How come Canada is so cool? National pride, government dosh, a serious work ethic . . . Jim Carrollon how the rock'n'pop scene north of the US border got a kick-start

Canadian music is hot and, without realising, it, you've probably played a part in this.

Did you maybe purchase an album by Feist or some other member of the extended Broken Social Scene?  Perhaps you went go see (or at least tried to buy tickets for) Arcade Fire on one of their three visits to Ireland in 2007?  Did you read about Sunset Rubdown, Miracle Fortress, Patrick Watson or Cadence Weapon and make a mental note to investigate further? Canada says thanks for the interest - and the cash.

While the country has a long and illustrious musical history (think Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen), lately we've experienced a seemingly endless wave of fresh, exciting, innovative alternative acts emerging.

When examining this explosion of musical talent, naturally there's a temptation to talk up a Montreal scene or a Toronto scene. That was the same default setting to explain what happened when grunge emerged from Seattle, or baggy from Manchester.

But it's not simply a matter of one particular sound dominating. There is very little but nationality to join the dots between Feist and Wolf Parade, for instance. Instead, the current wave of Canadian predominance can be attributable to both the tangible (government funding) and the intangible (that great art of timing).

The green room at the Phoenix theatre in Toronto is a good place to begin an investigation. It's the Polaris Music Prize gala evening, and various nominees for the Canadian Album of the Year prize are talking to reps from the domestic (and Irish) media. Eventual winner Patrick Watson is lightly dismissive about his chances, Murray Lightburn from The Dears is nonplussed about the night, and Graham Van Pelt from Miracle Fortress is just glad to be here.

When the question is asked about the robust health of the Canadian alternative scene, one factor crops up again and again. Generous funding from the Canadian government may not be the first reason given, but it is always cited. The Canada Music Fund was established in 2001 and provides financial assistance to Canadian artists and entrepreneurs for everything from recording and touring to label promotion and artist management.

"You could spend a mint just driving across Canada because it's such a colossal country," says Van Pelt. "You need to get some sort of support or you're going to be down thousands of dollars. Once you figure out how to get that support, you can get it repeatedly. It's very easy to get help once you have any level of organisation."

Arts & Crafts label boss Jeffrey Remedios is familiar with the process. Sitting in the label's boardroom surrounded by gold and platinum discs for Broken Social Scene, Remedios describes the funding as "a massive help", though he does voice some reservations.

"Funding allows us to punch above our weight and we do," he says. "We posture and spend as if we're a huge company. But if you polish up a piece of shit, it's still a piece of shit. The funding doesn't discriminate sometimes when it should. The catch-22 for us was we had to get to a level on our own before we qualified for funding. No one would give us funding for recording or touring when we started. Once we'd sold 50,000 records, though, they were queuing up to give us a cheque."

Remedios says the current burst of creativity can also be attributed to national pride.

"Growing up Canadian, you have a huge inferiority complex because you're not American. It means you need constant external validation, like getting your big brother to say you're cool. But in the last few years, there has been a remarkable maturity. People now say I'm going to make music for my community, my friends, fellow artists in other disciplines because the music which is inspiring them is coming from their own backyard. That sense of security has provided an amazing breeding ground for all these bands to develop and thrive."

The success of Arts & Crafts, though, has a lot to do with their approach to the US. "It makes no sense for all these Canadian bands to spend three days getting from Toronto to Vancouver," Remedios says.

"There are 30 million people within a 10-hour drive of Toronto. Twenty five million of them are across the border so, no disrespect, but fuck Vancouver. Chicago, DC, Boston, Philly, New York are all within 10 hours, so you can work those cities. When you finally go west, you can do Vancouver alongside Seattle and Portland.

"We never sold ourselves as a Canadian label and no one in America batted an eye. They treated us in the same way as if we were an indie from Chicago and judged it on the music from day one and it worked."

According to Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene, new Canadian acts also benefit because they're not locked into the traditional major label process.

"Every band's goal is to get out of Canada. The problem for a lot of bands was they were trying to do that within the major label system and it wasn't working. Because we were independent and weren't shooting for the big time, we could go out to LA and play to 200 kids in a club and consider it to be a triumph. There were so many of us doing these small things that people began to pay attention to the bigger picture."

In Montreal, Gourmet Device from the Bon Sound management company and agency feels that city's musical buzz has benefited from its laid-back atmosphere.

"There's no money here, there's no big industry here," says Device, who look after Farranhavane acts Makable and Legs Breast-feeds, among others. "Elsewhere, people are going crazy running after the cash. Here, it's more about let's have a beer, hang out, make music and have fun. It makes for a more laid-back and artistic environment. Bands have different ambitions and they want to make music and write songs for the right reasons."

Andrew Rose from the Secret City label, home to Patrick Watson and Miracle Fortress, hopes commentators will soon stop concentrating on the geographical location of the acts.

"You don't talk about the New York scene or the Brooklyn scene because there are perpetually turning out hot bands," he points out. "That's the situation we could end up with here. Hopefully, people will focus on the bands because of their amazing music rather than where they're from. I mean, there isn't a Montreal sound. If there are bands who want to sound like Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade, well, they're not very good."

Outside observers tend to view the huge success of Arcade Fire as the moment new Canuck rock exploded, Délice and others on the ground are a little more circumspect.

"The Arcade Fire thing didn't change much," he says. "Sure, it started the Montreal hype, which spread to Toronto, but the bands were all here before that. When magazines started to write about Monteal, though, they concentrated on the Anglophone bands, who just made up 50 per cent of the total. When Malajube started to happen, the hype was extended for another year, and Montreal got another year in the spotlight."

Yet no one doubts the spin-off effects from having all those international industry eyes on the country.

"Sure, we had labels and an industry here before, but they were focused solely on Canada," says Remedios. "We never had an industry here on the scale or of a quality that The Irish Times would be interested in what was going on. That international dimension is a new element."

Drew sees the international success as a pay-off for all that funding and investment. "There is a huge society-wide support in Canada for the arts and now, more than ever, people can see that the funding is working because our music is getting outside of Canada.

"It's no longer just a domestic thing, which is great because we used to be a country which just kept recycling our own shit. Now, there's a lot of eyes on Canada and not just once a year for the Toronto Film Festival. We're becoming more of an attention-seeker, I suppose."