Toronto band Martha and the Muffins at odds with Conservatives over song use

Globe and Mail

3 days ago

Toronto new-wave band Martha and the Muffins is trying a relatively novel legal strategy to prevent Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre from using its song Echo Beach at rallies in his upcoming by-election campaign.
After learning that he and at least one other Conservative candidate used the Juno Award-winning 1980 song at rallies during the spring election cycle, the band's manager took to social media to ask him to stop, but says Poilievre did not respond.
Because Mr. Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area riding and plans to run again in an Alberta by-election, Martha and the Muffins is taking steps to prevent him from once again using Echo Beach at events. Crucially, the band is asserting its moral rights to not be associated with Mr. Poilievre's politics, which are at odds with the often left-leaning stances the band takes in song.
'They do not endorse you or the Conservative party in any way, and the false perception that they do causes prejudice to their reputation,' the band's intellectual-property lawyer, Dickinson Wright LLP partner Paul Bain, wrote in a letter to Poilievre this week.
Musicians often send legal threats to politicians they don't agree with who use their songs in campaigns without consent, sometimes escalating them into lawsuits. Neil Young and Rihanna are among the many musicians who've tried to stop U.S. President Donald Trump from using their music. Paul Langlois of the Tragically Hip also condemned the federal Conservatives' use of his band's song Fifty Mission Cap at an event in 2023.
But the Conservatives' use of the Hip's music, like the party's more recent uses of Echo Beach that Martha and the Muffins's lawyer outlines in his legal letter, highlights a lesser-known tenet of Canadian copyright licensing. It's typical here for venues or event organizers to have licences from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) – and so permission isn't explicitly required from songwriters to use individual licensed songs.
As well as disagreeing with the Poilievre's policies more generally, in an interview, Martha and the Muffins members Martha Johnson and Mark Gane decried the Conservative Party's historic treatment of the arts, which saw cuts to supports under former prime minister Stephen Harper.
'Respect for the artist doesn't seem to be there,' Ms. Johnson said. When it came to the party's use of Echo Beach, Mr. Gane said, 'It's not just an affront to us – it's an affront to anybody who makes anything, and has somebody come and take it for their own use.'
In the U.S., the performing-rights organization ASCAP allows musicians to opt out of having their songs featured in political campaigns. The blanket licences from SOCAN, a parallel organization in Canada, do not have that same flexibility.
'If Mark had opted out of a political-campaign blanket licence, then no politician would have been able to use that song,' Martha and the Muffins manager Graham Stairs said.
In an e-mail, SOCAN's legal counsel Adam Jacobs said: 'We understand the concerns raised by our members about the use of their music in political campaigns. As always, we will explore and consider the most effective ways to protect our members' rights and their musical works.'
This is why Martha and the Muffins is taking the relatively untested avenue of asserting their moral rights not to be associated with the Conservatives or its leader. In one oft-cited case in the visual-art world, Toronto's Eaton Centre was found to have violated sculptor Michael Snow's moral rights by tying Christmastime ribbons around the geese he had sculpted for display in the mall.
'While there have been some cases dealing with violations of moral rights of musicians and performers, there is no precedent in the context of use by politicians,' Mr. Bain said in an e-mail. Though this specific kind of music use by politicians has not been tested in court, 'that does not mean that the law is unclear, or that this is some 'out-there' theory, or that artists have no recourse.'
The letter points to the Copyright Act's safeguards for 'the author's or performer's right to the integrity of a work or performer's performance,' which can be 'infringed only if the work or the performance is, to the prejudice of its author's or performer's honour or reputation . . . used in association with a product, service, cause or institution.'
Moral rights fall outside SOCAN's mandate, Mr. Jacobs said, but he added that they 'may be relevant' in certain situations. 'It would be up to the individual songwriter or performer to assert those rights and meet the legal thresholds for proving an infringement of their moral rights.'
A representative for the Conservative Party did not respond to comment requests – nor did Re:Sound, the not-for-profit that administers licences for recording copyrights, which are separate from songwriting copyrights.