Canadian Heritage committee  I think you may have heard in the past when we've deputed about copyright specifically that while audio performers have copyright protection, audiovisual performers do not have copyright protection. This means that when I do a performance and somebody in a foreign country is usin

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll be brief so that Madame St-Onge can speak to that as well. Absolutely. For instance, we've been in conversations with the funding bodies themselves, such as the CMF and Telefilm, to actually put in rules that will allow for productions that can in essence prove that they ar

Canadian Heritage committee  We welcome the foreign service work that is coming to Canada right now. Frankly, it's been coming to Canada in this kind of volume for the last two or three years. It has become a financial boon for those streaming services that were super hungry for content. It has even been dou

Canadian Heritage committee  It's definitely to support CanCon and not water it down. Let me pass it over to our general counsel, Raj Shoan, to get into the minutiae of that.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, it's certainly the case that.... Our friends at BCE have pointed out the lack of a level playing field. One of those things is that creating a Canadian production has been one thing in the past, but there has been no money left over to actually promote it in the same way th

Canadian Heritage committee  As a union of professional performers, we have a great relationship with the Netflixes and Disneys and other big streaming services that are up here doing foreign service work; that is, they're producing their own productions written largely by Americans. Right now, during COVID

Canadian Heritage committee  I do. We are a sovereign country with unique stories. We live in a competitive world, and we've always maintained the airwaves in Canada both [Technical difficulty—Editor] Canadians. We allow companies, whether they are domestic or foreign, to use those airwaves by paying into th

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's obviously a world that impacts performers. Performers are in some respects the most precarious workers in the industry, in that we aren't guaranteed the work we do. In essence, we apply for jobs every single day by auditioning. Sometimes we get those jobs and sometim

Canadian Heritage committee  I've had an extremely fortunate career over the last 30 years. I've been in over 100 film and television roles, commercials, voice-overs, cartoons and all kinds of things. I have also been a writer and had a couple of projects made, so I have made my career in the arts for 30 yea

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, committee members and staff. My name is David Sparrow. I'm a Canadian performer and the national president of ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. Joining me today are Marie Kelly, ACTRA's national executive dir

Canadian Heritage committee  This is why we are gravely concerned with the proposed wording in proposed paragraph 3(1)(f) of the bill. It would remove the requirement that: (f) each broadcasting undertaking shall make maximum use, and in no case less than predominant use, of Canadian creative and other res

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that first off—and I'm not sure it's the mandate of this committee, but I'll just say it—

Canadian Heritage committee  ISP providers paying into the CMF and other funding models in order to support Canadian content would be huge in terms of creating more content and hiring more performers. We count them, I would say, as great partners in our industry. We've had long-term contracts with them. Thi

Canadian Heritage committee  Do you want to address that?

Canadian Heritage committee  It's interesting that right now in the world there are apparently 500 English language TV series being recorded. None of us has the time to watch all of that programming. There is a lot of work for performers. The question, as I'm repeating today, is simply how the long use of t