ACTRA Presentation
EMERGING AND DIGITAL MEDIA: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
Tyrone Benskin, ACTRA National Vice-President
Stephen Waddell, ACTRA National Executive Director
27 April 2010
Tyrone Benskin
Thank you. Mr. Chair and Committee Members, my name is Tyrone Benskin. I’m a professional performer from Montreal and the National Vice-President of ACTRA. With me today is Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s National Executive Director. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak on behalf of 21,000 professional performers in film, television, sound recordings, radio and digital media who live and work in every corner of the country.
We’re excited by the opportunities we see before us as it gets easier for people around the globe to see and enjoy our work. We’re already working in new and emerging media creating the content that Canadians want to enjoy on their computer screens, cell phones, iPods and sometimes even their TVs.
Personally, I’ve been doing a lot of videogames, work I enjoy a lot… (TYRONE to insert more personal note here.
Today Canada’s cultural industries currently represent $85 billion or 7.4% of Canada’s GDP. I think this number will get even higher as we move forward into the digital world. However, in order to seize on the opportunities of a creative economy and compete in an increasingly digital and borderless world, we need leadership from you, our Members of Parliament.
Canada needs a national digital media strategy that combines several key ingredients:
- strict limits on foreign ownership to make sure creators and broadcasters of content are Canadian
- more content through increased investment
- a modern regulatory framework that ensures there is shelf-space for Canadian content
- new copyright laws that gives audiences access to content while ensuring creators get paid.
Technological developments are changing the way Canadians engage with media. What isn’t changing is the fact that whether on conventional or emerging media platforms – content is king. And the demand for content has never been higher.
Luckily Canada is blessed with some of the most educated, creative minds in the world. We enjoy a diverse culture. We have the technological knowledge and have skilled workers who can deliver some of the leading communications technology in the world. That said it is becoming increasingly urgent that the federal government show leadership in developing a comprehensive digital media strategy that ensures Canada doesn’t fall behind when it comes to producing content.
For too long we’ve struggled to get space on our prime time schedules and in our own movie theatres. Now, when there is no end to screens and paths to distribution – I worry that we won’t have the tools to fill that space. We have the skill and ideas, we need investment to make it happen. We also need to make sure Canadians will be able to find the content once we’ve made it.
How do we ensure we are creating Canadian content? For one we make sure there are Canadian companies and technology to do it. That means maintaining the current restrictions on foreign ownership.
Ownership of our cultural industries by Canadians is not only crucial for our cultural sovereignty – but also for our economic sovereignty.
We also believe that it is mistake to think that you can relax foreign ownership rules for telecommunications without negatively affecting Canadian culture.
With increasing corporate consolidation and the rapid evolution of technology – telecommunications and broadcasting are quickly converging. Telephone companies own cable, broadcast and satellite assets; and cable companies own telecommunications, satellites and broadcasters. Moreover, content is being delivered to Canadians through all of these channels – telecoms and ISPs are effectively becoming broadcasters.
Our telecom and broadcasting industries are simply too economically vital to be left to the whim of foreign conglomerates. They are the future of our knowledge-based economy. If we cede control we will not only lose control of our culture, but of a huge piece of our economy. Canadians have seen what happens to other industries when they get bought out by foreign companies. They come up here for a while, take advantage of some tax breaks, then shut down and ship the equipment overseas tossing Canadians aside to the unemployment line and their skills and knowledge along with it.
Telecom and broadcasting are no different. American companies won’t care about telling Canadian stories. They will ship everything in across the border leaving Canadians without a voice, and without a shared culture.
It is the government’s duty to strive to make our telecommunications and broadcasting industries stronger. Not to sell them off.
We also need to support Canadian companies who are creating content with new investment. Government must embrace policies that assist the production of content that reflects Canada to Canadians and the world – regardless of the screen on which it is viewed.
The Canadian Media Fund is one small step forward in encouraging the production of content for multiple platforms. However, it does not represent any new money and will not fill the funding gap. For Canada’s digital media industry to thrive it needs increased long-term investment through enhanced, direct government funding.
Other agencies critical to digital media content production, like the CBC, Telefilm, and the NFB, also need clear mandates and stable public funding to ensure they are leaders in telling Canadian stories in the digital world.
A federal tax credit for original digital media production (similar to the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit) would encourage private investment further developing and retaining Canada’s highly-skilled digital media workers.
The federal government could also offer incentives to encourage Canadian advertisers to support websites that feature Canadian content. The government could easily expand Section 19.1 of the Income Tax Act to allow Canadian advertisers tax deductions for advertising on Canadian-owned websites if the website gives prominence to Canadian digital media content.
I will now ask Stephen Waddell to speak more about shelf-space for Canadian content and copyright reform.
STEPHEN WADDELL
If we’re going to keep creating exciting content, we need to make sure Canadians can find it. We need shelf-space. And for that reason ACTRA appeared before the CRTC last year to argue that digital media was just another way of broadcasting content. We asked the federal regulator to establish rules that would help to provide shelf space in digital media for Canadian content. Unfortunately the CRTC chose once again – as it did 10 years ago – to put its head in the sand.
ACTRA also urged the CRTC to create a new source of funding for Canadian content online by requiring Internet and Wireless Service Providers to make contributions to a digital media fund out of their enormous revenues. We’re still hopeful on that one.
The final and critical piece – is to find a balance between giving people around the world access to our Canadian content, and making sure creators are creators getting paid. We do that by modernizing our copyright laws.
Frankly, it’s embarrassing — and economically damaging — that Canada has failed to update our national copyright laws in keeping with international norms, something we signalled we would do by signing the World Intellectual Property Organization Internet treaties thirteen years ago (1997).
Although now that we’re so far behind we at least have the advantage of being able to see what others have done and draw upon the hard lessons learned by others and find the best, most effective tools to suit our needs.
The conversation about copyright is often one of two extremes – the makers and the users. I see performers and other creators in the middle. (Notwithstanding the fact that performers in AV production currently have no rights in Canadian copyright law. It’s only because of ACTRA’s collective bargaining agreements that Canadian performers get a cast credit on a TV show or residual fees for use of their performances.)
Performers want Canadians and people around the world to enjoy their work where and when they want to watch it. Whether Canadians buy content on a CD, or a DVD, or on-line, we should be able to legally copy it on all our personal devices, computers, iPods and phones. However, we need a balance between a performers’ right to protect the integrity of their image and receive payment for use of their work, and Canadians ability to enjoy what they have legally purchased when and where they want.
How do we get that balance? In our view, the answer already exists in audio recordings – collective licensing. Canada’s private copying regime in audio recordings has put millions of dollars directly into the pockets of singers and musicians since it was introduced in 1999. Unfortunately that regime is limited to devices people hardly use today — blank audio cassettes, mini-discs, and CD-Rs. We urge that Canada’s Copyright Act be amended to extend the application of private copying to devices that people actually use today in order to ensure continued remuneration to performers, other creators and the makers.
This isn’t a ‘new’ levy – it’s merely continuing something that’s already there. Let me be clear: if the government does not extend the private copying levy, you’re taking money out of artists’ pockets.
We also need to expand the rights now only available to audio performers and makers to audio-visual works by supporting the adoption of the AV Performances treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). There is a real opportunity for the treaty to be passed this year; and the Canadian government can play a leading role in making that happen.
As you have just heard, we have a number of creative ideas to help the government and our industry work together to face the current challenges and seize the endless opportunities.
It’s pretty simple: we need to make sure there are Canadian content creators and broadcasters, we need to invest in more content, we need to make space for the content, and we need to make it easy for Canadians and people around the world to enjoy our content while respecting the right for the creators to get paid.
Thank you. We’d be happy to respond to your questions
