Evidence of meeting #110 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses.
Ms. Hénault and Ms. Desrochers, are the Canadian francophonie and Quebec francophonie in danger of literally disappearing in the future?
I know that's a big question.
12:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Yes, it is a big question.
Speaking as the representative of the Canadian coalition, I think we're here because we're working hard to protect and promote cultural specificity across Canada, for both the Quebec francophonie and the minority language communities.
The Canadian and Quebec francophonies are definitely at risk. That's why we're vigilant and why we're here today to call upon you. We need to take action on several fronts to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Ms. Hénault, before you respond, I'd like to remind you that earlier you said that Canada mustn't become a banana republic. Do you view Bill C-27 as the bill of a banana republic?
12:20 p.m.
Director of Legal Affairs, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
That's not what I said.
I'm glad you asked me the question, and I thank you for it.
Since publishing is a global industry, we have frequent discussions with international partners. However, our foreign counterparts are at times surprised to see that Canadian copyright legislation lags behind the rest of the world in all sectors.
The purpose of the European directive is to protect cultural expressions, which I believe is one of the objectives of Europe's artificial intelligence legislation and also a boon to the francophonie and to all languages. However, it's even more important, in an AI context, to have good public policies to support minority cultural industries.
English is obviously a dominant language that travels more easily than others, but that's one of the challenges for Canada's anglophone market because the large American market just next door competes with it.
As for the francophone book publishing industry, Quebec's public policies have truly promoted its development, unlike other cultural industries, and the numbers are there to show it. A 50% market share, a very good number, has been achieved as a result of Quebec's and Canada's public policies, which have been foundational for the development of the book publishing industry.
However, those policies must clearly be updated and modernized. The bill before us is an opportunity to help Canadian culture to continue emerging.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Now I'm going to speak to everyone.
On several occasions, many of you have discussed interoperability with what's being done elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe and the United States. Do you think Bill C-27 goes far enough, even though it was improved by the amendments the government proposed? Considering the answers you've been giving from the start, that doesn't seem to be the case.
To ensure your respective organizations remain viable, do you think it's important that Bill C-27 include the elements you're proposing?
12:25 p.m.
Director of Legal Affairs, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
We're ready to work very hard with you to improve this bill. The providers of AI models, both the general use ones and the big generative AI models, must be subject to the same cultural obligations as those Europe is introducing. We don't want to have European francophone culture in Quebec. We want our own culture to emerge. At any event, we're all in favour of respectfully regulating AI technologies for the common good.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Last week, Mr. Bengio came and told us we had to pass this bill quickly despite its imperfections. However, many other witnesses have said we shouldn't move too quickly because, if we give Canada too rigid a framework and don't take the time to adapt to what Europe is doing to ensure that our respective regimes are interoperable, we would risk limiting innovation and research.
Do you think we should simultaneously improve the bill and take our time to make sure we align our laws with those of other countries?
12:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Innovation and protection for rights holders go hand in hand. I'd even say it would be to the advantage of innovative businesses to work in an environment that has clearly marked guideposts and where it's easy to remunerate rights holders and secure consent. That actually works to everyone's advantage. Innovation and protection for creators shouldn't be mutually opposing concepts.
As regards the importance of passing this bill quickly, I'm going to add to what Ms. Hénault said: we are prepared to work with you to improve it, but we need a framework. There are matters that must be settled promptly because the situation is developing quickly.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you very much.
Before going to Mr. Turnbull, I see that Mr. Rogers wants to speak.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
I just wanted to say, on the U.S./EU question on deepfakes, specifically, that the No AI FRAUD Act in the U.S. is a bipartisan bill that our industry supports widely, and we would encourage all members to take a look at it. I think it provides a great framework for the deepfake issue we've been discussing.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
It's great to have a bit more time to go back to my line of questioning.
My understanding from reading AIDA with the amendments that have been proposed is that it requires organizations building general-purpose systems with the ability to generate output to make their best effort and ensure that the output of those systems can be detected easily or with the aid of free software.
That's one. I think that's a step in the right direction. I'm going to ask you in a second, but I want to cover a couple of other things.
It also significantly strengthens the enforcement framework for privacy and requires express and meaningful consent when sensitive personal information is being collected, used or disclosed. That, to me, covers biometric information, which I think would apply to all of your actors, creators, performers and directors, etc. Perhaps there are some exceptions.
It also requires the companies that are creating the AI systems to keep records related to the creation and operation of the systems, which may suggest they have to keep records of how they're training their systems.
I understand that we could go deeper there, and some of you would want that, but those seem to be three significant steps to create greater transparency.
I want to go to ACTRA first. It seems to me that these are really positive steps. Would you not agree that those are very positive steps that have been added to the bill?
12:25 p.m.
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
Yes, we would, and we started our submission by saying we're thankful that the government is looking at this and we're thankful that Bill C-27 has been brought forward. It has allowed us to have this conversation.
There are significant changes we'd like to see in it, but we are happy to have the conversation. We're happy to be here, and we're glad that Bill C-27 is being discussed.
12:30 p.m.
Director of Legal Affairs, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
Yes, we're headed in the right direction, but I admit to you that, as a lawyer, I was very surprised to read the part of the bill concerning generative AI and not to see the key elements of the European legislation. However, I understand that our bill may have been conceived before the big generative AI models, which are capable of generating text and images, became widespread.
Consequently, we have to adapt our legislation to reality, specifically by drawing on European AI legislation, to which you will soon have access. It has ingredients that can help us improve our own legislation so it genuinely protects Canadian creators and entrepreneurs.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
On the first two points, I'll let my colleagues who more represent interpreters respond.
With regard to keeping records and making them publicly available, keeping records is not enough. What do we do with these records if they are not public? We don't know that. Yes, that's an improvement, but it must be improved again.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
My understanding is that some of these AI models could be 70 billion pieces of information, so is it realistic to make that publicly available? Maybe you think it is, but I'm sort of anticipating that there may be some logistical challenges to throwing the doors wide open and wanting that to be all public. Have you thought about that?
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Well, I'm not dealing with this amount of data. They do, so I guess there's a way of doing it.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
I understand that, but I think you have to have some empathy for what we, as legislators on our side, are trying to do, which is to be practical. There are companies using AI to do all kinds of great things. If we make it really onerous on them, it may stifle some of their ability to do some of the very good things that they're doing as well. I just want you to be aware of that.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Thank you. I totally understand.
I will switch to French again.
In my remarks, I referred to an excerpt from the European Union's draft AI legislation, which isn't yet finalized. It provides for an obligation to make available to the public a sufficiently detailed summary of the way copyright legislation handles protected training data. I think that, if they can do it in the European Union, we can do it in Canada.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Forget, in terms of the three steps or the three additions that I highlighted at the beginning, can you speak to whether those are positive from your perspective?
12:30 p.m.
Manager, Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Directors Guild of Canada
We believe that the current protection provided by AIDA doesn't go far enough. To reiterate the comment made by my colleague, Marie-Julie Desrochers, it's not sufficient in terms of transparency.
Specifically—to give an example about generative AI—there is the fact that there currently is an absence with regard to authorizations from rights holders to use data for mining, for exploitation. The output cannot be protected by copyright. At least there is a consensus that these outputs are problematic because we have no knowledge of which data were used. It creates an issue for creators—for example, for DGC members—whenever they use or would like to use an AI output, but also for all Canadians, we believe, and—
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
I don't want to interrupt you, but I'm sure I'm very close to running out of time.
To summarize what you're saying, then, you're saying that you want copyright protection ahead of an AI model being generated or trained. Is that what you want? Help me understand how.... If an AI model takes 69 billion pieces of information, are you saying that every single rights holder of every single piece of information that may be put into one of these models—the person who created that content—should be entered into an agreement with? Is that what you're saying?
12:35 p.m.
Manager, Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Directors Guild of Canada
No. In fact, we do not currently have access to the information, as we said, of how much data is used and exactly how it's being used, which means that it creates a level of uncertainty.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
I just covered that the builders of these general-purpose systems have to make their best efforts to ensure that it can be detected how they've created that output. Isn't that right? If we put that in the bill, doesn't that actually address the concern that you're bringing up?