Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill and these clauses today.
This bill has created a lot of problems for many of my constituents, across the whole range of the clauses dealt with in the bill. In particular, I received yesterday a letter from a company in my riding. That company, for the last 75 years, has been supplying bookstores. As a result of the changes which are being made by this bill, which they see as a major distortion of the marketplace under the excuse of protecting Canadian culture, the book market will be disrupted and it will be very bad for consumers.
This company and my constituents have urged me to bring to the attention of the House the fact that this bill will be a major disadvantage to consumers. It will protect Canadian distributors of books when libraries and universities could have much better direct access to wholesalers in the United States. The protectionism in the bill will not protect Canadian culture at all, it will simply drive up prices and create a very restrictive market within Canada.
I wanted to get that on record. Not only in the many areas that have been discussed earlier but in the area of book distribution this bill is a major problem.
Amendments were introduced today at a moment's notice to the House. We have not had the time to review them properly. We are appalled at the speed at which this bill is moving through the House.