Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to talk to you about the list of witnesses.
This morning we have the honour and pleasure of receiving two key witnesses from 11:00 a.m. to noon. However, last week, at the last meeting, there were six people. At the last minute, the chair decided not to receive another person. There would have been seven witnesses and that would have made no sense.
There are representatives from organizations who are representing tens of thousands of artists and who have concerns about Bill C-32. Organizations are complaining that they have not been invited. This morning, we would have had time to hear from other witnesses, because, in the second part of the meeting, we just have to look at a notice of motion and that might only take five or ten minutes. Yet, this morning, we are only going to hear from two witnesses.
A number of organizations have contacted me to let me know that they have not been called to appear. When they call, they are being told that they are not on the list yet and that they might never be.
Mr. Chair, one of those organizations is the Union des artistes. The Union des artistes (UDA) is one of the organizations representing Quebec's leading artists. It is chaired by Raymond Legault and it has 11,000 members.
Its representatives want to testify together with Artisti, which protects the rights of artists and has 2,000 members. UDA has initially asked for neighbouring rights and is also the founder of the current private copy system.
It is completely unfair that the Union des artistes is not on the priority list to be invited to participate in our work and that we cast them aside by saying that we don't even know if they are going to be invited to testify. It is simply unfair, Mr. Chair.
I would like us to rethink the witness list together and find a way to invite them. That was very clear when we sat around this table and made the decision. We were supposed to have two hours with two panels. In each panel, there were supposed to be three witnesses or three representatives from various groups.
That's not what we have here. When the representatives are against Bill C-32, we fill the room with six or seven different groups at the same time. When they are in favour of it, they are all alone. They are asked to come back or there aren't very many of them and they have all the time they need to express their ideas.