Mr. Speaker, it is too bad some members are not paying attention. When you recognize somebody on debate why are they asking for the question?
The parliamentary secretary has pointed out that we are debating Group No. 5, Motions Nos. 7, 54 and 57. He has also insisted that anybody who does stand up and debate should not go off on a tangent and should not elaborate on anything else. They should stick to the issue.
Now all of a sudden they are applying the narrowest sense of the terms and rules of this House which, up until now, certainly a lot of members and the Speakers who have monitored the debate have given a lot of discretionary variance to for members to bring up any particular issue on these amendments that we are debating.
What concerns me is that we have a process and a system in the House of Commons whereby we have three stages to a bill and after second reading it goes to committee. It can go to committee after first reading for debate and discussion. Going through the fine print is the responsibility of standing committees. It is their responsibility to try to improve and point out flaws in bills and to make sure that the interpretation of all members and all parties is the same so that when the bill becomes law Canadian citizens can understand it.
When people look at an issue, when they want to know what the law is, what they can or cannot do, they can pick up a bill, for example Bill C-32, go to this page, which is being amended with these three motions, read it and understand it.
I am not a lawyer. Maybe I should be. I will bet a dollar to a doughnut that if we took this bill and some of these amendments with the language being used to lawyers out there who are going to be hired to interpret the copyright act, to interpret who has to pay and who does not have to pay, to interpret collective agencies, who qualifies and who does not, what they can charge for and what they cannot charge for, there will be a difference of opinion out there. They will not understand the wording.
It is amazing to me that we try to introduce bills that are very complicated. Instead of using fewer words, being clear and concise, they carry a lot of baggage.
I have given this preamble for a purpose. I had a fight about seven or eight years ago with the people of SOCAN. There was another one. It was called PROCAN. We had two collectives coming after my butt for running a nightclub in Calgary, playing music and having live entertainment. These people professed that they had the right to charge me money because I was playing music.
I said that makes sense. I guess it is performing arts and I have to pay it. I looked into it. The reason I bring up this story up is for a better understanding of why I would be voting against the Bloc member's amendments on this bill. The more collective agencies there are, the more people who claim they have the power to protect the rights of the originators of copyright information or copyright material, the more confusion there is.
When I had my nightclub, they came to me and said "here are the fees". They had a list of the artists and entertainers. Because I was playing this type of music, because my establishment had a certain number of seats and a certain amount of square footage, the fee was x .
I wondered what right they had to do that. I questioned their right to do that and what law forced me to do that. After all, if I had a live performer in my club, I paid them perhaps $5,000 a night. I paid good salaries because we only brought in the best entertainers.
Mr. Ian Tyson was a favourite of mine. We had him in our club quite often. I paid this fee to the artist. Then I questioned why, on top of that, I had to pay a performing arts fee to SOCAN and PROCAN.
When I buy an album or a tape, we are all paying the fee for the artist. The artist makes money from live performances, records, tapes and videos that are put together. Members may argue that they might not get enough of a percentage from it but they have agents who negotiate that.
Certainly someone like Garth Brooks makes a heck of a lot more now than he did when he first started. Yes, it was an opportunity for me at one time in my club to book him for $5,000 a week. Now he is getting $150,000 an hour or more, who knows what he is paid now.
These collective agencies then come forward and say "because you are playing this kind of music, on top of what these people make, we have to collect more money from you because you are repeating it". Radio stations play their music. They have to pay.
Then along comes another association called PROCAN, another collective agency. The Bloc is recommending we create more. It says to me "you have to pay because you are playing this kind of music, these people originated from the States, it is a bit of a crossover".
I said "I am not paying. I am already obligated. Some other association said I had to pay it. Before I pay anybody, I want to see the lists of the artists you represent". I made both of them bring me the list. I had a file so thick of all the different artists and all the different venues they represented. When I cross referenced it with the other list, lo and behold some names of artists were on the two separate lists. I asked how they could be charging me double. Either one had them or the other had them. I raised quite a fuss and I refused to pay both of them until they got it clear who represented which artists.
That lasted for a year and a half. I was able to get my back up and directly fight the system. Through that I may have been one of the people in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver who forced these people to get their act together and create just the one.
My point to the Bloc member is that the fewer collective agencies there are the better, and the clearer it is who you have to pay for the rights to use somebody's music or work. I agree with the principle that a fee should be paid for that since after all artists are at the low end of the totem pole and they get the least. I understand that principle and I would certainly support making sure they get some money.
Let us not go overboard. In the process of trying to protect these artists, performers and professional entertainers there are all these fat middle people called agents, producers and everybody else who take the cream off the top. The tougher you make it for the person who tries to hire these people to perform on a stage in theatre, the more expensive they are.
One of the reasons the philharmonics across the country are in trouble-they raise some money but it is hard to raise money and hard to pay them-is because the performers are asking too much. You can bankrupt the system. If we go overboard with this copyright bill by having too many collective agencies, which will confuse the general public that uses the copyright material, we will be in trouble.
The point in my intervention on these motions is to argue why it is not wise to have a number of collective agencies. They become like tax collectors. Lord knows we have enough tax collectors in this country and we pay enough taxes already. The point is that yes, we are interested in protecting the creators of original material and yes, we are interested in protecting intellectual property. Those people should be rewarded for their efforts, especially if they have talent and if they create a reusable product.
I do not know all aspects of this bill. I was not on the standing committee when it was debated clause by clause, but I hope that somewhere along the line the members of the committee and the parliamentary secretary recognize that there are a lot of people involved here and everybody has his or her hand out. I hope we are able to tackle the layer of fat of the different people who want a bunch of money before the people who should get it get their fair
share. By going too far in protecting artists are we satisfied and clear in our mind? Do members of all parties have an understanding before this bill gets passed that we are not just padding the pockets of the producers, the agents and all these other people rather than the artists?