Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in support of Bill C-103. I must say at the outset that I find it supremely ironic that in Parliament support for the bill should come from my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois, who stand for promoting a separate culture, and that opposition to the bill comes from the Reform Party, which surely should stand to promote Canadian culture at any opportunity.
I begin by making some comments on the remarks delivered by the member for Medicine Hat, who says that the bill represents a kind of cultural protectionism, which is no longer appropriate. This is a bill that deals with cultural protectionism and is very appropriate. I feel that some of my colleagues in the House, particularly in the third party, do not seem to appreciate the central role the spoken and written word has in the viability of a nation, the viability of its institutions as well as the viability of its entertainment and cultural industries.
Certainly in English speaking Canada the publication industry, whether it is books, magazines or newspapers, has been under economic pressure for a long time. In Canada we believe in free
speech, which is tied with the independence of media agencies delivering the message from Canadians. Consequently, it is essential that these industries that deliver this cultural message in books, magazines or newspapers remain viable.
The sad reality is, as other members have mentioned, that we are a country one-tenth the size of the United States. What happens, for example, in books alone is that an author who is lucky enough to persuade a publisher that his book is worth while and it might sell on the open market will be very fortunate if he sells enough copies to earn perhaps $8,000 or $9,000 a year from that one book. However, because the United States is 10 times as big, a similar author with a similar book can make a living at it. He can make from $70,000 to $80,000 from that single book. This is the way it is with books and with newspapers. Newspapers these days have come under enormous advertising pressure: the shortage of advertising, the lack of circulation and competition from the United States.
When next in Toronto, Mr. Speaker, visit the Toronto Star at 1 Yonge Street, Canada's largest newspaper. You will find outside on the sidewalk various news boxes. Among those news boxes you will see U.S.A. Today . There is a very active market in this country for American publications and newspaper publications.
Mr. Speaker, I will take you back to your childhood for a little bit. I will bet at one time you sold magazines. It used to be very common to sell magazines as a child to make a bit of money. I did that when I was a kid. I remember vividly that most of the magazines I had to sell were American magazines. The reality is that we are a country dominated by the American cultural industries. There is no getting around it. To ignore this is to ignore a fundamental reality.
It is with irony that I listened to the member for Rimouski-TĂ©miscouata. She spoke very finely on the issue of the need for Canadian cultural protection. The irony is that English speaking Canada is under the greatest pressure. Here we have a member of the Bloc Quebecois, a Quebecoise, defending English culture in this country. She is quite right that we have to subsidize, support and build a certain amount of protectionism around the magazine industry because of the phenomenon of split runs. That is a very real problem. It is true that the Canadian periodicals will suffer adversely from that.
Ironically French language periodicals do not have the same problem. Therefore I was very pleased to hear her defend the government's initiative in this regard with respect to split run publications. However, best of all, she took the debate one step further, which I really like, and she raised the question of the GST.
The one thing I could never understand as a former journalist and a some time author is any government that could put a tax on books. We actually have in this country a tax on reading. If ever there was a regressive tax that has set us back, particularly in English speaking Canada, it is this tax on reading.
I say to the Reform Party that it does not understand how difficult it is to get the word out as an author, a writer or as a journalist in this country, particularly when we are English speaking, because we are in overwhelming competition with the Americans to the south. The previous government put a tax on books which damages the periodical industry. It lost 6 per cent of its circulation. Authors of books suffered.
The member from the official opposition made a very good point when she suggested the GST be dropped from all publications and reading material. I support her 100 per cent on that. That recommendation from the task force on the magazine industry is not in Bill C-103, although I am confident the government will make that alteration when it addresses the problem of the GST. I hope we will see that change in the next budget.
Finally I would like to make a comment concerning the member's comments on postal subsidies. Again I believe she is right on the money there. In this case it is a question of distributing Canadian newspapers as well as magazines. We would do well to do anything in our power to make sure the Canadian point of view gets out to Canadians. If we do not back up our own authors, our own writers, our own journalists, our own publications, then at least English Canada is going to slide into the United States and the separatists will get their way by default.