The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday edition 25 years ago, a British academic named Richard Collins found Canadians to be a seriously insecure people. The Globe's Konrad Yakabuski writes Mr. Collins figured our cultural elites had one huge chip on the shoulder. "In Canada, there is a pervasive belief that in the leisure habits of its population lies the key to the continued existence of the Canadian state; that Canadian television audiences' viewing of non-Canadian television drama is a deeply destabilizing political force," Prof. Collins wrote. Cancon may have worked as an industrial policy; as a cultural one, it has not. Is our identity as a nation any more threatened for it? When Prof. Collins wrote his book, debates about "Canadian identity" or lack thereof were a staple of the mainstream media. Today, we almost never talk about it. As Canadians, we are secure enough in who we are, and what kind of country we want, that we do not need mediocre TV dramas -- ironically copied from American formulas -- to exist as a distinct people. Not that we ever did. That has always been a trope used by those who have lived off the generous subsidization of domestic programming.