Friend of mine has dual citizenship. His bachelor's was in Canadian Studies. He told me once that to understand Canada, you need to understand that 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. Canada is a sovereign nation. I would never suggest otherwise. But as a sovereign nation, it is often culturally and economically beholden to a much more influential neighbor. Economically, demographically and politically speaking, California has more influence on world affairs than Canada. I had a (Canadian) film producer point out to me once that from an export standpoint, Chile has more more media distribution than Canada. When was the last time you saw a Chilean film? Heard a Chilean song? Read a Chilean book?
Ya I’m honestly not sure the last time I watched something Canadian other than a few things my friends have made and basically all my friends who graduated college/did something with their lives are in the industry so that probably says something. Come to think of it, the habit of pointing out when something was filmed in Canada but set in America is kind of weird. We do it all the time, like hey that’s Canada ! but they’re pretending it’s somewhere else because nobody would care otherwise. Damn.
That's because Canadian Content laws make it vastly cheaper to shoot in Canada than in California. And we hate you for it. Had a chat with the DIT on Tron. Producers wouldn't let him bring his own assistant - he had to hire a Canadian assistant. DIT didn't want a Canadian assistant, he wanted the guy he'd been working with for ten years. Offered to take a pay cut to pay the assistant out of his own share - talkin' $550 a day for four months. Was told by the production that they were saving so much in incentives that it would cost them money for him to pay his assistant himself. Next movie out? Yeah, they went with the Canadian assistant as DIT.