Appalled that We’ve Been Cancelled?! Sign This Petition!!

Shoppers Drug Mart recently took the extraordinary step of “delisting” Adbusters magazine, one of Canada’s most influential homegrown publications.

With over 1,300 stores, Shoppers is the country’s largest print-magazine retailer.

Adbusters, for its part, accepts no advertising or corporate sponsorships. It relies entirely on newsstand sales and subscriptions to stay afloat.

With access to the drug-store chain’s shelves revoked, the independent mag was dealt a heavy blow — in a time, moreover, of economic beleaguerment and journalistic peril.

“I don’t think Canada’s biggest newsstand distributor should be censoring content,” says founder Kalle Lasn. “Canadian magazine readers deserve better.”

We’re calling on Galen Weston, Jr. — executive chairman of Loblaws, Shoppers’ parent company — to put Adbusters back in Shoppers . . . and affirm that from now on, his company will stop sanitizing its magazine racks.

Buck top-down speech policing. Sign the petition below to affirm your support for fiercely independent print publications like ours!

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We, the undersigned, are appalled and dismayed at Shoppers Drug Mart’s decision to “delist” Adbusters.

As citizens of a country that prides itself on its protections for free and open speech, this is an alarming development. Canadians should be afforded easy access to whatever non-hateful, non-violent material they like.

Moreover, Canada’s largest retailer of print magazines ought to show its support for independent homegrown journalism — especially in this time of crisis for the industry. A robust journalism culture is essential to any properly functioning democracy.

To Galen Weston, Jr., executive chairman of Loblaws: Put Adbusters back on Shoppers’ shelves.

We will not tolerate your company’s policing our reading preferences!

Sign petition here!