The Canadian Magazine Dispute Summary

The Canadian Magazine Dispute

Matthew J. S. Taylor

University of the People

Personally, I believe that there were genuine desires to protect Canadian culture in the U.S.-Canadian magazine dispute. It was considered important that Canadian authors and publishers be given the chance to write and distribute that written material to Canadians without being completely overshadowed by American publications. Without these desires at heart, American publications could be allowed to compete with and overshadow Canadian publications in a completely unrestricted way. In terms of the extent that the dispute was motivated by these desires, I would say that it was only 25 percent motivated by these desires, and 75 percent driven by economic

Although Canadian magazines are only 11 percent of sales in Canada – with the rest being foreign – an unregulated market with no protection for Canadian publications would result in a major backlash from the unprotected Canadian publications. An unregulated market would also cause money to be taken away from the Canadian economy, because the majority of profits made from magazine sales would thus be taken out of the country and given to the foreign – and primarily American – publications that sold their magazines in Canada. Personally, I do believe that this is an issue that impacts Canadian culture, albeit a somewhat unimportant one. I think that it is more economically driven. An unregulated market could very well drive Canadian publishers and authors out of business, and thus cause Canadians to lose their jobs. This is turn would cause money to be lost from the Canadian economy, which is never a good thing. In terms of Canadian culture, however, I think that it is important for Canadians to read magazines relevant to their lives as Canadians, as no one has a better insight on Canadian life than

Tariffs are imposed on most foreign goods anyway, so why not magazines? This would also force the publishers of foreign magazines to invest some money in the market that they are selling in by subsidizing local publications. Unfortunately, this would also force Canadian purchasers of foreign magazines to subsidize local publications. There would have to be a way to protect Canadians’ wallets as well as forcing foreign publications to invest money in Canada – perhaps by having the government subsidize Canadian magazines by lowering the price of Canadian magazines – and thus incentivizing consumers to purchase Canadian magazines – and then giving the magazine publishers money to make up the difference? However, there would be at least a couple of problems with this. First of all, from what I have seen magazine consumers are very oriented towards brand (ie. they know exactly what magazines they want, so there are not many substitutes for that magazine), so a subsidy that would incentivize purchasing Canadian would not really matter to Canadian consumers. Secondly, this would open a whole new can of worms for other Canadian industries. There would be backlash from these industries on why only Canadian magazines were protected, and would thus attempt to force the Canadian government into giving their industries subsidies as well. This would cripple the Canadian economy, as the government cannot afford to be