Thank you for that.
I don't want to create any false breaks between the multinational labels and the independents and songwriters, but I was very struck, because they were very clear that this idea of the levy was absurd. The house was burning down. I mean, there was so much smoke coming up from the table; we had to pass this bill immediately.
Mr. Dexter said that we have a $400-million industry at stake. I was doing the math...and I'm kind of slow at math. I got 52 in grade 10. You can put that in my next attack ad.
At any rate, I did the math, and I thought, well, if we have a $400-million industry, and I'm asking about money that's being taken off the table.... The mechanical royalties are more than $8 million; the digital levy, according to the Copyright Board, is more than $35 million. So I'm looking at people who are saying that their industry is in such dire straits that they're willing to give up 12%, to 13%, to 15% of their annual income just to get this bill passed.
Mr. Fortin, you and I were in Washington together at the Future of Music Coalition. We met with musicians from across North America. What we've heard from the record industry--my Conservative colleagues love this--is that if we increase the statutory damages and we put digital locks, we'll be in the promised land. But I didn't see, in the United States, musicians feeling that their situation was any better than ours. Yet we have a situation here where there's compensation for artists, direct compensation, and that is being taken off the table in this bill.
Why do you think this bill should be allowed to go ahead if the compensation for artists that has been guaranteed under copyright is one of the things that will be stripped?