I call the meeting to order.
Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 47 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted in committee on April 12, 2021, the committee has commenced consideration of the study of fair compensation in the field of educational publishing in Canada.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Most of us will be in our own respective virtual rooms, or in the case of Madame Bessette, a virtual environment with a beautiful backdrop. Hopefully you'll get to see that later.
As you know, of course, when you're viewing us from the webcast, the person speaking is the only one you will see on the screen.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. The way this format is going to work is that instead of an hour with each of the witnesses, we're going to have all witnesses. We have six witness groups with us today. We'll carry on. If we need a health break, we'll do that halfway through; nevertheless, we will continue to move on.
I introduce our first witness only because he is not yet with us. He is having a few technical issues. We'll get to him towards the end when he's able to log back on. That would be Bryan Perro, who's a writer, and he's appearing as an individual.
We now go to the organizations. From Access Copyright, we have Roanie Levy, who is the president and chief executive officer; from the Association of Canadian Publishers, Glenn Rollans, who is past president; from the Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers, Sylvia McNicoll, author; from the Writers' Union of Canada, John Degen, who is the executive director; and from Universities Canada, Philip Landon, who is the chief operating officer of that organization.
To our witnesses, we've all had our sound checks and are ready to go. We'll have five minutes of your opening statements, and following that, we'll go to each of the caucuses represented here on our committee.
That said, Ms. Levy, I'm going to start with you. You have up to five minutes to begin.