Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to the committee, and thank you for your position. I think we're hearing a little more in terms of ads that a number of your members across the country are airing, which certainly have my attention.
Mr. Keller, what you've described in your comments here I think has more to do with what we refer to, in the vernacular, as “more industry support”, the $52 million. That really doesn't have anything to do with copyright, nor the legislation here, so I'll leave you aside for a moment and maybe ask my question of Madam Courtemanche.
Madam Courtemanche, your industry has evolved and has used new technologies that involve copying music onto broadcast servers, which provide them the opportunity to, among other things, reduce staff and space requirements, minimize losses from advertising insertion errors, produce better-quality programs, and improve productivity. We all understand that. In fact, the Copyright Board found last year that the new broadcasting technology means lower costs for radio stations and that “the reproduction technology has allowed stations to increase their efficiency and profitability”.
So when your website, which one is directed to through the attack ads, particularly against my party for coming up with some rather innovative ideas to try to provide balance, claims that a server's copies yield “no revenue”, that's not the same as saying that they create no profit. In fact, broadcasters have earned record profits over the past several years. I think you'll acknowledge that, because the Copyright Board has done that for us. It is an industry of $1.5 billion.
The CRTC has reported that the commercial radio stations' pre-tax profit margins increased from 8.93% in 2001 to 21.2%. Is that right?