Thank you for inviting us to appear today.
We would like to talk to you about the work of authors, such as screenwriters, and how the Copyright Act could enrich Canadian culture and economy in the long term.
First of all, let me tell you about our organization, SARTEC. Its mission is to protect and defend the professional, economic and moral interests of all self-employed French-speaking authors in the audiovisual sector in Canada. It negotiates collective agreements with producers, advises authors on their contracts, collects royalties on their behalf, and helps ensure that their work is valued.
Our collective agreements prohibit the assignment of rights, but they grant producers operating licences for the text in the form of audiovisual works, they regulate the possibility of granting licences for other purposes, and they allow authors to collect royalties from producers or collecting societies, depending on the type of operation. All this is set out in the agreements.
Screenwriters are creators who devote their lives to writing and imagining the stories of Canadian heroes and values. Their scripts are the source of audiovisual works that bring people together, move them, make them laugh and reflect, promote our culture, our country and its great wealth. The benefits they generate are very positive for the economy and the well-being of Canadians. To ensure that our Canadian audiovisual production is competitive, we have a responsibility to put in place modern mechanisms in the act to ensure that creators are adequately compensated for the fruits of their labour.
It is important to remember that, in order to do their jobs, authors must be able to grant the rights for their work in return for remuneration, whether for a film, to a theatre company for a play or to a publisher in the case of a book. Authors must have the ability to monetize the rights for the adaptation of their screenplays and to reap the benefits. Self-employed workers often assume the risk of creating their work alone. The act must therefore allow them to mitigate that risk, so that they can continue to create and make a decent income in the digital economy.
In our opinion, the act must allow our children who have the desire and talent to dream of working as creators one day too.