Industry Committee on May 29th, 2018

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Right. Okay.

We've been presented with a number of models that are out there in some other countries. There's the U.K. version and the U.S. fair usage model.

In my few remaining minutes, maybe I could hear from all of you on the things that you think are beneficial, that we maybe should consider, or that aren't working well there.

We'll start with you, Mr. Hinds.

[John Hinds]

We're seeing I think some hopeful developments in the EU. We've seen both Germany and Spain, and to a lesser extent Italy, come forward with various protections. Now it's moving to an EU level. There's the new EU directive where they're discussing the publisher's right. It's interesting, because we've seen there that as soon as that discussion enters the public realm, as a result there's a much more collaborative approach by some of the aggregators. They do come forward, either with funding for journalism or.... I mean, we've seen particularly journalism funds in almost all the big EU countries as a result of government actions on the copyright file. To us, it really shows that once you strengthen the balance, or even threaten to strengthen the balance, it works wonders.

The U.S. is a bit more complicated. There's probably a stronger legal precedence in the U.S., whether it's through the hot news stuff and things like that, but again, the enforcement is tough, right? We're 700 across the country, and many are small members. While The Globe and Mail and Postmedia may be able to do it, and they can enforce it, a lot of those small players just don't have the capacity to do it. That's where I think the legislative model needs to be amended: to give them that power.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Perhaps we can quickly jump to Mr. Swail.

[David Swail]

The two jurisdictions we looked at were really the U.K. and Australia. What's important there, in our view, is the importance of the effect on the market, which is, of course, one of the six factors in the determination of “fair” in our act. Those are given much more prominence and much more heft, if you will, in the determination of options to fair dealing. That's the language we've brought forward over the past several years in draft form to various folks in government here. It's really what we would see as the most helpful in terms of maintaining the integrity of the marketplace for the kinds of reproduction we're talking about within the sector of education.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Mr. Béland, do you have a comment?

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

To answer your question on fair dealing, we haven't done any research on what other countries are doing, because it doesn't apply to us, because we don't use fair dealing.

I don't know if that answers your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Baylis, you have five minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Swail, I assume this chart is from you.

[David Swail]

It is, yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I have a couple of questions. First, are these in constant dollars?

[David Swail]

I don't believe they are in constant dollars. You'd think I would know that, but I got some help on this from some other folks.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We received a different chart, and let's just say it was going up, not down.

[David Swail]

It turns it the other way around, yes, and that's exactly the reason I introduced this.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Is that why you introduced this?

[David Swail]

Yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I notice you have a carve-out that says you did not include exports and foreign sales. If you had, would the other chart we'd seen be correct?

[David Swail]

It would be closer to correct. That's right.

The background for this document was really my effort to try to understand how trends as introduced to this committee in the previous document could be so dramatically different from the trends that I know exist for our members. Those are not public numbers, but the trends—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We're going to try to reconcile all these different numbers we're getting.

[David Swail]

Yes, and I'm certainly happy to provide those to the committee.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Could you do two things? Could you provide this chart—we already have this one—but one that includes your exports and other foreign income to see even whether that at least aligns or not?

[David Swail]

Okay.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Then I'd also like to see it in constant dollars just so we can see if there's an actual real trend: are you keeping up, really going down, or going down much more than we think?

[David Swail]

I have just a couple of observations on that.

Here we've tried to focus first of all on educational institutions as end user customers. Second, the trade publishing business, which includes things like Harry Potter and Fifty Shades of Grey, is a very different kind of business, equally mature in this country, but it tends to fluctuate depending on whether in a year you might have a dramatic bestseller that can actually spike the numbers.

We looked at the education sector. It was much more mature, and, personally, our members see a trend that's radically different from what you saw previously, which is—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We'd like to see that trend.

There's another thing you might be able to give us. There is a consumer price index specifically for education and recreation. There's an education one. I'd like to know whether these expenses, compared to the overall expenses of our education system, are going up or down. How are they in relation to not just your income, but in terms of all of the expenditures? Do you follow me?

[David Swail]

Yes, okay. So you're looking for, say, per capita spend—