The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) joins with colleagues in Canada’s writing and publishing sector in pressing the federal government to prioritize homegrown human creativity with greater investment and protection.
While the 2025 Federal Budget contains some welcome funding and policy announcements related to cultural workers, it is far less than the sector has been promised for almost a decade. Other than a small share of the $2 million per year (over three years) going to the Canada Council for the Arts, there is nothing in the budget specifically designed to sustain and grow Canada’s book sector; this, after many years of policy-driven market failure and a terminally weakened Copyright Act.
Specifically, the government has retreated from previous Budget promises to repair the licensing market for educational copies of published material in Canada. Canada remains a global outlier, lacking the enforcement of respectful and valuable educational licensing that protects the intellectual property and cultural labour of writers, while providing robust and affordable access to educators and students.
A long-promised increase to the modest but extremely efficient Public Lending Right program, which compensates authors for the free use of their work in Canada’s public libraries, has also disappeared, along with proposed increases to the Canada Book Fund, our sector’s primary public investment vehicle.
By contrast, Budget 2025 allocates almost a billion dollars over five years to investment in artificial intelligence technologies and the building of a sovereign public AI infrastructure.
“While federal investment in artificial intelligence soars in the budget,” notes author Kim Fahner, Chair of TWUC, “what’s missing is the crucial understanding that AI depends on humans and our valuable creativity.”
As it is now widely understood that AI needs established human creativity for its ongoing training and output delivery, this budget misses an opportunity to encourage a fruitful collective licensing marketplace that would contribute to economic growth across the economy and maintain valuable creative labour in Canada.
TWUC encourages the government to continue its current study on the effects of AI on cultural work, and to renew and strengthen its commitment to growing and protecting the homegrown creative labour of Canada’s authors and publishers.
For additional information:
John Degen, Chief Executive Officer
The Writers’ Union of Canada
jdegen@writersunion.ca
DATE: November 6, 2025
