Mr. Minister, in all fairness, your party has attempted to use a levy as a political wedge issue. You've misrepresented the fees that were discussed at the Copyright Board. You've misrepresented the extent of Bill C-499 and what it would cover. You've tried to portray it as some kind of socialist plot. Yet levies are the norm in many countries. We've got Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain that are applying the levy.
I don't know if you've seen the recent Dutch Court of Appeal decision. It said that the right of reproduction must include a compensation plan, which means that the Dutch are likely to extend the levy onto MP3 players as well.
This bill is not technologically neutral; you've targeted out the levy.
You're saying you have an interest in privacy, but I'd like to read a line from the social research council paper that's going to be delivered this December 1 at the WIPO. Paragraph 13 concludes:
We have seen no evidence--and indeed no claims--that enforcement efforts to date have had any impact on the overall supply of pirated goods. Our work suggests, rather, that piracy has grown dramatically by most measures in the past decade, driven by the exogenous factors...[such as] high media prices, low local incomes, technological diffusion, and fast-changing consumer and cultural practices.
Your approach on the locks is a failed approach. We either go to levies or we see that artists are not going to get paid.
Will you continue to use a levy as a political wedge issue, or is this an area where we can find a way to get compensation for artists and get this bill through?