Thanks, Brad.
Like other self-employed people working in Canada's cultural industries, recording artists like me tend to experience sharp swings in our annual income. Our earnings spike when we release an album and tour in support of it, but between recording projects, revenue drops significantly. Unlike people who are employees, as self-employed people we don't have access to many of the supports, such as employment insurance, that other Canadians can count on to help them make it through the transition between jobs.
My band has worked hard and has been blessed by God to see some success, but it's been a tough road to get here. The reality is that even today, like many career musicians, I have to pick up other work to pay the bills. When we first started out, I quit my day job to focus on this opportunity, but that meant going to the food bank and borrowing money from friends and family, which is not uncommon for many musicians trying to make it in a competitive and demanding industry.
That was when we started eight years ago. Fast-forward to today and three albums later, and I still receive support from family to allow me the ability to be a professional musician in this country. Now with a family to support, including a beautiful wife and four amazing children, I have a job pouring concrete to keep us going while working on our fourth album. As well, two of my three band members are working full-time day jobs too, which in turn means that our next album will take a lot longer than expected to get finished.
Our profession is really not that different from any other profession. It takes years of practice, dedication, and risk to make music.
I'm not alone. I've seen countless bands come and go over the years because they just didn't have proper support. I have many friends currently on radio here in Canada who depend on RACS cheques and every single revenue stream to pay the basics such as rent, gas, and food.
Receiving fair compensation for the use of our work is essential. The royalty cheques we receive from RACS help to pay basic bills, knowing that when your song is played on the radio there will be a small payment back to the artist. Like I just said, those little payments are often the difference that help to pay rent, buy food, and get gas.
But there is more that could be done. Right now artists have to pay high marginal tax rates for one-off successful years. To address this issue, ACTRA RACS and other creator organizations have asked the government to support the reintroduction of income averaging for artists under Canadian tax law. Under such a tax measure, the performer's fluctuating earnings are averaged over a period of years to permit a preferential taxation rate in an occasional year where income is higher.
Several European Union countries, including the United Kingdom, have introduced this approach. It works. It smooths out those income peaks and valleys. In so doing it lends a measure of tax predictability to performers' creative endeavours, which in turn makes it easier for our cultural industries to thrive and for our overall economy to benefit.
RACS also supports the creation of a federal tax exemption on the first $10,000 of royalty income that performers earn on their artistic work. Such an exemption would be in keeping with the royalty income deduction that Quebec has had in place since 1995.