Canadian Heritage committee  Well the solution would be.... Again, this is not simply my opinion, but I've met over the years with many people in the broadcast and ISP industry. As you know, I'm the chairman of The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund and I know many of those people on a personal level. The sense I have is that, just as the cable industry when it started refused to pay any royalties for broadcast television for about 25 years and were sued continually and said “No we don't touch the content, we're just selling bandwidth”, that's the same argument the ISPs use today.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll try to give you a big-picture answer that will be very incomplete because, in the time allotted to you and to all of us, this complex issue won't be solved. The big picture is pretty simple. There's general agreement that the major economic frictional loss in the chain of payment for content is that ISPs charge from $40 to $60 to $100 a month for essentially the majority of what people pay for as subscribers: music, television programs, and movies.

Canadian Heritage committee  Same question, different perspective. I think it's not the right question, if I could be so bold to say. The right question is how can Canada support an environment in which creators can earn a living? There are two big ways to do that. There is a choice. One is the way that Canada and most countries in the industrialized world have done it, through legislation and regulation.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, there is some linkage. It's part of the same general problem that, because the current situation does not pay people who create and produce music—producers, production companies, the older kind of record companies, the artists, the composers—we must produce the work that we do for less money.

Canadian Heritage committee  So it is linked. In particular the situation with audiovisual works, which are normally never spoken of in the same breath because there are whole different areas of copyright and you have two different industries, the Hollywood movie industry looks at copyright differently than the record industry and deals with it differently, which has created some—

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, some loopholes that, of course, every good businessman will try to find to maximize their profit. Anyway, this goes along. It's a big question, I think, larger than what we are discussing today. I'd be happy to speak about it at another time, but that's my answer.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, my name is Paul Hoffert, I perform as a musician with my rock band Lighthouse and as a jazz pianist. In addition, I compose music songs and music scores for television programs and movies. I'm chair of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada, a founder of the Canadian Independent Music Association, chair of the Bell Fund, and a professor in the faculties of music, law, and information science at the University of Toronto.