Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 6th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Welcome to meeting number five of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person here in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

All witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of this meeting.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before you speak. All comments should be addressed through the chair.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is meeting for a briefing on the effects of technological advances in AI on the creative industries.

It is now my pleasure to welcome our witnesses.

From the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, we have Marie-Julie Desrochers, executive director. From Copibec, we have Arezki Raab, assistant general manager, and Maryse Beaulieu, adviser, legal and public affairs. From the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies, we have Dave Anctil, affiliated researcher. He is by video conference. From The Hub, we have Rudyard Griffiths, publisher.

We will start with Ms. Desrochers for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers, Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm the executive director of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. I will now switch to French, but I wanted to state clearly that our organization is a Canadian one. We have members in Quebec, in English Canada and also in the minority linguistic community.

Representing more than 350,000 creators, artists, and over 3,000 cultural enterprises, the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is as concerned with the economic health of the cultural sector as with the vitality of creation. More specifically, it focuses on the treatment of culture in trade agreements and the impact of the digital environment on the diversity of cultural expressions, ensuring in particular that public policies actively protect and support our cultural ecosystem.

Twenty years ago, Canada, alongside civil society, played a decisive role in the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. As the first country to ratify it, Canada has since continued to act as a leader on this.

Today, a major technological transformation is upon us: generative artificial intelligence. As in many other sectors, its development is profoundly disrupting the cultural ecosystem—from the weakening of jobs to the redefinition of artistic practices, its impact is felt at every level.

The rise of generative AI, digital technology and online streaming platforms is reshaping the conditions of creation and circulation of works, generating unprecedented challenges for cultural diversity. Today’s market is flooded with machine-generated content, often without clear indication of its nature. Art cannot be reduced to a mere chain of algorithmic operations: It is inseparable from human experience, emotion and collective memory. AI can be a tool in the service of creation, but it cannot and must not replace it.

Obviously, these issues are not limited to Canada; they extend far beyond our borders. Recently, the international community has increased its commitments on technology and culture. I will be happy to provide more details on this during question period since I have just returned from the world’s largest conference on cultural policies and sustainable development, MONDIACULT, organized by UNESCO. More than 100 ministers of culture met at this conference held in Barcelona from September 29 to October 1, including the hon. Steven Guilbeault.

At the conclusion of this conference, the ministers of culture adopted an outcome document “in response to the urgent and complex challenges of our time.” Among other commitments, they pledged to: “Promot(e) a human-centric and human rights based approach to a digital environment that respects cultural rights, fosters equity and accessibility, promotes diversity of cultural expressions…”.

The protection of the rights of artists, creators and rights holders in the digital environment, combatting unethical uses of AI, recognition of human creativity, support for the discoverability of multilingual cultural content on digital platforms, involvement of the cultural sector in the development of AI-related policies, protection of copyright: These are clear commitments confirming that regulating artificial intelligence is a global issue and that Canada must continue to play a leadership role.

In Canada, the Copyright Act already prohibits the use of protected works and productions without the authorization of rights holders. We should be proud of that.

Among the 50 organizations represented by the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the CDCE, a strong consensus is emerging. In the face of technological advances in generative AI affecting creative industries, three pillars are essential: authorization, remuneration and transparency, or the acronym ART. It is essential to respect these three conditions, otherwise our cultural environment will be weakened to the benefit of multinational corporations and to the detriment of Canadians.

The CDCE has been actively engaged in consultations on the Copyright Act in the context of generative AI, as well as on former Bill C‑27—part 3, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, which died on the Order Paper. In these consultations, the coalition made specific requests that I will be happy to elaborate on during the question period: no exception for text and data mining, no copyright for purely AI-generated content, and transparency for training data and for identifying synthetic content.

Recently, we also took note of Minister Solomon’s announcement regarding the creation of an expert panel tasked with developing a new Canadian AI strategy. However, we deeply regret that no voices from the cultural industries are represented there, even though AI’s impacts on creation are immense and immediate.

In conclusion, Canada is engaged in a race toward innovation. But innovation must not come at the expense of culture. Canada must commit “to promoting a responsible and human-centered approach to AI and digital transformation in which culture is a powerful driver of innovation, inclusion, and economic growth”, as stated by Mr. Guilbeault at MONDIACULT.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you, Ms. Desrochers.

We will continue with the representatives from Copibec. I am not sure if you will be sharing your time, but you have five minutes in total.

[Arezki Raab, Assistant General Manager, Copibec]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am Arezki Raab, assistant general manager at Copibec. I am here with Maryse Beaulieu, advisor, legal and public affairs.

I would like to begin by thanking the committee for inviting us here to discuss the impact of technological advances in artificial intelligence on the creative industries.

Allow me to briefly introduce our organization. We are a non-profit rights management collective specializing in copyright management. Founded in 1997 by the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois, or UNEQ, and the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, or ANEL, our organization now represents more than 30,000 authors and over 1,400 publishers. We facilitate legal access to a vast repertoire of works protected under the Copyright Act through a licensing and authorization service. During the last fiscal year, we distributed more than $13 million in royalties to rights holders, bringing our total to over $300 million since our inception.

Copibec had the opportunity to express its views on artificial intelligence during the last consultation on generative artificial intelligence, which ended on January 15, 2024. We also worked with the book industry to submit a brief on the amendments we wanted to see made to part 3 of former Bill C‑27. We did the same with the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. We also submitted a joint brief with Access Copyright at the end of August as part of the pre-budget consultations, in which we addressed generative artificial intelligence.

Needless to say, not a week goes by without new developments in generative artificial intelligence. However, we can already say that rights holders are extremely concerned. We would even say that this is an existential threat. A work protected under the Copyright Act is a work created by a human being. That is how the law was conceived. It is important to establish the fundamental principles and to reiterate them.

I will now hand it over to Maryse Beaulieu who will take it from here.

[Maryse Beaulieu, Advisor, Legal and Public Affairs, Copibec]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Furthermore, it is of the utmost importance that the Copyright Act be respected. It remains the flagship law for creators, and we submit that the advent of generative artificial intelligence should not obliterate the Copyright Act—quite the contrary. It remains relevant and constitutes the foundation on which we must rely. It is a law that confers exclusive rights on the copyright holder.

Authorization is generally required when using a protected work. However, large language models have been trained without such authorization being granted. This goes against the very foundation of the act. We feel it is important to add that no exceptions should be made in this regard.

Creators, who offer sought-after content, are absent from the business model. No remuneration is granted. This cannot be tolerated. Through licensing, collective management organizations are well positioned to meet market needs.

Let us add that it is important for us to have normative texts. The former bill enacting the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act died on the Order Paper. Canada needs to have regulations, particularly with regard to transparency. This message is being hammered home by the entire cultural community, and it is important that it be heard.

Legal proceedings are under way in Canada. Waiting for the courts to rule is not the way to legislate. We submit that it is important for the government to be proactive in this area. Our cultural sovereignty must be assured, since our identity is at stake. Jeopardizing what defines us cannot be the subject of negotiations of any kind.

Generative artificial intelligence made a sensational debut in November 2022 with ChatGPT. We have barely had time to integrate a whole new lexical field, which, it should be noted, comes from another industry. This significantly increases the difficulty coefficient. We are still in the process of developing adequate literacy.

Let us be clear: We are not against artificial intelligence. Creators are used to using new tools. That is not what the debate is about. Rights holders are part of an economic model from which they do not reap the benefits. Creators and creative industries are also the jewels in the crown of our culture and identity. From both these perspectives, we cannot leave things as they are.

Culture is part of Canada's collective and economic wealth. The impact of artificial intelligence is real, and it is up to our elected officials to respond—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Ms. Beaulieu, I must ask you to conclude your presentation.

[Maryse Beaulieu]

It is up to our elected officials to respond to the challenges that generative artificial intelligence poses for creators and creative industries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

We will now hear from Dave Anctil from the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies, who is joining us by video conference.

[Dave Anctil, Affiliated Researcher, International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies]

Thank you. I will try to be brief and provide a complement to the previous speeches so as not to go over the five minutes I have been given.

My expertise is not in culture, but in AI, or artificial intelligence. I chose to help organizations and unions that defend culture in Quebec and Canada because I am in a good position to know how threatened these industries are. Beyond the industries themselves, it is artists and creators in particular who are the main subject of our discussion today.

Non-artists and studios can simulate works and market them using generative AI and, in particular, agentive AI. For example, there has been a lot of talk about the fake band The Velvet Sundown, whose music has garnered millions of plays on Spotify. It is absolutely not a band, in fact. Nor is it a group that used an artificial intelligence system to produce music. It is simply the product of an individual who simulated fictional members and generated music based on training data that was itself plundered by harvesting the web.

What is more, there are now synthetic studios that create fake actresses and actors, such as Tilly Norwood from the Particle6 studio. These studios are essentially creating a lie, namely the idea that there is such a thing as synthetic actresses or actors. Again, these are just unfounded claims. Of course, these things cause confusion among the public and represent unfair competition for artists and creators, who spend a large part of their lives developing their talent, studying their art and thereby investing in our culture.

In my opinion, the government has a critical responsibility to preserve the existence of arts and culture by protecting citizen artists against theft and exploitation of their works and against unfair competition from artificial intelligence, which already exists and will continue to grow.

For very simple reasons, there is a difference between artists and professions such as mine or those of doctors, lawyers, engineers, or electricians: these professions are protected by law. If, for example, a doctor uses ChatGPT to analyze a patient's medical condition, they remain ultimately responsible for making a diagnosis.

However, generative AI is capable of creating fake works and synthetic productions. Unlike many other professions, there are no professional standards guaranteeing the exclusivity of artistic production. As a result, artists are left to their own devices, and it is the market that dictates, based on consumer preferences, who will truly be considered an artist and who will not. Of course, many economic players have understood this. It will therefore be very easy to replace living artists with synthetic “artists,” in other words, synthetically generated products that are not artists. This will contribute to further destabilizing artistic professions.

I would therefore like to speak to the committee about the importance of labelling synthetic products in Canada. There is no legislative framework or bill on this subject, but it would be possible to create a regulatory framework very quickly to ensure that synthetic products are clearly identified. This will enable the public to at least make an informed judgment about music and audiovisual content generated by artificial intelligence systems. They will be aware that these productions are not works of art and do not meet the basic requirements of artistic or cultural production. Of course, one could also argue that such regulation, which would aim to ensure transparency in cultural production, would also serve as a safeguard against misinformation originating from a multitude of actors capable of using these generative artificial intelligence systems.

I would like the committee to understand that, even though I am not an artist, I could start working tomorrow morning in all kinds of fields such as graphic illustration, audiovisual media, or music, without mastering any of the codes of these professions, but simply by being able to use generative artificial intelligence systems. I could set up a complete studio to promote the development of my own film and television productions and flood platforms with this content. All it would cost me is the subscription fees for non-Canadian computer server and algorithmic system companies, all located in the United States.

This is a real threat to sovereignty, not just cultural sovereignty, but Canadian sovereignty as a whole. If elected officials cannot protect citizens from data theft and public deception, who can?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you, Mr. Anctil.

Next, we go to Mr. Rudyard Griffiths of The Hub.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Rudyard Griffiths, Publisher, The Hub]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to address you and the committee.

Thank you to the other witnesses who are testifying.

I'm going to focus my remarks on the industry that The Hub is part of. That's the news and information industry. I'm going to leave discussion of cultural industries, which we just heard from, to others who are more capable of providing assessment and reflection.

What I want to talk with you about are the effects of AI on the publishing industry and the news industry and what we're seeing here at The Hub, a fast-growing independent news publisher.

We have been in operation for about five years. We see approximately two million unique engagements with our content every 30 days. We operate a suite of public-facing news products from podcasts to newsletters to, of course, a website and a YouTube channel.

Our view is that as we approach AI as an industry, we need to understand both the benefits and the challenges. What we have heard today from the witnesses has understandably been a note of concern about AI, about its effect on creative industries; I would venture that in the news and information industries, there are some clear and positive effects. There is the ability to synthesize large amounts of information quickly and report this out to news consumers. I draw the committee's attention to the remarkable work that is being done in the field of investigative journalism using large language models and large datasets to further transparency and accountability on the part of organizations, including government.

I think we need to approach this conversation with some sophistication and understand that there are important applications of AI in a news context that can generate productivity and profitability for news organizations and also deliver news to readers and consumers that is useful and well researched and genuinely uncovers new and important insights.

In my remaining time, I want to shift a bit to the challenges, because I hope we'll take these up in our discussion.

Many news organizations, for the better part of 2025, have been reporting significant drops in what is called their organic traffic. This is the referral traffic that traditionally has come from Internet search engines. Some news outlets—not The Hub, thankfully, because we have a very diversified platform—are reporting declines of 50%, 70% or 80% of their organic traffic, and that organic traffic, in many cases, for larger news publishers, can make up over 50% of their total traffic.

What in effect is happening is that people are using these powerful tools, the large language models, or LLMs, and searches powered by AI, to access their information. I am sure the committee is familiar with AI Overviews, for example, in Google.

Consumers are using these to access the information they need. They are not going beyond the search page into the websites of, not just news organizations, but anyone who is creating useful information on the Internet. Some recent search engine optimization, SEO, studies have indicated that upwards of 60% of all Google searches are now zero click. Think about that. Google is responsible for 90% of all search volume in Canada, the United States and much of the western world, and 60% of all Google searches are zero click. Within AI Overviews, AI Mode and other LLMs, the click-through rate can be as low as the single digits.

This obviously challenges the business models of many news and information providers on the web, and I hope that we'll get into the discussion of how, from a public policy perspective, we can address a fundamental change in the Internet that is now ongoing as a result of AI, a fundamental change that will affect the websites that exist in the future and the information that will be available to citizens and consumers.

I see that I'm at my five minutes, so I'm going to pause there. I look forward to questions from the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

You had three seconds to go, but I appreciate the succinct way that you have summed up, as any good broadcaster knows how to do.

I'm going to turn the floor over to Ms. Thomas for six minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you so much to each of our panellists for being here and for presenting today.

My first question is going to be directed to Mr. Griffiths from The Hub. There was an article that was published by The Hub entitled “AI offers Canada an open opportunity”. In that article, it states:

Overregulation won’t stop risky actors—it will just sideline responsible innovators and transfer the risk to other countries with an entirely different set of values. A confident, cooperative model rooted in Western values and open participation offers a better path to both prosperity and safety.

Mr. Griffiths, you have outlined a few of the opportunities but also some of the hesitation or maybe challenges in terms of AI and how it functions within the online sphere, but this states that over-regulation is not the answer, despite some of these challenges that we face. Can you expand on that a little more?

[Rudyard Griffiths]

I'll be careful of my time here. This is a conversation that we could have for the better part of this afternoon.

I would just point out that there are some very real challenges that over-regulation represents, and I would simply point to the Online News Act. This committee, the heritage department, was critical in the whole legislative process that created the Online News Act that now sees Google provide $100 million in funding to news groups in order to comply with the terms of the act.

As a part of that agreement, the Online News Act and the regulation that it imposes on the news sector, all news organizations must make all of their content available to Google. If you are a recipient of funding through the Online News Act, you are unable to prevent Google from scraping behind your paywall, scraping subscriber-only content to serve up in their LLM.

I think that we need to understand that, with every regulation, there are trade-offs. I'm sure that the committee members are well aware of this and have spent a lot of time reflecting on this. My point is that there are unintended consequences, and we are already seeing those emerge around the Online News Act and how this committee, the departments and the government will, for example, look at copyright protection as it relates to news organizations, if, in effect, those rights have been signed over to Google in the context of the Online News Act.

I realize that's not a precise answer. There are so many different directions that we can go on this, but I do think the Online News Act is in some ways a cautionary tale. It suggests the challenges of regulating this fast-changing environment and now, unfortunately, news organizations are going to have to live within that act unless it is amended accordingly to provide them greater flexibility to protect their content and to monetize it in a context of the use of that content by various LLMs and search platforms.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Griffiths.

I just want you to dive a little bit deeper into this. The Online News Act, Bill C-18, did come through this committee. There were some challenges with that bill. There were a great deal of concerns that were raised. Go a little bit deeper in terms of how Bill C-18, the Online News Act, facilitates the potential demise, ultimately, of online news if AI continues to generate the type of content that it is currently generating in the sense of these summaries that are available at the top of our search page.

[Rudyard Griffiths]

Yes. People are actually using LLMs to get directly behind paywalls.

Pro tip: If you confront a news website that has an article that is paywalled, you can ask most LLMs to summarize for you that article that's behind the paywall. The reason is that the LLM bots have scraped all the content in that website that is behind the paywall.

This is happening for two reasons.

One, Google requires you to make all of your content available to it, and if you choose to block its bots that are scraping your content for its AI LLM, it will block you from all search results. There is a huge issue there, a question of real fundamental fairness, and I think it needs to be taken up with a company that is responsible for 90% of all search volume in Canada and is telling news outlets like The Hub and others that if we prevent Google's AI bots from accessing content behind our paywall, we will disappear from all search results across a platform that serves the vast majority of the organic traffic to our website, if not all. That's problem number one.

Problem number two is that with the Online News Act, a condition of receiving funds from the Journalism Collective, which was established to disburse the funds, is that you have to make all the content you produce available to Google, to one specific AI company, one specific LLM and arguably to the most powerful one in the marketplace: the originator of AI Overviews within your Chrome browser and the creator of Google AI Mode, which is something that the company is clearly investing in and that it is rolling out across browsers in Canada and around the world.

You simply don't have a choice as a publisher right now, if you are accepting funds under the Online News Act, to block Google from scraping your content, including subscriber-protected content, because, again, you are a recipient of Online News Act funding. That is an issue that either this committee or someone obviously will have to take up, because it removes any bargaining power from a recipient of Online News Act funding to negotiate with Google over fair terms of what that content is worth to Google, to its LLM and to the clients and customers who are using its AI service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you, Mr. Griffiths.

I now turn to Mr. Myles for six minutes.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks so much. That was super interesting. I'm so glad we're having this conversation.

I'm going to turn back to the creative question. I was an artist for 20 years, a songwriter, and I can put “write me a David Myles song” in the generative AI and it will write me a song that sounds a lot like my other songs and uses my voice.

I will try to speak in French.

Ms. Beaulieu and Mr. Raab, from Copibec, I wonder if you could explain how the artificial intelligence models collect data without infringing copyright. Where are we with that at present? How can we do that? Does this information currently come from open sources?

[Arezki Raab]

That is a very good question. Thank you.

From a broader technical perspective, technology players generally and overwhelmingly take content that is already available on the web, without necessarily obtaining permission. There are a few exceptions. Some players have direct agreements with producers who authorize them to use the content.

Otherwise, as Mr. Griffiths explained earlier, it is mainly technological actors, known as software robots, that regularly harvest various websites to copy all their content, which they then store in data sets that serve as sources to feed and train artificial intelligence systems.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

In my case, no one asks my permission to use my songs to create tools that enable them to write other songs that sound like mine. Where do we stand now in terms of these permissions? There aren't any, correct?

[Arezki Raab]

There currently aren't any.

There are models that are “under construction,” if I may use that term, models based primarily on a licensing model that allows these actors to use this content for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

However, to date, they have been able to use them pretty much as they wish.

[Arezki Raab]

Right now, the real issue is that rights holders have no control over their content once it is available on the web. Copibec recently acquired a tool that allows it to monitor the activities of software robots on websites.

We see software robots harvesting content from websites that already have an exclusion file such as a robots.txt page, which sets out the rules for such robots' activities. However, these robots either do not consult this exclusion file or ignore it, and harvest the website's content anyway.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Ms. Desrochers, do you wish to add anything?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

That is a very good explanation, but we can assume that they are doing so without complying with the Copyright Act, which does not allow the use of this data.