Basically, this all comes down to a summary of the despicable comments we have heard from the people who are just looking to profit from this exemption. It will mean a loss of $21 million in royalties to artists. To that $21 million, we can of course add the $30 million dollars that, one day, we will try to get back, let's hope, by overhauling the private copying regime.
We have opposed this Conservative bill from the outset. We are always mindful of the interests of artists in Quebec as well as elsewhere in Canada. The Conservatives on the other side of the room speak about balance. I don't think they know what the word “balance” means. We feel that they would have some understanding of what balance is if they had at least found a way to make up for those losses by other means. But that is not the case.
In the Conservatives' bill, there is nothing to make up for that loss. Why? In this committee, the question of where the money taken from the artists' war chest was going to come from has often been asked. The term “war chest” is a very bad choice of words, because we are talking about their income. We have pointed out on a number of occasions that the royalties artists get here and there are their salary. To subtract $21 million dollars that comes from an industry that, for the moment at least, is cashing in on the music handsomely…