I had a chance to write a column and then do a debate on it on the CBC radio show Q. I think there is a role to play for Canadian regulations that support Canadian authors and support Canadian publishers. Indeed, there is scarcely a book published anywhere in this country that does not enjoy support from the public, in a sense, through the various programs, and that is absolutely essential.
I am less convinced that similar kinds of regulations are needed for booksellers, much less a distribution arm of an online seller. The reality is that one of the big challenges Canadian authors faced in years past was lack of shelf space. It wasn't whether or not the company was foreign owned. It was that bookstores, especially some of the smaller stores, have a limited amount of shelf space and so, yes, they are going to carry Canadian titles, but they are also going to carry the J.K. Rowlings and the Dan Browns and all the other well-known authors, because they are in business to sell books that their customers want to buy.
Amazon and the other larger players are a good thing from a Canadian author and publisher perspective, because it addresses that shelf space issue.
Mr. Simms has a copy of one of the books that I edited on copyright called In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law. I think it is a pretty good book and you can download it for free online. But what's notable is that if you go down to Chapters or to a smaller bookstore, the likelihood is that you're almost never going to see it. I understand. It just doesn't sell all that much. But if you go to Amazon you can find it, and so Amazon is a good thing for me and my co-authors, indeed, for the majority of Canadian authors, whose biggest challenge is obscurity in terms of finding a marketplace. The notion that Amazon somehow harms that just isn't consistent with the experience we have seen to date.