Industry committee  As far as statistics are concerned, I don't have them at all. I'm not sure whether Mr. Tabor from the campus side has anything to show. We know that the booksellers in those provinces fought very hard at the time to ensure that books would not be taxed provincially, because the

Industry committee  I don't.

Industry committee  No, not fixed.

Industry committee  The price that is printed on the book is established.

Industry committee  Right.

Industry committee  Is that a question?

Industry committee  Sure. The thing is that the products are bought well in advance by booksellers. Books don't go out of date like milk. They're sitting on a shelf. They're a product. They've been paid for. Some of them have up to six months, a year. They could be in a store because they still cont

Industry committee  Amazon doesn't employ Canadians.

Industry committee  You're absolutely right. In many cases, the discounters like to use books as loss leaders, to make a penny or two, or a very small amount, because it's such a visible comparison that they can put front and centre, as if to say, if we sell our books at this price, then everything

Industry committee  No, I don't believe so at all. The small independent bookstores— I'll backtrack for just a minute. We also have, as part of our membership, Indigo and Chapters, people who sell books for a living as opposed to people who sell books as a commodity, which is why we feel that books

Industry committee  I think it's already happened. You can't pull something as big as that back. We do need to ensure that, for example, the books they are purchasing are being purchased through the Canadian distributors, not purchased through the American distributors, and that they're playing by e

Industry committee  No, it's not that it isn't authorized. When Amazon came to Canada there were no policies in place--there still aren't--regarding Internet companies doing business in Canada. Barnes and Noble, for example, can't just come into Canada and take over the company, or an American pub

Industry committee  No, unfortunately I don't have any statistics on that. We also don't have statistics on how many people are actually getting in their car, crossing the border, and loading up on books because they're wanting to buy it at the U.S. price. All I can say is that the booksellers I'v

Industry committee  That's right. As Mr. Tabor said, the climate has changed. Students and general consumers are now looking to the Internet to compare prices. When we have policies in place that help keep our prices high, that's not good for the government, that's not good for Canadians.

Industry committee  One thing we have to be sure about--and this just has to do with cross-border shopping, however that is happening--is that taxes are being collected on the goods that are coming into Canada. Not only are we faced with consumers looking at two prices, but in many cases they're als