Good morning to everyone.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.
I am the director of ACTRA's Performers' Rights Society and its division, the ACTRA Recording Artists' Collecting Society, or what we call RACS for short.
I want to thank the committee for inviting us to participate in these important discussions. l'm pleased that we were able to bring with us one of Canada's most celebrated recording artists, Dave Faber, of the band Faber Drive. Dave will be speaking about some of the realities of working in Canada as a professional recording artist.
First, I want to give you some background and perspective on what RACS does. RACS collects and distributes public performance and private copying royalties to recording artists who have earned that money. We represent over 3,500 recording artists domestically and thousands of others throughout the world through reciprocal agreements with other collective management organizations like RACS.
Since 1998, RACS has distributed over $35 million to recording artists, which represents a significant income stream for thousands of Canadian musicians. It's important to note that our presentation and comments today are supported by the Canadian Federation of Musicians and its 15,000 members.
Despite the various statures of our artists, our members share the common circumstance of being dependent on a number of different copyright royalty streams to make a living from their art. The overwhelming majority of people we represent are small business owners who don't live on a single paycheque from a single employer, but who instead rely on exploiting their copyrights for royalties domestically and abroad, which in many cases are the cornerstones of building their professional careers.
We are concerned about recent changes to the Copyright Act that have served in many cases to weaken those rights, and consequently, the Canadian music industry. As this committee studies the Canadian music industry, we'd like you to consider a couple of major issues that impact our members' ability to earn a sustainable income and thus their ability to make and distribute Canadian music.
The first is the harm that has come to performers from Canada's failure to modernize its private copying regime. The second issue, which my friend Dave will talk to you about, is the income volatility performers experience from year to year in their careers.
The private copying levy has long served as an effective balanced mechanism supporting the Canadian music industry. On the one hand, consumers are able to make copies for personal use, and on the other hand, creators are fairly compensated for those private copies.
Ten years ago, $35.6 million per year was available for distribution to rights holders in the Canadian music industry for the private copying of their works onto blank CDs. Today that amount has dropped to significantly less than $10 million per year, as the nature of private copying has shifted away from increasingly obsolete audio recording media to digital audio recorders.
It is not fair that the artists who have created the recorded music are not compensated for the use of their music on these devices. We note that the Canadian government's decision to not extend the private copying levy to digital audio recorders runs counter to the direction of one of Canada's largest trading partners and the position they have taken with respect to their music industries.
Just last month the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the preservation of private copying levies in the European Union. The main principles upon which the resolution was passed by the European Parliament are worth reading and are referenced in the document that was circulated to the committee clerk this morning. I would note that at the heart of the resolution and its plan for action is a fundamental understanding of the harm that would result to their music industries if private copying levies were simply abandoned in Europe. We're afraid that such simple abandonment is exactly what has recently occurred in Canada. We believe the ill effects of this decision will continue to unfold in the coming years.
Accordingly, we encourage the Canadian government and all parties to revisit how the private copying regime may be modernized to reflect the way in which consumers currently make digital private copies. Our European trading partner is taking a leadership role in looking for solutions, and so should we. We strongly recommend that the Canadian government modernize the private copying part of the Copyright Act as part of its next section 92 review.
At this point, I'm going to turn it over to Dave for some perspective on the impact on recording artists. By way of introduction, Dave's band, Faber Drive, has had two gold and two platinum singles. They're the recipients of a SOCAN number one song award and a Canadian Radio Music Award, and were nominated for a Juno for best new group. They're currently signed to 604 Records, owned by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback fame. Dave is one of Canada's most successful recording artists.