Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having me today. I appreciate it.
Music publishers are businesses that own, administer, and control the rights to musical compositions. These compositions are the foundation of the entire music industry. The music industry in Canada represents more than $4 billion of economic activity annually. A recording is an end; a live performance is an event; but without a musical composition, neither of them can take place. There are no music recordings without a composition; there are no live performances without a composition; there are no jingles on advertisements; there are no soundtracks to movies. There is nothing in the industry.
Therefore, the music publisher has perhaps one of the biggest interests in the IP provisions of the TPP, and certainly in the term extension provisions in the TPP, because they own and administer that musical intellectual property. It's the bedrock of the entire music industry.
We will primarily focus our comments today on the term extension provisions of the TPP. We know that they have been very controversial. We know that there have been some strong opinions expressed. We hope to perhaps debunk a few of the opinions that have come before you.
We have no opinion on the broader provisions of the TPP; that's not our issue. Our goal is to address those misconceptions and some misrepresentations by people we may best describe as copy fighters, which is an interesting term.
First of all, there's a myth that extending copyright terms will be costly to consumers. That is in fact not the case at all. It will not cost the consumer, at least not the consumer of musical works. It won't cost them one cent. The New Zealand and Australian studies that have been cited are based on a 20th-century consumer “packaged goods” model of music consumption that frankly no longer exists and certainly, by the time term extension really has any meaningful impact, won't exist at all. It's 2016. That's the environment we operate in, and those models are based on people continuing to purchase music as a physical product in a store or online.
Third, extending term is not about the heirs. It's not about “life plus 50” or “life plus 70” and some music writer's great-great grandchildren by their third marriage getting a whole windfall of money. That's certainly not the case. It's about creating a secure financial instrument for music publishers—Canadian companies—to invest in. Extending the term increases the value of that financial instrument, which they can leverage to invest.
Music publishers, that are mostly affected by term extension, are investing in Canadian artists—Canadian songwriters in the Canadian industry—and term extension gives them an instrument with which they can invest further. Publishers invest more in talent development than any other element of the music industry, including record labels. Term extension gives that asset greater long-term value to leverage and invest.
You've probably heard that term extension will make it more difficult for the next generation to create new works. We don't understand how extending the pool of investment capital available could possibly do that. It's just counterintuitive. It does not.
We've heard about DRM provisions that could possibly block experimentation and innovation. Well, they do block innovation that's based on intellectual property theft; they absolutely do that. That's not innovation, no matter how much the average consumer may like easy, convenient, free access to the contents that such innovators exploit. The fact is, DRM enhances investment in that same intellectual property that the innovator in every case basically wishes to exploit for free.