April Blog

For many years the Canadian government bought advertising space to impart important information to readers of Swedish Press. There was an understanding that ethnic publications were an important tool in reaching all sectors of the population.

During the last few years Swedes have been shut out, only because Swedish Press is printed in a magazine format rather than as a tabloid or a semi-tab.

Swedish Press started out as a broadsheet in 1929, but switched to a magazine format in 1986 to raise the quality of the publication and to prepare it for computerization. For a long time the bureaucrats did not mind the change as the frequency and content remained the same, but suddenly the 8"x11" format stopped us from being eligible for government advertising!

Similarly Swedish Press does not receive any advertising from the province of Ontario because the magazine is not printed there! The fact that Swedish Press is the only way to reach Swedish Canadians in Ontario does not seem to matter.

If information is important enough to im-part to all citizens, this should be done in the best and most fair way possible and the format and where in the country it is printed should not be considerations.

The issue of format is in general a form of discrimination against Canadians of Euro-pean origin as their publications are often magazines. I am acutely aware that the Swe-dish community, like many other European communities, is small compared to the various Asian communities and hence easily ignored on the political scene. It is only natural that the Asian communities, primarily the Chinese and the East Indian, are heavily targeted by political parties and, above all, commercial advertisers such as banks, immigration lawyers, car salesmen and realtors. But shouldn’t you expect a degree of fairness from the government?

On top of this, the Government of Canada spends only $800 000 on ads in the ethnic media (with 3 million readers a day), compared to about $100 million in the general media, which does not sound reasonable for a country that professes to be multicultural.