Archived - Gatineau — Round Table and Public Hearings on Copyright

Date: July 29, 2009   7:00 p.m.

Location:
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Gatineau, Quebec

Principals: See participant list

Subject:
Minister of Industry, Tony Clement, and Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore, hold a round table on copyright

Download: Audio Recording (MP3, 54.4 MB)

Transcript

Hon. James Moore: Good evening, everyone.

Voice of Translator: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us here this evening. I'm here accompanied by the Hon. Tony Clement, the Minister of Industry, and we have also made these commitments towards copyright because it is something that is a promise by our government during the last electoral campaign. It is something that is key to our economy's future.

Hon. James Moore: Translation. There are a couple of ground rules to this but before we do that I'll just have a few introductory remarks, then Minister Clement will speak, then you'll get a little bit of instruction about how we want to proceed with this and then we'll get straight into the conversation.

Voice of Translator: As you know, our government is hosting a series of national consultations on the modernizing of the Copyright Regie (ph) and we're here to listen to your views on this study.

Hon. James Moore: …town hall meetings throughout the country to hear from Canadians on the copyright issue. We started recently in Vancouver, we've also been to Calgary. We're continuing forward and I'm very much looking forward to the conversation here tonight in Gatineau. We want to ensure that all Canadians, that all Canadians have the opportunity to express their views on copyrights and we're embracing technology to provide as many people as possible with the opportunity to engage in these conversations. We've received over 200 submissions in the first week online.

Voice of Translator: On top of that, as well, we've also heard such consultations in real time as tonight and… So we also have created an online forum where participants can launch their own discussion and respond to other participants, Canadians who are participating in these exchanges have already sent in over 1,000 comments.

Hon. James Moore: …those of you who have done so to visit copyrightconsultation.ca, and by all means tell your friends to do so as well so that the debate can be robust and thorough across the country. So a couple of very quick ground rules and then I'll pass it on to Minister Clement for some comments. If everybody can do what I didn't just do, which is to have your cell phones turned off. And we'll have a time limit for each intervention of three to five minutes as we're going around. There's a clock at the end of the table there and there are some in the corners here, so if that's a little bit too far away for you to see.

And before you speak, also do what I didn't just do. This is James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages. Identify yourself, your institution and feel free to speak in the official language of your choice. The conversation this evening is being recorded and will be translated into both of Canada's official languages, be made available online as well as the transcripts. So while this is a closed-door session, it will in fact be open and available for all Canadians to listen to, to read about and to have opinions about. So the people you're speaking to aren't just in this room, are in fact all Canadians, and we hope that that too will be part of the encouragement of a larger online pan-Canadian discussion.

Hon. Tony Clement: James, thank you very much.

Voice of Translator: Good evening, everyone. I would like to welcome everyone here, all those who have joined us here this evening for this event which is truly historic.

Hon. Tony Clement: This is a National Capital Region event for week two of what will be at least an eight-week consultation and, as James indicated, we're really taking this on the road, we're going across the country. We should have tour shirts made up maybe. That would be too much, wouldn't it?

But I think that we are trying to get across to everyone throughout the country using every means whether it's tweets or blogs or of course simultaneous and posting of all of this. I think all of it will be helpful

Voice of Translator: As James has said, we have already had some similar meetings with stakeholders in Calgary and Vancouver and before the end of this process we will have hosted several others including two public assemblies as well, and those assemblies are going to allow us to get to know the public's points of view as to what we should do to modernize Copyright legislation which after all was drafted decades ago.

Hon. Tony Clement: Of course, you know this already, but there have been updates throughout the years and decades, but I will say something trite, that there's no fear of contradiction. Technology is changing extremely rapidly and we have the dual challenge of addressing the needs of today while at the same time in some manner anticipating what the future holds as well. So we're hoping that you can address those issues this evening, and there's no doubt that what we've found already in Vancouver and Calgary is there's no shortage of opinions. What I've found is as well as being Canadians, we're very polite about our opinions. Certainly continue to be polite and civil but don't be afraid to identify some points of contention or some points of contradiction. I think that it is important that we get all of these on the table as well and, as James already mentioned, we want every Canadian of course to have a chance at least to let us know how they would like to best modernize our Copyright laws.

I won't go over all of this ground, but I guess the last time we had consultations, formal consultations, was back in 2001, "we" meaning the Government of Canada, and I don't have to tell you how things have changed since then. But I think one of the key tests for any new legislation will be can it withstand the test of time? Can it be, you know, principle-based, can it be something that we can, knowing that the world is going to change and there will be new iterations and new generations of things, can the basis of this law still be relevant and still be something that Canadians can support and respect?

I won't go through it all but basically we are also planning two town hall meetings, one in Montreal and one in Toronto. The new Website, as James mentioned, is working well. We are starting to get these copyright discussions and copyright submissions in, and of course, as he said, we're posting as much information as possible. So I think I'll leave it at that.

Voice of Translator: And I would like to thank all of you for having come here tonight because it's very important to hear the points of view of the various organizations as well as private citizens who wish to come and speak, and perhaps at the end of this evening there will be the opportunity for some kind of a free-flowing discussion.

Hon. Tony Clement: So we can hopefully have a little bit of time if we stick to the three to five minutes which I probably already have offended by portion of time, but if we can have a little bit of time at the end where we can have some commentary, based on some of the submissions that have been held, I think that will be wonderful. Thank you.

Hon. James Moore: So did you want to lay any other ground rules forward before we go straight ahead?

Unidentified Female: No. Thanks, Minister, I think you've covered it. I'll be the person giving you the evil eye if you're going towards the five parts of three to five minutes, and the clocks at the end of the room. And it's about 90 minutes, so if we all do respect that, we should have a good half hour left for some discussion afterwards.

Hon. James Moore: So we'll go around the table counterclockwise and it's true, keep it to three to five minutes keeping in mind that at the end of that we'll have more of a free-for-all session so you can have a conversation with one another and have a little bit of debate. Again, cell phones off so you don't get the microphone interference and before you speak say where you're from and, Mr. Sasseville.

Serge J. Sasseville: Hi. My name is Serge Sasseville. I'm Vice President, Corporate and Institutional Affairs of Quebecor Media. First, I would like to thank Minister Moore and Minister Clement for this opportunity to speak about the issues of copyright reform. This is a very important topic for Quebecor Media. Quebecor Media is in the middle of the upheaval caused by copyright infringement and the emergence of new technologies. Indeed, in addition to holding Videotron, one of the leading ISPs in Canada, Quebecor Media is the most important producer of Canadian content produced by hundreds of Sun Media newspapers, the TVA Television Network, the Sun TV Television Station, numerous magazines and book publishing houses, Websites gathered under the Canuta (PH) CA banner and Musicor (PH), one of the most important record labels in Quebec.

We have faced for several years a revolution without precedent in the media universe. It is a revolution which has already turned upside down our industry and our lifestyles. It has affected most particularly our television network, our newspapers and our record label, Musicor. For us, for Quebecor Media, Bill C-61, although not being perfect, would have brought Canada into sync with the rest of the industrialized world. The updating of Canada's Copyright legislation is long overdue. Bill 61 would have clearly established that unauthorized file sharing is illegal. This was more than welcomed. This major reform of Canadian Copyright legislation reflected the need to balance the rights of copyright holders with the needs of users, the need to set rules that let Canadians benefit from their works, the need to promote innovation and the need to bring copyright protections for materials available on the Internet up to international standards.

The establishment of new rules for copying content, the creation of new rights and protections and the provisions on the responsibilities of ISPs achieved the reform's twin goals of adapting the law to technological progress and bringing Canadian public policy in line with other countries. It's more than time for Canada to make the WIPO Treaties of 1996 the law of the land. It's more than time for Canada to provide legal protection to intellectual property rights in order to encourage businesses to invest in this country. Intellectual property is central to the digital economy and if we do not protect it properly, investors will put their money in countries with more appropriate legal systems.

Now going back to Bill C-61, the Canadian government made it clear in that Bill that ISPs are not liable for the copyright infringements made by their subscribers and their networks. In order for the ISPs to do their part in discouraging copyright infringement, Bill 61 adopted a notice, a notice approach that Quebecor Media supports. The system proposed in Bill C-61 lets producers enforce their rights and enables Canadian ISPs to focus on innovation and growth. ISPs would be able to help drive the development of the new economy without laboring under a burden that undermines their competitiveness and hampers their efforts to play in the big leagues.

By striking a fair balance between the interests of the citizens who use digital technology, the content creators and the ISPs propose amendments to the Copyright Act would have attuned Canadian law to the new digital environment. It demonstrates that it is not necessary to regulate the Internet in order to hold users accountable and let Canadian content take its rightful place on the Web. This being said, Quebecor Media believes that ISPs should do more, but without the intervention of the legislature or the regulator. A Canadian telecommunications company does not answer only to its directors, shareholders and creditors. As a stakeholder, a good corporate citizen, it cannot remain insensitive to the piracy problems affecting the survival of Canadian content producers and rights holders.

ISPs should engage in discussions with them as partners in order to find and agree on solutions that would allow these content producers and rights holders to be successful in the new media environment. ISPs should be active participants in the definition of new business models that would enable content producers and rights holders to monetize their creations. Neither the form nor the content and technicalities of the solutions to be considered are determined, but one thing is for sure. The confrontation between ISPs and content producers and rights holders must stop. They have to build together strong business models that will protect and help develop the Canadian cultural production. Thank you for your attention.

Hon. James Moore: Mr. Lawford.

John Lawford: Thank you very much. My name is John Lawford and I'm with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. It's a non-profit organization that provides legal and research services for consumers and, in particular, for vulnerable consumers, and we thank you for the opportunity to comment tonight.

I brought with me a consumer white paper which PIAC co-authored with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic as well as Online Rights Canada and Obscion (PH) Consommateur, and I will leave a copy with both the Ministers and staff. Our white paper is also available on the Internet and we did tweet it today.

We've been following the copyright consultations for some years now with interest, and we noted that at the Vancouver round table the Entertainment Software Association, the gaming people, suggested that technical protection measures are good things for consumers, and we'd like to take issue with that. We think it's just plain wrong. We think that TPMs are 99% of the time completely negative for consumers. We don't see the need to have anti-circumvention laws in our Act just in order to satisfy WIPO if the purpose of the circumvention is punishing the circumvention and not trying to catch infringing uses. So non-infringing circumvention we think should be allowed. Copyright law already has penalties for copyright infringement and we don't see the need for the second layer of protection.

We're also concerned that the anti-circumvention laws when used in that fashion will threaten privacy of consumers and limit consumer choice. If there is going to be anti-circumvention law added to the Copyright Act, we must take care to minimize the impact on Canadian consumers. Most importantly, consumers should have the right to circumvent TPMs as long as their access does not otherwise infringe copyright. Put differently, we're also concerned about the overriding of that principle as well with private ordering so that in a contract it says you can't go around the technical protection measure even though the law might say something else. We'd like to have the law say that that overrides any contract to the contrary.

Also very important to consumers, we think, we think you'll hear it loud and clear at the town hall meetings, is that time and format shifting should be allowed and that those rights are key to consumers and that should be a consumer right that's recognized in the balance of the Copyright Act that you're trying to achieve right now because right now we're talking about adding technical protection measures, consumers need something on the other hand.

A couple of additional points. We are in favor of the current notice and notice procedure for copyright infringement on the Internet. We think it's appropriate and that the notice and takedown approach comes with many unintended consequences and would have chilling effects on free speech and innovation.

Finally, we have one concern which we think is somewhat novel and that's that we're concerned that ISPs will be tasked with fishing for copyright infringement on their networks and this comes out of the context of Bill C-47 or C-46, whichever it is, the new Lawful Access Bill. In that situation, you can ask for subscriber information if you're law enforcement. It's an infrastructure which is being built and could be built into this Act where the recording industry and others could ask for subscriber information which is collected through this mechanism. So we believe that that function creep shouldn't creep into copyright policy.

So finally, I'd just like to stress that given that consumer rights are an important part of your deliberations, that you see fit to give consumers time and format shifting to balance any moves you might make in the area of technical protection measures and anti-circumvention. Thank you.

Jeremy de Beer: Thank you very much. My name is Jeremy de Beer. I'm a Law Professor and as an academic I've been researching and writing in the area of copyright for about 10 years now or about as long as we've been talking about the WIPO Internet Treaties.

In that time I've seen that copyright can be a very polarizing topic and it's often portrayed with imagery caricature of toiling creators and freeloading pirates and what I think we need to do is to move beyond those extreme positions and find the middle ground which I think we can do through market-based solutions and voluntary licensing.

The talk that you get, the caricature that you get produces headlines and it may make it easier to produce a quick batch of legal reforms, but it doesn't facilitate intelligent policy making that's sustainable for the long term. Even saying that Canada's laws are hopelessly antiquated and can't copy with new technological or cultural realities is a bit misleading. The truth is that Canada's laws are among the best in the world. They help to make our business environment, our cultural investment environment among the best in the world and we need to be proud of that and we need to stand up and say that our laws are the best in the world. And of course they can be improved. There is absolutely room for improvement.

But when we look at how the laws can be improved, we need to realize that innovation investment decisions are driven by different factors and different factions than those that control creativity in the 20th century, or in the 21st century – we're in the 21st century. To ensure that the digital economy thrives the way that it can, I think we need to move beyond the sort of old, old way of looking at things.

That's why I think it's such a positive step that this consultation has been launched, and I think that you, the Ministers, should be congratulated for launching the public consultation and I thank you for the opportunity to be able to participate. But taking hundreds or potentially thousands of diverse responses and spinning that into a coherent policy framework is a daunting task. I suspect what will happen is the responses will coalesce around a few common principles, and that first principle I think is respect for rights holders. I think that most Canadians, almost all Canadians value our extraordinarily talented community of creators and understand the importance of providing a legal framework to encourage investment in that sector.

But I don't think that we should conflate that with an endorsement of American experiments that have failed to deliver the promise for the digital economy, and I'm speaking specifically here about legal protections for technological protection measures. I think this is probably the key issue for the government to deal with in deciding how to implement the WIPO Internet Treaties. I don't necessarily think that digital rights management systems foreshadow the apocalypse, but I think that they don't actually… I think that any business who plans to be in business in five to 10 years already realizes that this is not a sustained business strategy. So creating a legal regime now for a business model that's already obsolete just doesn't make sense and it doesn't fit in with the goals of creating a long-term viable solution.

And I think what's more likely, unfortunately, is that anti-circumvention provisions will have unintended consequences. They'll stifle investment and stunt growth in mobile commerce, electronic commerce. I think that they will provide artificial barriers for creators and entrepreneurs to engage in the new networked information economy. So I think it's better to focus on ways to facilitate voluntary licensing and what we need to do is streamline that process so we can facilitate market innovation rather than legal intervention.

There are other points I could raise but since time is limited I'll mention just one more. I suspect a second principle of consensus that'll come from the consultations is that Canadian educators, consumers, innovators, technology companies all need more flexibility when it comes to fair dealing. I think the current approach is artificially restrictive. Now I don't mean free dealing, I mean fair dealing here. And I think what we need to do is take a different approach than was taken in C-61. C-61 had frankly unbelievably bizarre provisions relating to things like video cassettes and I think that's inevitable any time you enumerate a long specific list.

So I think the best most sustainable solution is a simple technologically-neutral approach that makes the categories of fair dealing illustrative rather than exhaustive, and what that will facilitate is all stakeholders from every angle sitting down and collaborating on the development of best practices to work around for fair dealing. Hopefully we can elaborate on more of this in written submissions in the discussion, but thank you very much.

Hon. James Moore: Thank you, and before we go to Mr. Wills, that is entirely the case if anybody at this table, anybody in this country wants to give us a written submission, you're certainly free to do so. Our policy advisors are also here at the table as well and in the room and you're free to give us any documents that you may have brought with you that you'd like us to see as well. So, Mr. Wills.

Steve Wills: Thank you, Ministers. My name is Steve Wills. I'm Manager of Legal Affairs with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Thank you for inviting AUCC to participate in this round table discussion on copyright reform. AUCC is the voice of Canada's universities and represents 94 Canadian public and private not-for-profit universities and university degree-level colleges.

Canadian universities support balance in copyright law. As both substantial creators and users of copyright works, universities recognize the need for balance between creators receiving fair pay for the use of copyright works and the public having access to copyright works for purposes such as research and education. Users' rights in copyright law, by which we mean fair dealing and exceptions to infringement, are essential to achieving balance, as the Supreme Court emphasized in the 2004 CCH Decision.

Voice of Translator: The corporate consultation Websites set up by the Government of Canada raises a number of specific questions relating to corporate reform. Two of the most important questions are how existing copyright laws should be modernized and how amendments should be made to withstand the test of time. Key elements of the modernization of Canada's copyright laws should be the adaptation of existing educational and library exceptions to the digital environment and the introduction of a new educational use of the Internet provision. To the extent possible, the amendments should reflect the principle of technological neutrality so that copyright legislation is not tied to specific technologies or the specific formats in which a work may exist.

Steve Wills: Students and professors need to know that they're not breaking copyright law when they engage in teaching and learning activities that involve the use of publicly-available works on the Internet. Copyright law should be amended to clarify that publicly-available works on the Internet can be used for education and training purposes without infringing copyright. A 2003 study commissioned by Industry Canada to assess the economic impact of copyright reform and technology-enhanced learning found that, and I'm quoting:  "Allowing educational institutions to freely access content that is lawfully available on public Websites would allow the Internet to become a more important learning resource and support the development and growth of online learning which in the view of many is a key to Canadians' successful adaptation to the requirements of a knowledge-based economy."

And for the translators, I'll move down to the end of that paragraph to save time. The existing educational exceptions in the Act should also be updated to facilitate technology-enhanced learning and distance education including the delivery of lessons through the Internet. Copyright law should allow a student to view a lesson live through the Internet or later through a recording of a lesson. It should also be permissible for an educational institution to make a recorded lesson available to a student for the duration of his or her academic program and for a student to copy a recorded lesson onto a computer or other mobile device for personal study later.

Voice of Translator: The possible implementation of the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaties granting new rights to copyright owners and the online environment raises concerns about the copyright liability of Internet Service Providers in Canada. AUCC supports the approach taken in Bill C-61 which exempted ISPs from copyright liability in relation to their activities as intermediaries and established a notice and notice regime under which an ISP's obligation is to forward to a subscribe any allegation by a copyright owner that the subscriber has engaged in infringing activities.

French untranslated 27:07-27:45:

Rick Theis: My name is Rick Theis. I'm with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. We represent nearly 400,000 students across the country and I'm going to do something that students tend to do very well which is to improvise in sake of time constraints.

Students understand the need for balance in copyright for two reasons specifically. First of all, we're manufacturers of creative content and like any other producer, we desire the ability to profit from those works. But further, the ability of students to secure full and competitive participation in the global economy depends heavily on access to high-quality post-secondary education. The ability to fairly use copyright materials for education is a vital component of this system.

Students both understand and support the need for change in our copyright laws. What we ask is that our copyright laws encourage rather than limit novel means for sharing ideas, insights and information, thereby continually redefining the boundaries of discovery in Canada's post-secondary education sector.

I want to share with you a couple of ideas that we have about how we can do that. First, I want to talk a little bit about digital learning. It's important to recognize that we are in the process of a large-scale pedagogical change where new models of teaching are being blended with emerging technologies to help deliver advanced learning methods to a greater swath of the population. Flexibility for digital delivery of distance education has specific and special consequences considering the value of continued lifelong learning, in building and maintaining a competitive labor force and in meeting the needs delivering high-quality education to students located in geographically-remote areas of our country. We need to entrench such flexibilities into our copyright laws.

But what we should also recognize is that more and more students and teachers are identifying formats such as Podcasts and Videocasts as key study and learning tools for future courses. This suggests the need to accommodate access to course materials containing copyright works, as Steve mentioned, for the duration of the student's study period rather than around a fixed term set around a specific class.

Bill C-61 addressed the issue of digital transfers of academic materials within libraries. However, in allowing digital transfers of those materials, C-61 focused on limiting this information to print copy terminus points. This requirement doesn't conform to the contours of information management use in an era when learners and researchers maintain a non-print-based repository of data and use digital means for processing said data.

Thirdly – and I won't labor too long in this area – but digital locks are a concern for students for the obvious reasons. They have the potential to limit rights that are conferred under fair dealing but, more specifically and of paramount importance, they have the potential to limit access to materials for students who have disabilities, print disabilities amongst those. And so anything that is done within the next Copyright Act that imposes certain kinds of rights managements should have a means for students to be able to conduct things like format-to-format conversion – screen-reading software is a prime example – so they can access these materials fairly, and again, like everybody else has said, in the interests of time I'll close my remarks there.

Michael Geist: Hi. I'm Michael Geist. I'm a Law Professor at the University of Ottawa. Let me also thank you both for the invitation but even more for conducting this consultation. Last Summer I wrote a 61-part series on reforming C-61 and I should say that the very first entry focused on the lack of consultation. So I think this is a great first step.

There's a lot that I've love to say, talking about things like preserving the public domain, modernizing the backup copy provision, or moving Crown copyright, sticking with notice and notice for ISPs, and reforming the statutory damages provision so that we distinguish between commercial and non-commercial infringement, to name just a few. But instead, what I want to do is actually pick up on Minister Clement's challenge. How do we come up with reforms that last?

And I'd focus on three issues in particular: Technological neutrality, clarity and simplification of the Act, and flexibility. Now in the earlier round tables you already heard about the value of technological neutrality and the need for greater clarity so that Canadians can respect copyright because they actually understand copyright. But I think it's flexibility that deserves some attention, and I'm thinking about it in three respects.

First, I think we need to recognize that flexibility has actually allowed copyright provisions to last at times for decades as they can continually adapt to changing economic and technological environments. We've had a certain amount of flexibility in the law from the beginning and courts sometimes push back, CCH being the most recent case to do that, but there's a need to preserve that flexibility in the next round of reforms.

I think of flexibility as well in terms of recognizing that it works for virtually all stakeholders across the spectrum. It's flexibility that allows documentary film makers to complete their work, artists and authors to build on the work of others within their work, students to complete their assignments, teachers to engage in lifelong learning, researchers to explore new possibilities and businesses to launch new innovative models.

And third, flexibility applies not just domestically but at the international level as well. Many of the same kinds of challenges that we face here in Canada on the domestic front are only magnified at the international level in treaties, and so that means that those treaties, notably the WIPO Internet Treaties, are far more flexible than is often appreciated. Compliance with those treaties can be achieved in many ways and following a single model, say the USDMCA, is not needed in order to meet the WIPO standard.

So quickly then, how to apply these principles around flexibility, technological neutrality and clarity to two of the toughest issues of the moment, fair dealing and anti-circumvention. On fair dealing I think just about everybody recognizes that there's a problem. Everyday activities, as we've already heard, like recording television shows or format shifting aren't covered, artistic endeavors like parody isn't covered, teaching activities are often not covered and innovative businesses can't rely on the provision right now.

C-61 went in the exact opposite direction of what I've just proposed. It was technologically specific, as we heard, talking about VHS tapes and network PVRs. It was very complex, there was a 12-step test that you needed in order to be able to record a television show, and included what I thought was a fairly complex Internet exception for education, and there was a lack of flexibility.

The solution I think, a much cleaner, simpler approach would be to add two words such as, and Professor de Beer noted it as well, so that the current list of fair dealing becomes illustrative rather than exhaustive and be built-in flexibility but don't lose the fairness. It opens the door to dealing with creator issues like parody, consumer issues like time shifting, education issues and business concerns as well.

On anti-circumvention I think this issue is frankly unavoidable given the WIPO Internet Treaties. My own view is that given the recent experience, whether even just in the last week or so, Amazon's deletion of books from the Kindle or Bell closing its online video store shows that there are real problems with DRM, that frankly we need to guard against DRM misuse.

That said, I recognize there are political realities and pressures. But in trying to address those pressures, C-61 again went in the exact opposite direction of what I just talked about. It was technologically specific, banning the distribution of certain devices, it was very complex, pages of long frankly ineffective exceptions to try to deal with some of the unintended consequences, and it lacked in flexibility as it well beyond what was required for WIPO and it covered all circumventions, even circumventions for fair dealing, circumventions to protect privacy, research, etc. The solution - again, a cleaner, simpler, more balanced approach is to link circumvention to copyright infringement as Canada did in C-60. With that approach, we'd comply with WIPO, there would be no need for specific references to technology, no need for long lists of exceptions, and we would still target clear cases of infringement. Thanks.

Violet Ford: My name is Violet Ford. I'm a lawyer by training and presently a Doctor of Laws candidate, and Vice President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. And our work for a long time has been with the WIPO Inter-Governmental Committee on Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions. And the reason I'm here tonight is because Inuit have experienced the misuse of Inuit cultural expression such as the kayak, such as the inukshuk that you see in very bad taste on laws in southern Canada at the moment. And also, this type of misappropriation by companies as well as Shoppers Drug Mart who have used the inukshuk for very derogatory means to sell their pharmaceutical products.

Now, Inuit intellectual property is reflected in Inuit art and it's in the traditional knowledge itself. And also in stories, in songs, in lyrics, in the carvings carried out by Inuit carvers, the traditional knowledge of the landscape, that's all reflected in cultural expressions of Inuit.

Now, the concern we have is that the existing copyright law is inconsistent with constitutional rights that we have under Section 35. Our land claims, our Inuit land claims agreements' objectives is for economic self-reliance, cultural well-being and a certainty of land rights. With this copyright infringements that we've seen occur interferes with that economic self-reliance because we cannot market our products in the same way that companies that imitate our cultural expressions do.

We've seen the most recent experience with the Olympics in Vancouver with the use of the inukshuk as well. And for that reason, I mean I do have a paper here that I will be handing to the staff, but we would, you know, particularly request that any copyright reform reflect the rights that we have under Section 35 and that it be flexible enough to look at the work coming out of WIPO's Inter-Governmental Committee on policy options for new intellectual property rights as it pertains to indigenous peoples. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak here tonight. Thank you.

Paul Jones: My name is Paul Jones and I'm with the Canadian Association of University Teachers, a national organization representing 65,000 professors, librarians and researchers at universities and colleges across Canada. I want to thank you for this great opportunity to consult on the Copyright Act. We really appreciate it and have been looking forward to it.

As teachers and researchers, our members need affordable access to material that can be shared and transformed as part of the education innovation process. As authors, our members also need to protect the works they create against misuse, and to do this requires a statutory balancing of the needs of users, creators and owners of copyright works. Our view is that the Act has traditionally tilted too far in favor of owners. Our specific suggestions for amendments reflect this perspective.

Three of our main ideas are, and I'm afraid the echo chamber is kind of starting here, first, expand fair dealing. Fair dealing, as you know, is the right to in certain circumstances copy works without permission or payment. The current Act lists five categories of fair dealing - research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. By qualifying these categories with a "such as", the Act would clarify that other similar and necessary uses such as parody, satire and format time and device shifting are legal. Expanded fair dealing would also be available to all creators, users and owners and would negate the need for divisive, complex and sector-specific exceptions.

Second suggestion. Allow the circumvention of digital locks and the devices that facilitate circumvention unless the purpose of the circumvention is copyright infringement. Fair dealing depends on access to works. It would be destroyed by a complete prohibition on circumvention. The idea of allowing circumvention but only for non-infringing purposes is an elegant compromise in the pursuit of balance in the Act.

Our third main suggestion is eliminate the application of statutory damages to situations where there was a good-faith belief that the alleged infringement was covered by fair dealing. The Copyright Act's fair dealing provisions are complex and the court rulings on fair dealing are as well. Students, teachers, the public at large should not suffer if they make a good-faith effort to abide by the law.

CAT will be making longer written submissions. We'll submit our full shopping list as part of this consultation process. We're hopeful for a better Copyright Act that can come out of this process and again thank you for this opportunity.

Matthew Johnson: My name is Matthew Johnson. I'm with the Media Awareness Network. Media Awareness Network is a non-profit organization and our mission is to provide students, teachers and parents with the tools they need to ensure that Canadian children and youth can understand and actively engage with media, and what I'd like to talk about right now is just how important it is for teachers to have the right to make use of media in the classroom.

Now, I think it's fair to say that the media environment that we live in now is one that could not have been imagined by the drafters of the original Act or indeed the people that revised the Act in 1985. Today young people are absolutely immersed in a media-rich environment. There are new media being introduced all the time, allowing them to interact with, create and distribute their own content as well as being consumers of media. In this world, media literacy is the most effective tool we have to provide children and youth with the necessary critical thinking skills to maximize the benefits of media and new technologies and to minimize the risks.

Media literacy is essential to be an active, educated citizen. It helps children and youth understand the cultural, political, commercial and social implications of media and how it affects their daily lives. It also helps them to actively engage with media and to use it responsibly. The importance of media education is shown by the fact that in the last 20 years it has become a core component of the curricula of all provinces. Overall, understanding media is a key skill needed to succeed in the knowledge economy.

Now Canada is a world leader in getting media education into curricula and into classrooms, but current and proposed copyright limitations are preventing teachers from doing the kinds of meaningful authentic activities that they need to be able to do. We feel that current educational exceptions must be preserved and should also be extended. The same holds for fair use. Students need to be able to study media products such as advertising, TV shows, movies that are under copyright. This requires the ability for teachers and students to record and display or exhibit excerpts of a media product for educational purposes, not just as in the current exception as part of an examination, but as part of regular class practice.

Now I should point out that I'm not talking about the use of media for entertainment purposes within a school or necessarily the use of an entire media piece, but the ability to use excerpts, the ability to make use of media freely is essential. Teachers need clear guidelines to be able to use media with confidence.

As well, creation and reconstruction of media is a key pillar of media education. Therefore, students should have the right to deconstruct and parody media products as part of their classroom activities. This requires the ability to excerpt and remix some or all of a media product for educational purposes. Not giving students the right tools and the ability to manipulate media products is very much like teaching them to read without teaching them to write.

Similarly, teachers should be able to sample from an excerpt from copyrighted works in order to publish and distribute media education lessons, activities and best practices to other educators so that we can maintain the very high standard of media education that we have in this country. Again for that reason, teachers and students should be able to shift media products between formats for educational purposes, for instance creating a compilation of clips for classroom study. Obviously, in order for that to have any meaning, those educational exceptions must not be undermined by other clauses such as those covering digital locks or technological means.

Now this sounds or it may sound like some significant changes to the current Copyright Act, but I should point out that this is very similar to the copyright as it stands in its educational uses in both the United States and the United Kingdom, both of whose Copyright Acts have some similar provisions.

My final point is that Canadians, and particularly Canadian youth, need to be educated about copyright and other intellectual property issues. We know that youth and indeed the public in general are by and large poorly informed about intellectual property issues. The less well-informed the public is, the more the debate will be driven by extreme positions. In order to be law-abiding media consumers and producers, youth must understand international property and copyright law. In order to succeed in the knowledge economy, youth must understand their rights as creators of intellectual property. We need a Copyright Act that will permit teachers and students to do these very important things. Thank you very much.

Brian Boyle: Good evening. My name is Brian Boyle. While my day job is as a photographer at the Royal Ontario Museum, I'm here representing the Canadian Photographers Coalition. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to provide comment during this consultation period. Additionally, the Coalition will like to make a written submission further detailing our position.

We applaud the government's last Bill and we think it strikes a balance between the needs of photographers and the ability of people to use photos commissioned for personal purposes. Our Coalition represents the interests of two professional associations, the Professional Photographers of Canada which I represent, and the Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communication.

Together, our group represents over 14,000 professional photographers, 95% of which are small business people owning, operating and working in their own businesses. The CPC's primary concern is how the current Copyright Act awards first ownership of a work's copyright to its author. Unlike most other creations however, commissioned photographs are specifically exempted from this section of the Act.

Furthermore, the current provisions of the Copyright Act place Canadian photographers at a significant disadvantage relative to their international peers and other creators. In virtually every other industrialized country, including the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the United States, photographers retain first ownership of copyright in their commissioned works. Because photographers from other industrialized countries have copyright to their works, they are increasingly generating additional revenue from licensing of additional rights through stock photography and library sales. Photographers who participate in the stock photography market can sell their works around the world.

As you will recall, last Spring we welcomed the introduction of the copyright reform legislation. We congratulated the Government of Canada on its recognition of photographers. The need for regulation still exists and we hope that future legislation will continue to recognize photographers as equals among their creative colleagues. Thank you.

Diana Nemiroff: My name is Diana Nemiroff. I'm representing the Canadian Museums Association and I'm also a member of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization. I don't have a prepared text and our associations will be submitting a brief, but there are a few points that I'd like to raise that haven't been covered yet because they pertain specifically to our non-profit area. Museums obviously work directly with creators in usually a very collaborative way, but we're also the bridges to the public and we are constantly involved in balancing the interests of those two functions. So the copyright provisions are very much of concern to us. And in fact, I would say that since 1988 the revisions of the Act have been making the legislation increasingly restrictive for our sector.

I'll give you a couple of examples. In the first place, we take the permanent collection of museums, works that we have either purchased or acquired through donations. In most countries, with the exception of Canada and the United States, since 1988 in Canada, the what we call here in Canada the exhibition right is exempted for those works in the permanent collection. That's not the case here which means that we have an additional economic burden to cover in the cases where we wish to show the permanent collection. Why do we wish to show the permanent collection? Because we want to tell Canadians about their country, about their nation and about our place in the world as well. So it's very important for us to balance these interests.

Another area is in the old-fashioned area of publishing. I made a point of saying up front that we are non-profit organizations. Generally speaking, when we create for example collection catalogues or exhibition catalogues, we sell them at cost. I know that sounds like a ridiculous business decision, but our desire is to be accessible to the public. Paying for reproductions is a burden to us, it's a burden that we've had on us for a long time and in a way we've adapted to it. But unlike the publishing sector where there is the lending rights provision, the payment for those rights has to come out of the purse of each individual museum.

If I give you the example of the museum that I direct, the Carleton University Art Gallery, we're a small museum. We have three permanent staff and we have a collection of 29,000 works. Imagine the burden. And I'll get to that in a minute because now I want to move to the digital environment. Obviously, museums like most other public-sector and indeed for-profit users want to make use of the digital environment, and one of the primary ways that we do so is through Websites and through putting our collections online. One of the locations for that is actually organized by the federal government. It's the Canadian Heritage Information Network. It's a very important research tool. All online collections of course are also an important way of promoting Canadian art both in the country and abroad.

So if I go back to my example of our own collection of 29,000 objects, that's going to be one heck of a payment if we include illustrations with our collections listings. But I have to ask you – we're talking about visual arts – how much sense does it make to have a listing that gives you information like a title and a medium and a dimension, but no image? It makes all the difference in the world to researchers and to members of the public as well. So we're extremely concerned with having provisions that will allow for flexibility and a better balance between creators with whom we've always worked closely, and museums and the users that we eventually will direct their works towards. We want for the most part to make their works more accessible, and I feel that it's partly through shortsightedness that we haven't better balanced these different aspects of copyright. So I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Rosalie Fox:     Good evening. My name is Rosalie Fox and I'm here representing the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. I'm the current President, however I'm not a member of the Copyright Committee and I'm here quite unprepared. The invitation just came yesterday.

Hon. Tony Clement: Some people didn't have a lot of time to prepare and we apologize for that but we wanted to make sure that we got as many people around the table as possible, and we certainly welcome your written preparation.

Rosalie Fox: I just want to preface my remarks by two quick caveats so that my Association is not horrified by anything I say, and that nothing that I say of course represents anything that my employer would want me to say. But I do have a couple of remarks that I'd just like to make of a very general nature and possibly more as a Canadian citizen even than in my role as President of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

I just want to emphasize the core purpose of libraries and law libraries in particular who see the access to legal information and knowledge of the law as central to society. In the role that we play in providing fair and equitable access to legal information, the need for authentic legal information and the need to educate our clients, sometimes even lawyers about copyright law, but also in ensuring that the people that come to our libraries have legal literacy skills and are able to deal with information are very much the core purpose of the law libraries that the Association represents.

We do see ourselves, I think libraries are partners in educating our clients in copyright legislation and its application, and we see increasingly that our hands are tied by the mode of access to legal information in digital format, and it's a very fast-moving environment. I think economics has a lot to do with it as well and the models for distribution of legal information, but increasingly our libraries are not repositories of print material, but we access and license legal information in electronic format. We no longer own that information and the licensing restrictions tend to be more restrictive than fair dealing would be if we had access to that same material in print format.

So I would encourage in looking at the Copyright Act to expand exemptions for libraries, to expand fair dealing and to enable us to preserve born (ph) digital materials for non-commercial purposes. Those are all things that we're finding in the current environment. We have too many barriers and we need to be able to repurpose information both in print that's in the public domain, but also born digital information so that we can retain it in institutional repositories and not lose access to it after our licenses expire or publishers no longer provide access to material because of business decisions that they've made when that information is still of value to our clients.

So I think I'm going to leave it there but the issues of preservation and access to digital material is really core. I know there are legal issues with Google Books, but many of us have used the way-back machine, the Internet archives, which is very similar in capturing information that perhaps is copyright-protected but if they hadn't captured it, we wouldn't have access to it now because so much of it has disappeared. So you have to look at creative ways of keeping that information in the public domain.

Laura Murray: Hi. I'm Laura Murray. I'm an English Professor at Queen's and I'm the co-author with Sam Trosow of "Canadian Copyright, a Citizen's Guide". I also run the Website faircopyright.ca which I started in 2003 and I'm the Chair of the Copyright Committee for the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences.

One of my main research projects at the moment is a study of the daily newspaper in New York City in the 1830s and 1840s. This was a revolutionary time in the business. In 1833, Benjamin Day started selling his New York Sun for a penny, and the older papers, which sold for six cents, were enraged. Before long, many of them folded, others changed and the penny paper became the norm, making news accessible to pretty much everybody.

Strikingly, papers of all sorts in this period feature far more borrowed material than original material. None of the articles were copyrighted, no money changed hands, nobody complained. In fact, postal regulations and pricing were designed to facilitate newspaper exchange, and thereby enable the information dissemination necessary for a rapidly-developing economy and democracy. Editors wrote openly about waiting with their scissors for the mails and they complained if the mail was late because they couldn't cut the articles out of the other papers. In other words, the multi-million-dollar American newspaper industry depended in its origins on lack of copyright regulation. It was subtented (ph) instead by particular postal laws and by a system of norms and practices amongst editors about when and how cutting and pasting, as it literally was, was okay.

I should say that British politicians, publishers and authors were not so happy about U.S. copyright ways at this time, but the U.S. chose not to heed their protests until the very end of the 19th century and into the 20th, always keeping its own national interest clearly in view.

I take you to the 1830s U.S., not because the situation is identical to our own, but it does show that copyright is one of many tools available to make cultural industries work. In times of change, increased copyright regulation may or may not be the best way to go. Bowing to foreign pressures may or may not be the best way to go.

Turning to today's possibilities for copyright reform in Canada, I contend that any changes to the law must be made in the spirit of balance between owners' rights and users' rights, and in the context of other policy options for supporting innovation, as I'm sure your portfolios remind you all the time. Reforms, if any, need to address our specifically-Canadian cultural and economic content and they must be drafted in a way that ordinary people can understand and respect.

And I will echo various others by emphasizing here really the importance of fair dealing. I think that it can help achieve these goals. Together, Sections 3 and 29 of the Copyright Act make copyright make sense. They go together. Fair dealing is also the mechanism that makes copyright constitutional. Otherwise, it would impede freedom of expression. We can use copyright to call people to account, as we do with criticism and review and perhaps parody and other uses that might be included. We can use it to facilitate the flow of information and that's the category of news reporting. We can use it to ground our own innovation and to allow others to validate our claims as we do in research and private study. You can't go with hearsay, you know, in the law or in research or in ordinary conversation, you need to show where your information comes from.

Fair dealing lets creators do their work and strengthens their owners' rights by increasing the legitimacy of copyright as a whole and it's a modest provision, not a free ride. The Supreme Court has laid our several tests for fairness. There's nothing automatic or wild-eyed about fair dealing.

So some of the basics I'm looking for in copyright reform have been mentioned already. Adding the words "such as" before the list of fair dealing categories so that for example artists can make better use of it. Secondly, incorporate in some version the fair-dealing test laid out in the CCH case. Three, never allow DRM to override fair dealing or access to the public domain. Four, avoid picky exceptions for specific uses, instead letting fair dealing do the work. Exceptions in Bill C-61 for digital inter-library loan and education Internet use were perversely constraining ways of letting people do what the law and established practice already permits. The provisions were frankly worse than useless because they promoted the view that all rights belong to owners unless otherwise stated. That's not how the Copyright Act works. It enumerates specific rights in Section 3. Once again, it's always a policy decision what to do with rights enabled or created by new technologies.

In closing, it occurs to me that copyright may appear to be a very cost-effective way for the government to support innovation and the arts. It doesn't seem to cost money like other more direct supports might do. The market can solve the problem, we can license uses. However, to take only that path will reward creativity with immediate commercial value but leave other forms of creativity unsupported, and it will greatly increase the cost of education and libraries the more we go down more extensive licensing routes. Our trade partners are not doing this, so I think we should think twice and think about fiscal policy in this regard and I think fair dealing will be important to that task. Thank you.

David Keeble: My name is David Keeble (ph). I'm a consultant here in Ottawa. I represent no one on the subject of copyright except myself, never have, nor would I consider myself to be a true expert on copyright. I'm here I think because I was one of the co-authors of a study on the impact of digital technology on the value chains of all of the cultural sectors which was done for the Department of Heritage a couple of years ago, and in which necessarily we dealt with copyright in each of those cultural sectors and had some observations on it.

And I'd like to offer what is really a totally different approach to this because the nature of value chain analysis is such that it leads you to conclusions that are really a sidelight on what's been said here today rather than directly involved with the details of what happens in copyright legislation. And what I'd like to put forward for consideration are three principles to guide copyright reform, adding if you like to Professor de Beer's two principles which I agree with.

The first of these principles would be to say that the system works best, the sector works best as a whole when cultural products flow down the value chain of the consumer without being hindered by gatekeepers, and I stress this, when economic value is returned to all of the players who contribute. This doesn't always happen. Right now the biggest problem is clearly piracy, the distribution of so-called free content. Now of course consumers pay 50 bucks a month to ISPs to gain access to this free content, but none of that revenue actually flows through to the producers of the content because ISPs are exempt.

This is what we call the value chain disconnect. It is clearly a problem in the music value chain and in some others, and it must be solved or part of that value chain, the creators, will continue to be starved of revenue and investment. In our view, or in my view I should say because I only represent myself, it's not Richard Kavanagh, my co-author in this, the file sharing can't be prevented, lawsuits are not a revenue stream. However, file sharing can be monetized through copyright reform. The Songwriters Association of Canada has put forward a proposal to that end and in my view it should be taken quite seriously and it or something close to it should be adopted, whether voluntarily or through legislation.

The second principle is that the system works best when users see that the value they're paying is based closely on the value that they have received. But sometimes in copyright we establish proxies for value that are by now obsolete. That's one of the impacts of digital. Value is primarily received when the content is performed or consumed, when music heard, when a book is read, when a movie is seen. Some copyright tariffs are based on public performance like the playing of a song on the radio and these works quite well as proxies for value and are accepted by the users.

Others are not so happy. Many of our tariffs now are based on the making of copies of a work, and at one time this was the only satisfactory proxy that we had for value and it still is in many cases like the printing of a book. You can't measure the reading of a book, so printing is the best proxy you're going to get for the value of that book, the making of copies that is.

But other examples make very little sense like the transfer of medium tariff which is simply an artefact of a past age. Likewise, on the subject of fair dealing, why should we care if end users copy a work to different platforms? It's their consumption of the work that matters and which they're prepared to pay for. It's not how many copies of it they may happen to hold in their library. We should be taking advantage of the ability of digital technology to measure consumption and base copyright payments on that instead wherever possible.

The third principle is all cultural value chains must innovate to be successful. Some of our copyright practices curb innovation and these should be changed. Now innovation is a slippery word and I should say what I mean by it. I don't mean free content. In my view, innovation occurs when business models, new business models arise and that means that economic return must be there which will encourage investment so that that investment can encourage the talent to create. One highly desirable change to encourage innovation is greater speed in the tariff-setting process. Many new opportunities are missed because it takes so long to establish prices and establish user rights.

Another positive change would be to open up the power to initiate. As I understand it, the current legislation does not permit users to initiate suggestions for tariffs and compulsory licenses and, as a result, some digital business models are delayed while rights holders withhold their material because they're nervous of the consequences. This is not to diminish the rights of copyright holders or to minimize their concerns. The Board would still be the judge of what's appropriate in these cases. But if users could initiate the copyright process, then I think we would see more innovation in business models in the digital world.

These three principles are in my view fundamental and can guide the measures to be enacted in new legislation. They will of course be seen as disruptive. Many stakeholders are attached to current practices, sometimes in very clear ways. But we need basic principles. We cannot successfully reform copyright if we have no way of judging which reforms are progressive and which serve only to entrench counterproductive practices.

That's really all I had to say but just to try to speak to some of the things that have been raised before, I think this deals, although in a sidelight way, with the question of fair dealing and the need to expand it with a different principle behind that. On the subject of DRM I would simply say beware of initiating laws that you can't enforce.

Roanie Levy: Hi. My name is Roanie Levy and I am General Counsel and Director of Policy and External Affairs at Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency. Access Copyright licenses the copying of copyright-protected works by facilitating access to millions of printed works through a one-stop licenses that ensure Canadian creators and copyright owners derive benefit from their works.

Voice of Translator: We represent more than 8,000 creators and publishers so that they can depend on a fair trade or on fair dealing between the users and the holders.

Roanie Levy: …8,000 creators and publishers whose livelihoods depend on the right balance between their rights as creators and owners of copyright, and the needs of users, the first of the four principles that the government used in developing the changes to the Act. But what does balance mean in today's world? A teacher photocopies five pages of a textbook for use in class. At first glance, this appears to be an inconsequential use of a copyright-protected work. Some would say that it fits the balance equation, that it is a fair-deal dealing use which should not be paid for.

Step away from the individual to the teacher and consider the use of copyright-protected works by tens of thousands of teachers across the country every day. Now the picture is very different. It's a series of multiple uses many times over. Taken together, these multiple uses amount to the photocopying of hundreds of millions of pages of copyright-protected works every year.

This is something that the Copyright Board of Canada recently decided was not inconsequential and was not a fair use or, in the language of our Act, a fair dealing of the protected works. In other words, what may have seemed at first as an inconsequential use by an individual teacher does not fit the balance equation. Collective licenses for the reproduction of published works offer a tremendous solution. They address the needs of users to access the works and help at the same time to ensure that creators and owners of the works are fairly remunerated for the use of these works.

Collective licenses in the print world have been managed in Canada outside Quebec by Access Copyright and in Quebec by Copybec. And for 20 years we have licensed large-scale photocopying and provided easy access to the world's scientific and cultural printed works. We act as intermediaries and facilitate clearance. Today we also facilitate the digital use of printed resources.

Thanks to our licenses, teachers and students as well as employees of corporations and not-for-profits across Canada have access to millions of published works and copy hundreds of millions of pages a year while ensuring that copyright owners and creators are fairly remunerated for the use of their works. Fair remuneration for the use of copyrighted works is at the very heart of the balance equation. Fair remuneration is also vital in fostering innovation and attracting investment and high-paying jobs in Canada.

The third of the four principles that the government used in developing change to the Act. Publishers invest thousands of hundreds (PH) of dollars every year in R&D to create textbooks and other resources for the education sector as well as other sectors. These investments in innovative digital content and digital business models create thousands of high-paying jobs in Canada. They also leverage the work of thousands of Canadian freelance writers, photographers and visual artists.

The use of works that are not remunerated affect the market for the work and when the markets suffer, investments suffer and creators and jobs suffer. Previous government efforts reformed the Act and successfully balanced the interests of rights holders with the needs of users in the education sector when it combined a statutory extension that allowed digital uses of works covered under the collective photocopy licenses with fair remuneration to the copyright owners.

Exceptions may be justified in certain special cases. However, they should never be introduced where they would have a detrimental impact on the market for work or conflict with the normal expectation of the work. This of course is part of Canada's international obligations. Exceptions are inappropriate where markets have organized themselves to meet the needs of users to access works, for example when collective licenses are made available. When I heard this evening several colleagues talk about the need to expand fair dealing to add very simply two simple words, "such as", I kept wondering whether this was an issue of access or whether this was an issue of free access.

I encourage this government to consider the real impact of proposed exceptions including expanding fair dealing on the market and the effect of seemingly inconsequential exceptions on the ability of thousands of Canadian creators and the Canadian publishing industry to benefit from the product of their labor and to consider the balance that collective licensing provides. Thank you.

Nancy Marrelli: I'm Nancy Marrelli, the Chair of the Copyright Committee of the Canadian Council of Archives. Archives may not be familiar to all of you, so I'd like to explain a little of what we do and who we are.

Archivists protect, preserve and make available the documentary heritage of Canada and its citizens for present and future generations. Canadian Archives are full of valuable historical material and much of that is preserved at public expense including genealogical records, diaries, letters, documentary films, photographs, home movies, census data, immigration records, drawings, e-mails and those are to name just a few.

Most of the works in our institutions were not created for commercial purposes. They are the records that document the lives of ordinary Canadians, the photos your grandmother or your uncle or your mother took at the family cottage in 1951 and that showed the shorelines of certain parts of Georgian Bay at that time, and those have changed as we all know since then, the diary of your great-aunt, your great-aunt wrote as a young girl on the Prairies in the 1930s, film footage of native children going off to a residential school in 1958, the records of a small family grocery business begun in the 1920s.

This archival material is important because it tells the stories of Canadians and of Canada. Archives hold the memory of the nation. Archivists are not concerned with the monetary or market value of what we care for, but for the long-term historical and research value of our materials. That's what we're about.

Traditionally, the public has had to travel to our archival institutions to access this material. In the digital environment, archives and archivists strive to meet the expanding information needs of our users while respecting the rights of the creators who entrust their records to our care. We're concerned about balance. Increasingly, our role is a dynamic rather than a passive one. We don't just sit and wait for people to come into our reading rooms to see what we have. We reach out to Canadians beyond our four walls to provide information about and access to the rich documentary resources that are in our care.

In order to do that effectively, archivists are asking for a provision in the Copyright Act that will permit archival institutions to continue to make our collections and holdings available to the public for research and private study, but now with all the possibilities of the digital environment. We seek a commitment from government to deal with the millions of works that are hidden in archives because they cannot be reproduced or posted on archival Websites for research and private study because of copyright restrictions.

In the digital environment, for the first time in history archives can truly come to the public rather than the public having to come to our archives. We have the technology to provide equal access to our holdings for a researcher in Vancouver or Thunder Bay or Nunavut as for a researcher living a bus ride away from my archives at Concordia University in downtown Montreal. It's about equal access. Archivists believe it is a matter of good public policy to not let the holdings in archival institutions languish in darkness because the public has no way of knowing they are available or they have no way of travelling to the archives to use them on site. Our holdings tell the stories of our country and its people. Help us make it possible for them to be available to the public on Websites and through all the other means available in this information age.

Archivists believe that the Copyright Act, along with many other people who've spoken here tonight, should be technologically neutral. It should include rights for users and creators based on sound public policy rather than focusing on the myriad means of delivery of those rights for creators and users. In relation to archives, this means that technologically-neutral users' rights for research and private study should be included in the law as a guiding principle that is well-founded in good public policy that relates directly to copyright.

We ask you to allow archives to help move Canada forward by providing leadership and facilitating access to our holdings as one of the elements of the research that will be a key feature of Canada's future success. Thank you.

Hon. Tony Clement: I appreciated the reference to Georgian Bay as well. Very, very clever of you. I didn't any reference to your riding.

Nancy Marrelli: It's not something that people think about but archival resources contain that kind of information.

Hon. Tony Clement: As the Member who represents Georgian Bay, I think about Georgian Bay a lot. So thank you for that.

Jay Kerr-Wilson: Good evening. My name is Jay Kerr-Wilson and I am here representing the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright. Everyone talks about balanced, we actually have it in our name. We represent the interests of Canada's large and independent telephone, video, wireless and Internet network providers, broadcasters, retailers and technology companies. Our members include Rogers, Bell, Telus, SaskTel, MTS Allstream, Google, Yahoo, Retail Council of Canada and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

The members of the BCBC are not opposed to copyright reform and are not opposed to measures that support and protect creative talent and innovation. In fact, our businesses depend on giving consumers access to the products and services that are made possible by that talent and that innovation. Not only do the members of the BCBC provide consumers with the tools to find and access the content they want, but we are also creators and innovators in our own right. We understand the economic importance of protecting intellectual property and providing incentives for creators. But the game has changed dramatically in a very short period of time and Canada's copyright law has to adapt to the new reality or risk becoming irrelevant.

Historically, consumers were only impacted by copyright indirectly. They were the ultimate consumers of copyright-protected works but worrying about copyright was somebody else's problem. It was the broadcasters, record companies, authors, composers, performers, publishers and film producers who had to navigate the rules and sort out the details. Obviously, technological innovation has dramatically changed the landscape. Consumers are no longer spectators, they are participants. Digital technology and advance networks have given the average Canadian unprecedented power to create, distribute, access and enjoy content.

The Copyright Act has to reflect this new reality, not just by imposing new rules and new restrictions, but also by recognizing that innovation is happening on all points of the network from the largest media company to the individual sitting in front of his computer or someone using her mobile phone. To this end, the members of the BCBC believe that the next round of copyright amendments should reflect some basic principles.

One, and this won't be a surprise, the Act should provide a general fair-use exception that permits consumers to deal with copyright-protected material in a way that does not destroy legitimate markets for that material, but does recognize people's legitimate expectation to use copyright works in a variety of formats, on different platforms for a variety of purposes. Rules that try to capture specific uses or that target certain technologies will be obsolete even before the Bill can become law. The same principles of flexibility and adaptability must be applied to the protection of technological measures that are used to restrict copying or prevent unauthorized access to works. People should not be prevented from making legitimate non-infringing uses of content.

Third, we need to rationalize the complex and overlapping layers of rights that can stifle innovation and drive up transaction costs. Wherever possible, we should rely on the market to establish values and create new business opportunities. Regulatory intervention and indiscriminate levies should be measures of last resort, limited to only those rare cases of true market failure. Rights owners should be adequately compensated for the use of their works but it shouldn't require institutional litigation and multiple payments to the same rights owner to achieve that objective.

Fourth, we can't shift the burden of copyright enforcement away from rights holders and onto the very networks that are vital for the digital environment to function. It is important to find workable solutions to the challenges posed by new technology but those solutions have to respect Canadian legal values including due process and personal privacy.

It is clear that reforming copyright is a long and complex process. Mistakes cannot be easily fixed and unintended consequences can persist for many years. We urge the government to listen to Canadians, carefully consider the long-term impact of its approach, and take the time to get it right. We might not get another chance at this for a very long time. Thank you.

Graham Henderson: My name is Graham Henderson and I'm with the Canadian Recording Industry Association. I would like to applaud both of the Ministers for this initiative and also for the initiative of the digital economy moving forward, Minister Clement, that I was part of in Ottawa a while ago. I think that if one thing is certain, it is that the future is about innovation and I think my members share that goal with you.

We foresee and hope for a market that is rich in digital choices and that will benefit creators and consumers alike. And I agree that in order to allow for this and to create this, that we require principled laws that will be relevant to the demands of the future. Now my focus is going to be principally on the market, as you might imagine, not on educational uses per se, though I am very heartened to hear that fair dealing is not being interpreted to mean free dealing.

But what I would start out by saying is our start line. If we think that the start line is a place for our digital economy that we're going to be gathering with all of our international competitors and we're all together there on the blocks, I think we have to guess again because our competitors have in many respects a 20-meter running start in what amounts to a digital dash.

For example, in music there are booming digital marketplaces in other jurisdictions. For example, in the United States digital's share of the music market, the overall music market, is 36% whereas in Canada it hovers around 17%. What's different? Well, what I would say is the difference is that those of our competitors that are ahead of us have marketplace rules, rules that encourage innovation and investment. And it's these same countries who have actually enacted WIPO and they've done so robustly and completely, and in many respects they're going beyond WIPO to confront new challenges as they arise and I'm thinking of for example the U.K., France, Italy, Taiwan, Korea and other jurisdictions. While we talk and debate, they are racing forward.

Now we've often heard that copyright rules, and we've heard it today, are bad for innovation and many see WIPO or many aspects of WIPO as a harmful step backwards. And I would ask where the evidence is for that. Unlike Canada, all of our trading partners have long ago implemented WIPO, and if it were truly bad for innovation and consumer choice, the evidence would be there. But I don't see it. And we know from experience around the world that far from stifling innovation, WIPO has driven it.

And let's take innovation as seen through the lens of consumer choice in digital music. Exciting new models, like Spotify, which everybody is reading about, comes with music. These are making waves around the world, but not in Canada. And note not only are these models not being offered in Canada, but Canada is not generating models of this nature. Here, unfortunately, the only choice for consumers at this point for online music would be iTunes for the most part or iLegal, illegal. Now, in WIPO-compliant jurisdictions such as Sweden and the U.K., digital marketplaces are flourishing. The result, legal activity amongst teenagers is skyrocketing, whereas illegal behavior is plunging, and why wouldn't it? Because these new models are fantastic. So much for the idea of a lost generation and that ingrained behavior simply cannot be expunged or changed.

But to catch up, we have to act fast. We have to explode literally out of the blocks and we're going to have to run a very smart race. This means we have to take advantage of the experience of others, of best practices instead of trying to invent a Canada-only model. But we do need to set rules of the road. We need to draw a box, we need to set boundaries, we need t tell Canadians what is and what is not acceptable behavior. We are a law-abiding people. And we need to aggressively engage the unauthorized taking of other people's property without remuneration. We are talking about protecting the fruit of people's creativity, their time and their financial investment. The U.K. for example has set themselves a specific target of reducing piracy by 70 to 80%.

I'd like to focus on a concern that arises from the status quo in Canada, the dampening effect on Canadian culture. Unrestrained file sharing means that there is far less money in the system for Canadian artists' development, nurturing and promotion, and we are reaping a bitter harvest of inaction. In last year's billboard top 30 there were only three Canadian artists and that compares with an average of eight in five previous years. Sadly, in music today after great Canadian acts reaching new heights from Jonie Mitchell to Alanis Morissette, we are punching below our weight. It's unacceptable and we can do better. And Minister Moore, the largest Canadian groups, the largest groups representing Canadian artists, ACTRA and AF of M are calling for WIPO-compliant rules and I would urge that you listen to them.

I think that there are four principles that should guide you as you pull together your new Bill, and they are these. Without question, the rights of those who hold copyright must be fairly balanced with the needs of users to access those copyrighted works. Two, the Copyright Act must provide clear, predictable and fair rules to allow Canadians to derive benefits from their creations. Three, the Copyright Act should foster innovation in an effort to attract investment and high-paying jobs to Canada. And finally, we have to ensure that our framework for the Internet is in line with international standards. Thank you.

Jessica Litwin: Hi there. I'm Jessica Litwin .I'm with the Canadian Conference of the Arts. The Canadian Conference of the Arts is the oldest broadly-based arts and cultural-sector organization in Canada, and we represent artists, creators and users in Canada's creative economy. Because of that, our members are often strongly opinionated but divergent on their approach to copyright. So we thank the Ministers for inviting us to participate and we will participate as observers this evening.

Fran Cutler: Good evening, Ministers, departmental staff and colleagues here at this table. My name is Fran Cutler. I'm the Past-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. The CNIB library is a venerable institution which has provided alternative-format materials to people with vision loss and other perceptual disabilities for over 90 years. We have always been a respecter of rights holders and of copyright.

I'm actually here on behalf of Margaret McGrory who is the CIO, who's Chief Information Officer of the CNIB and the head of the CNIB digital library. I'm merely an avid enthusiastic consumer of the material. Before I go any further, I have some gentle advice for our third speaker whose name I didn't hear. If there are to be further hearings, and I gather there are, I would suggest that she broaden her definition or suggestion for warnings, that of an evil eye, because in the interests of inclusivity that would be lost on those of us who have vision loss. Perhaps a gentle growl would also help.

We will be presenting a written submission but I'd like to share with you some remarks from Margaret McGrory and her staff of experts. Incidentally, I do have a driver guide tonight who is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the CNIB Library, Kevin Burns, but he will not be speaking tonight.

CNIB will confine its comments and submissions to those aspects of the proposed legislation which are specific to our mandate, and our mandate of course is to provide alternative-format materials, accessible materials to people with vision loss, close to a million people in Canada, and at least another two million who have perceptual disabilities such as learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities or people who simply cannot hold printed material.

The Section 32 exemption may contain a drafting ambiguity that's not in line with how the CNIB library performs its mandate. We will be submitting a revision which will more accurately reflect the work that we do, that will validate what we do but will not expand on the CNIB library's current role. It's essential for the CNIB and like organizations, trusted intermediaries, to draw on electronic as well as print materials. This is axiomatic in the world of the 21st century. These organizations alone cannot do all in this field but not-for-profit organizations like the CNIB and its many counterparts around the world are doing an admirable job in this respect. They should not infringe copyright if they circumvent technical-protection measures, tech-protect measures, in order to utilize the Section 32 exemption.

Persons with perceptual disabilities should be able to circumvent the TPM for their own use… making available for their own use without infringing copyright. Canada's cultural diversity is reflected in those people who have perceptual disabilities as in the general society. Therefore, we will be making recommendations that we'd be able to enable the lawful importation of materials from countries which respect the copyright laws in a similar way to the CNIB.

CNIB is a leader in the production of alternative-format materials and are constantly sought after by organizations, like organizations in other countries. So we would recommend that this be granted to the other organizations who may want to make the material that we have available to their users and listeners with perceptual disabilities.

I think that covers our key points, and we will provide a written submission within the next few weeks and we recommend that you include other organizations which represent people such as Voiceprint, the national broadcast reading service, at future hearings, likely in Toronto. Thank you very much.

Hon. Tony Clement: Thank you. So I think we've come all the way around. Have we missed anybody? I just want to make sure we haven't done that. It doesn't sound like we have. We'd like to keep rolling along a little bit and maybe add 15 or 20 minutes to the session if that's okay with you folks.

Hon. James Moore: You can see the clock at the end there. We're nine minutes over now but we thought we might extend by up to the top of the hour if that's okay. We have this group of people here, a lot of diverse groups of people. Everybody is talking about fair balance. But I think everybody has a different perspective of what fair balance is. So why don't we do it this way? I have a stopwatch here and why don't we allow people to make a comment about someone else's intervention and that person will have the same amount of time to respond back. Or if somebody just wants to make a general comment as an add-on to what they've done, I think maybe we'll do it that way. Does that seem fair? So if anybody wants to go ahead, just raise your hand and again with the proviso that the audience for this conversation of course is not just those of us who are in the room but there are many people who will be downloading and reading the transcript of this. So if you can identify yourself before you go ahead, if there's someone who wants to rebut a statement that they've heard so far this evening.

Hon. Tony Clement: In a very polite way, a Canadian polite way of course.

Matthew Johnson: It's Matthew Johnson, Media Awareness Network. And I'd just like to respond to the point that was raised by my colleague from Access Copyright. I'm afraid I can't read your nameplate from here and I've heard so many different names tonight, they're all blurring together. But you raised the scenario of a teacher making photocopies from a textbook and I think anyone here would agree that that would be an unreasonable act under any copyright law. So I just thought I would point out how two other jurisdictions have dealt with this in their copyright law while still making it possible for teachers to make effective use of copyrighted material.

The first is in the United Kingdom where they have a provision which allows teachers to display copyrighted works for educational purposes in the classroom, but there is a specific exception in their provision for works where there is a licensing regime, that is to say a collective license. So if there were a collective license in existence for media products, then obviously a similar provision in the Copyright Act would make its use by teachers possible.

What I think may be a better approach though is the approach they take in the United States which is they have, as I'm sure you know, a variety of tests for fair use and one of them is whether or not the use harms the commercial success or prospects of the copyrighted work. Is the work harmed financially or are the copyright owners harmed financially? In the case of a textbook, the answer obviously is yes. A textbook was intended for use in a classroom, it was intended to be used one copy at a time and so photocopying it is harming its commercial success. But a television commercial, a portion of a TV show or a movie were created to entertain. They were not created as educational tools and so their use in an educational context, particularly the use of excerpts of these works, would and has been shown to fall under fair use under American law.

Hon. James Moore: It's been two minutes, so if you'd like to respond, go ahead.

Roanie Levy: Yes, thank you and thank you for that opportunity to speak about fair dealing and the implications of fair dealing for licenses and for uses in the education sector. It's interesting to hear you say that you don't believe… that most people would agree that the use of five pages in the classroom would not be a fair use or a fair dealing in the context of Canada. You should note that the Ministries of Education who are the objectors to that tariff are appealing the decision, that's going to judicial review. So they don't necessarily agree even though it may seem like common sense when you look at the volume that's involved.

I hear the solution in the U.K. There are other solutions around the world. There's one solution in our Copyright Act for other types of exceptions which I think is one that we could continue to use, and those are exceptions that I like to call smart exceptions. They're exceptions that exist in the Copyright Act to ensure that access is provided so that the user, where there is an access need in a very specific situation where there is a justified reason that access should be provided such as in the education sector, that there is an exception in place. But that exception gets trumped when the work becomes commercially available or when a license is available.

So when you have rights holders, creators and copyright owners that organize themselves in order to create an infrastructure in order to provide that access while at the same time ensuring that there is a fair remuneration back to them, I think that that should be respected and encouraged. So smart exceptions – we have examples of them in our Copyright Act – are things that should be examined when there is a need for access and that access is justified in the education sector, research is often referred to, but that when there is a marketplace that gets created, a system that gets put in place in order to allow remuneration to flow back up the chain similar to what David Keeble next to me was mentioning earlier on, I think that that should be encouraged.

Matthew Johnson:   Thank you.

Hon. James Moore: Thank you very much. Does someone else want to make a comment or another intervention? Mr. Geist.

Michael Geist: Michael Geist. I can't resist. So I agree, once again I agree with a lot of what Graham had to say as we did the Digital Economy Conference. In this case he talked about no Canadian-only model, we need to follow others, and he talked about the need as a principle for a framework in line with international standards. And I'd make two points. The first off, that there are many… first off, that there is no single international standard in this area. The truth is if you go from country to country to country on copyright, you're going to find many differences and this isn't a matter of saying don't do what the U.S. does. On issues like Crown copyright, they're far ahead of us. On issues of fair use, they're far ahead of us. The majority of countries around the world don't have things like statutory damages and so if we're looking to other countries, there are a lot of things that we can learn from other countries where we can make changes that are the sorts of things you heard tonight.

On the issue of WIPO though, because I suspect that's part of what Graham was getting at, I think it's essential to recognize that there are almost as many different implementations as there are countries who have implemented the Treaties. So if you go country by country, whether in Europe or Asia or elsewhere, you will find lots and lots of different exceptions, lots and lots of different approaches, and so when we talk about needing an international standard on WIPO, it's the Treaty. It isn't a specific country in the way that they've sought to implement it. And many countries have recognized that to be part of that, if they're going to move forward, it's to ensure that they retain as much of the balance and flexibility as possible.

Hon. James Moore: One of the things I heard Graham say was that we should identify and use best practices in the way that other countries have implemented it. So you may disagree on what those practices are, but as a way of proceeding, that seems to make a lot of sense I guess or at least have regard to them anyway.

Michael Geist: Absolutely, and I think part of when I referenced that 61 entry series on C-61, I think it was at least a third of it was spent looking at what other countries had done specifically on the anti-circumvention provisions. Looked at for example what New Zealand has done, recognizing that it's not even just enough to say that you've got a right to circumvent, but recognize that there are many, many citizens, in this case many, many Canadians, that even if you say we'll allow you to have the tools to circumvent let's say for fair-dealing purposes, they don't know what to do. A lot of people don't know how to use programs like Hand Brake (ph) or these other programs that are out there. And so they actually said that we need to identify trusted parties in society, librarians, archivists, others who can circumvent on behalf of users in appropriate circumstances. So I think there are lots of different examples that we can get that will allow the industry to get the anti-circumvention legislation that it says it needs that will allow Canada to say it's consistent with WIPO, but at the same time preserve many of the core balances and concerns that you've heard about this evening.

Hon. James Moore: Graham.

Graham Henderson: Well, I'm happy to stand by what I said and I think the Minister has touched on the nub of it. I think where Mr. Geist and I are going to disagree is on the question about whether or not there is a standard, and I would argue that with limited exceptions there is a very, very clear international consensus on what implementation of WIPO means. The European Union for example is very, very close to a mass ratification. They just need a couple of countries to present their instruments and away they go. But rather than take my word for it or the professor's word for it, I guess what I'm really urging for the departments to do is look at this, and it would be the same with any claims that have been made regarding what's going to happen when we implement WIPO.

I mean we heard somebody say that it would usher in a police state. We've heard people say that iPods will be seized at the border. We've heard people say that innovation will collapse in this country, and so I say fine, well let's just throw the window open and let's do a serious analysis of exactly what the experience is in other countries, and I'm not focusing just on the United States – that's been brought up a number of times tonight. I think we're really, you know, just as importantly looking at the EU directive and what those nations over there have done with it. And I would argue not only have they robustly and completely implemented WIPO, in particular the major jurisdictions of France, the U.K., Sweden, people like that, but they are now, as we read in the papers every day, going way, way beyond that.

Jeremy de Beer: I'll be brief. I'd actually just like to support Graham Henderson's call for more empirical evidence on this. I think that's well worthwhile. Let's actually look at evidence to support arguments on all sides of the equation, but that's not an easy task. It takes time and an investment of energy and research. But I actually wanted to direct a comment not at anybody or anything in particular, but just to echo a point that was made by Jay Kerr-Wilson and David Keeble as well which is related to the realism of copyright, okay? So let's not sit here in a room and think about how we could draft a law that everybody could agree on, but think about how that's going to be interpreted and applied in practice in terms of Canadians' everyday realities. And what we have now actually is a Canadian copyright law that is… it's irrelevant.

People don't follow the law and they don't respect it, and that's a really bad thing. The state of the law right now is leading to disrespect for copyright. That's the opposite of what we should be trying to achieve with law reform. And so I think that goes back to two other points that I'd made earlier which is that we need to make fair dealing realistic. An overly-technical approach, like unfortunately was in C-61, will further lead to public frustration. And similarly I fear that anti-circumvention provisions, particularly following a broad public consultation, if they don't reflect most people's realities, everyday practices and everyday needs, is going to exacerbate that problem of disrespect for copyright rather than remedy it. So I really think there are opportunities for streamlining collective licensing and other processes. I just wanted to reinforce that.

Hon. James Moore: Mr. Wills.

Steve Wills: Thank you very much. I'd like to pick up on maybe some of Michael Geist's comments about implementation of the WIPO Treaties and first of all remind the Ministers about the 1998 discussion paper that was commissioned by the two departments to look into WIPO implementation, and one of the options in relation to technological measures that was listed as a possible option for the Government of Canada was in fact to allow circumvention where the purpose of the circumvention would not infringe copyright. So clearly, that is a viable option and it is unnecessary to go the extreme route that the U.S. has gone with the digital… and Copyright Act.

Secondly, in relation to the WIPO Treaty and predecessor treaties like the Burn (ph) Convention, they have all provided for the opportunity to enact exceptions for various purposes because the view has been that copyright law is about more than just remuneration, there is some balance and the balance does require exceptions and limitations. And in the agreed statements relating to the WIPO Treaty, they do in fact state quite clearly that you can bring forward and extend into the digital environment any existing limitations and exceptions and that you can devise new exceptions and limitations.

The third issue I'd like to address briefly is remuneration. Universities and colleges, universities in Canada are spending I estimate at least $65 to $70 million a year to license, access, to digital versions of works and to license the copying of works. We are certainly remunerating publishers and authors, rights holders in big ways. However, I'd like to point out as well that the people who create many of the works that are used in universities, professors at universities around the world, have different incentives for creation. Many of them create not because they're look for remuneration, they create because they want to further knowledge in the field, perhaps tenure promotion purposes, various other reasons. It's not always about money.

And in fact, when you look at the academic journal publishing world, the whole link between remuneration and creation has I think been broken significantly because unfortunately one of the longstanding policies of some major academic publishers has been to require that professors assign their copyright to the publisher in order to be published in that journal. So we have to look at these issues not just in terms of remuneration as an incentive for creation. There are other aspects to it as well.

Nancy Marrelli: I'd like to make a response to Mr. de Beer's comments about unintended consequences and looking at issues very carefully. I think that unintended consequences and really looking at issues in a very, very careful way is crucial. I really do not believe that, and I think the archival community does not believe that there was any direct intent to try to prevent archives from making our materials accessible to the public that needs them.

But the reality is that that's the unintended consequence, that's what we're living with, and we're living with it, as somebody mentioned, for a very, very long time. I think it was you who said we lived with this Act for a very long time. So we need to look at what these issues are. We need to look at them in depth and carefully and understand what they mean in a real sense in the real world. The digital environment has changed the whole information landscape. It's different and it's hard, it's not an easy fix to any of this and the unintended consequences can be very serious indeed.

Graham Henderson: I think that this is a very, very good point and I think that there's a solution. And even the despised Digital Millennium Copyright Act incredibly encompassed it and that is the idea of some kind of review process. The United States, and you may quibble with how it actually goes down, you may not like the process, you may want to improve the process, but the idea is there's a triennial review. People come forward, they bring concerns like this, so that you have an actual mechanism to deal with potential problems that arise and I think, Minister, that would help to provide a mechanism to keep it current.

Hon. Tony Clement: We're have to do this all over again in three years. Groundhog Day. Anyway. Anybody else? Do you want to say…

Hon. James Moore: I just wanted to again thank all of you for taking time out of your very busy day. We've had a good full two-hour conversation and we are going to continue on. I'm in Montreal tomorrow for a town hall meeting which I know will be a very lively discussion. We're going to continue this going forward. As well, if you have any further additions to your submissions to us as we consider copyright reform, please feel free to forward that to both Minister Clement's office and mine and this has been I think a very helpful and very good conversation and I really appreciate all of your time and diverse views that we heard here tonight.

Hon. Tony Clement: Voice of Translator: Yes, thank you for your participation.

Hon. Tony Clement: …for both a round table and a the town hall on August 27th. So I'm looking forward to that. I believe we've got another one in Winnipeg coming up too. Somebody is in charge of that one. Shelly is doing that one, and I'm going to be in Halifax as well on the 10th of August. So we are really putting this show on the road, and we do take this seriously. I want to encourage you to recognize that and I don't think we're obviously at the stage of any conclusions but I'm really getting a sense of the nub of the issue on a number of different fronts and this for me, as long as there's no exam at the end of each one of these, I think I'll be in good shape to be able to add my two cents worth on this and I know James feels the same way and, as you can see, it's a very collaborative enterprise. I think that's important to recognize as well, that Heritage Canada, Industry Canada, we're at the same table, we are definitely working together and that's as it is and as it should be as well. 7

Hon. James Moore: And this conversation will be online on our Website very shortly and please stay tuned to the debate and keep contributing online if you so wish and thank you again for tonight. All the best.

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