Let me put it this way. Let me give you a specific example that I think the vast majority of Canadians can understand.
You're saying that artists are losing income because of the advancement of new technologies, so therefore new technologies should have a new fee imposed on them. Did you know that in Canada one of the largest sources of distribution of music right now, electronically, with the consent of the creator is Facebook? What kind of tax or new levy would you put on Facebook to compensate artists who are circulating their music on Facebook? How does that work?
Pandora and Stitcher, these new digital apps that are on iPods and iPhones--how do you propose to do that?
I am trying to be as objective and empathetic as I can to the stated goal and concern, but how do you attach a solution to that?
When artists come forward with an idea and they say they want to have as many people buy tickets to their concert as possible, so they are going to put their music online, and somebody takes that music and puts links to it on Facebook.... People are losing income because a song is being circulated to people's friends list on Facebook. How do you put a fee or a levy on Facebook? How do you actually do that? If you wanted to, how do you do that? This is the question that we asked during consultations. How do you actually achieve the goal? You're identifying a problem and that's great. Identifying a problem...that and 50¢ will get you a cup of coffee. We can do that all day. But our job as legislators is.... If you're going to identify a problem and say the government has to act—well, you're a legislator as well. If you have an idea about how we do this, we're open to your proposal. I don't know how to put it.