Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Canadian Federation of Musicians is a Canadian division of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada with a membership of 90,000 people across North America, 17,000 of whom are Canadian. The AFM-CFM is the leading professional organization of its kind to musicians in North America. The Canadian Federation of Musicians' headquarters oversees all matters of national importance to musicians and governs its 25 local offices coast to coast in Canada. There are just over 200 offices in the U.S. as well.
As a distinctly Canadian division of AFM and under its federal status of the artist recognition, the CFM negotiates fair agreements and working conditions covering all musical services within Canada. CFM diligently works to protect ownership of recorded music, secure benefits such as health care and pension for its members, and actively lobbies in copyright reform and other matters of interest to all professional musicians working and/or living in Canada.
The Canadian Federation of Musicians helps thousands of musicians who need assistance with any number of issues related to the recording and live performance of their craft with various departments covering an array of services important to musicians, including cross-border work. We're a P2 petitioner. We do a lot of work for P2s for musicians travelling across the border: medical care, insurance programs, etc.
Our agenda today is addressing some issues with regard to intellectual property and the temporary entry for foreign business persons. Intellectual property talks about several treaties, but it leaves out a very important treaty, the Beijing treaty, which was recently signed off on in 2012. We would like to see the Beijing treaty added as a reference document here.
We would also like to bring up the topic of national treatment. While national treatment is good, our concern with national treatment is that Canada has, in some cases, reduced the level of protection below what is recommended in the WCT and the WPPT. We would like to see a higher level of compliance there. The Beijing treaty and also the Rome Convention would be reference documents we would like to bring forward.
Regarding temporary entry business persons, there seems to be a recognition—and we applaud that—that there should be an application procedure and licence. We would like to push for recognition that musicians entering Canada on a temporary basis must submit to contract to the certified organization—that's us, the Canadian Federation of Musicians—to ensure that conditions of employment meet or exceed the recommended minimums for that particular classification of work. We're federally certified to represent all musicians in this country, and immigration is definitely a federal topic.
With regard to this committee, we would like to also bring up an overall request to recognize the need to clear all musicians entering Canada through our office. Without scrutiny by our national office and the enforcement of a fair wage in all sectors, there's very likely to be a huge influx of foreign musicians under this treaty, which makes the market more competitive. It drives wages down unless they are controlled and floods the market with non-Canadian culture. We would like to uphold Canadian culture in this country, and we need to do that by fair competition and fair wages.
Thank you.