Madam Speaker, what is very interesting in this discussion is that, if we look at the statistics, we will find that artists have a special relationship with their fan base and fans want to buy music.
In fact, there was a study done in the U.K. on downloading, on kids who download music and who download music for free, and the vast majority of them said they did not have a problem paying for music. They had a problem with not having easy access to music. If they can get it easily, they will get it easily, but they were not fundamentally opposed. They were not libertarians on this. They would support it.
I have been speaking on talk radio and to various groups about this motion. Once people get the idea that it is not a tax, as the Conservatives have misrepresented, but a levy that is dedicated to artists, they ask, for example, after what has been negotiated at ACTA, that if they get stopped at the border, whether the U.S. border officials will not be able to take their iPods and say they are illegal. They ask if they have some protection as fans for what they buy and they will not be sued. That is part of what it is.
Artists are going to get some remuneration, and they are not phenomenal amounts of money. From having toured this country I can tell members that, if artists were getting $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 from the levy, that is sometimes the difference between being able to continue as musicians and having to stop. Our artists are living on pitifully small amounts of money and they create the music we love.
The message that should be coming out of Parliament is that we as Canadians and as the Government of Canada recognize the importance of building that relationship rather than doing what the Conservatives always do, which is to try to pit one group against another. They are desperate for wedge issues. They are trying to drive a wedge between music fans and the creators, but I hope the wedge-issue politics will stop as Conservatives realize, just as fans and artists realize, that this is a compromise and people benefit.