1228 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V 
The Committee held that the Canadian Act of 1889 was 
inconsistent with Imperial legislation and would therefore 
require to be confirmed by an Imperial Act, but they were 
not prepared to recommend that it should be so confirmed 
in its present form. They urged that a Bill for the purpose 
could hardly be passed through the Imperial Parliament, as 
it would be inconsistent with the policy of making copyright 
independent of the place of printing, which Her Majesty’s 
Government had for many years been urging the United 
States to adopt; it would impair the rights in Canada of 
British authors, by whom the Canadian market was princi- 
pally supplied, and it would be at least open to the charge of 
being inconsistent with the declaration made in 1891 to the 
United States, on the faith of which the United States had 
admitted British authors to the benefit of their copyright law. 
The Committee considered that the Canadian reader had 
no grounds for complaint under the existing arrangements, 
as it could not matter to him, as a reader, whether the 
reprints which he used were produced in Canada or in the 
United States. Canadian authors could only suffer from 
the isolation of Canada in copyright matters. No doubt 
the Canadian publishers and printers felt severely the com- 
petition of rivals in the United States, but it was doubtful 
whether the Berne Convention had augmented the difficul- 
ties, for even before the Convention countries like France, 
which had copyright treaties with the United Kingdom, were 
entitled under those treaties and the International Copyright 
Acts to copyright in Canada. The arrangement with the 
United States was not such as to increase the inducement to 
American publishers to reprint British books, and the real 
grievance of the Canadian publishers was that they were 
andersold by competitors who had the advantage of a larger 
capital and a larger market, and in whose favour protective 
legislation was enforced against their weaker rivals. 
The Committee recognized that the present state of the 
Canadian law was unsatisfactory, and they suggested that on 
proof of a book first published in the United Kingdom and 
by such publication having copyright in Canada not being