Canadian Heritage Committee on Jan. 31st, 2019

[David Yurdiga]

Thank you for your response. It's complicated, especially if you're just entering into the arts, when you want to be known. Obviously, some people sign away some of their royalties just to get in, and then we hear from those people. That's a challenge. I don't know if copyright alone can solve the issues that a lot of people have been mentioning through many testimonies.

Ms. Marchand, what do you think has to be done in the Copyright Act, and what additional things need to be done to ensure that everyone's protected fairly?

[Lori Marchand]

No pressure.

I have to admit that I came with a pretty specific lens. In a broader context, I would just say that I agree with you. It is not just the copyright legislation that is at issue, but also ensuring that artists—and individual artists, for example—have the means to live, right? Artists right now, primarily theatre artists, are living below the poverty line. They are important voices in our nation, and we value their contribution.

I just want to reference something, too, that Mr. Garvie said, in terms of the changing landscape. It isn't just about DVDs and copies, of course. There are webcasts, a whole distribution net through the Internet and controls. I would be lying to say I have those answers. I think that those are the huge questions in front of us.

I would love to start thinking outside the box, and finding a way to share some of those resources, and the royalties—a way to compensate artists for their work so that they could ensure that their livelihood can continue. I say that, balancing it as a producer who understands that there is a need for infrastructure in order to produce the work, and that somehow needs to be financially sustainable as well.

I'm sorry, I think I'm just helping paint more questions than answers.

[David Yurdiga]

Thank you for your answer. It's not a simple solution. Sometimes my questions are general, because there's no magic formula to actually fix it, but we can always strive to do better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

You're at 7:01, perfect.

Mr. Nantel, you have seven minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you very much.

If you don't speak French, you may want to grab the earpiece so you can hear the interpretation.

[Lori Marchand]

I will try to answer in French, but I may have some trouble.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

That's kind of you. What matters is the information you provide. Thank you very much.

Ms. Marchand, I would like to know what are the specific copyright issues facing first nations, Métis and Innu. Do they have a broader or more societal concept of copyright?

In the research carried out by the committee's analysts, there is a reference to the testimony of a northern singer who said that throat singing is the subject of a copyright debate. In my world, that's surprising. When culture is very traditional, it is naturally in the public domain. Isn't that the case with you?

[Lori Marchand]

Certain types of stories or songs have cultural content. As I said, it is up to the community to let people know if it is possible to share those stories and songs.

If it's okay, I'll switch to English.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

It was super good.

[Lori Marchand]

I want to reference the work of my colleague Kevin Loring. James Alexander Teit created wax cylinder recordings with the permission of Nlakap’amux nation. Kevin is working with the community to bring those songs and stories back into current use. Because they have a specific, cultural relevance, there are even songs that as they are translating—the four or five people who are sitting around and listening to the recordings of the recordings of the recordings of the wax cylinders, and trying to ascertain their meaning—they are wondering whether it's appropriate for them to be sharing those results.

This is very specific to indigenous culture.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Marchand.

Mr. Garvie, we've heard about the principle of what the Americans now call the showrunner. The showrunner probably has some author's rights. Is it a concept that is applicable here in Canada?

[Scott Garvie]

It's not one size fits all, unfortunately.

We have shows. To use Murdoch as an example, we developed that show to a certain extent and then we brought in a showrunner who hadn't been involved in the development phase at all. We built the structure and then they came in. They worked two years and then they wanted to go off and do something else. We brought in another team that worked for three years, and now we have our third showrunner. Just so you know, with the showrunner, we will have a room of six or seven writers. They'll sit and come up with—

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Next stories.

[Scott Garvie]

No. We are going to do 18 shows this year. We tell them the stories we want to break out. They workshop ideas and then they allocate who will write which script.

In the Murdoch case, we've had three different head writers who have all done a good job, because the show is still on the air.

There are other cases in which we go to a writer. For example, we do a show called Slasher. That's a horror genre. We met over coffee with a showrunner creator we really liked. I asked him what he would really like to do. He was doing family viewing shows. He said he wanted to do a horror genre, like I Know What You Did Last Summer. We have an arrangement with him: we optioned the rights and hired him to do the job. We share revenues with him on a very favourable split, because we recognize that it was his passion and his idea.

Everything changes; there's no one size fits all.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Which comes back to the point made by my colleague, Mr. Yurdiga. It is through the contract that you recognize that the level of importance of that creator.

[Scott Garvie]

The thing I find really important about this is clarity on who owns it and who can exploit it, and a really orderly exploitation of what you've made in the marketplace.

The worst thing is to have any grey area so that you're sitting on your hands because you can't sell things because you don't have the rights. Again, to use Murdoch as an example, I did a deal with the author of the books 16 years ago, for whatever reason. I didn't ever know there was going to be a World Wide Web. We're constantly going back and negotiating new rights.

We never thought that we would do a theatrical play. We went back, and we've just finished negotiations about how we can work with Shaw, and the author is involved. Everything is constantly changing. In a perfect world, we would have had all those rights. We just said that we'll have a good-faith negotiation downstream if there are new things that come up.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

This angle that you bring to us is about the perspective of confusion regarding the rights of producers versus the rights of screenwriters or directors. That's the point you came to, interestingly.

Are there issues for you as producers of Canadian content in Canada? This is why we are here. We are here to make sure they can thrive better.

[Scott Garvie]

Do you mean the challenges of the disruption facing us, writ large, or with respect to copyright?

There are lots of issues, lots of disruptions, lots of different platforms, new ways of doing business and new challenges that we deal with every day, and we have to find ways.

One thing that Canadian producers have always been very good at is that we've never been like the American model, where you have a studio that funds 100%. I would argue that Netflix and those kinds of places are the new American studios because they fund fully, hire talent in Canada for a fee and take all the value out of the country.

The type of company that Shaftesbury is means we've developed our IP, and we've tried to find stories that are reflective of the experiences in Canada we want to tell. We're very proud Canadians. We love our Canadian stories, and we want to take those stories and sell them around the world. We want us in the middle of it. We monitor all this revenue. We're very driven to exploit it as widely as possible because it's good for us, and it's good for the people downstream because we share the revenue downstream, as opposed to letting somebody else take all the back-end value.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Unfortunately, that's already over our time.

We will now go to Mr. Breton for seven minutes.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. Marchand and Mr. Garvie, thank you for being with us today.

I will continue with you, Mr. Garvie, on the same subject as my colleagues raised.

In recent weeks and months, witnesses who have appeared before the committee have recommended that the Copyright Act be amended so that the screenwriters and directors are considered the first owners of copyright and co-authors of a cinematographic work, and to specifically exclude producers.

What do you think of this recommendation? If this recommendation were implemented, what do you think the implications would be?

[Scott Garvie]

Obviously, from my testimony, you will understand that I'm not a supporter of that approach. I think it's a bit disingenuous by a lot of the parties putting forth that argument. I think that if they are going to be the copyright owners, the end result would be that there may not be as much production that gets done unless they're going to do a deal with someone who's going to pay for that content. If we don't own the content and can't control the process, there won't be as much interest in working with those types of people, and we will find other creative outlets to do our thing.

If the writers guild says, “You can't do this unless we own the episode and take control of the revenue stream,” there's no interest in us supporting that sort of endeavour—unless they pay us very well. Turn the dichotomy around; they'd have to pay us to develop, help them finance and help them produce.

You have people who aren't in the business of exploiting and developing. They're in the business of being hired by companies like Shaftesbury to write, to direct or to act. It doesn't make sense to me that they'd go to the front of the bus and take control of the process.

There's nothing to stop any of these people. There are some very good writers who are also producers. If they want to take the financial risk to fund development, to take the risk of going to the bank, factoring the papers that are tax credits and raising the money, Godspeed to them. They're more than welcome to do so, and we embrace them in the CMPA. We have a lot of members who do that. However, if you're not going to take that risk, and you're not going to be part of that process, it's a bit disingenuous to say, “We should get the most benefit from it.”

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

To what extent do media producers play a role in copyright matters and, above all, in the fair remuneration of our artists and creators?

[Scott Garvie]

I apologize. I missed the beginning of your question, sir.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Could you tell me what role producers play in terms of copyright and the fair remuneration of artists?

[Scott Garvie]

I think that it's a very important role. I think that we have to manage production. We manage the creation process. We manage the production process and we manage the exploitation process. We work with all these people, who are very important to what we do and we need them. We need to work with them and collaborate with them, but that doesn't mean that they need to be controlling the copyright.

We work on a respectful, contractual basis and we think they're very well protected by that.