On our side we're very interested in ensuring that artists get paid, and ensuring that the small-business person, who is essentially the artist, is supported in ways that nurture a growing middle class of artists.
I like to say that the music industry is a great place to get rich and a lousy place to make a living. In other words, there are a few people who can strike it rich and the rest are working extremely hard and every dollar counts.
I think this is important for this committee to understand. I'm sometimes surprised at the members on the government side who dismiss the $2,000 or $3,000 that some artists get from the different royalty streams as being just a couple of grand and what's the big deal with that? Well, this is the underpinning of the music business in Canada. It strikes me as outrageous to sometimes hear this lack of understanding. One of the core pillars of the arts and culture sector in Canada is made up of essentially thousands upon thousands of micro-business people, who are trying to pay the rent, raise a family, write a good song, and make life a little more joyous, even for those of us on Parliament Hill.
When I hear this talk about actually taking money for artists off the table, this raises a huge red flag. We're talking about $20 million right across the country.
Let's talk in real dollars here for a second. For a radio station with a revenue of about $500,000—we're talking about a small station—its broadcast mechanical is about $1,500. Are we saying that a small radio station whose broadcast mechanical is $1,500 is going to spend way more than that on a staffer to copy the music?
Mr. Gray, that sounds like a strange business model to me.