Industry committee  In another life, we used to deal in contemporary art from southern artists. Every time we made a sale, along with the cheque we said, “We sold this painting to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” We said exactly whom we sold it to. But I would think there are probably also some very serious pri

Industry committee  Can I just say one thing?

Industry committee  I just thought of something. Everyone talked about estates. Unfortunately, most Inuit artists die intestate, so who are the legitimate heirs between adopted children, biological children, etc.? No one has given us information as to who gets what. Again, so many of the early pie

Industry committee  I know, but I'm saying that auction houses often forget the words “attributed to” because they want it to sound as if it is definitely by.... All of a sudden, we could have a situation where the next-door neighbour says, “No, I made that.” Again, the question of who gets what is

Industry committee  In the traditional gallery-auction house model, we're the intermediaries between the consumer and either the producer or the seller, in the case of resale. In other words, a gallery has an exhibition of an artist's work and people come in and buy it. If people are going to try to

Industry committee  Put it this way. Collectors aren't thrilled about paying 15% HST in the Maritimes or 13% in Ontario. If there is a way for them to avoid it and the seller is automatically in a position whereby he or she can save 5%, they will find a way.

Industry committee  It doesn't necessarily lower the demand. The demand is low enough. You're raising the retail price, which makes it less competitive in the marketplace. In other words, if it's hard enough to sell at $5,000, it's going to be that much harder to sell at $6,000.

Industry committee  Indeed. That's our big concern.

Industry committee  It's way outside of my....

Industry committee  Well, as I said, it's a very real fear that sales at the higher end of the market would move south of the border. Forgetting all the private sales that will circumvent the traditional gallery or auction house market, what's to stop a major Canadian auction house from opening up i

Industry committee  I haven't a clue. I think it's in the venue where the piece is sold. It's like when something is being imported, assuming it's being imported with the correct price attached, as opposed to coming in with a zero that has miraculously dropped off.

Industry committee  Okay. All this is assuming that the GST, HST, PST or whatever would be collected at the border, but I don't know that.... Again, it's not the government's job to collect that.

Industry committee  Exactly. That's what I was saying. In all these venues where it's a shared thing, it's almost like 90 countries agreeing to use Times New Roman 12 instead of Arial 14. It's a compliance issue, so it's the same across trading partners.

Industry committee  This is just it. Unfortunately, in the art business, we're selling a fantasy, much like the case with lottery tickets. When the Ontario lottery advertises that Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Leamington, Ontario won the 6/49, they don't say, “and, by the way, there were 20 million other ti

Industry committee  It's really hard to say. In the United States, California enacted an ARR in the 1970s, which was just overturned by the courts. It all came about after an auction where a Robert Rauschenberg painting that was originally sold for something like $50,000, let's say, was sold for $