Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, good afternoon. My name is Gilles Valiquette and I am an author, composer and performer in Quebec. Today I am representing the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, better known as SOCAN. I am a member of the board of directors, a board which I chaired for five years, and with me today is my colleague, Victor Davies, who is also a composer and member of SOCAN's board of directors, as well as Paul Spurgeon, Vice-President, Legal Services and General Counsel for SOCAN.
Mr. Chairman, Bill C-32 is a very important bill as far as we are concerned. To help you understand our perspective, I should just point out that SOCAN is the Canadian collective that administers the performing rights, words and music, of more than 35,000 active Canadian members and all the members of its affiliate organizations around the world. That said, it is important to state that songwriters who spend days and weeks creating a musical work receive no advance payment for their work.
Furthermore, the social convention embedded in the Copyright Act gives artists the right to be remunerated if, and only if, their song is used. In other words, my colleagues and I are entrepreneurs who make songs, as opposed to furniture or cars. We take the risk that our work will be used and we agree not to be paid at that point. That is the agreement we have with our clientele.
It is critical that, in a spirit of national unity, Bill C-32 respect the two legal traditions associated with intellectual property, both copyright and le droit d'auteur or, more specifically, that it ensure that Canadians have access to copyrighted work while at the same time upholding the right of creators to compensation. As currently drafted, Bill C-32 completely disregards the fundamental rights which are the cornerstone of copyright in Canada. Let us not forget that Bill C-32 deals with intellectual property.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, I very much appreciate this opportunity to address you directly as both an artist and creator. I am calling on you to make the amendments to the bill that we have suggested in our brief, in order to ensure that creators' rights will be respected and that the music industry will be able to continue to move forward on a daily basis.
Thank you very much. I would like to turn it over now to Mr. Paul Spurgeon.