As of February 1, Canadian Publishers' Council (CPC), which represents the interests of Canada's largest trade, education and professional publishers, has finalized its merger with the Canadian Education Research Council (CERC), which represents approximately 80% of the country's K-12 education publishers. Currently, the CPC has 18 members with Scholastic and Chenèliere Education (a K-12 publisher out of Montreal) the most recent members to join.
CPC will continue to be run by executive director David Swail, while CERC’s executive director Gerry McIntyre is retiring. Beverley Buxton, who serves as chair of CERC and is general manager of Pearson Canada’s school division, is joining CPC’s board of directors and will serve as chair of a newly-formed K-12 Committee. The other CPC committees are Higher Education and Trade. "With this third leg of the stool, this will give the CERC members a defined voice within the organization and an ability to deal with issues that are germane to K-12," Swail told PW.
CPC is currently interviewing candidates for the new role of vice president, K-20 (through under-graduate and graduate level). "Our plan," said Swail, "is that this person will work to maintain the momentum that CERC has developed over the years with education ministries across the country,"
“CERC and CPC merging will help us streamline our administrative efforts so we can focus more energy and resources on telling the story of how much our members contribute, both to the sector and economy, but as importantly to Canadian classrooms,” said Kevin Hanson, president of CPC and president of Simon & Schuster Canada, in a prepared statement.
"2017 big year for us. One of the big focuses for us is the Copyright Modernization Act, which is up for review this year," Swail told PW, who added that the merger was, in part, prompted by the need of the overlapping interests the organizations had in lobbying the government to change the law, which has had a significant negative impact on Canadian education publishers. "We felt that joining forces more formally would help us more efficiently in engaging key stakeholders with this issue," he said.
