Canadian Magazine Dispute Case Study
1. To what extent do you think the U.S.-Canadian magazine dispute was motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture?
If we follow the Canadian Government's argument, the only motive was in fact to protect its culture. I think that the fact that 89% of the magazines sold inside the country are of foreign origin is in itself an obvious cause for concern. However, I also think that the Canadian Government's greatest concern is not only about the competition over the magazines, but also has to do with a perceived greater dominance of the United States in all cultural spheres of the country. Any country has the right to protect important aspects of its culture. According to the Levin Institute (2010), "the Canadian government has …show more content…
Governments, especially those of most advanced countries, often tend to impose extra taxes or tariffs on imported goods and services in order to protect their own interests and industries. The same happens, for instance, with the automobile industry. Every country that manufactures cars imposes heavy taxes for imported cars and their parts and accessories in order to protect their industry and jobs.
6. If you were the Canadian government, trying to protect the domestic magazine market, what kind of criteria would you establish to distinguish between a split-run and a domestic magazine?
A split-run magazine has a proper definition. According to Collins English (n.d.),
split-run is “a divided print run of a periodical in which a number of copies contain advertisements not included in the rest, esp a Canadian edition of a US magazine which contains Canadian advertisements but no Canadian editorial content.” (para.1)
In order to distinguish between a split-run and a domestic magazine, I would introduce clear laws and regulations that would use certain criteria for that purpose. In addition to the definition given above, some possible criteria would be percentages of the following:
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If we follow the Canadian Government's argument, the only motive was in fact to protect its culture. I think that the fact that 89% of the magazines sold inside the country are of foreign origin is in itself an obvious cause for concern. However, I also think that the Canadian Government's greatest concern is not only about the competition over the magazines, but also has to do with a perceived greater dominance of the United States in all cultural spheres of the country. Any country has the right to protect important aspects of its culture. According to the Levin Institute (2010), "the Canadian government has …show more content…
Governments, especially those of most advanced countries, often tend to impose extra taxes or tariffs on imported goods and services in order to protect their own interests and industries. The same happens, for instance, with the automobile industry. Every country that manufactures cars imposes heavy taxes for imported cars and their parts and accessories in order to protect their industry and jobs.
6. If you were the Canadian government, trying to protect the domestic magazine market, what kind of criteria would you establish to distinguish between a split-run and a domestic magazine?
A split-run magazine has a proper definition. According to Collins English (n.d.),
split-run is “a divided print run of a periodical in which a number of copies contain advertisements not included in the rest, esp a Canadian edition of a US magazine which contains Canadian advertisements but no Canadian editorial content.” (para.1)
In order to distinguish between a split-run and a domestic magazine, I would introduce clear laws and regulations that would use certain criteria for that purpose. In addition to the definition given above, some possible criteria would be percentages of the following:
-