Good afternoon. My name is Guy Banville. For 37 years, my career has focused essentially on my role as a program director at radio stations in Quebec and France. Whether in the dance music format of the 1980s, the RockDétente format that I created with an amazing team in Quebec in 1990, the national program of the 190 radio stations in the Europe2 network in France, or the Quebec radio stations of the RNC Media group in recent years, I realize that the design of all these radio offerings to date has been indissociable from the development of Quebec artists.
I know that you've heard a lot about Quebec artists, but perhaps a little less about Quebec broadcasters. So I thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear before you today to add the voice of Quebec broadcasters to the discussion.
I'm used to saying that record producers are gardeners, that artists are flowers and that radio stations are perfume makers. We like the flowers we select, and we offer them to our listeners, who sometimes, even very often, go out and buy the perfume. We pay a portion of our incomes to the gardeners.
With its contribution to the development of Canadian content and its copyright royalties, radio takes part in the artistic development of Quebec artists. Its contribution is not always quantified, such as when it broadcasts promotional interviews or sponsors shows and festivals. In Quebec, 65% of what we broadcast is francophone music, mostly Quebec music. That gives you an idea of the enormous presence of Quebec artists on our airwaves.
Today, Quebec radio is facing major challenges, and those challenges are the same for large and small radio stations alike. I'm going to name two.
First, Quebec radio must invest extensively in technological tools in order to prepare for the migration of content to the new digital platforms. It also has to deploy considerable resources and money to develop radio hosting talent because we believe the future of radio depends on the human voice. After all, that's what differentiates us from other music platforms.
However, radio personalities, that is to say radio hosts, who we think are also artists, have to develop unprecedented technological adjustment ability. In addition to communicating well on air, they must, for example, be agile in their use of social media and digital archives. In view of these challenges, we fear there will be a significant increase in our production costs. That's part of our situation. In view of the fact that the number of radio services based in Quebec is higher than the number of Quebec operators, any increase in copyright royalties would result in a net outflow of money from Quebec to international recipients. I understood what was stated earlier.
Quebec broadcasters, both big and small, support Bill C-32. We believe this bill represents a serious step toward the adoption of a sensible copyright system in the Internet and digital technology era. The current Copyright Act is obsolete and impractical in the digital economy. From the broadcasters' standpoint, it creates a climate of uncertainty at a time when we are improving our services. It also creates numerous royalty levels for what is essentially a single activity, music broadcasting.
In many industries, users of copyright-protected works are required to make copies, given the various digital technologies currently in use. Copies made by broadcasters are simply an incidental factor in the process of broadcasting music. Including an exemption for reproductions made by broadcasters acknowledges their incidental and technical nature.
The amendments being proposed by broadcasters are consistent with the general aim of Bill C-32 to limit royalties relating to a number of technical processes, such as the provision enabling consumers to record programs for later listening or viewing, which is essentially an exception to the broadcaster's right to fix its signal.
Broadcasters support an approach based on the principles for the adoption of exemptions for incidental reproductions. Broadcasters support Bill C-32. Quebec broadcasters support Bill C-32.
I'm going to ask Mr. Ross Davies to continue.