a variety of literary and scholarly genres. The Commission consists of writers, translators, librarians, and publishers, as well as non-voting representatives from the Canada Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Library and Archives Canada, and Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Author Mélikah Abdelmoumen is the current Commission Chair, with writer Russell Wangersky as Vice-Chair. The creation of a PLR program was first deliberated in 1977, when the Council sets up the Payment for Public Use Committee to discuss the matter. Also that year, UNEQ (Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois) is founded in order to defend the rights of Quebec authors. In 1982, the Applebaum-Hébert Committee recommended that the federal government create a program to pay authors for the use of their books in libraries. Soon after, in March 1986, the Payment for Public Use (PPU) program was established by a Cabinet decision, with an initial budget of $3 million allocated to it by the Treasury Board Secretariat. This would make Canada the 13th country in the world to develop a PLR program. The initial name was promptly changed to Public Lending Right and catalogue-based system was adopted. The PLR Commission developed and approved its Constitution and Bylaws in 1988, its second year of operation. In 2008, the Commission would unanimously adopt a growth management strategy, including a new four-tier payment scale for PLR payments, which was implemented two years later. The Commission first moved in favour of the possibility of ebooks being eligible in the PLR Program in 2011. However, it would not be until 2016, when the Program opened registration to ebooks. Also in 2016, the Program would begin to consider the future eligibility of audiobook materials, and the Canada Council would pledge to increase direct payments to authors through the PLR Program. In 2012, author Roy MacSkimming published the first of three major research studies related to PLR; subsequent reports would address the arrival of new technologies and compare the Canadian model to other PLR systems operating around the world. The PLR Program would finally open registration to audiobooks in 2019. For the first time, works must have been published during the previous 5 years in order to be eligible for registration. See also The Killam Trusts Virginia Parker Prize References Further reading Granatstein, J.L. 1986. "Culture and scholarship: The first ten years of the Canada Council." Canada 1957-1967: Years of Uncertainty and Innovation. Toronto,