This is 1000% correct. Canada is definitely not defined by "being American", or as Peter Zeihan would say: "passive-aggressively not-American".
Of course, when you're a small nation right next to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it's easy to have your media sphere be overwhelmed by the glut coming from south of the border. This is especially true as institutions like the CBC and NFB have come into increasing irrelevance while the internet replaces them. But this should not be misinterpreted as the country missing an identity or viewing itself as the same as the USA - that's simply not the case.
On a casual viewing, the similarity of external culture looks the same: we have the same shops, the same ugly modern strip malls, etc. We mostly look at talk somewhat the same, certainly in urban centers. But when you dive into the heart of our cultures, we had very different histories, and that's reflected in some big societal discrepancies. The USA is a bit of an outlier in a number of ways, and in many ways Canada resembles Scandinavian countries more than the USA.
Of course, when you're a small nation right next to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it's easy to have your media sphere be overwhelmed by the glut coming from south of the border. This is especially true as institutions like the CBC and NFB have come into increasing irrelevance while the internet replaces them. But this should not be misinterpreted as the country missing an identity or viewing itself as the same as the USA - that's simply not the case.
On a casual viewing, the similarity of external culture looks the same: we have the same shops, the same ugly modern strip malls, etc. We mostly look at talk somewhat the same, certainly in urban centers. But when you dive into the heart of our cultures, we had very different histories, and that's reflected in some big societal discrepancies. The USA is a bit of an outlier in a number of ways, and in many ways Canada resembles Scandinavian countries more than the USA.