Canadian Heritage Committee on March 4th, 2014

[Sophie Couture]

They have juries. This is not a decision that is made by the government. Those are juried.

[Jean-François Bernier]

He mentioned the Junos.

[Sophie Couture]

There are the Junos too.

There are selections done by committees that are looking at diverse criteria, such as your sales, your work, and from where you go to where. Based on their selection, they have nominees, and then they make the selection for the winners.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

There's a committee that selects the performers.

[Jean-François Bernier]

Yes. For the Junos or the Gala de l'ADISQ, which is the French equivalent of the Juno Awards, there's a producer and a committee. They bring in the popular stars of the year. This is how they're selected. The government has nothing to do with picking artists. This is as true for the performances at the Juno Awards as it is for picking projects and which artists we should invest in or not. It's really not.... We're not doing that.

[Sophie Couture]

In certain categories, it's like when you go to restaurants; it's the choice of the public. They're the ones.... There are surveys that go out and depending on which categories they select....

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

You have more than two minutes left, if you want to use it.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

I'll pass it over to John, because he was having a fit here at being cut off a while ago.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Go ahead, Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Couture, I will pick up where I left off and ask you my questions.

Do you have an idea of the questions we could ask the musicians? I think we have to focus on the people who benefit from this program.

[Sophie Couture]

Given all the changes that the artists and the entrepreneurs in the music industry in general are going through, I think that it is always good to get a sense of the real challenges they face every day. Understanding their challenges is the best way to adjust public policy.

So you should ask them whether the current funding mechanisms meet their needs or whether their priorities are more international and digital now. So you have to confirm the priorities again. Those would be the questions to ask them, I feel.

People in the industry generally make themselves heard. It is not very hard for them to give their opinion on various things. A good open question could provide you with a lot of information.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

If you think of any other questions that we could ask, we will gladly take them.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

We'll now go to our five-minute round of questioning.

Mr. Nantel, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As my colleague said, my thanks to the witnesses for their patience.

The idea of conducting a study on the world of music is more than appropriate, of course. But I would like to get one thing clear. As I see it, record production, support for artists, our cultural richness, are really going well both nationally and internationally. The figures you have shown us are conclusive in terms of the process of music production, creation and support for the creators. Basically, in general terms, that is going well.

But there was a part of your presentation that did not reflect daily reality, I feel. Mr. Dion tried to raise a point about sales. As you very rightly said, the number of majors in business in Canada has dropped spectacularly. I was with Sony at a time when there were 17 majors in Montreal. Now I believe that there are only 12 left, including BMG. Some have merged.

That drop is troubling. That said, it is an international situation that is potentially linked to things like pirating, but also to other forms of consumption. That is precisely the topic that I would like you to tell us more about.

I brought my daughter's computer. I am struck by how great a challenge it still is to improve the visibility of Canadian productions on platforms that the audience goes to. If you go to deezer.ca, you get redirected to deezer.com. That is one example. Deezer is no worse than any other. I registered as a 50-year-old Canadian francophone. I got a “top 100” list and only about three of the 100 artists were Canadian. I could register with a profile of “Songs in French“, but you have to look for it. This is a problem.

At the moment, I feel that the entire recording industry needs support for its Internet presence. I went on the iTunes Canada site and it is the same thing. The iTunes site certainly provides a site in French. There are local selections. But it is still all new. Up until now, we have managed to impose quotas. Mr. Juneau made that proposal a while ago and it made all the difference. You spoke highly of it too.

The result is that, today, our music industry is also solid.The same thing goes for television and cinema. The quotas encouraged the development of our own cultural products. It created a vibrant culture on a daily basis. That is a great. We are not talking about a pair of snowshoes hanging in a museum. We are talking about people listening to homegrown contemporary music. They see that as a good thing and they are proud of it. It makes for a good show on national holidays. It generates record sales and creates jobs.

How are you communicating with the recording industry in order to try and improve our presence on these new platforms?

[Jean-François Bernier]

That is an excellent question.

Let me go back to 2009, when the fund was overhauled. it was not a huge overhaul, but the decision was still made to support two priorities that came from the music industry. They often tell us that Canadian artists and Canadian content are not sufficiently featured on digital platforms, or on other kinds. I will not tell you that all the problems have been solved, but the decision has still been made to invest more in order to develop the digital market.

Annex 2 gives several examples of market development initiatives in this area. There is a lot of trial and error as we move forward with it.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Yes.

[Jean-François Bernier]

You worked in the industry. If there was a miracle recipe, Sony would still be one of 17 in Montreal.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

What you say is valid and what we did in 2009 was good. However, there is a kind of inertia, not only with you but here too, all over Parliament. Things are moving much too quickly for us to be able to digest it. That is the problem.

Since I opened a Deezer account, that is the music that plays in my office. I have constant access to new music. I can adjust my profile so that the music playing matches the styles that interest me. I can rewind a song, stop it, start it again, replay it in a loop, and so on. In other words, I am not going to be buying the new disc because I am on Deezer. This all highlights the question of what a decent payment might be to get the music offered by that kind of station.

You mentioned 2009. That is already five years ago now, and you know as well as I do, that is a long time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Monsieur Nantel, merci.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I'm done, unfortunately. I'll be back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Dykstra for five minutes.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you very much for the update and for being here this morning.

I have gone through the presentation. On page 8 you talk about the quotas for broadcasting of Canadian and French-language popular music content. I wondered if you could comment on how those originated in terms of 35% of the playlist being devoted to Canadian content and 65% of the playlist devoted to French-language content. How was that arrived at, and have you ever reconsidered?

There are many in the music industry who I've heard talk about this as being more of a burden to Canadian content, to Canadian music and the development of such, than it is a benefit. I wonder if you could comment on whether there's a thought within the ministry, whether there's a thought within the industry, to taking another look at this and seeing whether or not we actually need content levels or if we should adjust them to perhaps a more appropriate level in this day and age.

[Jean-François Bernier]

Thank you for the question.

The Canadian content regulations are not a policy of the department. Those regulations are established by the CRTC. I understand you're going to have them on one of the panels. I would recommend that you ask them how they come up with those numbers.

However, it is true that there is a debate out there against and in favour of those types of quotas. If that's okay with you, I would defer that question to the CRTC.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It's actually not okay. I'd really like to get an answer from you as to what you think.