Good afternoon, everyone. I am Julien Castanié. I am an illustrator and, as you said, I am the President of Illustration Québec. First of all, I would like to thank this committee for the opportunity it gives our association to express its views on such an important topic as copyright.
Illustration Québec is an association of artists founded in 1983—which happens to be the year when I was born. It represents about 300 members. Its mission is to bring together illustrators, represent them and defend their interests, but also to champion and promote the practice of illustration.
I would like to highlight the unique aspect of illustration, which is a social and accessible art. Illustration is used in all areas of our lives to communicate graphic messages and support ideas. It is an omnipresent art created by an artist who lends his or her work to a given context. Illustrations can be found on cereal boxes, in children's books, or even on the poster of a theatre that has decided to use illustration to communicate.
I would now like to talk about the economic reality of our business.
Illustrators are self-employed and their status is precarious. They do not benefit from the labour standards reserved for wage earners. Nor do they benefit from unemployment in the event of a reduction or cessation of activity during a given period.
Unfortunately, as with many artistic disciplines, our profession remains very challenging. According to our latest survey report from 2018, conducted among Quebec illustration professionals, the situation is truly alarming: 45% of illustrators, almost half, earn a net income of less than $15,000 annually from their artistic creation. They must therefore turn to other jobs to earn a livable income.
That is why I stress how vital copyright is for us as artists. Every exception, every new distribution platform that does not generate remuneration for authors amputates creators' income.
I would now like to talk briefly about remuneration models for illustrators in the context of copyright. There are five of them.
The first is the sale of licences for the use of creations as part of the orders of clients. This may mean an editorial illustration in a magazine, the creation of a poster illustration or illustrations for a website.
The second model is the royalties on the selling price of an object that reproduces illustrations. We could talk about children's albums, meaning the distribution of illustrations through the object in itself, but we are also talking about operating authorizations, meaning the use of images distributed on a whole bunch of objects, for example coffee cups or pens. In the case of children's books, royalties paid by publishers represent a percentage of between 3% and 5% of the price of each book sold. To give you a better idea, if the book were an apple, the copyright for the illustrator would be like the seeds of the apple.
The third remuneration model is the Canada Council's Public Lending Right Program, which is actually remuneration for the availability of literary works that can be borrowed from libraries.
The fourth model is the royalties that come from copyright collectives, such as Copibec in Quebec.
The last model is exhibition rights, meaning the rights that are paid for the exhibition of original works.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a right that does not exist in Canada, but that exists in dozens of other countries. It's the resale right, which is designed to grant visual artists a portion of the income from the resale of a work after its initial sale. It is something that does not exist in Canada, but that we recommend.
So copyright is truly vital for illustrators. Here are our five recommendations for improving the working conditions of artists through this legislation.
The first is to extend the private copying levy to the new digital media and distribute them to artists. The legislation should adapt to new media. Artistic works are regularly shared on digital media, such as cellphones or tablets, and this use is not covered by the legislation. This is really a loss of income for artists, whose situation is already precarious.
The second proposal is to provide remuneration for the use of works on the web. To my knowledge, right now, there is no control over the distribution or reproduction of works on the Internet. Perhaps a system should be found to manage the use of works and the remuneration of artists. So who would be responsible for that task? I'm actually wondering: would it be the responsibility of the collectives, the access providers, the distributors? It's an open question. Without content, the medium actually no longer makes sense. In fact, those who make works available should be required to pay the royalties or, at the very least, to direct the royalties to the rightful owners of the works.
The third recommendation is to create a tax credit. Given the impoverishment of our crafts, we recommend that a copyright tax credit be included in federal legislation. It already exists in Quebec, for example. So having this support would be a fairly powerful lever to support creation.
The fourth recommendation is to look at what is being done abroad to support artists. Let me draw your attention to a creative support measure that exists in France. French copyright collectives, such as the Société des auteurs des arts visuels et de l'image fixe (SAIF) or the Société française des intérêts des auteurs de l'écrit (SOFIA), which are the equivalent of Copibec in Quebec or the Public Lending Right Program in Canada, support artists through grants for the creation and dissemination of works, but also through grants for artist training or the development of artistic and cultural education. Their activities are funded by one quarter of the amount received for private copying, in accordance with the French Intellectual Property Code. We could imagine such a mechanism to support Canadian creations.
The last proposal—
