Good evening.
My name's Melikah Abdelmoumen. I'm a writer, researcher, editor and teacher. I do all these jobs at once, freelance, to complement the almost non-existent income from my nine books, two of which were published in France, one won an award at the Salon du Livre du Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, and another was a finalist for the Prix Littéraire des collégiens.
I'll give a concrete example and, in this, I'm a lot like some of my other colleagues who are not the worst off among us. My last book, which is quite successful right now and is well recognized, cost me five years of work. If I sell 1,000 copies, I will receive less than $2,500 in income for five years of work. That book is educational and social in nature, being a story that fights exclusion, xenophobia and social discrimination, based on my experience with immigration in France, where I lived for 12 years, and defending what I think are values that Canada says it proudly represents. My only hope is that it earns enough income to let me find the time to write another, and that it be included in educational programs, in whole or in part, and is distributed as much as possible.
Actually, the fact that it is suitable for teaching is exactly the reason that I won't receive income from it, unless the government rectifies the situation. To do so, it must redefine the term "education" in section 29 of the act to put an end to the abusive use of our works. With that change, writers like me could finally being receiving meaningful royalties paid by collective management companies like Copibec.
As a lecturer, thus a professor, at UQAM, I carefully report copies that I make of every text I teach because, without that material that cost the writers time, sweat and work, I would quite simply not have any material to transmit. Students to whom I've explained this reacted favourably, considering that it is a matter not only of survival for the writers whose work they're reading, but is also at the very heart of what they're studying. I would like the act to have the courage of not betraying these future citizens, to whom we're trying to teach the value of intellectual work and respect for the work of others; in short, make them responsible citizens who respect the values of our society, values that we are supposed to defend.