Mr. Speaker, one needs a crystal ball to know what the WTO might rule. The WTO might say it has had a complete change of heart. All the rationale it used before will just be thrown out and suddenly it will have an epiphany, a change, a road to Damascus experience. The WTO might but I do not think so.
The WTO body has said argue as you might, folks in Canada. It is unfair to treat people differently on your trade laws.
It is not an industry that needs protection. It is going to rule the same way again.
It is interesting how we want to have our cake and eat it too. There is a reciprocity agreement over there. They want a free trade agreement except they do not want a free trade agreement.
One Canadian publisher, the proprietor of Saturday Night , said this about Bill C-55: “I have been a relentless opponent of these restrictive rules all the time. I have been in business nearly 30 years. I am opposed to the restrictions that representatives of the magazine are advancing on American publications. We have been well received in those foreign countries, the U.K., the U.S.A. and Israel, where we do business. Canada should behave as those other countries do”.
Other countries say to Canada “If our guys want to advertise in your magazines and you want to sell into our markets go ahead. It is not a bad magazine and you are going to penetrate our market a bit, but some of our people like to read about Canadian stuff. Some of them are transplanted Canadians. Some of them want to go to Canada”. There is a market. Sell into that market. What an opportunity.
We have 30 million people, a little country by world standards. Somebody says to us that in their country there are 200 million, 300 million or a billion people like in India and they will let us sell into their market. What we should be saying is thanks for the opportunity to expand our business. Thank you for letting us sell into their market. Let us hope for a .5% market penetration. All of a sudden the circulation on the Canadian magazine goes through the roof. With a free trade access like that there is access to billions of people.
Instead, Canada wants to keep Canadian magazines in Canada and get a 10% market penetration on 30 million people. There will be three million people who have ever seen the magazine. It will never be more than that. The business is restricted. It cannot expand. We will not let it expand. It is the tit for tat thing in international trade. If they will not let us go into their markets we will not let them come into ours. That is the deal.
Worse than that, under the WTO arrangement it understands that other countries may choose to retaliate, but not on the magazine. They might say they were willing to let the magazine come in. It is not that big of a deal and there will be some market penetration. But may the best magazine win. They are willing to try that. They are willing to offer that. They may come back and say they have had trouble with our textile industry because it takes them on and beats them half the time. So they get back at the Canadian government for its intransigence by countervailing on textiles. Or they might come back to the softwood lumber agreement that has already put thousands of people out of jobs in my province and expand it a little. They might put another tariff on top of all of that.
Because the Asian market has gone into decline, our primary market is in America right now for software lumber and a lot of our grains. What if they came up and said that the wheat does not go south of that border, that imaginary 49th parallel on the map? They tell us to keep our wheat. They give their subsidies to their farmers, pump them up and get them in business. But that industry is going to suffer because of a magazine bill.
What kind of a strained logic on that side over there would say they are going to take this to the WTO, poke the people in the eyes until they get them nice and mad like boiled owls. They are going to be all claws, beaks, feathers and scratches. They are going to come out of there like a broken helicopter. They will come out of there mad. They will say “did we not deal with the split-run issue once already?”. A similar panel is going to get this. It will not have an epiphany, a road to Damascus experience.
It is going to wake up with the same logic that was brought into that next one. It is going to crack open the magazine and say “Guess what folks, the rules are the same as the last time and will be the same the next time, but there will not be a next time because we ruled in favour of the plaintiff”.
Instead of creating jobs in Canada and encouraging diversity and saying to the world “Come on world, we are ready. We can take you on, on our terms”, we will catch it in the ear in an industry that is innocent of what the government is doing. Industry will take the retaliation. What a shame. If it comes on one of the industries in my riding, I do not know what it will do to the federal buildings in my riding as there are not many left in my riding anyway because they have all been transferred to Liberal ridings elsewhere. They will be some upset and I understand why.
Maybe the minister of culture figures she has not had enough of the spotlight lately. Maybe she wants to by all stretches of the imagination make a run at the Liberal leadership one day or maybe she is trying to get her name in the paper, who knows?