Canadian Heritage Committee on May 4th, 2010

[Maureen Parker]

Well, we like to dream. First of all, we do need copyright to move forward, period. Let's get it moving. If there's one message, it's that we really need a new copyright bill. We need to ratify and implement the WIPO treaties.

I agree with what you're saying about digital locks, but it's tricky. There has to be some measure of control, or the people who have put up the money and financed the productions will not be able to recoup their investment. This has to be a business. Just because it's cultural doesn't mean that it doesn't make money and it's not a business--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to make sure I'm very clear. What I said is that the model suggests that if we just put a digital lock on the content, the market will come back; I'm saying that it's not about using digital locks or not using digital locks, but is that sufficient?

[Maureen Parker]

No, it's not. What you said was very true, Charlie. We did say that, I believe, as well. Our members want their works to be exploited in all these various forms.

We're not trying to roll back the clock. We know that this is the future and we're excited about that, because it gives us new means of distributing our work. In fact, what we were talking about earlier is, yes, sometimes professional content does appear on YouTube because we can't yet figure out how to distribute all this work. But when it does get monetized, that's when it moves into a different realm and it becomes part of these affiliated broadcaster sites, etc. It's a good launching pad and it does have good content. I'm just saying there is a different level when you're producing professional audio-visual content.

So in terms of collective licensing, absolutely that's where we have to be, because there are going to be various uses that will fall outside the domain of our collective bargaining agreement, and we have to have a collective licensing regime imposed, something along the lines of a private copy model. We can work with you to do that.

Lastly, before you go down that road as well, in the audio-visual sector—I know we're considering it for music and the iPod—we need to address who is the author of the audio-visual work. We have not yet done that. The act is silent on that. We have already done some work with the other arts groups, and we have consensus between the creative community that writers and directors are authors of the audio-visual work.

We're trying to work and we're trying to move this forward behind the scenes, but we need to do a few things, and it all starts with amending the Copyright Act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Next we have Mr. Del Mastro, please.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have more of a statement first, to you, Mr. Caron.

First of all, it has been an outstanding presentation. I really quite enjoyed it. I agree with what you're saying. The library wouldn't function if there were no index cards at the front that told you how to get to things. I think you've taken a sound approach to digitizing things, and I do think you've also correctly pointed the committee to an area where we might be concerned—that is, on preservation, not just putting things online but adequate preservation. So I want to thank you for that. I really think you're on the right track, and I just want to make that clear and thank you for your presentation.

Ms. Parker and Ms. Ashton, I want to pick up on where Charlie was a minute ago. I am somewhat concerned by some of the statements, because I'm always afraid that you're looking backward as opposed to forward. This study is very much about looking forward and saying, how do we leverage all these tools, this emerging platform, to really elevate Canadian artists, writers, and producers? How do we take advantage of these platforms?

I really think Charlie is bang on. It may be amateurish, some of the stuff on YouTube, but people love it, and they love it more than some of the professional shows that we're producing. They're really into it.

I'd also argue that there are more big hits being produced from things that might be seen as amateurish than there are coming from the conventional formats lately.

I remember, for example, when American Idol started up, the conventional music industry was saying “It's awful. Look at this platform. It's a joke.” But that platform has spun out stars such as Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Big stars have come out of American Idol. These were amateurs. These were people who, before that, were bussing tables and stuff, but they had skills. Maybe they would have never been discovered if there wasn't an opportunity for them to put themselves out there. YouTube is that opportunity. It's the opportunity for everybody to broadcast themselves.

But I think you're adequately putting a case forward, which is, how do we monetize these things? How do we make sure there is value coming back to the writers?

That's something that this committee needs to get its head around. I think it's something that the Writers Guild needs to get its head around as well, and frankly, the ISPs and everybody else, the actual producers of content. They all need to figure out this new emerging platform.

I think things are happening. They're happening very quickly. I'm just concerned that you might be looking backward a little bit.

Can you address that?

[Maureen Parker]

I understand your concern. As Kelly Lynne said, however, 99% of viewing is still television content. We're quoting a Nielsen study that came out last week. That's fact.

Let me clarify that.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

May I say something very quickly?

[Maureen Parker]

Yes.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I'll tell you what I see, and my oldest brother is the best example of this I know. He'll have a television on and he's also on his computer. Are the shows on? Yes. What's he doing, though? He's online at the same time.

[Maureen Parker]

Absolutely.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

My wife very rarely watches a show at a broadcast time. She watches it when it fits into her schedule or she watches it online.

[Maureen Parker]

That's the point I'm trying to make. It's called “television content”, but we consume it very differently now. You store it on your PVR, your personal video recorder, you may stream it to your laptop, you watch it in different forms, but it's still television content because that's its initial distribution. But we also have new content, new digital content, and as Kelly Lynne was saying, the Canada Media Fund has now addressed that. There's going to be an experimental stream and those are things like webisodes and mobisodes and our members are also doing that. As I mentioned in my presentation, we even have members doing a Twitter soap opera. So we are at the forefront of this. This is what screenwriters do because they are the content creators.

We're not saying that YouTube does not have a very valuable role. What we're looking for is a diversity of voices. We use YouTube and professionals use it too in order to get that initial distribution. We have a series on the west coast that was initially launched on YouTube and then it got a broadcaster deal. So it can be used in all these different forms.

We are decidedly not looking back. In fact, I've just hired someone this week as a digital organizer. We're embracing this new world. We feel there will be a lot of freedom under it and that writers can tell the stories they want.

We just want to ensure there's enough money in the system to make these shows and that Canadians can find them, but that's a different discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

We've got time, so we're going to do one more round of four minutes each.

I've got Mr. Rodriguez, then Madame Lavallée, and then--

[A voice]

Monsieur Pomerleau.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

Mr. Rodriguez first.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Where do we stand relative to other industrialized countries with regard to the digitization of our documents?

[Daniel J. Caron]

That's a question I wouldn't dare answer. We're quite advanced. We at Library and Archives Canada have approximately 20 million digitized items. That's virtually unequalled. Around the world, a lot of efforts are being made and many documents are being prepared on strategies, but when you scratch the surface a little, you see that not that much digitization is actually being done. You have to be careful. Here a strategy is emerging across the country. We're positioning ourselves quite well.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Over time, have a lot of documents been lost because we were unable to digitize them?

[Daniel J. Caron]

No. The analog documents we have are well preserved. We have excellent preservation conditions. There is a preservation centre in Gatineau. There are such centres virtually everywhere across the country. We recently acquired a special building to preserve what we call nitrate films. To date, we haven't had to use digitization to preserve things that would otherwise have disappeared.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

So your success rate is nearly 100%?

[Daniel J. Caron]

In what area?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

In preservation.

[Daniel J. Caron]

Yes, it's nearly 100%, although there are always bits that disappear.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

You talked about the over-abundance of information. I've always wondered how that's managed. In fact, too much information is like not enough information. If you can't find the information, there's not much point in having it.

[Daniel J. Caron]

I'm pleased you asked me the question. That's one of our challenges. We work upstream. Our role is to ensure that our heritage will be there in 5, 10, 20, 50 years. Our archivists, our librarians are dealing with this new complexity. It's related to the fact that an enormous quantity of information is registered. We've always produced a lot of information, but now everything that's being done and everything that's being said is recorded. So we have to do a sort, for example, for what we find on YouTube. We have to determine what has value for the future. We have experts who are looking at this, obviously, but it is nevertheless more complex than it used to be. So we have to create new policies so that we can select what will be important and organize it so that it can be found.