“Canada Strong” is a terrific nationalist motto right at the time we need it.

We don’t want to be the 51st state. We aren’t simply Americans who spell “colour” and other words with u. We are the good northern neighbour who offers up our airspace and airports in an emergency, sends our firefighters to fight the wildfires threatening California suburbs, and shares the longest unprotected border in the world. But for too long, we’ve also been the compliant political jurisdiction that ignores our own laws in favour of the hegemonic continent-sharing behemoth down south, especially when it comes to our culture.

It’s time to be “Canada Strong” not only when arranging trade and security deals, but when it comes to our culture in general and, in particular, to the books on the shelves of our schools, libraries, and bookstores, and the books available to Canadians in audio format and as ebooks.

National defence, in the form of a well-trained and prepared army, navy, and air force, is obviously important. But they can only fight traditional wars. They are not equipped to defend against an expansionist empire bent on subjugating our country through cultural colonization. Americans may see us at best as soon-to-be Americans; otherwise, Canada is a market to be exploited – one into which they dump their cultural products,  including their print overruns, at a significant profit. The arts in Canada are also a defence, and none is more important, in my opinion, than our literature.

In the early 1970s, the Canadian government decided to support the emerging domestic publishing industry to compensate for its open-border policies with respect to books originating elsewhere, specifically in the U.K. and U.S. The federal government began to fund Canadian-owned publishers because they were pretty much the only companies publishing Canadian authors, whom the Canada Council had been funding for about a decade. The country had been funding writers, but there weren’t enough publishers to handle the manuscripts being produced. For magazines, tax laws gave breaks to companies advertising in Canadian magazines, giving rise to a stronger domestic industry, and the creation of Canadian editions of U.S. publications, notably Time. The Ontario government enacted the Paperback and Periodical Distributors Act in 1971 requiring all books to be purchased from a Canadian source, which made possible the growth of Canadian distributors, and helped to support the publication of Canadian books.

In 1985, the federal government, then led by Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, brought in the Baie-Comeau policy to ensure a strong book publishing and distribution industry, owned and operated by Canadians in Canada. The policy was a trade irritant, primarily for the U.S., and, in its short life, was observed only in the breach.

The Mulroney government understood – as had previous governments – that the arts in Canada were a common good, with particular emphasis on poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama; these are the ties that bind us. A play by Michel Tremblay, first produced and published in Montreal, could be translated into English and produced in Toronto, shortly thereafter to be published in Vancouver, resulting in a literary work that would be taught in colleges and universities throughout the country. This was the goal of enlightened federal arts and culture policy, especially in provinces that co-operated with their own arts councils and funding programs.

Until the late 1980s, this patchwork system of policies and funding worked adequately – but, admittedly, it still wasn’t resulting in a particularly healthy and vibrant book publishing industry. Once-major publishing companies faced irreversible decline. Rupert Murdoch, majority owner of Harper & Row and William Collins, combined the two publishers, and found willing Canadian partners to create a subsidiary that circumvented the intent of the Baie-Comeau policy, but not the letter of the law. Distribution for HarperCollins was moved out of Fitzhenry & Whiteside and into the newly formed HarperCollins Canada distribution unit (which was eventually closed, in 2015, when the distribution of all HarperCollins imprints, including Harlequin, was moved to the U.S.). Canadian ownership and control was in greater peril than prior to Baie-Comeau.

By 1992, a new publishing program, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), was created to fund Canadian-owned book publishers based on their sales. A second program, the Publications Distribution Assistance Program (PDAP), was created at the same time to replace the postal subsidy that had lowered the cost of shipping books across the country through Canada Post. These programs had a combined budget of $50 million. Within two years of establishment, the two programs were combined into one, and the budget was slashed by 70 per cent, under Michel Dupuy, then the minister responsible for Canada’s cultural institutions.

While the original monies were good and important, these programs had two serious flaws that have remained in place for 35 years. The first flaw – and perhaps the most damaging – was, and is, the fixed pot. In order for one publisher to receive a larger grant, one or more publishers have to receive less funding. This is no way to stabilize an industry, let alone encourage its growth. The second flaw is that program officers determine which projects will be funded and which will not. Their decisions are entirely subjective – as they are for most federal and provincial funding programs. (Full disclosure: in those years, I was director of the Literary Press Group of Canada, which received very significant funding through the marketing component of the BPIDP. I’m speaking as a “winner” here, not as a “loser.”)

The law of unintended consequences came into play in this funding model, as it implemented a program that created winners and losers. The subjectively assessed portion of the BPIDP did the same. The result? The government ensured there would be as many or more losers as there would be winners. Not exactly good public policy.

In his book Lament for a Literature, published this spring, Richard Stursberg advocates for a federal book publishing tax credit modelled on the one that has already been in place for almost three decades for Canadian film and television production. His observations and advocacy, based on his experience in film and television production and broadcasting, is most welcome, as just such a program is exactly what the Canadian publishing industry needs.

Why?

Not only would the tax credit program work on a system that funds all publishers, it would do so in a manner that allowed publishing companies to set their own agendas and to be rewarded in the marketplace for good publishing. A tax credit that refunded a percentage of certain expenditures in Canada – including rent, printing, and translation, among others – would very quickly make the Canadian-owned publishing sector more viable.

Currently, publishers are eligible to apply for many grants, federally and provincially; the time needed to complete these applications is close to one full-time position per company. This is time that would be better spent acquiring, editing, producing, and promoting. The simpler tax credit process would allow publishers to know the exact amount they would receive, making budgeting easy and accurate. In fact, the process would result in financial statements that could be used for short-term financing – the bank would see exactly what amount of money was incoming and in what time frame.

The current Ontario tax credit program (with which I am most familiar) does not fund many things it should; for this reason, it should not be used as the model for a federal tax credit. For example, when the provincial program was conceived, graphic novels were not in common production. Today, they are probably the most vibrant and popular genre – one where Canada should be leading the way. Translations are deemed to be “double-dipping” – nonsense if ever there was bureaucratic nonsense. In a culture with two official languages – and many Indigenous languages – translation should be supported generously by public policy.

Given the current federal and provincial governments’ pivot to trade with European and Pacific Rim nations, it would be wise to encourage translation from these languages, too. (It’s very difficult to sell to companies from which you can’t buy anything.) The tax credit for printing in Ontario is rated at half the credit applied to advances, production, and marketing. Again, an error. Not-for-profits – which represent a significant portion of the publishing industry – are not included, a situation that would need to be addressed in the federal tax credit program, along with the other items mentioned above.

The better model for a book publishing tax credit is the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit (CPTC). Because it’s based on a company’s expenditures and backed up by the company’s financial statements, it’s not open to subjective evaluation. It’s not subject to analysis and lengthy delays.

In order to establish a federal tax credit, the government would have to commit resources to get it up and running – publishers will need to have access to greater working capital in order to make a tax credit work. To achieve this, the federal government would have to provide five years of Canada Book Fund funding in three, with one year overlapping with the new tax credit. It may seem that asking the federal government for such an increase in funding is unrealistic – but this request is still less money than what Justin Trudeau’s government promised the country’s publishers in 2016 – 10 years ago.

The idea of a federal tax credit program, based largely on the one already in existence for film and television producers, isn’t just about more funding for some publishers, it’s about an effective and sustainable form of support for an entire industry. It would ensure that our publishers committed their staff resources to publishing and not attempts to access a dozen funding programs. This will only make the industry stronger. Yes, there’s the word. Now the phrase: Canada Strong – with publishing companies that ensure Canadians have access to their stories, the ties that bind us coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Marc Côté is the president and publisher of Cormorant Books.