As traditionally self-effacing people plagued with an unrelenting inferiority complex compounded by the cultural imperialism characteristic of our big brother to the south, we Canadians remain complacent, if not plain shameless, about our lack of identity.

The only thing particularly signature to our national personality is our second-fiddle, or better, second-rate mentality. Describing something as ‘so Canadian’ is basically saying it reeks of poor quality – a common consumer reference made to Canadian film and TV.

I remember when I first started working at Playback, my mother asked me why Canadian TV always looks so obviously Canadian.

My answer then was pretty much the same as it is now: budgets and talent. Only, what I’ve started to think about lately, especially after watching the runaway campaign evolve over the last year, is the role of Canadian identity, or lack thereof.

What is so obviously Canadian about Canadian productions is what I’ve come to think of as this flat-line sensibility, representative of little for us to identify with.

Unlike regional newscasts, and more to the point Quebecois TV and film, which effectively reflect a distinct Quebecois culture and sensibility, English-Canadian film and TV speak more to a cultural stereotype that says, at best, that we’re distinctly pedestrian – a frightful juxtaposition to the sexy, colorful, cosmopolitan world reflected through the high production values of American film and TV.

The truth is, a distinct culture we don’t have, a championed identity is far from our vernacular, a self-sustaining economy is not a reality, and while we’re pretty complacent about all this (despite marginal attempts to put ourselves on the map), the U.S. production and broadcasting industries need it to stay this way.

The second we’d start to identify with our own culture – the second our culture could translate into hardy entertainment the way it has in Europe, in Australia, in Quebec – is the second we start becoming more self-reliant on our own programming and paying less for theirs.

As it stands, no other country relies so heavily or pays so much for U.S. programming as Canada. We are the prime market for our southern neighbors, not just because we share the same language, but also because we mooch off their culture for lack of our own.

Canadians, for example, dole out hundreds of thousands for an episode of U.S. TV compared to the $50,000 or so the British and Germans pay.

And for that reason alone, the annual L.A. screenings have become all about the American distribs wooing the Canadians casters – a dichotomy that certainly would not exist if our goal to create our own star system and marketable programming was actually achieved.

So perhaps the U.S. service industry should stop to consider for a minute that for all the business it claims to lose to Canada, our lack of identity has always been and continues to be their greatest countervailing duty.