Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to meet with you today.
My name is Ted East. I am president of the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, or CAFDE for short.
CAFDE is a non-profit trade association that represents the interests of Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled feature film distributors and exporters. CAFDE members distribute over 90% of the non-studio and Canadian films released theatrically in Canada each year. CAFDE members distribute films in Canada from all over the world and in the widest ranges of genres and budgets.
With me are two senior executives from CAFDE member companies: Patrick Roy, president and CEO of Alliance Vivafilm, and David Reckziegel, co-president of Entertainment One Films.
Copyright reform is long overdue in this country. The Ipsos study released today emphasizes how urgently Canada needs to modernize its copyright law to stop massive online piracy and encourage the development and delivery of a variety of innovative new business models. Piracy hurts Canadian film distributors because it seriously erodes both the domestic and international markets for Canadian movies, makes it more difficult to finance new productions, jeopardizes the jobs of everyone involved in the creative process, and ultimately affects consumers as lost investment means fewer movies being made for audiences around the world.
We applaud the government's introduction of Bill C-32 and fully support its stated goals and intentions. However, we do not believe the bill as currently drafted achieves those goals.
Changes need to be made in the following areas: the enabling provision must be redrafted to ensure that anyone who enables copyright infringement, including hosting services, is stopped; the current ISP safe harbour provisions are too broad and could actually legalize the operations of illicit Internet sites; the UGC--user-generated content--exception is so vague that it legitimizes copyright infringements and violates Canada's international treaty obligations; and the statutory damages provisions should apply to enablers and should provide an effective deterrent to large-scale illegal file sharing.
CAFDE also opposes the educational exemptions mentioned in clause 29 and asks that changes be made to protect the legitimate business rights of producers and distributors within the Canadian educational sector.