The extent I think the U.S.-Canadian magazine dispute was motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture in my view is not clear in the reading material. To me it seems it was motivated by money. Canada saw the Americans slowly dominating from many things to the magazine sector of the economy and therefore Canada reacted. To me it seemed like culture was just used as a reason to impose tax to the foreign magazine or more like a deterrent.
The extent I think the government of Canada was pressured to seek to protect its market because of the financial interests of the Canadian magazine industry was to impose tax at the port of entry and then imposing tax on foreign split-publications. This was mainly because the American magazine started
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Magazines, in a different way from any other medium, can help foster in Canadians a sense of themselves."
But as far as giving the Canadian a choice of picking the publication they prefer to buy, this does not seem to be the case as far as the reading is concerned. It appeared that it was politically driven. For example, the trade minister and culture minister even had contradicting points of view. And eventually the view of the trade minister won out.
In my view, it is not fair to levy extra taxes against foreign magazine. If Canada really wanted culture to be the basis of their argument, their deterrent method by increasing tax is a poor one. In my view they could work more on monitoring the content of foreign publication to see that it does not promote too much of outside influence. But one could easily argue that American and Canadian culture are not too far off different. The Canadian government could also give incentives to local magazine producers to flourish their growth instead of trying to hold back foreign