Evidence of meeting #123 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 creators.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Connect Music Licensing
On the technological aspect, going back to the private copying regime would certainly help, because there isn't anything in place right now to cover artists and creators when their music is copied onto new devices.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
In the last few years, the video music industry has changed as well. Can you please tell us how this has had a negative impact on your members?
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Connect Music Licensing
Absolutely.
We license music videos as well, specifically for television, and a bit of online, but traditionally it's the music video market on television with MusiquePlus and MuchMusic. There were many other stations that played music videos. They no longer exist.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Okay.
My next question is for Mr. Dagonas.
Could you tell us how documentary filmmakers and documentary films are being affected by copyright?
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Documentary Organization of Canada
That's a good question.
Again, we are users and rights holders in that scenario, so fair dealing in particular affects our work. In terms of fair dealing, documentary filmmakers are able to take content from copyrighted material and use it within their work.
What happens, practically speaking, is that once they go to the insurance companies and speak to their lawyers, they still have to pay a number of fees to purchase the copyrighted material, because the exemption isn't necessarily well understood by the landscape. That affects, obviously, our bottom line.
In both of those scenarios, our filmmakers want to be able to use that exemption to create truthful and meaningful stories and not have to pay the fees that they are often charged even today, despite the exemption existing. It could be 20% to 30% of their entire project budget, which can range from $20,000 to $1 million for a documentary.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
We've heard testimony about copyright literacy. What has your organization done to help the members understand better?
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Documentary Organization of Canada
We've commissioned a number of reports over the course of the last 10 years. I've been in my job seven months, so I can't speak exactly to those reports. However, we've commissioned a number of reports that were graciously funded by a number of agencies as well.
We've worked with partners across the country and different agencies on those reports, which educate the entire population on the work of documentary filmmakers. More conversation specific to this dialogue around fair dealing is required, and certainly it would be helpful to have government partners at the table with some insurance companies to further that discussion.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Digital technology has changed every aspect of the creative world. In your opinion, has this helped progress in documentary filmmaking or hindered it, and what changes could we make to the copyright legislation?
It's a big question, so take your time.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Documentary Organization of Canada
Yes, it's a big question.
I think it depends on the filmmaker. Some filmmakers have certainly adapted more quickly to the changing landscape, and some of them rely on broadcasters to continue to commission their work. With fewer broadcasters and fewer buyers in the market, there are diminishing funds.
I spoke to the pie getting smaller, or encouraging the government to increase the pie. I think that is important, so that it is a more competitive market with more documentary filmmakers, because again there is a higher demand for the genre not only in Canada but, as you know, with Netflix and others. We commissioned a survey or a report that showed that people watch their documentaries on many platforms, but Netflix is number one. In light of that, again we think that there's some work to be done from a fair dealing standpoint and also from a digital standpoint. Documentary filmmakers are often starving artists—I think you mentioned it a little earlier—so they don't have the negotiating capacity when they're in front of a buyer or a broadcaster to fairly negotiate what they think is a living wage for their work. They are disadvantaged in that room when they are trying to sell their work.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
That was my next question.
Between fiction filmmakers and documentary filmmakers, is there a difference in how copyright law affects both of these film genres? Is one more unfairly treated than the other?
12:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Documentary Organization of Canada
My quick answer is yes. I think that because we exist as a minority within a very complex media landscape, there are unintended consequences with changes of policy that affect the documentary community in a way that's probably disproportionate.
I think there are many changes and many conversations that are happening that are really tailored around a feature film. Those are great works—and believe me, I watch plenty of them—but I think the point is that documentary filmmakers are a minority within that area, so we're trying to get our voice heard in some of those conversations. To your point, I think sometimes it's not necessarily built into changes, whether it's a broadcaster or whether it's policy changes.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you.
We will now go to Mr. Shields, who is sharing his time with Mr. Yurdiga, please.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
Those are three very different messages we've had today from three witnesses.
Mr. Schiller, yours is probably the most different one we've heard while we've been doing this process.
I'm an old guy. I can remember when people close to the border would turn their antennas to try to find an American channel. That's the one on the roof, for those younger people who don't remember those. Then we transferred to satellite dishes to cable to now, where people just get it whichever way they want by live streaming.
When you were talking about this, I need you to go back and tell me again, when you're talking border, what you are...because “border”, I think, is an irrelevant term now.
12:35 p.m.
Canadian Advisor, Border Broadcasters, Inc.
I think “border” is very relevant, in that if you're a Windsor resident and you work in Detroit and you're dependent on local news in the morning for weather, traffic and sports going in to work and there's no local television news in Windsor, then obviously it's relevant. Those communities are directly impacted and identify with that shared community of interest that's being televised. It's the idea that people still require local news, which requires local journalists and local news offerings to be relevant and connect with the audiences. Local news remains very popular in trust surveys. It's well respected. It's held in higher regard than national news in the U.S.
It's also important to acknowledge that it's the local television stations in small and medium-sized markets that are the dominant generators and creators of local news online, so the idea that people are going to the Internet for alternative sources of local news doesn't reconcile with the fact that the providers, generators and creators of the local news are still local journalists and broadcasters who are on the scene locally.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
That clarifies it a bit. Even to go back to my old cable bundling that you referred to, I get Syracuse, Detroit, Seattle, Spokane. That's not my morning traffic stuff, but those are the ones on my cable provider bundle, and they're nowhere near me.
12:35 p.m.
Canadian Advisor, Border Broadcasters, Inc.
Exactly. It varies across the country. Boston has a very special connection with the Maritimes—Halifax, obviously. You're hard pressed to go anywhere in the country and not find Detroit television stations on the cable package. Minneapolis is relevant to northern Ontario and Winnipeg. Spokane has connections with the Prairies, with Alberta. Obviously, Seattle has a following in Vancouver.
I think the key is that those decisions of your cable package are not being driven by you, but rather by our current broadcasting distribution laws and regulations that provide incentives for our distributors to package as much as they can and provide that to you. A number of mechanisms are behind that, but I think the crux of it is that the local stations are not involved in this process, and the distributors and the Government of Canada policy are contributing to what you may refer to as oversupply of the U.S. programming services.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
When you refer to the decision made about who's in those cable bundles, in a sense you're saying that the decision is totally made in Canada. Do the three major networks out of the U.S. have no influence, no input into that?
12:35 p.m.
Canadian Advisor, Border Broadcasters, Inc.
I can give you an example. KSTP in Minneapolis, an ABC affiliate, became aware that it was being distributed by Canadian distributors in Canada because it started receiving complaints from northern Ontario that its closed captioning was not working properly. At KSTP, there is a very regulated process whereby complaints are followed. KSTP looked into it. They were having no problems with their transmitters. The high definition was working and there was no issue with their closed captioning. Somehow at KSTP, of interest, the signals from Minneapolis are not available off-air in Canada, so they don't spill over the border. Somehow the distributor in question was obtaining these signals, compressing them, and in that process, content was being stripped out of them. The challenge for that particular station owner was that when they became aware of it, there was no place for them to go to have that issue addressed. The distributor didn't want to acknowledge that they were distributing the station. When the distributor went before the CRTC to add KSTP to the list for authorized retransmission, there was no requirement by the CRTC to ensure that the distributor consulted the owner or even that the owner agreed to it.
Just as an aside, when that station owner became aware of this and the challenges, they said they would prefer not to be distributed in Canada. They went to the CRTC, and the CRTC declined their request to be removed from the authorized list, stating it was in Canada's cultural interest to keep them.
The CRTC adds stations to this list on an ongoing basis. In that process, other over-the-air stations from other nations receive better treatment from the CRTC than the U.S. border stations. For example, in 2015 a Ukrainian television station was added to the list, but for that to happen, that television station owner had to furnish a letter confirming that they not only had the rights for the programs that are being retransmitted in Canada, but they also agreed to that retransmission, and that's what's being denied in the Canadian practices.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
In Europe, where countries are close together, is there anything there that would—
12:40 p.m.
Canadian Advisor, Border Broadcasters, Inc.
The Canadian retransmission regime is a hybrid, and it grew out of that subsidy model. Initially it was to provide cable subscribers with content outside the border. It goes back to a policy in the early 1970s, called the equalization of viewing policy, that we had at the time. It just meant that people across Canada were entitled to the Windsor television package, no matter where they lived. Once satellite came in, they expanded the list and the number of sets of American services that were available. When high definition came in, the sets of American services were expanded; they also brought in a whole other group with satellite.
You'll notice sometimes that you probably have stations from Los Angeles, Atlanta, or New York City that have no connection. Again, this was all driven by the copyright system in Canada, which is like an all-you-can-eat buffet for our distributors. It's not à la carte. You pay the same fee whether you transmit one or multiple sets. As my colleague made reference to, there are preponderance rules, so there's an incentive to include more American channels because that allows them to package their Canadian offerings around those American stations.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
We are now out of time.
We will hear from Mr. Nantel, who has seven minutes.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all three of you for joining us this morning. This is very important.
I hope I will have enough time to talk to you, Mr. Schiller. I am fascinated by the situation of border radio stations. There are many decisions and situations taken for granted, and that continues. It is completely ridiculous and surprising.
Mr. Dagonas, you referred earlier to the report issued by the CRTC. Like me, you saw a lot of lucid things in that report. Were you disappointed that the government's response was to delay this indefinitely, or at least until January 2020?