CCA Bulletin 31/10
December 16, 2010
Of this and that and other things:
A pre-holiday wrap up (Part 1)
Well, it’s that time of the year again. Parliament Hill is ablaze with holiday lights, the House of Commons is in recess until January 31 and we are all fretting for a well deserved break after a remarkably busy fall.
Before wrapping the season’s gifts, it is time to wrap-up a number of issues before we all take off. In this first bulletin, you will find the latest on:
C-32 – Revision of the Copyright Act: The political battle lines are drawn
Parliamentarians have been at it since November 25, when the newly formed legislative committee began its public hearings with both Ministers Moore and Clement. So far, 14 individuals or organizations have appeared in front of the committee, whose work is set to resume on February 1, the date at which the CCA has been invited to appear. The list of expected witnesses is long and still growing.
From day one, the debate took a political turn as government and opposition members on the committee locked horns about the speed at which the examination of the bill should proceed. Five months after first reading in the House, the government has made it a priority to pass this legislation as quickly as possible. The drive to pass this bill quickly has been strongly supported by some witnesses already, for fear that the bill will die on the order papers if an election is launched, as happened to its two predecessors in 2005 and 2008.
Opposition parties have banded together to say that this important bill must be studied with the greatest of attention, particularly given the polarized reactions it is creating among the various stakeholders and the widespread opposition it is receiving from artists and creators and their organizations. Thanks to their one vote majority on the committee, the opposition has been able to establish that hearings are limited to two sessions of two hours a week and three witnesses per hour at the most.
The rhetoric in the committee, the House and in public has been escalating. The latest salvo comes from Ministers Moore and Clement who called an impromptu press conference in a shopping mall in Ottawa on Tuesday to assure Canadians doing their holiday shopping that “the Harper Government will stand with them against introducing this (iPod) tax.” This deliberate politicization of an already difficult debate has prompted strong reactions from some members of the cultural sector and from two of the opposition parties. However, it has succeeded in driving a wedge between opposition parties. The Liberal Party hastened to say that it too was opposed to extending the levy to digital recording devices and that it was looking for different ways to ensure that artists and creators are fairly compensated for the copying of their work.
The positions of the Official Opposition were made public today. At the forefront, a proposal to replace the current private copying levy with the creation of a new private copying compensation payment to be transferred to Canadian artists each year, through the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC). This new program, whose details remain to be hammered out, would be written in law within the Copyright Act, would increase at the rate of inflation and would be reviewed every five years. The CCA welcomes this development as an interesting proposition which certainly deserves more extensive exploration.
One of the main criticisms levied at C-32 is that it is trying to address two different sets of problems in two very different markets with the same tools. The problem is that in this case, what seems to be good for the goose (namely the artists and creators working in the game industry, international recording companies and Hollywood) is not good for the gander (individual Canadian artists and creators). In the latter case, the bill clearly favours users to the detriment of rights owners. The bill has many other flaws which will be covered in more detail in a future bulletin.
At the behest of its leading members, the CCA has stepped forward to support the important task of modernizing Canada’s copyright law. For the past two months, we have been supporting a coordination operation between our member organizations and other non-member stakeholders so that the sector can speak to the process with greater clarity, and thus better assist Parliamentarians in this most important and challenging task. Hopefully, this common work will lead to a less politicized and acrimonious climate in which to discuss the vital interests of Canadian artists and creators in this crucial revision of the Copyright Act. Stay tuned!
Federal budget 2011-12
We learned this week that the 2011 federal budget will be written without the input of the parliamentary committee on finance. The Commons finance committee has decided to shelve its pre-budget report after a draft was leaked to lobbyists by a low-level Parliament Hill staffer. According to press reports, the reason put forward for cancelling the committee report is that “it was not the final report but a draft report outlining where each party stood on various policies. That left some MPs feeling the opportunity for compromise on a final report had been lost.” This seems somewhat bizarre considering that transparency is the buzz word with politicians on the Hill!
After spending much of the summer consulting with our members and drafting our pre-budget submission, we were quite disappointed not to be invited to present our recommendations before this committee. Each black cloud has a silver lining: we can move forward feeling just as productive as the rest of civil society who partook in this thwarted exercise! And we hold our breath waiting for the late February/early March federal budget which may or may not trigger a general election!
Bill C-470: An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (revocation of charitable registration)
This private member’s bill has created an unusual amount of noise all over Canada. It was passed by 280 votes against three at its second reading last April. In its original form, the very short bill (all of two articles!) sought to enhance the transparency of the charitable sector by requiring registered charities to provide the name, job title and annual compensation of the five most highly compensated executives or employees. Under the proposed bill, the Minister of National Revenue would have the discretion to deregister any charity, private foundation or public foundation that exceeds the annual limit of $250,000 in total compensation
Over the past nine months, C-470 has been the object of considerable attention by the non-profit and charitable sector across the country. The standing committee on finance has just completed its short public hearing on the subject. On December 6, the CCA appeared before this committee to explain why this bill is neither necessary nor useful. Just prior to our appearance, the sponsor of C-470, the Hon. Albina Guarnieri, tabled amendments to her own bill.
Finally, on December 10, the committee reported the amended bill to the House where it now awaits third and final reading. In its final form, the committee unanimously passed an amendment that: (1) removed its most egregious aspect, namely the compensation cap provision which had been set at $250,000 for employees of charities; (2) placed a $100,000 floor on precise compensation disclosure of employees of charities where previously, there had been no lower limit; and (3) builds in an inflationary escalator for the $100,000 disclosure figure. The escalator means that the disclosure floor will rise with inflation and salaries.
This is definitely an improvement on a well-intentioned, but totally ill-conceived piece of legislation. Given its eminently politically correct aspects, C-470 proved irresistible for politicians in this day and age where everybody clamours for transparency while at the same time, governmental information is more difficult to access than ever.
The CCA stands by its opinion that for a multitude of charities who count on donations for a very small part of their revenue, this bill is totally irrelevant at best and unnecessarily intrusive at worst. At least the indexed $100,000 threshold will exempt most of them from any further bureaucratic burden – particularly in the arts, culture and heritage sector where such salaries are quite exceptional.
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