For the last 11 months, playing Canada has been an expensive proposition. As of August of last year, new regulations required that any venue with a primary business other than music that booked bands and performers had to pay an application fee of $275/musician that was traveling from outside of the country. That was in addition to an extra $150 for each approved musician and crew member’s work permit. According to the math in an article last year, that would add up to $1,700 to get a band on the bill. It didn’t take long to get musicians, including Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, to urge Canadians to change the law back. It took a while, but Ottawa has eliminated the fee, known as the ‘tour tax.’

According to Toronto’s The Globe and Mail, the tour tax was quietly eliminated last week, hidden amidst a bunch of other measures. When it was announced last year, the government said that the fees were helping cover costs of determining whether a Canadian should be hired instead of a temporary foreign worker. Both Canadian and international artists were critical of the move, with many finding it hurting smaller businesses and venues more than concert halls. Musician Andrew Cash told the Globe and Mail that the government “corrected something incredibly dumb that they shouldn’t have implemented in the first place,” stating “the music sector wasn’t abusing the temporary foreign worker program, and there was no consultation in advance of the government’s decision. “There was no one asking for it, in fact.”

[via theprp]