Good afternoon.
I'll be giving my presentation in French.
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hélène Messier.
I am the president and chief executive officer of the Association québécoise de la production médiatique, or AQPM for short. Joining me is Marie-Christine Beaudry, director of legal and business affairs for Zone3.
Zone3 is one of the largest production companies in Quebec. It produces films, and its subsidiary Cinémaginaire recently produced the Denys Arcand film La chute de l'empire américain.
In the television arena, the company produces programs of all genres including series for youth like Jérémie, magazine programs such as Les Francs-tireurs and Curieux Bégin, variety shows such as Infoman and comedies such as Like-moi!
The AQPM brings together 150 independent film, television and web production companies, representing the vast majority of Quebec companies that produce audiovisual content for every screen in both French and English. The AQPM's members produce more than 500 films, television programs and webcasts watched by millions of people on every type of screen.
Our members are responsible for such film productions as the feature Bon Cop Bad Cop and Mommy—winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival and the César award for best foreign film—not to mention television programs La Voix, Fugueuse and the daily District 31, just to name a few. The commercial success of these productions is the envy of many.
In 2016-17, Canada's film and television production sector was valued at nearly $8.4 billion in total, generating more than 171,700 full-time equivalent jobs in both direct and indirect employment. Quebec's film and television production sector is worth $1.8 billion and generates 36,400 jobs.
We want to thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute to its statutory review of the Copyright Act. Although the AQPM is concerned about a number of issues including piracy and the extension of the private copying levy to audiovisual works, our remarks today will focus on audiovisual copyright ownership.
Determining who the creator of a sculpture or song is may be straightforward, but it's a whole other story when it comes to an audiovisual work, be it a television program, film or web content. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works gives countries freedom in establishing copyright ownership of cinematographic works.
In Canada, the identification process began in the early 1990s but has been delayed ever since, leaving Canadian legislation silent on the issue. As a result, only the courts are empowered to identify who the author of a cinematographic work is on the basis of facts specific to that work. With few documented cases, no clear rule has emerged.
Many countries have opted to set out in their legislation how the author of an audiovisual work is identified. Countries with similar copyright philosophies to Canada's—the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand—have identified the producer as the sole copyright holder, with the exception of the United Kingdom, where both the producer and director are copyright owners.
Conversely, in Canada, not only are producers not recognized as copyright owners, but they are also forced to operate in an uncertain model when producing and using audiovisual works, managing all related risks. It is worth noting, though, that, in order to limit those risks, some clarification has been incorporated into collective agreements negotiated between unions, representing screenwriters, directors, music composers and performers, on the one hand, and the AQPM, representing producers, on the other. Generally speaking, the producer has rights and pays a fee or royalty for the use of those rights.
A question worth asking is whether “cinematographic work” is still the right designation for the wide range of audiovisual works dominating the sector today, including those intended for digital media. In the AQPM's view, the current definition of a cinematographic work is not technology-neutral since it refers to a traditional production technique—cinematography—as opposed to the actual work.
For that reason, the AQPM recommends that the new category “audiovisual work” be created. It would be defined as an animated sequence of images, whether or not accompanied by sound, and include cinematographic works.
The next question that arises is who the copyright owner of an audiovisual work is. The answer lies in characterizing the work somehow. Is it a work in and of itself, or is it a collaborative work or compilation that brings together a number of underlying works? Does the script or music, for instance, represent a whole that cannot be separated, or do a number of separate works make up a whole that is more than the sum of its parts? Who owns the copyright as far as that whole is concerned?
The AQPM maintains that the producer's role in the creative process and making of an audiovisual work dictates the recognition of the producer's creative contribution to the work. This would make the producer the owner of the copyright in the audiovisual work, and all related rights, without penalizing the creators of the underlying works. In that case, it would be important to specify that a corporation could be the first owner of copyright in the audiovisual work.
Ms. Beaudry will now explain why the producer should hold all rights to the audiovisual work, right from its infancy.