Madam Speaker, for the past hour, I have been listening to the hon. members opposite talk about the industry's needs. If they were more transparent—honest might be a better word—they would clarify the fact that when they say industry, they mean the very large distributors. I have a great deal of respect for large distributors, which are a major part of the world economy, but they are talking about helping companies like Sony and Walt Disney. Those are the corporations that will benefit from this bill.
Let me go back to a rather striking example. How can they claim that they are thinking about the industry, when the cultural industry—which includes 80 arts and culture organizations across Quebec and the rest of the country, so from all across Canada—has stated that the bill will be toxic to Canada's digital economy? How can there be 80 major organizations across the country that have come to that conclusion and yet the government is still constantly claiming that it is thinking about the industry?
Certainly some sectors of the industry are perfectly comfortable with this bill, but let me reiterate that major sectors have reached that very harsh conclusion. That does not come from the New Democrats, but rather from a significant portion of the cultural industry, not just distributors. This bill will be toxic to Canada's digital economy.
Those organizations have warned us that if the government fails to amend the copyright modernization bill to ensure that content owners are properly compensated, this will lead to a decline in the production of Canadian content and its dissemination domestically and abroad. We are using the word “dissemination”. These are crisis words, blunt words that, I repeat, are not coming from the “big bad leftists”, as some of our neighbours opposite like to call us, but from people in the cultural industry.
With this kind of reaction from such important industry players, the government should first have the decency to not claim any great success. It should show great respect for the industry's response to the bill and go back to the drawing board until these people believe that the government's proposed legislation will not give rise to something as significant as disseminating Canadian content in Canada and abroad.
In Canada, the government has historically had a hard time fully understanding the cultural industry and its front-line players: creators.
I cannot cover every aspect of this 70-page bill, but I will take a few minutes to talk about one aspect I know well and to provide some historical overview.
We have been lagging behind for far too long with respect to the status of creators in Canada. We are one of the last countries to keep its Copyright Act under the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food. We are one of the last countries to realize that it has been a very long time since the days when artists were reduced to simply performing at agricultural fairs.
Then the government came up with a modernized copyright regime that was one of the worst in the western world.
Let us compare our copyright system with what was being done in Europe in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Here, for example, a songwriter or composer—and this was true everywhere—shared up to 50% of total royalties with a publisher. Consequently, there remained 25% for the songwriter and 25% for the composer. That is generally how it worked. That was quite a common model. And then a few pennies were paid per songrecorded on a widespread format, such as CDs, which are still in use. One of the differences between Canada and Europe was that, in Europe, the author had to be paid for the right to distribute CDs in stores.
If 100,000 copies of an artist's work were made, first it had to be proven that the composer of the musical work and the songwriter had received their few pennies per song, which could add up to a lot if it was a major success. We are not talking about $100,000, but, even if it was a few pennies, that gave them a decent income.
In Canada, however, records could be distributed through merchants, in stores, without paying anything. Up to 20% could be considered “free goods”. That is what the merchants were given for promoting the product, and those “free goods” were exempt from copyright obligations. So 100,000 copies were distributed, but the first 20,000 copies did not generate a cent for the creator, and the other 80,000 copies had to be sold and had to be recorded as having been sold. Ultimately, the creator might receive his meagre 25% for a song recorded on a CD that eventually sold.
That was something like telling a bricklayer to lay bricks at a shopping centre, but that he would not be paid for his work unless the shopping centre was successful and had customers and its tenants were happy and paid their rent. He could do the brickwork at the shopping centre but never get paid. The deep roots of that attitude toward copyright in Canada are evident in the failures of this bill.
I will conclude on this basic attitude because the problem of a toothless copyright regime that has been around for decades underscores a fundamental perception that must absolutely change in Canada. The success of a cultural product stems from something magical that comes from the artist, not from the investor, the broadcaster or the person who—admittedly—may have invested thousands or even millions of dollars in the distribution of an album, a disk or a book. It is the artist who suddenly manages to grasp the most interesting thing that is happening at a particular time and who suddenly finds an audience. When an artist does that, he deserves his copyright.
If we understand that, we can immediately see that attempts in this legislation to protect major broadcasters do not honour the artist’s medium- and long-term need to earn an adequate and decent income from new technologies. Often, people do not really understand that it is the creator's magic that makes the product.
If the major distributors had a magic potion and knew exactly how to produce an artistic product for one million dollars that would sell three million copies, they would do so every day. They attempt this regularly and, often, it does not work out. When it works, it is because there was something magical that came from the creators and had an effect on the public.
Things do not happen magically. Creators invests thousands of hours in practice and rehearsals, rewrite thousands of pages, and spend thousands of hours developing themselves culturally in order to become people who create magic. The fact that we are considering modernizing copyright—and that this is even in the title of the bill—and that the party in power has managed to conduct a smear campaign by conflating the notion of guaranteeing suitable copyright with a tax, represents a dangerous, slippery slope.
In sectors of the industry that require a lot of creativity, the downward spiral has already begun. In video game production, for example, creators are often paid on a per-game basis. Young men and women are approached and asked to put together a beautiful soundtrack in exchange for $1,000. Regardless of its success, whether the video game in question is a hit and sells 75,000 copies, or is a total flop and only sells 200 copies, there is no copyright. That is what is called a buyout; the rights are purchased from the young creator.
That is the fate that awaits creators. Personally, I do not want to live in a world where creators can no longer live off copyright unless they produce a real hit. It means living in a less creative world. I do not need a Rocky 127. In future decades, I want to see creators who create interesting music and arthouse films.
