Now, Catherine Tasca, the French culture minister, wants Canada to join her country in stopping the flow of 'American" pop culture across the world. Could anyone stop the influence of Rome or Greece at their height? Don't be silly. We are still influenced by these two cultures thousands of years later. So, can we stop American culture from spreading across the globe? No. Besides, we Canadians are guilty of creating a great deal of that "American" pop culture. Hollywood and New York are full of Canadian writers, actors, and other pop culture creators. We are part and parcel of this "American" pop culture. It is our culture to a great extend, although we are also different from the Americans, as they are different from us. Let me go further, the residents of British Columbia are different from those of us who live in Ontario, or those who live in the Atlantic provinces. New Yorkers are different from those in the mid-western states, and they differ greatly from those in California.

The French are afraid that culture will be homogenized through what pours out of Hollywood. The United States is not homogenized, neither is Canada, nor is Mexico, and finally, all of North America is not homogenized culturally. So, Europe surely won't be because the differences there are even greater because of language, custom, traditions (good and bad), climate and inclination.

Mme Tasca met with our counterpart, Ms Sheila Copps. One feels great trepidation at what these two women might be brewing. Sheila Tequila, as someone from Newfoundland once or twice called her, is surely no expert at culture, and what it really means. Culture cannot be artificially preserved. France is a clear example of that. Yet, it appears that for the past two years culture officials in that country have been discussing quietly "common ground" with culture officials from our country. What common ground, one wants to ask?

France insistently preaches national cultural self-determination in Europe, and apparently is beginning to convince a few of its fellow European Union members that they must legislate culture. Thank God that so far the British have refused to buckle under, and we can only hope that Ms Copps is not going to be given the chance to tie us to this narrow French idea of legislated culture.

What does the word culture mean and where does it come from? We must go back to medieval Latin, which gave us the word cultivare, which means to cultivate the land. The metaphorical extension of this word is culture, which came into English from the French culture. In its original form it meant a 'piece of tilled land.'

Well, as any farmer will tell you, if you keep tilling the land and sow the same seeds into it, after a while the land will be exhausted. Good land needs a variety of crops, new seeds of a different kind now and then to stay healthy, even a few weeds here and there. The latter, when plowed under, make good compost. Maybe 'American' pop culture are the weeds that keep the cultural soil across the globe healthy.

We Canadians want to keep our own culture, but we must not try to legislate what it is, how it is to be expressed and how we must use it. If a culture is worth keeping, it will survive (provided it is not eradicated by force). If a culture is stagnant it will not. This writer has always believed that Canada has a vibrant culture, even when people like Margaret Atwood and her generation decades ago berated Canada for being a 'cultural wasteland.' It never was, is not now, and never will be provided the government stays out of the way of the creative flow of our artists. Giving the CBC, for instance, huge new amounts of money is not going to give us more or less culture. Who watches CBC TV? Not the average Canadian, surely. Those of us, who care for good programming  watch PBS from across the border, or TVOntario or its equivalent in other provinces. The only good thing about the CBC is its radio programming. There it has a distinct voice that is worth preserving, but not through an order from the ministry of culture.

The French like to ban all sorts of things. In anticipation for when they finally get DVD television, they have already banned a whole lot of Hollywood DVDs. We surely don't want that kind of censorship in this country. Mme Tasca also would like to see us bring in the same kind TV tax that the French now pay on each television set they own, an equivalent of $100 a year (per set). Almost all Europeans, including the British, pay such a tax, fee or license. The CBC would surely love it, but our laws are different then those in Europe. It would be against our laws, for here it is the people who own the air, not the government. 'Hear this, Ms Copps, and don't forget it, if you don't want to cause a revolution.'

For those of us, who like to read books, France is not exactly competitive in its pricing of books. It forbids discount pricing for this commodity. This makes reading books an elitist affair in her country. While we are not against elitism as such, we Canadians like to read, but not everyone can afford the cost of a book at full price. The French claim that if we had a law similar to theirs, the Chapters affair would not have happened, and a lot of small stores would not have gone out of business. Our reply to such a claim: some small stores did go out of business, some have survived the onslaught of the giants. Why the latter? Because they were forced to become more efficient in their business. Those who could not adapt went under. Let me give an example. The city of Burlington, population 132,000, was the first place in which both Chapters and Indigo opened up. The local book store, A Different Drummer, adapted, changed and, lo and behold, survived. It, by all accounts, should have folded. So much for Mme Tasca's claim.

This summer, the Banff Arts Centre has a French focus at its TV Festival. The French are sending their Comédie Française to Canada, and more such events are planned. The question here arises, "what is the agenda behind this?" Does it not look as if the French are trying to push their culture onto us? While one likes a good cultural exchange between many countries, let us not forget that the French have been famous for pushing their cultural views (and not very gently) onto many peoples right up to the end of the Napoleonic era. They still think they are the arbiters of culture. Enough said.