Industry Committee on June 7th, 2018

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

Thank you.

If Canada ratifies the Beijing treaty, how will that impact you?

[Annie Morin]

Are you talking specifically about Artisti, the collective management firm, or about performing artists in general?

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

Please be as general as you can.

[Annie Morin]

Right from the outset, this will give them a moral right over their performances. That is already very important. It will no longer be possible to use audiovisual performances for a cause or a product without first asking the artist for permission. Nor will people be able to alter their performances in a way that distorts them.

The moral right will be introduced when the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances is implemented, to the extent that Canada ratifies it. This will give all of the copyrights to the performing artist. Once you have all of the copyrights, you can continue to negotiate in contractual agreements.

[Sophie Prégent]

We are talking a great deal about the music sector. I am the president of the Union des artistes. In Quebec, we've managed to compensate for certain rights through our collective agreements. The Union des artistes manages 55 collective agreements in all sectors. This, of course, involves music, but also hosts, singers, and dancers. Through our collective agreements, we have managed to protect ourselves. The music sector is an exception. In fact, I would say that it is the example that should be avoided.

Over time, in Quebec, we have managed to protect ourselves to some degree thanks to the Status of the Artist Act. We have what are known as residual rights. In fact, we are paid for a day's work, a bit like plumbers. For the rest, we receive a percentage of the fee that was negotiated at the outset. For instance, we agree that the residual rights will be equivalent to 30%, 40%, 50% or 80% of the negotiated fee. So we are in another system that protects the artists, insofar as we remain within that framework.

Of course, the environment or the market tends to completely change the way in which artists are remunerated, and flat rate fees are increasingly being asked for for digital media. Do you understand what I mean? That is completely different.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Mr. Jowhari, you have five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Five minutes, okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

If I may be allowed, I'm going to take the conversation in a slightly different direction.

We've spent a lot of time on piracy, but I would like to spend a bit of time on the disruptive elements that have been introduced to the TV and film industry, as well as the emerging technology. Could you all share with me what you have seen over the last five years with the different and emerging technologies that disrupt or may have hindered or helped your industry?

Anyone can start.

[Tim Southam]

Just as a brief preamble, I too want to acknowledge the fact that the major SVOD services have provided a platform for compensating artists that is second to none. It's unassailable right now. It's fantastic. The contracts are solid, and the compensation is completely fair. In some ways the rise of the SVODs has given us temporary relief from the huge problem of all the other services out there that are trading in stolen goods.

It's very important to recognize that as a stopgap for this generation, the SVOD services like Netflix and Crave really need to be praised for devising a mechanism by which artists are compensated for their work. Those contracts are very strong models for where the law should go in protecting artists' ownership of their work before it's exploited. That's my initial comment.

In terms of the disruptions, I'll let Dave start that rainbow discussion. That's a huge one.

[Dave Forget]

Really, the question is where to begin. We're in an era where there's an abundance of choice and a diversity of content. There's never been a better time to be a viewer; there's so much there to pick from. It's triggered a lot of investment in the creation of content. In many ways, it's been a terrific tonic for the industry, because we're seeing a lot of activity.

Canada has benefited from that. Our members work on shows—and we've mentioned a couple—Lost in Space, Star Trek, but also The Shape of Water, and the list goes on—but they also work on Canadian programming.

There's been a real boom in production activity. That's been good, but the counterpart to that is that there's a lot more content coming over. This is a positive thing, but it's made for a much more competitive environment. As an example, we see the strengths of the work the government has been doing. That was demonstrated in the report and recommendations of the CRTC that to be competitive internationally, and to build on those strengths of having a deep pool of talent, a great infrastructure, the financial capacity, and the experience to be competitive internationally, we need to continue to have a robust system that strengthens the Canadian content side of it.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Talking about the robust system, in your opinion—either of you can interject—does the Copyright Act, as it is today, support or protect the rights of the producers in the film industry, or does it need to be amended or strengthened? Is it good as it is?

[Dave Forget]

I'll let everyone get in because that's a great question.

I'll begin with exactly one of the reasons that we're here today. The act is ambiguous with regard to how “author” is defined. It states “author” but doesn't identify who the author is.

The case that we've made, I believe, today is that screenwriters and directors are authors. The reason I bring this up is that one of the ways the act can be strengthened is to give clarity to that question. As you've probably heard already, many of the things that we do—the waiving of moral rights, the assignment of exploitation rights to producers and distributors, and so on—to ensure that we are very motivated to see the full exploitation of the content that our members create, for obvious reasons.... It's for financial reasons, and we want to see that. We think that is positive.

Strengthening that by having that clarified in the Copyright Act is a modest change that would bring clarity. What would that do? Tim and others have mentioned the extent to which new players on the SVOD side have been making investments. When you ask Crave, Netflix, and others what they are making, they say—in the jargon they use—that they're making a TV show. When our members are in Vancouver at a sound stage, whether it's one show or another....

As we go forward, as there are more disruption in the marketplace, as newer business models come up, we need to have those collective agreements. Madame Prégent made an excellent argument, and this is very much the experience of DGC. Those collective agreements are the vehicles for codifying those sets of rights and that transaction. But a strengthened Copyright Act would give us the tools to ensure that as new platforms come on—I'm finally coming to the punchline, forgive me—when these new technologies, new models emerge, it would compel that conversation with authors, writers, and directors, and those who are commissioning and financing the content, who are orchestrating the construction of the project over the rights and the fair compensation.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm out of time in about a minute, but can you all make a submission to cover the area of the copyright, especially around the definition of authorship? How could it be amended or strengthened to protect or facilitate the emerging technologies?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to move to Mr. Stetski. You have two minutes.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

We're down to short snappers.

I'd like you to think a little about the government body or department that has the most influence or control over your lives currently. What's the number one thing they could do tomorrow to help your artists be more successful?

We can just quickly go down the line.

[Tim Southam]

It's money. The entire conversation around audiovisual is producing the funds required in a small economy to produce competitive, compelling programming for Canada and the world.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

So, it's funding.

[Tim Southam]

The second thing is to understand that we have, as a country, an opportunity and a mandate to create works in our own voice, and those are often drowned out in the international marketplace by larger players. Our ministry and our government have an opportunity to ensure that Canadian voices continue to be heard.

[Dave Forget]

I think with what we've seen recently, we're beginning to see a path for creating a coherent system where all of the participants are contributing, in the broadest sense of the word, whether it's investment or promotion—as you see fit—into the health of the industry. That includes the players located outside Canada who bring their content in, and those within Canada, both from the traditional broadcasting system and the online broadcasting world.

We saw last week with the CRTC's thoughtful report that there's a pathway to getting there, and in the review of the acts to come, the broadcasting and the telecommunications acts, there's a path.

[John Lewis]

I would just say that what the CRTC has done lately, I think, gives everyone a sense of cautious optimism that the right questions are being asked.

My concern is with the influx. Our industry is booming right now. A lot of it is frothy because of a lot of the foreign service work that's coming in with budgets that make no sense to me. I work in the industry. The budgets that are being spent on TV production are like nothing I've ever seen. I'm sure there's a business model and people who are smarter than me can figure it out.

I'm nervous that in that wash and in all of those essentially feature films being made every week, I just don't know how our domestic industry will match up with that. You need both. You need a foreign service industry and you need a domestic industry working in harmony together, and I'm nervous about where we're going because of that. There's so much money flooding into the industry right now.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

With your permission, Chair, can we continue?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Go ahead.

[Annie Morin]

On the platforms that distribute cultural products, often the draw that will make people tune in to view a cultural product is the performing artist. People want to listen to Adele sing a song, or see a Pierre Lapointe video, for instance. They will watch performances to see content provided by performing artists. Those platforms benefit from the drawing power of the performing artists to generate their business.

It would be good if the creators, like the platforms, could benefit from the economic spinoffs generated by the drawing power of performing artists. We could follow the model proposed by Fair Internet for Performers to guarantee remuneration for performances broadcast on the Internet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We have some time for a few more quick questions.

I believe you're going to start, Mr. Sheehan.

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

Thank you very much.

Dave, you mentioned The Shape of Water. A guy from the Sault, Paul Austerberry, won an Academy Award—I know him quite well—and David Fremlin from the design team shared it. These are very good friends of mine, and I know how important the creative economy is, especially in film and television production.

In this conversation that we had about copyright, in your presentation it was assigned to the author at 50 years. We're also exploring how we deal with copyright as it relates to Canada's indigenous people. One of the issues we're finding, and on which I'm doing my research, is that we know that we need to ask for permission, but a lot of times that production, that piece of work, doesn't belong to an individual. It belongs to a first nation or a clan or a piece of it.

Do you have any ideas or thoughts on how copyright changes could help Canada's indigenous artists, and how we might enhance that and have more creative artistry in the indigenous world?

[Tim Southam]

I think one template solution that one might want to propose to various communities is that copyright not be automatically assumed to belong to the owner, but to the content creator, the originator of the material. We should explore how that is described in different communities, and be very sensitive to it.

To automatically say that the original copyright holder is the owner, as opposed to the person engaging in the act of taking it from the blank page or the open set into something that exists for all to see, is maybe the first mistake we made in this ambiguous definition of copyright. Moreover, perhaps being more precise in favour of the author would get us closer to not taking things from people who have made them.