Science and Culture of Canada

According to Andyeducation, the high degree of general economic dependence on the United States determines the specific features of the “science-technology-production” system operating in Canada. Foreign-controlled subsidiaries of TNCs, as a rule, do not engage in large independent R&D projects and carry out mainly auxiliary work on the introduction into production of technologies received from parent companies. Many industrial firms controlled by national capital do not have sufficient organizational and financial resources to conduct large-scale R&D necessary to create and introduce into production fundamentally new products and technologies. As a result, the field of industrial R&D still remains a weak link in the national scientific and technical complex. This also determines the relative lag of Canada from other leading countries in terms of the overall level of spending on scientific and technical activities. In 2000, the share of such costs in GDP in Canada was 1.8% (average for countries – members of the OECD – 2.2%). At the same time, the government in Canada provides more than 51% of all direct spending on science and innovation and, according to comparative studies, provides large tax incentives to R&D companies.

It is noteworthy that Canada is at the forefront in a number of areas of basic and applied research, in which universities and federal research centers play a leading role. Among such areas are nuclear energy, the use of other traditional and non-traditional energy sources; genetics and selection; technologies in the mining industry and in the branches of the timber industry, in the field of transport and telecommunications; medicine and pharmaceuticals; biotechnology; control over the state of the environment and measures to protect it from pollution; development of the resources of the oceans. The state in Canada does not make large expenditures on military research and development, and military production itself does not make up a large share in the economy here.

In 2002, with the participation of representatives of federal and provincial authorities, business organizations, universities and non-profit research centers, the so-called. An innovation action plan, the financial parameters of which were subsequently enshrined in the economic program of the federal government. By 2010, it is planned to achieve that Canada entered the “top five” in terms of R&D development; at least double federal spending on R&D; take leading positions in terms of the share of qualitatively new goods and services in the total amount of sales of private companies. The federal budget program for 2003-04 stipulates the government’s obligations to increase allocations for R&D in state scientific institutes and university centers within 5 years, to strengthen support for R&D and innovation activity in the business sector.

The Canadian concept of multiculturalism can be characterized as a balancing act between collective and individual rights. Traditionally, more than in the United States, the recognition of the “collective rights” of certain groups (aboriginal, ethno-cultural minorities) provides a positive difference to Canadian society. Assimilation, on the one hand, and socio-cultural isolation of ethnic groups, on the other hand, the Canadian concept of multiculturalism opposes the possibility of integrating various groups that retain their special ethno-cultural identity into a single, distinctive (in its diversity) all-Canadian society. This primarily applies to the “founding peoples of Canada” – French Canadians and Anglo Canadians. Both of these peoples created their own special culture – literature, dramaturgy, folklore and modern music, national schools of painting,

The original culture of the French Canadians is a people that has developed over more than 300 years of isolated development in a specific North American natural environment and more than two centuries of political, economic, and in many ways cultural isolation from France. During a century and a half of French colonization (1608 – 1763), only 10 thousand settlers settled in Canada (of which only 1,100 were women, so a significant part of the first settlers married Indian women). After the conquest of Canada by Great Britain (1763), their descendants, numbering by that time 70 thousand people, already considered themselves Canadians, and French immigration to Canada practically ceased. The French-speaking population also included a part of the British soldiers settled here from among the Scottish highlanders-Catholics, as well as the Irish, assimilated with the French Canadians on the basis of a religious community. Most French Canadians in everyday life use the local version of the French language, which has developed on the basis of the old northern French dialect, with many archaisms, Anglicisms and borrowings from Indian languages, as well as “Canadianisms” that have already arisen here. This language, nicknamed “joual”, penetrated fiction, especially poetry, and subjugated drama and cinema so much that Quebec films are often shown in France with subtitles.

The musical folklore of French Canadians is largely different from French: dance melodies (“riley”) clearly show their Scottish origin. The creativity of contemporary French Canadian chansonniers is highly valued. French Canadian authors composed both the music and the original text of the all-Canadian anthem (“O Canada!”); in “French” Canada, the all-Canadian symbolism was also born – the image of a maple leaf on the coat of arms and flag of the country.

The presence of the French-Canadian cultural element in the country is felt everywhere, and, according to many culturologists, it is the main factor of Canadian identity that sharply distinguishes Canadian society from American.

Another “founding people” – the Anglo-Canadians – arose a century and a half later than the French Canadians, and took shape in completely different political and demographic conditions – gradually, in constant contact and with demographic “feeding” from the historical homeland – Great Britain and the English-speaking neighbor – the USA. Meanwhile, its basis in con. 18th century laid the so-called. “Loyalists” are immigrants from the United States who “did not want to become Americans” and during the American War of Independence supported the British army, and after its defeat fled to the lands not yet inhabited by the French Canadians in Canada, which remained behind the British Empire. Later, new settlers from Europe were added to them, but the “loyalist” spirit of law-abidingness, conservatism, adherence to British culture and independence from the United States was preserved.

In terms of phonetics, vocabulary and spelling, Canadian English occupies an intermediate position between British and American.

Much less commercialized and European-style more restrained Anglo-Canadian literature, cinema (however, here the primacy belongs rather to Quebec, where several world-class film masterpieces were created) and a kind of national school of painting, leading from the famous “Group of Seven” – an undoubted contribution Anglo-Canadians into world art. In the folk music of “English” Canada (especially in its eastern part), as, indeed, in other genres of art, and even in many features of the national character of the Anglo-Canadians, the influence of the Scottish element is clearly visible: the proportion of Scots among immigrants from the British Isles in Canada is higher than in the US (whereas the share of the Irish is slightly lower). The Scottish component is especially noticeable in the local culture in Nova Scotia, as well as in Manitoba,

Of particular concern to Canadians is the cultural expansion of the United States. The country is flooded with American fiction, magazines, films, radio and television. The question arose about the national identity of Canadians who do not want to turn into residents of the province of American culture. Meanwhile, multi-ethnic Canadians have their own vibrant and original musical culture, developed folklore, literature and press in 60 languages, their own schools of painting, developed ballet and other genres of theatrical art, and cinematography. The federal government of Canada, like the authorities of many provinces, is taking measures aimed at protecting and developing the national culture of the peoples and ethnic groups inhabiting Canada.

Education of Canada