.S. cabinet minister responsible for culture. Which is to say that even Bill Clinton’s Washington doesn’t think it worth appointing a cabinet secretary whose job it is to attend first nights.

It’s an object lesson in the pitfalls of trying to protect “culture.”

Anyway, with America absent, Canada and co. were free to devise new ways to ward off the sulfurous odors of Hollywood, as manifested by, say, the blockbuster Titanic. Who directed Titanic? A Canadian, James Cameron. Who sings its ubiquitous theme song? Another Canadian, Céline Dion. Indeed, Mlle. Dion, who spends most of her time south of the border these days, is one of the principal beneficiaries of the dirigisteDominion’s present regime of cultural protectionism. Under Ottawa’s onerous “Canadian Content” regulations, 30 percent of the music played on every radio station must be homegrown—which means that, whether your format is rock, easy listening, country, or Gregorian chant, you wind up through necessity expending a lot of your airtime plugging Céline’s themes for American movies. It’s an object lesson in the pitfalls of trying to protect “culture.” Let us