*Robert Lantos in 1998 following the announcement The Sweet Hereafter had been nominated for two Academy Awards

As the Hollywood studios go more and more into blockbuster overdrive, risking bigger and bigger budgets on safer and safer formulas, they leave the making of films that tell strongly felt stories, by filmmakers with a personal vision, more and more to us.

As for comparing The Sweet Hereafter to Titanic as the Globe and Mail needs to do – what better way to impoverish the senses than to compare cherries and watermelons, and then to find the cherries wanting on the sheer basis of size. What about flavor, texture, color and sweetness? Serious adults around the world are starved for films about human beings. They may be fewer in number than the popcorn-munching teenagers Hollywood depends on to sustain its extravagant ambitions.

From the United States to Europe to Latin America to the Pacific Rim, audiences are paying to see Canadian motion pictures. They may not justify hundred-million-dollar budgets, but we don’t make hundred-million-dollar movies.

If you add up the total cost of every Canadian film made last year, you won’t get to $100 million.

Measured on the most viable yardstick, return on investment, The Sweet Hereafter is a commercial success.

And it has managed to achieve this on its own terms, without the slightest artistic compromise, and without forcing its studio, in this case Alliance, to take outrageous risks and to bet the farm to finance it.

We are happy to trade the theme park rides and the lunch boxes for low financial risk and high artistic integrity.

*Robert Lantos speaking at the Canadian Club, February 16, 1998

Some of our Canadian free-market champions believe you shouldn’t protect yourself. It seems necessary to state the obvious: only idiots don’t take measures to ensure their own survival and prosperity.

*Robert Lantos, February 1998

Mass culture is the lifeblood of a nation. The fundamental question at stake is: do we or do we not want to remain a nation? Do we share enough values and goals, and do we have the political will and the pride to maintain a distinct country on the northern half of the continent?

Ultimately, the people of Canada and their elected representatives will have to decide.

As film and television producers, we can ensure that Canadian kids grow up with stories that are set in a familiar society, with its own geography, climate, politics and values on issues like race, guns, medicine and capital punishment – issues where we don’t share the values of our neighbors to the south, and don’t aspire to their way of life.

Yet that is the way of life shoved down our throats and, more importantly, our children’s throats, on television and in the movie theaters – more so in Canada than anywhere else in the world.

I’m sure many of you have had experiences, as I have, that bring home the problem. Ask your kids to name Canadian prime ministers, without counting Diefenbaker, the dog on Due South. They will probably be able to name more presidents of the United States.

Have you ever grilled them on their whereabouts the night before, and had them put up their hands and ‘plead the Fifth’?

It’s this slow suffusion of assumptions, based on a foreign culture and institutions, that will make it difficult to keep and develop all the things we cherish about Canada. We have a right to create a climate which embraces who we are.

We can ensure that our creators have a platform to express themselves, to tell our stories, both at home and around the world.

This does not come cheap – although it’s significantly cheaper than maintaining a standing army whose ability to defend our vast country from attack by a superpower is, to say the least, highly questionable.

The really effective defense system is our cultural identity. If we love our way of life, we owe it to ourselves to ensure our cultural vitality.

That is the best defense we have.

Unquestionably, it would make more economic sense simply to join the United States and forget all this anxiety about who we are. But for me, and I believe for most of you, that’s too big a price to pay.

If we are going to remain a country, and I believe that we will, then we must have pride and dignity. This we can only have if we have our own identity. Mass culture is the currency of national identity. It’s not something static, to be stored in a museum. It’s a living, breathing, organic thing, part of our daily lives.

And it costs money. If we are to continue as a nation, then we must have the resolve to invest in our culture, and the heart to protect it.

That heart is beating more strongly all the time. We have proven that we can speak a language that links us. We have proven that we have something to say to the world.

And we have proven that we can compete, on our own terms, and win.

*Robert Lantos, February 1998

Unlike many native-born Canadians, I have always believed that this is the greatest country in the world. I believe that the inferiority complex that infects Canadians is the single largest factor that holds us back and prevents us from achieving our full potential as a country.

Some of you may have seen a column in the Toronto Sun recently by Peter Worthington. He was writing about a Canadian television show which he had screened only because someone sent him a cassette and insisted that he watch it.

Surprise, surprise, he had found it excellent! Usually, he said, just knowing it’s Canadian would be enough to make him avoid it completely. That’s his loss.

Paul Gross is one of the success stories of our industry: a homegrown star who, through a Canadian television series, has acquired a worldwide audience.

Due South is the single most successful Canadian series of all time, both at home and abroad. For example, it’s the top-rated foreign series on the bbc.

So things are changing.

The growth of our film and television industry has been staggering, especially in television. Today, more than 15 million Canadians are watching at least one hour of Canadian fiction programming on television every week: Emily of New Moon, Due South, Traders, This Hour has 22 Minutes, Air Farce, Once a Thief, North of 60 and Cold Squad are a few examples. We are now the world’s second-largest exporter of television programming.

In Quebec, all the top-rated shows are homegrown. Dramas like L’ombre de l’epervier and sitcoms like La petite vie all attract huge audiences, handily beating imported programs. A homegrown movie, Les Boys, is currently out-grossing Titanic in Quebec, with $6 million at the box office since Christmas.

For the last three years in a row, our films – Exotica, Crash and The Sweet Hereafter – have won major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.

Canadian music, magazines and books have never had such high market penetration. Our wines are winning international recognition. Increasingly, ‘Canadian’ is becoming a mark of quality, evoking a sense of belonging.

*Robert Lantos speaking at the Canadian Club, February 16, 1998

The Canadian content industry is disproportionately important to Canada. It is also a disproportionately exciting business opportunity. In the 20-odd years since I began, we have come from humble origins to a multibillion dollar industry. We can go much further and carve out a growing domestic and international market share.