The following is a letter sent to NS Finance Minister Diane Whalen, with copies to Cape Breton MLAs, regarding the possibility of Nova Scotia becoming the only jurisdiction in Canada to charge PST on books. Feel free to share your thoughts with Minister Whalen and/or your MLA as well.
Hon. Diane Whelan, Minister
Finance and Treasury Board
P.O. Box 187
Halifax, NS B3J 2N3
Dear Minister Whalen;
I am writing to ask you to take a firm stand against the possibility that your government will apply sales tax on books.
It is a step in the wrong direction for a province devoted to encouraging literacy and entrepreneurship.
As I understand it, this would make Nova Scotia the only Canadian province to have applied a tax on books. As well, the vast majority of countries that have a VAT have a favourable tax regime for books; 25 per cent of them do not tax books at all.
The Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association (with fifteen members in Nova Scotia, including two in Cape Breton) has written to you stating our collective position. Books are not luxury items. Like food and children’s clothing, they are essential; they are key to the education, wellbeing and welfare of citizens. The Public Health Agency of Canada tells us that literacy and education are key health determinants. They are the vehicles of knowledge, information and self-determination. If Nova Scotians are to be educated and healthy, they need to have access to the essentials of life without impediment. Books foster literate, educated and competitive Nova Scotians and, books written and published by Nova Scotians create jobs and revenues from export sales while fostering greater self-awareness and growth in tourism.
Literacy Nova Scotia reports that 38 per cent of Nova Scotians fail to meet the benchmark set by the International Adult Literacy Skills Survey and this is detrimental to our economy. Increasing the tax on books effectively makes them less accessible; fewer will be purchased and this in turn will further impact our literacy rates. Nova Scotia’s Action Plan for Education 2015 made early literacy a priority. Taxing books seems contradictory to that objective. Making reading material less affordable flies in the face of everything the Department of Education is attempting to accomplish by making literacy its number one goal.
Importantly, applying the HST would mean additional costs on all text books—whether or not they are published in Nova Scotia—placing additional burden on the public education system and post-secondary students and undermining efforts to be competitive with other constituencies
The so-called Ivany Report, much-touted by your government, calls for game-changing approaches to the provincial economy. Reverting to stand-by and possibly harmful taxes is hardly “game-changing.” In fact, it seems rather unimaginative and even regressive.
I certainly hope you share in this concern and will convey that to your caucus as your department consults with all sectors in consideration of changes to the province’s tax regime.
Sincerely
Mike Hunter, Editor-in-Chief
The latest issue of Béascna, Journal of Folklore and Ethnology from University College Cork, includes a helpful review of Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd / Parting, Prophecy, Poetry, by Duncan Blair, John Alick MacPherson and Michael Linkletter (CBU Press 2013).
Cape Breton author 
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Nice review of