Lend Me Your Ear

This country’s public libraries are hungry for content, especially for content that represents a range of voices and experiences — from Indigenous histories to French-language poets, from the memoirs of recent immigrants to the graphic novels of third- or fourth-generation Canadians. In the ten years ending in 2018, our librarians spent $714,376,318 on collections. And while books are just one of the many ways that libraries meet the social, economic, employment, recreational, and educational needs of their communities, they remain central to the larger mission. A great deal of that money, then, goes to the authors, illustrators, and publishers who create the volumes that ­public libraries — and their users — crave.

Recently, it’s been argued that the public library system is somehow nefarious, that this critical infrastructure of ours competes with Canada’s authors and publishers...