Bill C-11 Committee on March 1st, 2012

[Michael McCarty]

Yes.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

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.

[Richard Gray]

Well, I think...[Inaudible--Editor].

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

But it is true, and for a small station it's $1,500 for the broadcast mechanical.

[Richard Gray]

I'm going to answer your question in a slightly different fashion, and I'm going to answer it using the same analogy that you did with respect to musicians. You said it's easy to get rich but it's also—

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

No, I said it's a good place to get rich but a lousy place to make a living.

[Richard Gray]

It's a good place to get rich and it's a lousy place to make a living.

Well, in radio there are a number of very successful stations and there are a number that are struggling. The reason is that music plays a big part in the success of a radio station but it doesn't play the only part.

Music is a component of a radio station's much broader environment that also includes the quality of the personalities on the station; the depth and breadth of the news, weather, traffic, and information we provide; the support we provide to the local community; the calibre of the creative people on the station; and the number and types of advertisers who are part of a radio station.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Understood.

How much money in broadcast mechanicals does CHUM pay?

[Richard Gray]

How much does CHUM pay?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Yes. What's the broadcast mechanical fee for CHUM?

[Richard Gray]

It's $2.8 million.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Okay. What's the profit of CHUM?

[Richard Gray]

That's not something that—

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Well, your parent company's profits in the third quarter of 2011 were $652 million.

Seriously, we're talking—

[An hon. member]

What has that got to do with copyright?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

What it has to do with copyright—

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

There's a point of order.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

What statute did we breach? If it's a point of order, I'm looking for a statute.

[An hon. member]

The point is relevance.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

This is debate. Thank you very much. If it's not a statute, it's debate.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

Mr. Cash, you're out of time, unfortunately. Thank you very much.

We'll move on now to Mr. Calandra, for five minutes.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gray or Ms. Woods, how many people does Bell Media employ in this country, approximately?

[Richard Gray]

Bell Media employs 723 in their radio business, and my guess would be that on the television side that number would probably be about 3,500—so between 4,000 and 4,200.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

What about Bell as a whole?

[Tanya Woods]

What I can tell you right now—because I don't have those numbers with me, and I wasn't expecting to address Bell as a whole—is that in the Ottawa area Bell is the largest private sector employer.