:
I call the meeting to order.
Welcome to the 28th meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. It is November 4, 2010. We are here pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) for a study on the opportunities and challenges in emerging and digital media.
[Translation]
Welcome to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. This is our 28th meeting, this Thursday, November 4, 2010.
We are here pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) for a study on the opportunities and challenges of emerging and digital media.
[English]
We have representatives from two organizations on our first panel today. From the Association of Canadian Publishers we have Mr. O'Hearn, who is director of the University of Ottawa Press, and Madam Ross, coordinator of digital initiatives. From the Great Northern Way Campus, via video conference, we have Madam Kopak, who is director of business development and operations.
Welcome to all of you.
We'll begin with an opening statement from the Association of Canadian Publishers.
The Association of Canadian Publishers represents the interests of 125 Canadian-owned English language book publishers from across the country. It provides advocacy; promotes professional development; and fosters collaboration, most notably, over the past two years, in the production of digital content.
The transformation of publishing processes from traditional to digital is well advanced in editing, design, typesetting, printing, order processing, metadata management, and e-book production, but we are still at the early stages in developing e-book pricing models and in digital marketing of both printed books and e-books.
ACP has several goals in this digital environment, and I will enumerate and describe four of them here.
The first is to maximize the revenue potential of e-books.
Canadian publishers have eagerly embraced opportunities to convert their content into digital format, particularly with the growing popularity of e-readers for general interest and even academic reading. Dozens of Canadian publishers have already produced marketable works in the early stages of this e-book phenomenon, and many more are now engaged in this market. The challenge now is to move from the conversion of content into digital files to the creation of content in digital format. As this new revenue stream opens up for publishers around the world, it's vital that Canadian publishers be able to take full advantage of it.
The second goal is to maximize the potential of digital technology in raising awareness of Canadian books in print, digital, and all other formats. Traditional ways of selling books are becoming less effective, independent bookstores are closing down across the country, newspapers are dropping or sharply curtailing their book review sections, and our national book chain is further reducing the space it devotes to books relative to other merchandise categories. And also, e-books tend to cost much less than traditional paper books.
At the same time, technology is creating new ways of promoting and selling books. Online retailers such as Amazon carry a much wider inventory than traditional stores; blogging offers up all the critical opinion and debate of newspaper reviews; social networking functions as word-of-mouth publicity; publishers' and authors' websites can generate attention for Canadian books and facilitate sales; and a new portal currently in development, called Canadian Bookshelf, will make Canadian-authored titles from all publishers much more discoverable on the web, much easier for teachers to integrate into their libraries and course materials, and more accessible for any reader anywhere in the world.
This wholesale change in the way the public learns about books, seeks them out, and acquires them is transforming the business practices of the book industry, and Canadian publishers must be ready and able to exploit these opportunities.
The third goal is to participate in the development of new business models for book publishing and distribution. With the advent of the digital era, retailers and publishers are throwing out old pricing and discount structures, rewriting contracts, and inventing new ways of doing business. We wish to seize this opportunity to shape our market environment before larger, foreign-based companies do it for us. We must have the capacity to experiment with new structures that reflect Canadian realities and benefit Canadian authors, publishers, and readers.
A fourth objective for the ACP is to increase the presence of Canadian books in Canadian schools. In the past 15 years we've seen a decline of investment in school libraries as well as a decline in the proportion of Canadian-published books in these diminished collections. Our children need to hear Canadian stories, told in Canadian voices, to learn the history and culture of their own country and to understand the issues that shape their own communities. New technology is allowing us to promote Canadian books to this market, and we must make the most of this opportunity.
Looking at the role of government, we feel that we can see perhaps three strategies that we certainly would support. The first is to protect the value of intellectual property assets with solid copyright legislation. As many of you know, many Canadian publishers are worried about expanding the definition of “fair dealing” to include education, as is proposed in Bill , and we look forward to working with government in the months ahead to ensure that Canadians--as consumers, as creators, and as producers--have a better understanding of the role of copyright in all aspects of their lives and in Canada's place in the digital world.
The second strategy or support that could come from government is the support of risk. I think the fast pace of change in the digital environment requires bold initiatives, willingness to experiment, and ability to learn from all outcomes, good or bad. The stakes are high, and the financial resources in a small business or small-margin industry are very limited. New solutions are required for the challenges of new formats and new business models. We believe that public investment programs must be flexible enough and strategic enough to support the risks that small businesses must take on in finding and building these new solutions.
Finally, we could certainly see government helping to facilitate access to capital, specifically through more broadly based funding programs, links to private investment, perhaps a loan guarantee program, and a federal tax credit for digital and print books.
:
Thank you for inviting me. I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person. I'm in Ottawa next week, but not this week.
I am the director of business development for the Centre for Digital Media, which is an institution owned by the four universities in Vancouver. It was originally set up with seed money from the provincial government. We are now three years old and have 50 graduates. Eight companies have spun off from us, and I think we're a Canadian success story. I also think we are the new world of digital media.
I don't have a formal opening statement. I just want to talk about how exciting the future is and the potential for Canada to be a real leader in this area, based on the examples of our students.
Our students come from all over the world and all over Canada. Some come from computer science, but we also have somebody who is a paleontologist. They come from a broad sector. They all work together on teams and produce projects for outside clients and outward-facing, for lack of a better word, people who pay us money to produce things for them.
Just before I came here, I met with six of our project teams to talk about issues and delivering, and I want to give you some background on what those projects are so that you can see how exciting this is and see the great breadth of what we can produce.
The first project is called Nom Nom Rider and Banana Samurai. It's produced for the British Columbia Innovation Council and Microsoft. It's basically a game for elementary school students. It's going to be launched on Monday on the new Windows Phone 7, and it's to teach them how to eat properly: if you eat bad food and you don't exercise, you eventually explode. It's based on the old idea of Mario Brothers. It's really cool, and the students we've tested it on love it. I just showed it to Telus, and Telus is really interested in bringing it into the market in both B.C. and Alberta. That's one little project.
Another project we're working on is something for the men's health initiative of B.C. The mandate of that project is to extend the healthy living lifespan of men by 10 years. They're doing a massive social media project using video and games to teach 20-something men that attitude is actually the reason they don't live as long as women. It has a lot of edge, and we're getting some really cool feedback from both DDB and Cossette Advertising.
These are just some of the projects we're working on.
A third project uses a science fiction novel to develop an alternative reality game for a small, independent production company in Toronto. They are producing a game as well as doing some artwork for the television series that's coming out of this science fiction novel.
Another one we're doing is called “Making It Work”. Basically it's an e-learning manual to show people living with rheumatoid arthritis how they can actually work. It has a combination of animation and full-motion videos--real, live video.
We're doing a project called Gold Mountain for the UBC history department and the Barber centre at UBC. Its purpose is to teach Canadians, primarily high school students, about Chinese history in Canada. Instead of doing the traditional web portal, we're actually building a traditional Chinese town in virtual reality in the Cariboo, and it's going to be based on game principles.
Finally, the other project I just touched on was a project we're doing with BigPark, a game company that was just acquired by Microsoft. We're doing some R and D development on HTML5, which is the platform that will be running on the iPad and the iPhone.
That's just to give you some excitement about where we can take digital media. I could talk all day about our projects--we've got over 50--but I just wanted to give you a flavour of what this country can produce in a very short period of time. It's a really exciting future.
:
We're lagging behind, especially compared to where we were.
If you're in a big urban centre in Canada, you have access to high-speed Internet. You need to be able to push that out so that everybody has access to high-speed data lines.
We're not lagging behind in innovation by the young people who are coming out of our school system. Whenever I get a bit worried about the country, I spend 10 minutes with some high school students, who have a ton of ideas about where to take us. I think we're lagging behind in that we have to enable education systems to let them develop new ideas.
As an example, if you go to any high school or any elementary school, they'll all have SMART Boards in their rooms. If they get money, they can buy a SMART Board, which is an interactive whiteboard that they can do cool things on. Although the school boards will buy them for them, the teachers don't get trained on how to use them and there's no content to put on them, but at least we're trying to get them out there. Where we're lagging behind is in allowing that education system to catch up to the students.
I don't know if that makes sense, but Canadian young people are very eager to make new things and new content and to tell their stories and tell their parents' stories; we just have to enable that. In terms of technology, we're there. Where we're lagging behind, I think, is in education, and I think we're lagging behind in rolling out the high-speed Internet. We really need high speed.
I find this conversation fascinating, because I started a magazine in 1995 when people were doing cut and paste. We used to have to get the light tables. We had a little Mac with a screen that big, and with PageMaker and QuarkXPress we suddenly were competing. Our stuff was as good as anything coming out of big professional houses. Now any kid on the block can put out stuff that looks fancier than what I could produce with my $1,000 programs. There is a dramatic change.
What doesn't change, though, is the need for content and the value of content. I found it interesting that you said the jury is out on digital and books and whether the book is going to disappear. It would seem to me that we always look at digital in terms of one factor in a market that's changing dramatically on a number of fronts. Many small Canadian publishers used to feed a number of small suppliers then. They were only supplying one or two large chains, and those large chains told them they had to supply a massive amount of books, so they did; then, of course, all those remainders would go back, which would put them out of business. The small publishers couldn't feed one or two giants the way Random House could.
With regard to e-books and Google, do you not think that the issue--and you mentioned quality--is that at the end of the day, people still want to have something they can hold and something they can read? We blow through it on our BlackBerrys and we read all kinds of content, but to read a book is an experience. Don't you think that's why people fork out the dollars?
:
I would have to agree. I think that's what I was saying, though: that beautiful books, the hard-bound books with a lot of craftsmanship in them, will continue. I have no doubt about that.
I was thinking more in terms of two situations. One might be the easy read, in a sense. If you're on a plane trip or a vacation or something like that, you can bring along 100 novels or more, if you want to, on one of those e-readers. I don't know how many you could actually get in there.
I did an experiment the other day. My mother is 81, and I went trundling in with one very large book and an e-reader. I said, “Mom, what do you think?” She spent some time flipping through both, and her answer was, “Well, dear, I like the book. This thing is interesting and it has its place, but it doesn't bend.”
Some of us are wedded. It's a cultural thing. The book is a cultural item. The way it works is as a cultural item. Many of us of a certain age are certainly wedded to it. I have also seen statistics, which unfortunately I don't have here, saying that for doing a lot of their research, university students still prefer paper books, but I don't know where that came from.
:
It's a master's program, so everybody has an undergraduate degree. A third of them come from the sciences, such as computer science or software engineering. A third of them are from arts programs, usually either 2-D or 3-D art animation. A third are anything else. We've had Gemini-winning documentary filmmakers come through the program. We actually strive to have it as balanced as we can, because we're big believers that computer scientists work really well with artists and produce the best product when they work in these intensive teams together.
The interesting thing--and this is why I called it a success story--is that we are being courted heavily from outside Canada for our model, because our model is basically to focus on solving a problem, rather than to create a product for the sake of creating a product. When I agreed to come, I was actually going to do what our students do, which is a day in the life of a person using digital media. When somebody wants to create a digital media product, we say, “Why do you want to create this?” Then we work through the problem with them: “Who is your target market?” and “What is that person going to do every day?” Then you give them 13 weeks to create something. They usually can't finish the project, but they can do a proof of concept or a prototype. Then you take it out to someone to pay to finish the project.
We've been working with health a lot. Health information is much more interesting when it's presented in an interactive way rather than through a pamphlet. The day of the pamphlet is dying in terms of exchange of information, because if you want to find out about a drug, you tend to go online to find out about it. If you want to find out about almost anything, you go online. So how do you make that information relevant and reliable and interesting? You let people interact with the information, answer their questions, and then go to a doctor or health professional with that kind of information in hand.
Two of our arthritis projects have been very focused on the drug Methotrexate and the implications of using that drug. Again, that's what's exciting about it; it's because the potential is so huge for how we can change the way we use the media.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chong. It's a pleasure to see you again.
Good afternoon, Mr. O'Hearn. Good afternoon, Ms. Kopak.
You're talking about book technology. I'm going to tell you a brief anecdote.
My father is 81 years old, and I believe he knows more about technology than I do. That's simply because he has a disability and is almost blind. Consequently, through the Institut Nazareth, with which you are no doubt familiar, which is an association for the blind, he is able to obtain books on cassettes and compact discs, audio books.
So that's very good for him. He can continue engaging in one of his favourite pastimes. However, that's not my concern.
Instead my concern is for young people. Technological development raises problems everywhere. I know that, in some regions of Quebec, there is no high-speed Internet, or the system is not yet completely functional. That's the case in a number of regions. It must also be the case across Canada.
So it must be harder to establish a system such as yours. People may be less interested. What's your opinion on that point?
Technological development has to progress, and it's very slow. Efforts have been made with regard to the Internet for years. I have it at home, but the people in the neighbouring municipality don't have it, and they don't elsewhere either. So this situation is causing some problems. There are also bottlenecks.
In addition, with regard to comic books, what are you doing to digitize that? Reading a comic book as a book is quite different. How are you going to stimulate young people's interest? That's important.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I had an interesting tour today. I went through Ericsson in Ottawa west and saw some of the things they're working on. It really is remarkable to see how much power is going to be put behind the devices that we're using every day, the speed at which these are going to be able to operate, and the quality of the broadcasts that will be available. It's really quite fascinating.
They expect the total number of connections to the Internet to increase to 50 billion by the year 2050, with multiple devices owned by everyone connecting in many different directions. I think that's the challenge: how do we take advantage of the 50 billion connections that are thought to be possible by 2050? That's what we're really talking about here today.
Mr. O'Hearn, the Association of Canadian Publishers has been quite clear and quite strong in its support for modernizing the Copyright Act. I know that if we go back for generations, the profitability of the industry was always based on selling the book. You needed to have content to make a book, but the profit was all made on the sale of the book.
How do we get from selling the book to selling the content and making sure the industry works for both the authors and the publishers? Ultimately, how do we advantage Canada in that fashion?
:
I wish I had all the answers to that one. That's really the crux of the issue, exactly the way you've put it. I read something somewhere to the effect that the publishing industry really hasn't changed much in 500 years. It's just starting now to have to take this seriously.
You're quite right; it's the selling of the content in book form as we would understand it. That's where the money is made, and it's shared out from that. Of course, we're somewhat like the record industry, I suppose, thinking we can do the same thing with electronic books. Again, the jury is out on that, because a book, like anything else, is still subject to file sharing. There's always somebody who can break a lock. It's fun. It's not for me--I'm hopeless at it--but I think these people just find it's fun to do that kind of thing, and they'll find a way around it; it doesn't matter what you do.
Again, that's what I was saying a bit earlier. We're doing an experiment anyway, providing books free in a certain electronic format, which is basically PDF. We're also using a fancier electronic format, EPUB, which you can actually do something with; we're selling that one, and selling the print book. We want to see if having the PDF available for free will have any effect on the sale of the other books, but we don't know yet. We've just started the experiment and we're going to run it for a year or so.
:
I've been in digital media for 20 years, and the iPad and the tablet technology are the biggest things I've seen since Netscape in 1995.
My father is 91 and in a nursing home. I downloaded a whole ton of family pictures that I had digitized, brought them to the hospital, and showed them to him on my iPad. My dad was just totally.... You see, it's got a recorder on it, so my dad actually got to tell me the stories of the photographs of the family. That's a personal thing, but if you think about it in the context of cultural history and think about the potential of what this thing can do and the fact that we now can walk around with all this material that we can show people and share, it's huge.
A year ago I would have laughed at myself for thinking that this would make such a big difference, but it's just so easy to use. The best thing is that when you go to a nursing home and you're showing these photographs and getting people to talk about them, it's so cool. It's not the technology; the technology is an enabler. It's actually the content and the communication that's the cool thing about the potential for these things.
It's funny, because I worked in CBC archives for many years, and I'll tell you that if we can get archives onto these things and start getting people to talk about some of the images and to tell the stories behind some of the history that's sitting around, it would be a very cool thing.
:
We're resuming our meeting.
Welcome to our committee.
We have representatives here from two departments of the Government of Canada.
[Translation]
We have, from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Mr. Blais, Assistant Deputy Minister, and Ms. Kennedy, Deputy Director General, and, from the Department of Industry, Mr. Beaudoin, Director General, and Ms. Miller, Director General.
Welcome to all of you.
[English]
We'll begin with an opening statement from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure for me to be here with my colleagues.
We have a few slides to show you to support my remarks, just to simplify the presentation.
[English]
Obviously, Mr. Chairman, you'll understand that we certainly can't be here to speculate about future policy directions of the government, but we're more than happy to provide some factual information to the extent we can. If we can't provide it today, we'll follow up with the clerk of the committee. We'll try to be as helpful as we can within the limits of what we as public servants can or cannot do.
I bring your attention to the first slide, which is on page 2.
Whenever one does a policy framework, as you're looking at in terms of the impact of new technologies on creation here in Canada, the broad strokes of any tool kit would include legislation, institutions, and perhaps programs. On page 2 you can see the items in the current tool kit--the principal ones, not the sole ones--that we use to support creation of and access to Canadian content. You may notice that some of these date from a few years ago; however, they remain particularly resilient and adaptive, because when they were originally drafted by Parliament, they were done in such a way that they were pretty open-textured and were able to evolve over time. They have helped us to continue to support the strategic outcomes we're looking for, as I mentioned--the creation of and access to Canadian content--but now we're trying to do it on a multi-platform basis.
We will move to page 3. You've been at this and hearing evidence for a number of months, so none of this will come to you as a surprise.
Technology is indeed one of the most important drivers, though not the sole driver, affecting arts and culture these days. You've heard this from a number of folks. It's certainly affecting the way we create, share, and consume creative content. There's convergence in devices as well as suppliers. Traditional lines of business are completely blurring, and there is a significant disintermediation of traditional players.
Nevertheless, audiences out there, Canadians, want their content on the platforms that they want, when they want it. These new platforms don't necessarily compete with each other. It's amazing how people seem to have more time to consume more content at the same time, but the choices are multiplying and the choices are global. This actually is quite a great opportunity for Canadian creators, because the technology is providing our Canadian artists and creators with global audiences. Certainly content plays an important role, and it's actually driving the demand for devices and bandwidth. As well, you'll see in an ownership chart in the annex that it's actually affecting how people are organizing to deliver on it.
[Translation]
Within the department, we have been addressing the issue of the impact of new technologies on content creation at least since I have been in my position, that is since 2004.
At that time, we established a working group on new technologies, and we conducted basic research that put us in a good position to turn the corner.
On page 4, there is a summary of the major changes that we have managed to make in support of the programming.
[English]
For instance, in March 2009 Minister Moore was able to announce fundamental changes to the Canada Media Fund, which has $134 million per year of contributions. If you add the private sector contribution, it totals over $350 million per year. We announced changes to the Canada Interactive Fund, which replaced the former Partnerships Fund and the Gateway Fund. That's $55 million over five years. The Canada Book Fund was reformulated in September 2009. That's another $40 million. The Canada Music Fund was renewed in July 2009 and given $27 million. The Canada Periodical Fund, which was announced in February 2009, is another $75 million.
Into every one of these programs, when we reviewed them, we incorporated a digital component adapted to those particular realities. We also have the Virtual Museum of Canada as well as the online works of reference.
The framework also includes, of course, the important role of the national cultural institutions. I'll let you read what's on the page. Certainly the National Film Board, Library and Archives Canada, the CBC, and others--national museums, for instance--through their archives and new collections are very important innovators in providing Canadian content to Canadians. It's quite remarkable. CBC, for instance, is one of the most successful media sites out there.
Since then, with our colleagues from Industry Canada,
[Translation]
and from the Department of Human Resources, we have worked together on the digital economy. We conducted a consultation between May and July. Interest was very great.
You've no doubt seen the document issued jointly by the three departments.
[English]
From our perspective, I think it's chapter 4 that deals with digital content. I recommend you read it if you haven't had a chance to do that so far, because it provides a road map for dealing with content in the digital world. We were quite surprised that almost half of all submissions dealt with content, so it's very much a driver of where we're going, and the page outlines that.
Looking forward over the coming months, again related to the digital story, there is the Copyright Modernization Act and the digital economy strategy. We are in the process of developing a forward strategy with the ministers.
As well, we are currently looking at the foreign investment policy in the book and publishing distribution business in Canada. The Red Wilson panel, you will recall, has recommended that we periodically review our investment policies; we're in the process of doing that, starting with the book policy. This policy was originally adopted in 1985 and revised in 1992, so it's certainly one that needs to be looked at.
That pretty much summarizes where we've been and where we're going. I'd be more than happy to answer some questions.
Now my colleague, Alain, will say a few words.
I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for the opportunity to be here today.
[English]
I will first speak about some of the key findings from the consultations we had on the digital economy.
I want to clarify at the outset that I'm not in a position to comment on next steps with regard to the strategy, as this is the purview of ministers. However, I can tell you, as Jean-Pierre mentioned, that we're working closely with our colleagues at Canadian Heritage, HRSDC, and other departments as well.
[Translation]
On May 10, Minister Clement launched consultations on behalf of the Government of Canada.
Through an interactive consultation website, Canadians were given an opportunity to discuss ideas and provide recommendations. We received more than 270 submissions and numerous ideas, all of which have been available to the public on our website: digitaleconomy.gc.ca.
If you haven't accessed it, all submissions received are accessible to the public.
Meetings were also held with key stakeholders on various topics.
Overall, participants generally agreed with the key challenges outlined in the consultation paper, and the notion that everyone has a role to play on the digital economy.
[English]
I will now speak to some of the areas that fall under the purview of Industry Canada with regard to the results of the consultations.
On capacity to innovate using ICTs, participants noted that Canada suffers from underinvestment in ICTs and slow adoption rates. Additionally, stakeholders considered SMEs disadvantaged, because they often lack the time and resources to select and implement the right ICT solutions.
The private sector acknowledged that they have a role to play in better using ICTs, but also recommended some government leadership to incent change, such as awareness initiatives.
Several stakeholders called for speedy passage of bills related to spam, privacy, and copyright in order to strengthen Canada's regulatory and legislative frameworks that protect and foster the online marketplace, and also to increase the take-up and use of digital technologies.
Next-generation network infrastructure was seen as a critical part of modern infrastructure for all sectors of the economy. Stakeholders wished for new, innovative services and higher-speed broadband at the lowest possible price. Generally they felt that the competitive market is working reasonably well in urban areas; however, in smaller rural and remote communities, stakeholders indicated that market forces on their own would not lead to deployment of higher-speed broadband and felt that government intervention would be necessary.
On promoting growth of Canada's ICT sector, stakeholders pointed to the relatively small size of our firms, lack of commercialization, and insufficient exports as factors constraining the growth of the sector. They noted the effectiveness and usefulness of programs such as NRC's IRAP to support the ICT sector and the digital media sectors as well.
While the scientific research and experimental development tax credit, known as SR and ED, is seen as very essential, many called for changes.
Some stakeholders argued that governments should review their procurement practices in order to foster innovation. They also emphasized the importance of highly qualified people for the ICT sector, as well as the need for greater collaboration between public and private sectors.
[Translation]
This leads me to talk to you about government support for digital skills. For its part, the industry portfolio supports digital skills talent through various programs, such as the Canada Research Chairs, the Canada Graduate Scholarships, the Vanier Scholarships and the Canada Excellence Research Chairs.
Allow me now to discuss the separation of telecommunications and broadcasting. As you know, broadcasting is a sub-set of telecommunications and it is treated differently from other forms of telecommunications because of the role it plays in developing, protecting and promoting Canadian culture. The Broadcasting Act therefore is primarily cultural in nature.
The Telecommunications Act, by contrast, is primarily economic in nature, with emphasis on ensuring that Canadians have access to high-quality, affordable services.
[English]
Let me turn to government support for R and D in the digital media sector.
Since 2006, the government has committed an additional $8.5 billion in innovation. These investments have been administered by a wide range of federal programs and agencies, as well as granting councils. ICT was identified as one of four priorities as part of the S and T strategy that was launched in 2007, with programs and initiatives that support digital media R and D and innovation, amongst others.
While we cannot provide you with an exhaustive breakdown of federal funding for digital media, some examples include the networks of centres of excellence program, which finds the Graphics, Animation and New Media Canada Network, known as GRAND, in British Columbia, and the centres of excellence for commercialization and research program, which funds the Canadian Digital Media Network in Waterloo, known as CDMN for some.
[Translation]
With that, I'll be pleased to answer your questions.
My colleague, Ms. Miller, will also be able to answer questions on telecommunications and infrastructure.
It's excellent to have both Industry and Heritage.
Mr. Blais, we've talked many times, so I'm not going to focus on you today, but I want to say that you did say Canada is a world leader. I certainly agree. I think that in the six years I've been here, with much of the frustration we've had about us lagging behind in terms of moving to the new platforms, of getting our isolated cultural silos into the digital sphere, I'm seeing phenomenal change, even within the last year. In particular I commend you on the magazine file. I think it's really exciting.
But I'd like to talk to Mr. Beaudoin because we don't get that opportunity very often. Please don't take it personally after I've complimented you.
Mr. Beaudoin, I'm interested in where we're going to be going in terms of becoming internationally WIPO-compliant in updating our copyright laws. Certainly we all agree that this is a key element.
I'm interested in the decision around the digital locks. Article 10 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty has some pretty specific language about the right of a country to bring into the digital realm, when it becomes WIPO-compliant, the exemptions that existed under its laws, and that the protection for digital locks, or TPMs, can be legally supported as long as they don't interfere with the rights that have existed already.
I see that under Bill the public will be granted a number of rights, but those rights don't supersede the digital locks. Why was the choice made to say you can have these rights as long as they don't interfere with the digital lock?
:
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, back in March 2009, the minister announced a replacement of the old Canada Television Fund and the old Canada New Media Fund, to create the new Canada Media Fund, and it was a merger of some of the moneys we had there. The federal government injects $134 million into that fund, but it's a partnership with broadcast distribution undertakings, cable and satellite companies. So we now have over $350 million being invested in digital content.
The first priority of the government at that time was to make sure the governance was right. The previous board of the Canadian Television Fund...the Auditor General had raised concerns about its ability to properly manage public moneys, because of potential for conflicts of interest. So we have now a smaller and more streamlined, independent board, but more importantly we almost nudged the industry along, because the fund is in two big broad pools of money. The convergent stream, unlike the old television fund, actually requires television producers, if they want to produce a television program, to also produce something on another platform. That's been very successful to get television producers to think of the multi-platform world.
Similarly, there's an experimental stream, and this one is wide open. It's very much an innovation stream. It's not just the producers who can apply for it, but even somebody who has a new application can apply to this stream. It's a competitive stream, and it's really for the best ideas. The thinking was that once you innovate in this realm with the experimental stream, great ideas will then become the next generation for the convergent stream. That's very much what is happening. It's relatively new; we will be evaluating it over the coming years, but the experimental stream is already oversubscribed by really, really good ideas. So it seems to be working out there.
:
Merci, Monsieur Rodriguez. Merci, Madam Miller.
We're going to finish here because we only have a minute before the bells ring.
I would like to point out to members of the committee that we have received supplementary estimates (B) for the fiscal year 2010-11. Sometime between now and the Christmas recess, the committee, if it so wishes, can review these estimates for Heritage Canada, which are for the amount of $94 million. If you wish to review these estimates, please let the chair know, and we will schedule a day for departmental officials and you, as committee members, to review these proposed estimates.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you to the witnesses for their appearance.
This meeting is adjourned.