Evidence of meeting #107 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
7:25 p.m.
Writer, As an Individual
I want to close with one statement.
I know from personal experience that the writing life is tenuous at all stages of one's career, and more so as one grows older. I also know that free culture is unsustainable for creators.
Thank you.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
7:25 p.m.
Jill MacLean Writer, As an Individual
Thank you for this opportunity to speak.
I'm a writer. I've published a poetry collection, three middle grade novels, and two young adult novels, all of them set in Atlantic Canada. These books have been nominated for many awards and have won four collectively.
From 2009 to 2015, from Vancouver Island to St. John's, I visited schools, libraries, conferences, and book festivals. In Newfoundland, I went to two schools that had never had a real writer in their classroom. In Ontario I attended several of the Ontario Library Association's Harbourfront gatherings, with 3,000 children bused in daily, many of whom had read and voted on my book.
My first children's book sold 11,000 copies. As a writer, in other words, I was instrumental in putting Canadian content in the classroom, and I felt honoured to do so.
The average income for a Canadian writer is $13,000 a year, which is about half the average minimum wage. We don't get EI, paid vacations, sick leave, or a salary. Access Copyright used to be a reliable source of income. This is no longer true. My 2017 payback cheque was one-quarter the amount of my 2012 payback cheque, a sizable decrease. The reason, as I understand it, is that since 2012 the education sector, including universities and schools, has permitted free copying, ignoring licensing agreements that ensured fair compensation to Canadian writers and publishers.
Despite the recent federal ruling against York University, ministries of education and school boards across the country have now launched a lawsuit against Access Copyright. One of my young adult novels in 2016 was picked up by the Nova Scotia education department for the school curriculum. However, members of the same government, by participating in this lawsuit, in my opinion, are acting punitively toward the province's creators, regardless of the fact that writers and publishers have earned less in the past few years and will earn less in the future, should the lawsuit win.
Thank you.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
That is all we have on our list.
I just want to remind everybody that everything that's said here today has been recorded through our analysts and we have also been recording all the actual audio portion of this.
Part of the role of the committee is to try to understand the impact of copyright. That's why we've opened it up. That's why we're looking at all aspects of this. It's going to be a fairly lengthy study, and we know there is a lot of controversy involved with this, so we want to ensure that people have had the opportunity to speak. I'm going to encourage again those who had more to say to, please, submit online. I guarantee you that it will be recorded and be part of our deliberations as we continue to go not just across the country but into different sectors. We are up and coming. We were on fair dealing. We're going to be slowly moving to publishing. We're going to be doing all the different sectors, so that we're looking at it in a holistic manner, piece by piece by piece.
I just want to make sure it's understood by everybody that they should not presume the outcome of this. We don't know. Right now we're on a fact-finding mission and just trying to understand.
Having said that, I want to thank you for taking the time to come today, for taking the time to come up to a microphone. It's not an easy thing to do. I commend you all for doing that and helping us to gather as much information as we can.
Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.