The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the governments of Canada, Manitoba and Nova Scotia to cut wasteful hand outs to publishing houses.

“It’s wrong for taxpayers to be on the hook for publishing houses pushing fringe political propaganda,” said Devin Drover, CTF Atlantic Director. “If people don’t want to actually buy a book, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.”

Fernwood Publishing has received $306,900 from the federal government between 2020 and 2024, along with $135,000 from the government of Nova Scotia in 2024 through its Publishers Assistance Fund.

The company also received $86,250 from the government of Manitoba since 2020 through the Publisher Marketing Assistance Program. Manitoba alone spends about $114,000 a year on hand outs to book publishers for marketing.

Fernwood Publishing is a Halifax- and Winnipeg-based company that describes itself as “politically driven, not profit driven.” The publisher says this approach allows it to “take risks in publishing radical analysis” in order to “engage with radical ideas and contribute to structural change.”

Recent titles include Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left, which describes itself as exploring the “uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.”

Despite the handouts, the book currently ranks #472 in “Communist & Socialist Ideologies,” #82 in “Marxism Philosophy,” and has no reviews on Amazon.ca.

Other titles published by Fernwood include I’ll Get Right On it, which is a collection of poems about “working life in the climate crisis;” and Openings and Closures: Socialist Strategy at a Crossroads, focusing on what actions socialists should take in 2025.

“If a business is explicitly ‘not profit driven,’ taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for that bad business plan,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director. “Publishers should make their money by selling books people want to read, not getting handouts from three different levels of government.”

Other documents showing funding to Fernwood Publishing can be found here.