Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for this opportunity to speak with you today.
I'm April Britski, and I'm the national director of CARFAC, which is a membership association for professional visual artists. We have a long history of advocating for artists' labour rights, and since we began in 1968, we've had guidelines for fees that artists should be paid for the exhibitions of their work. In 1999, we were certified by the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal to be the collective bargaining representative for visual and media artists in Canada—excluding Quebec—as recognized by the federal Status of the Artist legislation.
Status matters, because there are about 21,000 visual artists in Canada, most of whom are self-employed, and their income is much lower than that of the overall Canadian labour force. Half of visual artists earn just $20,000 a year, according to the 2016 census. It's also important to note that the majority of this income comes from the day jobs that most artists must hold in order to support themselves.
We certainly also agree with the recommendations that have been put forward by ACTRA and IATSE in this regard, and many more.
Copyright is a major piece of legislation that helps artists earn income from their creative work. For visual artists, that's through exhibition and reproduction rights. We're very pleased that the federal government is committed to introducing an artist's resale right to the Copyright Act as well, and we look forward to seeing that happen very soon.
The Status of the Artist Act complements and reinforces the Copyright Act. It's all part of a cultural policy tool kit. While copyright establishes the right to be paid, collective bargaining through the status act establishes the amount to be paid. Without the act, galleries and museums are not compelled to engage in collective bargaining. This unique law indirectly helps us establish standards for other types of institutions, both in Canada and abroad.
So far, there's only one collective agreement enforced for visual artists in Canada, and that's with the National Gallery. We had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to make that happen, and it's been in place since 2015. We hope to negotiate with other institutions when the pandemic is over.
Now I'll introduce Karl Beveridge.
Mr. Beveridge is an artist and a recent recipient of the Governor General award for visual and media arts, as well as the co-chair of our collective bargaining committee.