Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to you and the members of the committee for enabling me to take this opportunity to make a presentation to you this afternoon.
I'm a labour lawyer and a human rights lawyer here in Ottawa, which I say under my breath somewhat. I've been doing a lot of work with visual artists over the last decade or so, and recently I've become a board member of Copyright Visual Arts, so I'm here in that capacity.
We are a non-profit, artist-run, copyright licensing agency. We have submitted a brief to the committee with three recommendations that, in our opinion, will directly and significantly affect the livelihood of visual artists in Canada. I'm going to touch on those three recommendations right now. Of course, when everyone's done I'd be open to any questions you might have.
The three recommendations concern fair dealing, the exhibition right and the artist's resale right.
First of all, I will talk about fair dealing. You will have already heard earlier this summer from Access Copyright and other groups representing writing and publishing that the 2012 amendments to the act introduced an education exemption under fair dealing, but the act does not specifically define the scope of this exemption. Since then, educational institutions have established their own fair dealing guidelines, which are problematic for visual artists, and they have stopped renewing collective licences with Access Copyright under the guise of fair dealing. Although individual payments to visual artists are modest, artists rely on them as a regular source of income. Years ago, an artist could pay a month's rent with their annual royalty. Now they're receiving an average of $50 each a year. Over the last four years, royalties that artists collectively received from Access Copyright declined by 66%, from well over $500,000 to less than $200,000. In other places like the U.K., Australia and Scandinavia, limitations on fair dealing have been written into law that balances the rights of users and creators where artists' livelihoods are not at stake. We recommend that similar wording be used here that does not interfere with collective licensing. Our brief has further details on this, and of course I commend to you the Access Copyright brief submitted in the summer, which also has a detailed analysis.
The second issue concerns the exhibition right and 1988. As you all know, the act includes an exhibition right that allows artists to require payment for the exhibition of their works if the works are not offered for sale or hire. However, public museums and galleries are not legally required to pay artists if their work was made before June 8, 1988. That was the date on which the exhibition right was enacted and came into force. This date limitation has led to discrimination against senior artists and the estates of deceased artists. Some museums do choose to pay artists for earlier works, but most do not. Without stronger legal rights, senior artists are often excluded from payment, while their younger counterparts do not face these issues. In our opinion there are strong arguments that this discrimination could be a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We therefore recommend that the 1988 date be dropped and that the exhibition right be extended to include all works subject to copyright, that is the life of the artist plus 50 years.
The final recommendation relates to the artist's resale right. The artist's resale right is a proposed royalty that a visual artist should receive each time their work is resold publicly through an auction house or a commercial gallery. If an artist sells or donates their work, and then it is later offered for sale again, we are asking that visual artists or their estates receive 5% of that sale price. It's a fairly nominal amount. Currently Canadian artists only get paid on the first sale of their artwork. This royalty would contribute significantly to the financial sustainability of an artist's practice. A writer or a composer gets paid as long as people buy their books or their songs; visual artists should also be paid if their artworks continue to re-enter the market and are sold again because they retain intellectual property in their work. The resale right is not a new phenomenon. It exists in over 90 countries around the world. The World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, is making efforts to make mandatory international adoption of the right. Currently it is voluntary for members of the Berne Convention Last year CIAGP, which represents visual arts copyright collectives internationally, passed a motion calling on Minister Bains and Minister Joly, when she was still Minister of Canadian Heritage, to adopt the artist's resale right and to support the adoption of a universal treaty at WIPO.
We urge you to join an international community that supports artists by adopting the artist's resale right.
I should note that in 2011, this committee was supportive of our efforts in this regard and encouraged us to pursue enactment of the artist's resale right through a private member's bill, which we attempted to do in 2013 but ultimately were not successful.
Thank you for your time. I'll be happy to try to answer any questions you have later.