Indeed, Quebec nationalists frequently invoke the language of pluralism to inveigh against the homogenizing effects of this or that federal policy. But if pluralism were really what they had in mind, you'd think they would be as keen on multiculturalism as the federal government. They aren't, of course, because multiculturalism clashes with the vigorous monoculturalism that is their true raison d'etre.

The same is true of all forms of cultural nationalism: It isn't really about differences between groups. It's about sameness within the group. To talk of French culture or Canadian culture as distinct from American culture, you have first to imagine such a thing as a culture: a single entity, that is, fortuitously contiguous with national borders, with readily definable features. The exercise is inherently reductionist.

Adventures in Canadian culture, part 2: The Canadian Television Fund, a federal agency, has developed a new set of criteria for deciding which productions are certifiably Canadian, and thus eligible for grants. Henceforth, it will not be enough for a film or program to be made in Canada, by Canadians. It must also depict "Canadian themes." You can see the bureaucrats' dilemma. Previously, much of the funding was going to produce such generic fare as The Outer Limits and Once a Thief, made for sale in the U.S. market with no visible references to Canada. If the fund's purpose were merely to encourage artistic excellence, this would not matter: Indeed it wouldn't matter who made the films, or where. Nor would the absence of obvious Canadianism matter if the fund's objectives were more commercial: to create work for Canadian actors, writers and others in the film business.

It matters only because Canadian cultural policy is not about art or artists, but nationalism. The fund's aim is not to make good films, or even Canadian films, but self- consciously Canadian films: films that will teach us to be Canadian. This is what cultural nationalists mean by "telling ourselves our own stories": the creation of a unified national culture, the better to be contrasted with another. As ever, the chant is diversity, but diversity as a means to a political end: the justification of the Canadian state.

Of course, no one can define what a distinctively Canadian theme is, and it will be fun to watch the bureaucrats try. But it's no less troublesome to define Canadian culture by any other standard. Much present regulation, for example, is devoted to preserving Canadian ownership in the cultural sector, as in publishing or broadcasting.

Beyond the many policy anomalies to which this gives rise -- a Canadian-owned magazine running nothing but American copy qualifies for preferences that would be denied to an American-owned magazine that writes strictly about Canada -- how do we even define Canadian ownership? Is Seagram, which is run out of New York but controlled by Montreal's Bronfman family, a Canadian company? If so, is Universal Studios, its subsidiary?

Adventures in Canadian culture, part 3: Canadian publishers are demanding that a German publisher, Bertelsmann, be prevented from buying the Canadian operations of the U.S.-based publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell, a company it already owns. Why?

Because Doubleday Canada is owned by a Canadian. Well, sort of: The Canadian "owner" is strictly a dodge, a silent partner recruited a few years ago when Bertelsmann took over its U.S. parent, to get around a previous set of Canadian ownership regulations.

Before then Doubleday was wholly American-owned.

So on the basis of a recent and largely fictitious brush with Canadian ownership, Doubleday Canada has been transformed into an idol of cultural nationalism. I guess this is one of the stories we tell ourselves.