Email if you like small literary presses

So, I wrote a while back about the CPF issue and how it’s unfair to small literary presses who need the funding to survive, but aren’t getting it because their circulation is lower than 5,000 copies (is this per year? per issue? the details aren’t clear yet). I also posted a link to a Facebook group that has started a letter-writing campaign to lobby the Ministry of Heritage to reconsider the CPF.
Getting to the point: over the weekend, I was visiting my dear friend in Ottawa who works at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, a department in the government that happens to get a lot of mail. So I asked her what happens to the letters that pour in and what actually happens to letter writing campaigns and what she said actually surprised me. She says that they get read for the issue the letter is addressing, draft a pat response that probably won’t answer the question or concern (because they are written by bureaucrats that aren’t allowed to make any definitive statements about what the government is doing because such statements turn the letter into a policy statement, to which the government can be held accountable) BUT – and here’s the kicker – your letter will be COUNTED. The issue that you raise in your letter is only as important as the number of other people who write letters addressing the same issue, especially if these people identify themselves as “concerned citizens” i.e. not part of an NGO or professional organization.
What is cool about this is how easy the process becomes for us citizens concerned about the CPF. The actual length or quality of your letter is irrelevant. Emails are counted the same as letters. It is SO EASY to send off a brief email saying that you don’t think the CPF is a good idea because you care about small literary presses in Canada. Send it to James Moore, the Minister of Heritage. And hey, if you send another one to the Prime Minister, it will be counted twice. TWICE. It’s like a megaphone, making your voice is twice as loud.

Go! No excuses! moorej@parl.gc.ca, pm@pm.gc.ca

Advertisement