Evidence of meeting #121 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was artists.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Wayne Long Saint John—Rothesay, Lib.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone, for your presentations.
I won't ramble on too long here.
Ms. Rioux, the U.S. Senate recently unanimously approved changes to copyright reforms. Are there any measures contained in those reforms that we could emulate here?
President, Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd.
I'll try to be brief.
The portion of the MMA, Music Modernization Act, that I'm most familiar with, and even so I'm not an expert in that domain, has to do with ensuring that there is much less fragmentation of the marketplace in the U.S. Up until now under the MMA, there has been no one central collective for the administration of the reproduction rights in the U.S.
What was happening was that you had lots of different rights holders. There was a difficult infrastructure for the online music services to try to get a central point for licences and/or to get the data flow to be administered, and the payments as well.
The MMA is an attempt—these are my own words—to consolidate this so that it's much more efficient and reaches a larger scope of rights holders out there who may have been missing in the past.
September 27th, 2018 / 11:55 a.m.
Saint John—Rothesay, Lib.
Ms. Dean, do you have anything to add to that?
Chief Operating Officer, CARAS, The JUNO Awards, MusiCounts, Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
In Canada, I've been involved with organizations that do the distribution and the payments to the artist, and it's the efficiencies that need to come from those processes, just as Caroline has been stating.
I think the adoption of that, in following those models from international counterparts, will really help us get the dollars to the artists quicker. I have seen millions of dollars sit on balance sheets because a decision hasn't been made at the Copyright Board or they can't get the data processed to figure out who is actually owed the dollars.
I think that we can do a better job at that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you to all of our witnesses, and for all of the members who asked questions today.
We are going to suspend briefly and move in camera, so we will have to clear the room.
Thank you.
[Proceedings continue in camera]