Yesterday I appeared before the INDU committee, and that was the focus of my testimony there.
I'm afraid that there has been a lot of misinformation, and I'd love to spend more time with Matt and Monia, maybe later, because I suspect—at the risk of being condescending—that they are victims of this misinformation.
At least when it comes to higher education, the reality is that universities use very little Canadian literature in the higher education curriculum. In fact, actually I brought with me this book published by Anansi, by Nick Mount, who's an English professor and historian of Canadian literature at U of T, and he notes that at most English departments in most Canadian universities, you can major in English without ever being required to read a single Canadian piece.
By and large, Canadian universities don't teach Canadian literature. Canadians may teach in English departments, and Nick Mount teaches—my son takes his course. He assigns books, and students buy those books, and there are 400 students in the course every year; they sell 400 copies. Again, Professor Mount just told me that one of the authors told me that his course alone was responsible for a second printing of the book.
Actually, teachers love it. When there is content that's available, we have no problem asking students to buy it if it's available and it's reasonably priced. The reason teachers make their course packs and create their own customized teaching is we don't get paid for doing that. It's hard work, and we're not getting paid directly for doing that. If there is already good teaching material available, we would happily assign it. One of the reasons the major educational publishers are so lucrative is that there is this issue that the professors who assign the books are not the ones who pay for them. That's why the prices of textbooks have increased so much over the last four decades. We are lazy. If there is already a book, we're happy to assign it.
The second misinformation, I think, is how Access Copyright used to distribute its money. I suspect that the bulk of the money that has now been lost for Matt and Monia is not the money related to the use of their work, but the other pot of the money, where Access Copyright collected for everything but Access Copyright does not have everything in its repertoire. It collects for everything; it divides some of it according to who owns those rights, but then it keeps this pot of money and distributes it among it members. It has different names—there is the payback scheme for the author, the repertoire, and part for the publisher. This is the amount of money that actually Access Copyright used to distribute to its members, but by definition is not for the use of those members' works but for the use of other copyright owners' works, who are not members of Access Copyright.
I think that is a significant part of what we now have.