Of this and that and other things: A pre-holiday wrap up (Part 1)

CCA Bul­letin 31/10

Decem­ber 16, 2010

 

 

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 next fed­eral bud­get: no input from the par­lia­men­tary committee!
• Where is Bill C-470 at?

 

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.