SECTION II: Analysis of Program Activities by Strategic Outcome

Strategic Outcome

The Board's strategic outcome is: fair decision-making to provide proper incentives for the creation and uses of copyrighted works.

The Board is continuously looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the hearing process by minimizing the overall participants' expenses while ensuring that the process and the tariffs remain fair and equitable. The key partners in this endeavour are the private interest parties who appear before the Board, and include the various collective societies that represent rights owners and associations and organizations representing users of works.

To ensure fair decision-making, the Board will periodically measure stakeholders' satisfaction. A formal survey will be conducted either electronically or by telephone. The survey will assess the degree of satisfaction of its stakeholders with regard to the services it provides either as part of a hearing process leading to the certification of a tariff or in a process leading to the issuance of a licence.

With respect to this survey of the stakeholders' satisfaction with the Board's services, the Board believes that an initial satisfaction rate target of 70 per cent is reasonable, considering that this will be the first time such a survey is administered.

Program Activity: Copyright Tariff Setting and Issuance of Licences

The statutory mandate of the Board is to establish tariffs to be paid for the use of copyrighted works, when the administration of such copyright is entrusted to a collective-administration society. It is by rendering decisions and issuing licences that the Board fulfils its mandate.

Both the copyright holders and users are stakeholders in this outcome. Consequently, interventions before the Board are thorough and sophisticated, involving experts witnesses, litigation specialists and detailed econometric, business and financial studies, surveys and evidence. In rendering decisions, the Board must consider the underlying technologies (such as the Internet, digital radio, satellite communications), the economic issues and the interests of owners and users in order to contribute, with fair and equitable decisions, to the continued growth of this component of Canada's knowledge industries.

Sound tariff decisions avoid serious disruption in affected sectors of the national economy and costly time-consuming court challenges.

Improving the efficiency of the regulatory process involves continual refinements in scheduling of witnesses, establishing and communicating the parameters of the hearing to participants, consulting with key stakeholders and developing codes of hearing practice and related guidelines for the conduct of hearings. By improving the efficiency of the tariff hearing process, this activity is expected to contribute to the objective of reducing the regulatory burden.

Delays in providing written decisions to Canadian copyright industry stakeholders can cause uncertainty, thus impacting on the Board's capacity to provide incentives for the creation and use of copyrighted works. Therefore, we will gather data on the number of months between the date when a particular tariff file is closed, and the date of the corresponding decision.

With respect to the number of months before a tariff decision is issued, the Board believes that a target of 12 months should be set for the next fiscal year, with a complying percentage of 70 per cent. Considering that the Board's resources have recently increased, it would be unrealistic to set a shorter target. However, in the next few years, as new personnel are added, the Board will re-examine the possibility of reducing the 12-month target.

In addition, pursuant to section 77 of the Act, the Board may grant licences that authorize the use of published works, fixed performances, published sound recordings and fixed communication signals if the copyright owner cannot be located. Since 1989, the Board has issued 214 such licences. The Board's objective with respect to this activity is to issue licences in a timely manner. Therefore, we will also gather data on the number of months between the date when a particular licence file is closed, and the date of issuance of the licence.

With respect to the number of months before a licence is issued, the Board believes that a delay of 45 days between the file completion date and the issuance of the licence is appropriate, and that this delay should be met in at least 70 per cent of the files. Again, as new resources are added to this area, the Board will re-examine the possibility of reducing the 45-day target.

Program Activity: Internal Services

This activity deals with financial and materiel management policies, systems, processes and standards. In implementing these policies, compliance with Parliament's requirements for financial stewardship and probity must be ensured. This activity also encompasses the responsibility of providing human resource services.

The Board receives timely support from internal services, namely: finance; human resources; communications; information management and information technology.

By focusing on the priorities described earlier in this report with respect to management practices, this activity contributes to the creation of an environment that will allow the Board to fulfill its mandate and realize its objective.

Benefits for Canadians

As mentioned before, the Board is responsible for tariffs underpinning several cultural industries, and are estimated to be worth over $300 million annually. Cultural industries are growing at a rapid pace and are at the heart of the knowledge economy. In particular, the Canadian system of collective copyright administration is a healthy and growing part of our economy. Cultural industries' ability to continue to grow depends heavily on well-thought-out decisions respecting copyright. The mishandling of royalty issues related to retransmission, reproduction, neighbouring rights, private copying or public performance of music could cause serious disruptions in certain sectors of the industry, and would also lead to costly and time-consuming legal challenges. Timeliness in rendering decisions can impact on the growth and innovation in the Canadian economy.