As it turns out, Macleans Magazine gets a cool $3,000,000-plus from the Canadian Heritage Publications Assistance Program(PAP), which offset[s] the mailing costs of Canadian content magazines and non-daily newspapers mailed within Canada.
In fact of all the magazines supported it is the single largest recipient of such assistance:
However :
Magazines or non-daily newspapers are not eligible for postal subsidies if they;
[...]
...in the view of the Department of Canadian Heritage, contain material considered to be hate propaganda, sexual exploitation, excessive or gratuitous violence, denigrating to an identifiable group or in any other way offensive."
I've e-mailed Heritage Canada re what it takes to have a magazine de-listed. For while we might argue all day about whether the Human Rights complaints against Macleans are frivolous or substantial, it seems pretty clear that the magazine is both publishing offensive material and sucking off the tax-payer's titty. While we are all for Free Speech Heroes, we are also all against Corporate Welfare. No?
And the time might be especially ripe. The PAP has been undergoing a bit of soul-searching over the past couple of years, and one of the considerations behind this drive for change is
Whether the relatively large share of program spending received by a relatively small number of large circulation publishing companies is an appropriate and effective use of public funds.
Unfortunately, it looks as if the time for commenting on the formal review process has passed.
h/t Ti-guy.
Macleans is only seen as publishing "offensive" materials to the left wing nutbars who are in bed with muslims and their anti-Israel, anti-USA rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't be clearer.
Obviously, Johnathon is a bigot and he's just trying to cause nonsense.
ReplyDeleteMost bloggers deleted him off their sites a few months ago - he's now back all over the blogosphere with his crap.
You should consider deleting him.
If you want to de-list MacLean's because a commercial enterprise should not get government financing to operate - then fine, and I agree with you. But if you want to de-list MacLean's because you disagree with their content, then that's simply using a financial threat to effectively censor the magazine, and I can't imagine that's what we would consider to be supporting of free speech in this country. In fact, we have too little appetite in the MSM and others to carry sometimes alternative and sometimes "offensive" (always offensive to some) viewpoints.
ReplyDeleteNot a fan of MacLeans but how is your argument different from the Cons argument regarding offensive material and Bill C10. This could be very slippery hill indeed...
ReplyDeleteNot a fan of MacLeans but how is your argument different from the Cons argument regarding offensive material and Bill C10.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't really, although the PAP is really much more of a dole, whereas the film industry credits are industrial incentives.
I'm a big supporter of the PAP, and Macleans hoovering up the better part of it is probably just a reflection of its circulation.
Doesn't mean we can't talk about it and highlight the weakness of the arguments that claim the sanctity of press independence, marketplace of ideas and private property.
I wonder just how many people know that Macleans gets over 3 million a year from taxpayers?
I wonder just how many people know that Macleans gets over 3 million a year from taxpayers?
ReplyDelete...I'll add, all in an effort to plug Mark Steyn's book, itself a product of the Wingnut Welfare doled out by Regnery.
I hope you've heard of Regnery, BCL: Leading supplier for bulk book purchases that get doled out as swag at wingnut conferences.
Free market competion?
*snort*...That's only for little people.
BCL, time to cut your losses on this issue. Macleans and Steyn have already won regardless of what other HRC's conclude.
ReplyDeleteYou can trot out Barbara Hall and have her wave her puritanical finger at someone else if that makes you feel better.
Macleans and Steyn have already won regardless of what other HRC's conclude.
ReplyDeleteWell, leaving aside the incoherence of this statement, the only thing Steyn and Macleans have proved so far is that the process works and should be maintained.
Steyn's declining publishing opportunities have predated this latest issue with Macleans (which is really just another makework project for the old Black fellator) and I suspect that will continue, whether his detractors take any action or not. He's becoming a liability, that much is clear.
You can trot out Barbara Hall and have her wave her puritanical finger at someone else if that makes you feel better.
God, you people just repeat each other's bullshit. Barbara Hall was the first Toronto mayor to declare Gay Pride an official municipal event (which has been a lucrative tourism event for the city ever since); she's no puritan by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, if someone were to mount a "persecute the white man" campaign so you titty-babies could go whine to an HRC, would that help? I'd do it myself, but since I'm pretty white and very male (I shave twice a day, have descended testicles and a very deep voice, unlike you doughy hermaphrodites on the Right), I doubt I could pull it off.
More from Mark "Pissy and Moany" Steyn:
ReplyDeleteI've tried to make that point in interviews. The BC tribunal's ruling will mean that I can no longer write for Maclean's, and that Maclean's itself will be highly circumscribed in what it can publish about the relationship between Islam and the west. In other words, on one of the central questions facing the world today, the editorial decisions of Canada's largest news weekly will be determined by a British Columbia "court".
You mean, despite all of the appearances unchallenged on FoxNews he's never been able to make that point? I find that hard to believe.
My career in Canada will be formally ended next month. But don't break out the champagne and conga lines. If Maclean's decides to comply with the ruling, it will not be a "news weekly" in the sense the term would be understood by any genuinely free society. And one day there will be plenty of Jews and gays and all kinds of other fellows who'll come to understand the damage this case has wrought.
A news weely that hoovers up 3+ million a year from taxpayers, remember. But anyway, I dispute "news," since that implies journalism and what the Robber Bride and the Robber Baron's Catamite have been doing was never journalism. I think it was something along the lines of revenge.
Anyway, maybe Steyn will take up the cause and lobby to protect the homosexuals from all the Islamofascists who are coming to get them. After all, he's been such an ardent defender of minority civil rights for such a long time now.
Canajun,
ReplyDeleteYeah. So what? To get the Canadian gov. to buy you stamps you're not supposed to print anything offensive. A rule's a rule. Who cares if, it pointing this out, my motives are malevolent?
J,
The argument is different in that the govs legislative changes re C-10 allow the minister to tank a movie production even if it has MET the requirements. Macleans might have breached the PAP requirments.
Ti-Guy,
Yeah, I tend to support things like PAP. Its interesting that most of the money is being used to support large circ magazines though. Esp. Macleans, given its current free market inclinations. They must blush every time they get their government cheque.
The real problem I have is that Macleans isn't an independent publication, but owned by a media conglomerate (Rogers).
ReplyDeleteNow that I think of it, it really doesn't deserve support from the PAP. I think they could tighten up the regulations so that the PAP supports independent magazine publishing.
God, Rogers would lose multi-millions a year if that happened, since it owns L'Actualité, Chatelaine, Châtelaine and Flare, which represents a hoovering of almost 9 million dollars from the PAP in 2006-07.
Hmm. Is Wingnut Welfare Mater Steyn really worth that much to them? Maybe Keith Martin could do something about that?