In the traditional gallery-auction house model, we're the intermediaries between the consumer and either the producer or the seller, in the case of resale. In other words, a gallery has an exhibition of an artist's work and people come in and buy it. If people are going to try to circumvent this because all of a sudden a seller of a work wants to net $10,000 but not $9,500 if it's subject to the ARR or whatever, so all of a sudden they want to net $10,750 or something like that....
All this is to say that if the seller is unwilling to pay that.... It is interesting to note that in Bill C-516 it was proposed that it should be the responsibility jointly and severally of the seller and the dealer. If the seller defaults on paying the ARR, all of a sudden people will come after the dealer to remit it on the seller's behalf. All of a sudden we're shouldering a tremendous burden. Sometimes a commission is as low as 10%. If we have to lose half of that because the seller reneged or whatever, it's hurtful.
My point is that for anyone trying to circumvent the model, it's fairly easy now, with the Internet, to just post it somewhere: here's_my_collection _for_sale.com. It's no longer at auction or in a retail gallery, but the seller can find the buyer easily enough. The two of them can get together to negotiate the price, which, as I said, will not include the ARR, and it will not include GST, HST or PST.
All these things will negatively impact.... The gallery model might disappear. Some artists will argue that this is great, but they might be forgetting that galleries do a lot to promote the art form and to promote their artists. We co-exist in a system that has worked pretty well for many years.