Good evening. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. It's an issue very close to my heart.
My name is Barbara Spurll. I've been a professional illustrator for over three decades. Over the years, I have created hundreds of illustrations for the educational publishing sector. This type of work, though, has slowed to a trickle for me since 2012. Since the addition of education as allowable under fair dealing, my royalties from access copyright have been reduced to one-fifth, that's 20%, of what they were in 2010-11.
Besides the obvious loss of an income stream for me personally as a parent and grandparent, my other concern is that there is less, or there is going to be less, Canadian content in Canadian schools and universities as a direct result of lost remuneration for the publishers and their creators.
I'm also the president of the Toronto chapter of CAPIC, the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators. I hear from other illustrator members that they no longer make a living from their illustration alone, and that they now need to subsidize their income with jobs such as school visits, teaching, renovation and construction, bartending, selling real estate, you name it. These are hard-working professionals striving to create excellence in their crafts.
The loss of royalties from educational publishing and printing is yet another blow to image creators and directly impacts their livelihoods as creators.
As an illustrator, I am a content creator. I see a disturbing trend of everyone expecting content for free. That business would exploit the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law is disheartening, and I see colleges and universities as somewhat like businesses. Pay for content; pay the creator. Please, let's not kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.
Thank you.