Canada Magazine Case Study

I don’t believe that the U.S.-Canadian magazine dispute was genuinely motivated to protect Canadian culture. From reading the article in Globalization 101 it appears that the Canadian government saw magazines coming in from the United States as an opportunity to add a new tax to a product that was entering their market space. Although this was changed shortly after the dispute was settled by the WTO (1997). It appears that the Canadian government moved more towards wanting a ‘cultural uniqueness’ after the United States threatened to impose retaliatory measures against Canadian steel, textiles and apparel, wood products and plastics.

The Canadian magazine industry has only 11 percent of magazine sales in Canada. This is testament that

You could argue that there is no longer space in the market for Canadian magazines due to imported magazines but if that were the case then that would have its own ongoing or settled dispute. It appears more that the Canadian public has taken to the globalization of magazines from the amount of sales that they have in the country and the fact that Canadian magazines only add up to 11% of

With that being said, it is understandable that they want the magazines to have a certain percentage of Canadian content and also that they want the advertisements to come from local businesses. The benefits that come from Canadian businesses being able to advertise in the magazines that are the top sellers in the country absolutely outweigh the benefits the government got from adding a small tax to the foreign magazine producers. In that each business that gets more business from its advertisement in the magazines, means that they will be paying more tax at the end of the year so that the government is effectively making their money still, just in a different way.

I don’t believe that it is fair to the Canadian public to be forced to pay a higher premium (in this case via a tax) to subsidize local publications. The Canadian public should be free to purchase any magazine they choose, whether it is a Canadian one or a foreign one. If sales of local magazines are low then it should be on the writers and owners of those magazines to enhance the content to make it more appealing to the Canadian public. People will pay for something that interests them, it won’t matter to the mass