Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee.
My name is Maureen Parker, and I am the Executive Director of the Writers Guild of Canada. With me today is my colleague Neal McDougall, the WGC's Director of Policy. We would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear today.
The Writers Guild of Canada is the national association representing over 2,200 professional screenwriters working in English language film, television, animation, radio, and digital media production. These WGC members are the creative force behind Canada's successful TV shows, movies, and web series.
Every powerful show, movie, or web series requires an equally powerful script, and every powerful script requires a skilful and talented screenwriter. They start with a blank page and end up creating an entire world. WGC members Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern developed an idea about a police squad sniper into a prime time TV hit called Flashpoint. They started with a concept and created an entire world. That's what authors do.
Our request today is for a simple clarification in the Copyright Act. We ask that the act be amended to clarify that screenwriters and directors are jointly the authors of the cinematographic work.
Authorship is a central concept in the Canadian Copyright Act. The act acknowledges that authors generally create copyrightable works and states the general rule that the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein. The authors of the cinematographic works are jointly the screenwriter and director. Screenwriters and directors are the individuals who exercise the skill and judgment that result in the expression of cinematographic works in material form. They start with the blank page or screen, respectively, and a world of possibilities from which they make countless creative choices. Screenwriters create a world, choose the specific place and time in that world to begin and end the story, set the mood and themes, create characters with histories and personalities, write dialogue, and map out the plot. Directors direct actors, choose shots and camera positions, and make choices that determine tone, style, rhythm, and meaning as rendered in a film or television production.
Producers are not authors. Producers are the people with the financial and administrative responsibility for a production, but while raising financing and arranging for distribution are important aspects of filmmaking, it is not creative in the artistic sense and it is not authorship. Moreover, copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves, so while producers may on occasion provide screenwriters and directors with ideas and concepts, it is screenwriters and directors who in turn express these ideas and concepts in a copyrightable form.
A Canadian court has already determined that the joint screenwriter and director were the authors of a film. The court held that the individual producer could not be considered to be the author of the film since the role was not creative. Other international jurisdictions already recognize screenwriters and directors as authors of audiovisual works. The U.S. is the primary anomaly, something that is partly explained by their studio system, which is not the international or Canadian model. As such, our proposal does not change the law or the reality in Canada; it simply clarifies it. Why is this important?
For one thing, the act defines the term of copyright based on the life of the author. If the life of the author is uncertain, then the term of copyright is uncertain, and therefore, there can be uncertainty about whether a given work is still under copyright protection or is in the public domain.
Further, recognizing screenwriters and directors as joint authors provides support for creators and the role they play in the Canadian creative economy. It gives them a strong position in which to bargain and enter into contracts with others in the content value chain. Since this clarification would not alter the legal reality in Canada, it poses no threat to existing business models.
Producers and others seeking to engage creators for their work would simply contract for the rights in that work, the same as they always have. Nobody argues that novelists are not the authors of their novels or composers are not the authors of their music, and certainly no one argues that publishers somehow can't sell books or recording companies can't sell music because these authors are the first owners of their works. Indeed, nobody argues that screenwriters aren't the authors of their screenplays, and producers already contract for the rights to adapt those screenplays into a production as a matter of course. This is not a disturbance of the business status quo; it is the business status quo.
Finally, in this fast-changing environment, in which disruption is the rule and not the exception, clarifying screenwriters' and directors' positions as authors offers the potential for further tools, such as equitable remuneration as is available in other jurisdictions like Europe, if and when that policy option needs to be considered.
Thank you for your time. We look forward to any questions you may have.