Thank you, Ms. Lavallée.
Let me simply set a context for you. First of all, I can hear the passion in your voice when you talk about artists. It's a passion I share as the former Minister of Communications for Canada responsible for Canadian culture
and as former president of the CBC.
For me, it's absolutely fundamental, and as Minister of National Revenue, I was responsible for bringing in the status of the artist bill, which was designed to help provide protections and income for artists.
Copyright protection is one of the tools--it's not the only tool--the government has at its disposal to provide for better incomes and better support for creators. This is why we support the legislation. Artists themselves will benefit from having better copyright protection. Businesses will, and others will as well.
There are other tools in addition to that, as you're looking at the income of artists--support that may be available for the artistic community, which government also has at its disposal--and you should look across the board at all those measures.
Of concern to us, though, as we look specifically at copyright, and where we believe that both artists themselves and the businesses that are involved with them will benefit, is that we not lose this best chance that we've had to modernize our legislation and move ahead.
I've read the committee's transcripts, and the one area in which there's agreement is that the status quo is unacceptable. We have to make improvements. We need to strike a balance, to find some sort of fair middle ground. We think a conscientious attempt was made to do that. We're making proposals for ways to improve it beyond that. But we think that can be done.
Mr. Webster might want to comment specifically--