Thank you for the opportunity today.
My name is Chris Tabor. I am the director of the bookstore at Queen's University. I am here today on behalf of Campus Stores Canada, the national trade association of institutionally owned and operated campus stores.
We have almost 100 member stores nationwide and more than 80 vendor and supplier associates. In short, if you know one of the million or so university or college students in Canada, there is a very good chance you know someone served by Campus Stores Canada.
I would like to spend a few moments highlighting our support for adding education as a fair dealing exemption under the act. Fair dealing is an important academic right. It ensures that students and researchers are able to use the materials that they need without worrying about inadvertently violating copyright. This provision offers an important clarification to the academic community.
It is important to underline that fair dealing and other educational gains are undermined with absolute digital lock protections. By allowing circumvention of digital locks for non-infringing reasons, legitimate research and uses are not unduly hindered and creators' protection is maintained. We should not treat legitimate users the same way we would treat criminals.
A number of organizations have raised concerns that this might lead to the copying of full textbooks without compensation. Others argue, and we agree, that these concerns are unfounded based on current fair dealing jurisprudence. I can add, from the perspective of one who creates and commercially distributes course packs and relies heavily on the revenues from the sales of textbooks, that we do not see the addition of a fair dealing exemption as a risk to our business.
I would like to now focus on a provision of the Copyright Act that encourages the artificial inflation of book prices. It may interest this committee to know that in the years 2008 and 2009, the U.S. federal government and approximately 23 states considered legislation affecting access to and the affordability of course materials for U.S. students. I am very happy to be here today to talk about how, with the stroke of a pen, a change in regulation can save Canadian students tens of millions of dollars each year without any cost to the public purse.
The Copyright Act allows publishers to establish import monopolies on books from authors from around the world and, in turn, outlines what these import monopolies may charge for the cost of books. Specifically, the import regulations stipulate that an importer can charge a bookseller the price of a book in the country of origin plus the difference in exchange rates between the two countries plus an additional 10% or 15% depending on the country of origin.
Campus Stores Canada considers this to be a private tax established by a public policy. It is a tax paid from the wallets of Canadian students and their families and it is collected primarily by foreign private interests. It allows publishers to receive an additional 10% or 15% of pure profit from their products before risking losing a sale to parallel importers. Importantly, this returns no appreciable benefit to the artists or authors who have created the works in question.
These unnecessary costs are not insignificant. The trade in imported books by campus booksellers is worth about $262 million, representing roughly half the books sold at these stores. Removing this tariff would save students about $30 million annually, with savings beginning virtually overnight.
The tax is designed as an artifact of publishing, commercial distribution, and policy paradigms that have changed radically since these regulations were promulgated in 1999, most notably through the development of Internet-based commerce.
Unlike booksellers, individual consumers are not bound by these regulations and are able to freely and legally purchase books from the lowest-cost provider, regardless of location, and they do.
Through Internet retailers, Canadian consumers are often able to buy books more cheaply than Canadian resellers can. It confounds market logic that an individual Canadian student is able to import individual books more economically than a multinational corporation importing commercial volumes of products, but this is the direct result of the tariff's artificial inflation of domestic book prices.
Therefore, to get best value on learning materials, students are effectively forced by this tax to turn to Internet retailers based in other countries, an extra step that is as absurd as it is inconvenient. We believe a substantial reduction in textbook prices can be achieved by removing this book import tax. Doing so will see students spend millions of dollars less but without the need for any expenditure on the part of the government.
Legislatively, it can be achieved by removing section 27.1 of the act. While such changes were not included in the Bill C-32 update, legislative changes are not necessarily needed to remove this tax, as the relevant regulations can be altered with the stroke of a pen.
In an era when fiscal prudence is king, government must be sure to take advantage of opportunities where it can decrease costs to individual Canadians without increasing costs to government. This is one of those areas. This is one of those opportunities.
I thank you for your time. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.