Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable members of the committee, thank you for having me.
I am here on behalf of the members of the Association des distributeurs exclusifs de livres en langue française, known as ADELF. We are a membership organization representing Canadian businesses that distribute French-language books in Canada.
Our membership generates $450 million in sales annually and is responsible for more than 700 jobs in Canada, mainly in the Montreal area.
ADELF's board of directors asked me to pass on one key recommendation: that the government keep the Book Importation Regulations, passed in 1999, intact.
I'd like to start by telling you a bit about book distribution and the members of our association.
Distributors are the main business partners of book publishers. Distributors bring publishers' books to the retail marketplace, in other words, booksellers, bookstore chains, school co-operatives, hardware stores, drug stores, big box stores, and websites. Amazon.ca is a client of all of our members.
Our members have distribution agreements with French-language book publishers not just in Quebec and other Canadian provinces, but also in every country of the Francophonie, including France, Belgium, and Switzerland.
ADELF's members bring nearly 42,000 new titles to market each year, and those are only French-language publications.
Our members' catalogues contain more than 703,000 French-language titles, which are available to every Canadian reader in every province. Those titles include bestsellers with tens of thousands of copies sold, but the reality is that bestsellers are the exception, accounting for less than 1% of titles. The majority of titles are sold in very small quantities. In fact, for nearly 90% of books sold in Canada, fewer than 500 copies each are put on the market.
Now, I'll say a few words about the relationship between book publishers and distributors.
In Canada, virtually all Canadian and foreign publishers sign an exclusive distribution agreement with their Canadian distributor. That means the publisher is giving the distributor the exclusive right to represent them in Canada. In other words, the bookseller or any other client retailer must source books from the distributor designated by the publisher in question.
Exclusive distribution has a number of key benefits. First, it helps foster strong distribution networks throughout the country, but, above all, it ensures access to a wide variety of titles across the country. With the assurance that they will reap the benefits of their investment, exclusive distributors can commit to providing greater support for difficult titles that are not guaranteed bestsellers, seeking out more remote and less accessible clients, and so forth.
Since 1999, the Government of Canada has protected the exclusive rights of book importers. The Book Importation Regulations and the Copyright Act help to protect against parallel importation. What is parallel importation? It is a practice whereby an institutional buyer or retailer sources copies through an unlicensed supplier, one who is not the exclusive distributor. Parallel importation undermines Canada's book distribution infrastructure, hindering access to a wide array of titles in Canada.
In order to receive protection under the Book Importation Regulations, distributors must adhere to certain criteria or standards, including specified retailer shipping time frames and Canadian pricing that takes into account the book's list price in the exporting country.
Canada is not the only country with rules protecting the exclusive rights of importers. Quite the contrary. Nearly every OECD country has such rules in place. It is standard practice.
In conclusion, I want to say that the members of the Association des distributeurs exclusifs de livres en langue française do not receive any funding from the Quebec or Canadian government, including the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts. Conversely, we our counting on the federal government to establish a legislative framework that protects the exclusive rights of businesses, while encouraging innovation, creation, and risk-taking.
Thank you.