Hello, everyone. My name is Leslie Dema, and I'm President of Broadview Press, an independent Canadian-owned publisher of undergraduate college and university humanities textbooks.
I think everyone in the room today would like all students to have access to affordable, flexible, and high-quality reading materials for their courses, just as we would like them to have access to affordable tuition and high-quality professors. We don't, however, ask our professors to teach for free for 10% of the time or the librarians to work for free 10% of the time; nor does it make sense to ask authors or publishers to work for free 10% of the time.
Since education was added to fair dealing in 2012, and since the Copyright Board has failed to enforce the tariffs that they impose, that is exactly what authors and publishers have been doing. We are being forced to subsidize the education system. For the publishing industry, that means fewer jobs and less money to invest in new Canadian works.
The rise of copying as a substitute for the purchase of original works has caused a steep decline in Canadian sales revenue at Broadview Press. Fifty-five per cent of our revenue came from Canadian sales in 2013, and only 41% of our revenue came from Canadian sales in 2017.
We would prefer to continue being able to develop books specifically for the Canadian market, but in recent years we've been forced to develop more projects for the American market to compensate for our declining Canadian sales. When students are deprived of access to high-quality reading materials, their learning outcomes are damaged. This fact indicates that the books they study from are very valuable to their education, just as their teachers are.
The answer to this problem is not to cut off compensation to authors and publishers, thereby damaging their ability to produce new works in the future. The system prior to 2012, in which a collective licensing agency was able to negotiate convenient and affordable access to published works for classroom use, is more sustainable for the education ecosystem as a whole, supports authors and publishers, and will contribute more to the education of young Canadians than we cost.
Thank you.