Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that many of us in this House have been struggling since we first went to school and then university and participated in Canadian society about the way in which we define ourselves as a country, as a society, and ultimately how we survive in a world that is becoming in some ways a globalized world. You can put it as you like, but it would be unrealistic for us as Canadians not to recognize that we have a unique culture in this country. We must work hard to preserve the existence of that culture.
Our magazine industry is an essential component to the preservation of our culture because our magazine industry determines in some respect the news our citizens read. It determines the way in which our citizens perceive events. It determines our ability to reflect ourselves.
We have a very rich cultural expression in our magazine industry. There are many magazines published in this country, and many of them provide extraordinarily beneficial insights into where we are going as a country and where, if I may say from my own perspective as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, Canada should place itself in the world. Those are very important voices, which we must maintain. Those are voices we must encourage. Those are flowers that must be nourished if we are to survive.
We must recognize that if we allow our magazine industry to fail and after that our film industry and after that other industries, we as a country will be left without a voice, without an ability to express ourselves, without an ability to affirm ourselves here in this House, to affirm ourselves in our scholarly institutions, to affirm ourselves in our civic institutions.
I do not wish to overemphasize this, but the richness and diversity of our magazine industry is an important component to the existence of our cultural identity. We can be proud of the richness and diversity of that magazine industry and some of the magazines we are able to read.
The unfortunate fact is that our industry is not on a sound financial footing. The fact of the matter is that it does depend on advertising revenues. I have the figures here. It depends about 85 per cent on its advertising revenues. Our magazine industry publishes for a much smaller population base than its competitors from the United States.
This is where this bill seeks to do something. It seeks to redress a delicate balance with an enormous industry in the United States
with tremendous export potential, with volumes against which we cannot compete in any way. I am sympathetic to the point raised by my colleague from the Reform Party that we have to recognize that there is an export component to this as well. However, there will be no export component to this if the industry does not survive here domestically first. We have to preserve the basics.
This bill does not seek to in any way give an unfair advantage to our domestic industry. It merely seeks to make sure that from a tax perspective American publications that come here are not taking advantage of that enormous market they have and in fact what is the equivalent of dumping in this country. They are dumping not only their product, but they are dumping ideas. They are dumping their civilization. I use dumping in the term of an international trade lawyer. It is coming in here in huge quantities, at a very cheap price and in a way we are not able to compete with.
[Translation]
We must give ourselves the weapons we need to protect ourselves if we want our civilization, our culture, our country to survive in an increasingly globalized world. This is what Parliament, what all parliamentarians should try to achieve.
This is a modest measure to try to achieve that important goal. It fits very well within what our government has said in respect of our trading measures. We have said clearly whenever we have sought to develop trade policy in this country that the cultural industries of this country and our cultural existence are not up for negotiation. We will insist we have a right to adopt laws and measures that protect our cultural existence.
The magazine policy we are looking at here goes back over 30 years. I can remember as a young man being at university and reading about the dispute over Time magazine and the tax policy. Many of the members of the House will remember the same thing. We have grown up on this. It is not an issue that is going to go away. It is not an issue we can afford to let go away. We owe it to ourselves to ensure that we create the sound financial basis in our country for the survival of our own cultural institutions and then deal with it from a trade perspective.
This measure manages to achieve that balance. It gives our industry that breathing room, that sense that we can survive, that we are not going to be completely submerged in the weight and the volume of imports of American magazines that naturally come here. Nobody is saying we will not let magazines in. Nobody is saying we are going to stop anything. All we are saying is that we must ensure the financial viability of our industry, which depends on its advertising revenues for that viability and that vitality.
I come from the community of Rosedale, which is proud of the vitality of the cultural industry in the city of Toronto and feeds on it. Toronto is becoming a cultural centre of international acclaim. Americans come in high numbers to go to our plays, to our musical festivals, to participate in the rich cultural life we have in the city of Toronto.
Part of that rich cultural life is there because we have publications that feed it, fit into it, amalgamate with it and create a sort of a whole of a sense of a vibrant cultural existence that is a part of this country. We owe it to ourselves to continue always to encourage that, to build on that, which is what the minister is trying to do in the bill. It is commendable.
These are extremely complex and difficult issues, particularly in the modern trade climate, which requires that we must recognize there is a balance to be achieved. Overall, what we get with this legislation is a recognition of a problem. The problem is a lack of funding for an important industry. We get a recognition that the way to deal with overwhelmingly powerful competition is to tell our local producers here is something that will give them some marginal ability to guarantee that their bottom line will allow them to survive.
As such, the bill balances these and gives us the ability, when we get down to it, to preserve what is an essential industry in our country if we are to have a country where we know what our ideas are, are able to express them, get those ideas into print, share them with one another, and continue to make as a result a contribution to our country and ultimately to the world as a whole. For that reason, I support wholeheartedly the measure. I hope that other members in the House will support it as well.
I look forward to working with the minister in other areas where we can ensure that the cultural dimension of our domestic and foreign policy will ensure that Canadian values and interests are not only dealt with here but actually have access to the world as a whole. To do that, we must first ensure we are on a sound footing at home. This is where we start. The bill is a modest but important contribution to that start.