Industry Committee on June 5th, 2018

[Alan Willaert]

As I stated earlier, it would be just by looking at the size of the station and the revenue it generates on advertising. The smaller ones that make less than $1.25 million could be exempt. College radio could be exempt from that. The others that have been making a sufficient amount of money should be paying full freight on it.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

It's not really a full exemption, if I'm correct. There's a small number, so you pay a small number, and then after $1.25 million, you pay a bigger number. Is that correct?

[Alan Willaert]

That's right.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Could just raising that initial number be another solution that you'd recommend?

[Alan Willaert]

I haven't done the math. I couldn't tell you that.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Would you care to comment on that, Ms. McGuffin?

[Margaret McGuffin]

It's not in my area. It used to be. I could tell you that I was there when we were discussing this, and it was always meant to allow the small, private mom-and-pop ones to have the exception. What happened was that the large groups applied it to each station, so the amount was much greater than what was anticipated when we were first proposing this.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Now is that the result of a loophole in the law, or has there been an actual decision that has come down that says that these big companies are allowed to use this as well?

[Margaret McGuffin]

No, it's the way that the act is drafted, and it applies to each individual station.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

There's no wording about big guys. It's basically just a loophole, or an opening, left in the law.

[Margaret McGuffin]

Yes. It is not what we anticipated when we were looking at the legislation at the time.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

In terms of creation, we have Amazon Prime, Netflix, and CraveTV. I'm sure we have others. There doesn't really seem to be a Canadian-related streaming company. How does that impact Canadian music producers in your area?

[Margaret McGuffin]

Discoverability is a huge problem across the music streaming platforms and the audiovisual platforms. It's also a language issue in terms of being able to discover francophone content. I speak to my colleagues in Quebec about this all the time. We are very happy to hear the announcement today about the review of the Telecommunications Act and the Broadcasting Act. It is going to be a very interesting accompanying review to the one you're doing here because it looks at all types of issues around funding for the creative industries and small businesses, as well as at discoverability of both French language content and Canadian content. We're really excited about that.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I was looking at some of the charts that were provided by our library researchers. The revenue from physical has just dropped precipitously, but we have streaming coming up and picking up some of that slack. Do you see streaming growing in importance and taking up a lot of the slack from the physical, or do you see it kind of plateauing at this point?

[Margaret McGuffin]

It's continuing to grow very quickly, and there are new players. Amazon launched its core service more recently, so there are new players coming into the market. It's good for all of us when there are companies that want to come in to the Canadian market, and when subscribers want to pay for that content.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Do you think that there's enough competition in that market, or is it just too dominated by a few players?

[Margaret McGuffin]

I don't really have a comment on that.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Okay.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Twenty seconds.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

“Good” as in move on...?

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I could talk about myself, I guess, but I'll spare the committee.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Sheehan.

You have five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to our presenters. This is a really important topic: how we support our cultural economy and those who are working hard in it.

Years ago when I was on city council, I spearheaded an initiative for Sault Ste. Marie to have the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. A lot of people considered that to be a long shot, but we put forward a really good bid and we made it to the finals. I remember being interviewed by one of the major news organizations, and I didn't know that I was being pitted against someone else who was on the line at the time. They asked why the Canadian Music Hall of Fame should be in Sault Ste. Marie instead of Winnipeg, and they named the various artists from there, and from the Toronto and Montreal music scenes. I said that it's easy to argue that music was being made in Sault Ste. Marie before Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal.

This is part of our question that we're asking about the indigenous copyright and how we protect the indigenous culture and the performers who are in it. For thousands of years in Sault Ste. Marie, people came to do powwows because of the whitefish in the St. Marys River. They came from all over Canada, and naturally, when they were there, they traded, but then they started doing powwows and having dancing and music.

In your opinion, what is it that we need to do to protect and promote indigenous musicians?