Evidence of meeting #5 for Bill C-11 (41st Parliament, 1st Session) in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
What format is this in? What type of product are we talking about?
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
It can be in any format. We distribute it on DVD. We offer streaming, and we offer duplication rights for school districts. We also put it on a digital platform that can go on the Internet. So there isn't a format we do not cover.
We will no longer be able to charge those fees to the school districts for the public performance, because they'll be exempt from it.
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
Yes. So our argument here is that if we're only able to charge $9.99, who is going to produce Canadian content? How are producers going to create anything on the Canadian prairies or the maritimes? Who is going to create it in both official languages?
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
So when a school buys something today, are they paying for the product plus a licensing fee?
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
Yes. And we charge different prices. If they just want the public performance rights because it is commercially available, it would be a different fee from what it would be if we were actually supplying a hard copy to them.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
So under Bill C-11 the schools will still be buying your products.
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
No, they would be exempt from copyright from our products.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
So how is that different from today? You said that today they're buying your product and paying a licensing fee.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Okay. Under Bill C-11 they'll still be buying the product; they just won't be paying the licensing fee.
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
I'm going to defer to John, because I'm not sure I understand.
5:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
The public performance provision is extremely important to us because it helps provide price stability and distinguishes us from the home video marketplace. In the home video marketplace you buy a video or a DVD. You can get it for a very small fee based on the supply the producer has. If it's a Disney program, they will produce 20 million copies of it.
In the Canadian educational market you're lucky if you sell 150 copies, so we charge more for the public performance provision than Disney would charge for a private showing in your home. That's what provides stability to our prices when we sell hard copy. Many of our products are also available in the home video market, and through our licensing we have enabled the schools and teachers to have access to the millions of copies that are in the local community, and publicly perform them.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
I want you to quantify the financial or economic impact. Give me some numbers to help me understand this.
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
Essentially I think we'd be quickly out of business even if we could adapt a new business model over two or three years. I don't think we would survive in the interim.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
5:35 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
For us, 60% of our business is sold to the educational sector in public performance rights.
I also want to add to what John said. Bill C-11 also allows them to duplicate. So right now a school district would pay us $5,000 to duplicate 1,000 copies of a title. Now they will be able to buy it once for $49, or whatever the fee is, and duplicate it as many times as they want. They could stick it on a digital platform, make it available to all their teachers, and not pay any additional fees for that.
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Okay. And does the advent of digitizing your products provide a more risk-free business model for you? Are you fully taking advantage of digital platforms today?
5:40 p.m.
President and General Manager, Head Office, Criterion Pictures
Yes, we are. It's an expensive proposition, as you can imagine, and we've invested millions of dollars in it. Even in digitizing any feature films, we correlate everything to the provincial curriculum standards. It's very, very expensive.
5:40 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Glenn Thibeault
Thank you very much. That's the five minutes.
We're moving on to Mr. Regan for five minutes.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to all of you for coming today. I'm sorry the time is so brief.
We've heard from witnesses today that consumers wind up paying more under this bill. We have heard the music industry will be hurt to the tune of $22 million in losses from this. Now we're hearing that Bill C-11, in your view, will lead to job losses.
Mr. Cormier, could you please let us know how many job losses you are forecasting and how we should amend the bill to avoid that situation?
5:40 p.m.
President and General Manager, Audio Ciné Films Inc.
Similar to Criterion, about 70% of our revenues come from the educational sector and public performance, so very few companies can survive any length of time with a 70% reduction in their revenues.
Our company would close quite immediately. We've been in business since 1966. We have ten employees. But it's more the industry as a whole: not every single company that is in this industry can appear before the committee. We're among the largest, and we sort of represent the industry as a whole, informally. There are thousands of jobs related to what we do. There are millions of dollars that are generated for local economies through our licences.
So it's a very drastic thing for us. If we cannot charge for public performance, which is what we do mainly, then there's very little else for us to do.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Okay. Let me ask you, and then Mr. Fisher, this question. We've heard from Mr. Fisher or Ms. Hitchon—I forget which—that they're proposing an amendment that would say if it's commercially available it's not an exemption—
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
We've heard from other witnesses who are suggesting, perhaps with different parts for different sectors, that there should be an amendment to say basically that the six-step test put forward by the Supreme Court of Canada in the CCH case should be inserted into the bill. What's your view of those two possibilities?