Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his extremely relevant question. True, those who are against applying the levy to MP3s call it a tax. There is a principle or an ideology behind the word tax. A tax is money collected for the government that goes into the consolidated revenue fund before it is redistributed through the financial system. A levy is totally different.
A levy is an amount that is paid, for example 29¢ on the purchase of a CD, and then given to the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which redistributes it to copyright holders through a very sophisticated mechanism.
The copyright holders are the artists who contributed to creating the music. This mechanism is not perfect; there are always some who slip through the cracks. Nevertheless, in general, artists and arts workers are extremely satisfied with this system. Tens of thousands of dollars have been distributed in this way to artists and creators, thereby increasing their incomes.