Mr. Speaker, I talked in my speech about the impacts of education and technological protection measures and how we could clarify that, so I will not get into that in response to my friend from Nickel Belt, who, by the way, does excellent work for the people in the Nickel Belt region. I wanted to throw that little plug in.
The question is about remuneration on the issue of the arts. Artists do not want to live on grants. They want to live on a business model. The business model is based on copyright. It is based on mechanical royalties. It is based on the copying of their work. This is something the Conservatives have directly attacked. They have always been against the levy that was put in place by Canada and has been used around the world. They rant on about the iPod tax and taxing consumers when it has been a fundamentally guaranteed principle that all manner of copies are made, but at some level the artists should be part of the value chain. This is what we see as very disturbing in this legislation.
Conservatives talk about protecting consumers, which they actually do not do. They put consumers under lock and key with the digital lock provisions. They never talk about the fact that every day around the world there are millions and millions of copies made. Everybody is making something off that except the artists. We need to get serious about the remuneration of artists. I have never met an artist who was asking for the moon on this. They just want to know that they are getting their share so that they can continue to record, to tour and make great art that is known around the world.