House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2015, with 21% of the vote.
Copyright Modernization Act November 24th, 2011
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his speech, specifically the fact that he illustrated the need for compromise in moving forward with copyright.
I would like him to say a few words about the possible compromise that could be satisfactory with regard to today's technologies.
Copyright Modernization Act November 24th, 2011
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member.
This demonstrates that the legislative process quite often lags behind reality. In the lock example, for instance, it is as though this bill visualized digital reality as a physical book that we carry around with us and cannot load into our television.
We have to take advantage of the innovative nature of the digital world in order to modernize the tools that will allow us to both use and refer to works and to remunerate their creators. If we do not shed the mentality of the physical book, as I was illustrating, and shift toward digital methods for managing copyright and remuneration, no one will win.
Copyright Modernization Act November 24th, 2011
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his observations and comments.
I said at the start that a fair balance has not yet been achieved and we should continue to strive for it. This is a very clear illustration that a lot of work remains to be done. I understand the intent. However, we have to recognize that there is still a lot of work to do to achieve this balance in education for this digital world.
Copyright Modernization Act November 24th, 2011
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak to Bill C-11. I think this may be one of the most important bills I have seen in the time I have been a member of Parliament. Why do I say this? Because we are starting to build the future here. Up to now, there have been many bills that dealt with the present or the immediate future, but with this bill we are really talking about the future of our society, the way that young people in our society will live and will grow old.
Talking about copyright is one way to start building the digital society of tomorrow. We can talk about copyright and the digital economy strategy, as the government is doing, but to start with, we have to look at the big picture and talk about the digital society. We have to decide how, in the age of the Internet, globalization and planetary connectivity, we should be organizing our behaviour so that everyone has what they need to do what they want to do freely.
We often talk about balance between creators and consumers, but we tend to forget the distributors. With the Internet, some creators have started to distribute their own works, while under the physical model that has existed for decades, works go through a distributor as intermediary. Several of my colleagues have talked about digital locks, which are obviously intended to satisfy the appetite of distributors more than anything else.
We are trying to promote a balance. Everyone is trying to strike a balance between ease of access and creators’ right to remuneration. Here again, when we talk about creators in the world of the Internet, we are taking a completely different perspective. Because of the ease with which content can now be obtained, everyone can become a creator and distribute what they create on the Internet. I am pleased to see, for example, changes to photographers’ copyright. This is quite a trivial and simple example, but everyone has a digital camera. Anyone can be in the right place at the right time and take a photograph that impresses the entire world, and they too would like to be able to earn income from it. We can see that the concept of creator is being extended. There are those who do it as their occupation, who want to earn a living from it. I think we have to protect that and find a way of balancing use and remuneration. And I am not certain that this is going to be done.
I am very curious about the fact that for consumers, the bill essentially just legalizes certain existing practices. Yes, we have no choice, because everyone can do it. But there seems to be a lack of thought about the future. We are quite simply just transposing our practices in relation to a book or a cassette onto digital formats, when the reality is very different. That is why I am pleased that there are a lot of young members in the House. Young people have experience in the digital world. We are going to have to listen carefully to our young members in this debate because they use these devices day to day more than we do. They manipulate information, and there are tonnes of information being published. For example, every minute, 2,000 pages of scientific content are published. That means that if one of us wanted to read only the scientific content published today, there would be enough for five years. It is enormous.
It cannot be managed the same way that books are managed.
There is also another interesting statistic: we currently have 2 billion Internet users. With that in mind, I would like to address the global nature of the phenomenon. In the material world as we know it, there are borders. However, in the digital world the lines are a little more blurred. Scant attention is paid to this fact; we look at the Internet as if it were a in physical country when, in fact, the world of the immaterial, the world of the Internet, is global. We saw this, for example, with the Arab spring. It illustrates what can happen given the fluidity of information and how it is transmitted. These realities cannot be denied.
To begin with, treaties must have a more international aspect concerning jurisdictions and protection, and this is starting to happen. Given the speed at which information and tools evolve in the digital world, it is not possible to just take a bill that was introduced last year and reintroduce it as is, because it is already outdated, and quite substantially so. It is hard to imagine how anyone could keep up to date with this kind of legislation by simply looking at the work that is being done.
Building the digital society is a work in progress. It is unstoppable. We are starting to build something. We must look beyond our perceptions of the material world and begin to look little more at how this new world can be built. I know that there are a lot of consultations going on, however it is imperative that we continue to listen on this subject, especially to young people. Otherwise, in two years there will be another new bill dealing with copyright with still more major changes because all we will have done is codify existing practices. We should instead be thinking of how to build the digital society for all Canadians who, in fact, are part of this global movement.
A number of countries are starting to put legislation in place. We are going to have to keep a close eye, strategically speaking, on that legislation in order to determine what works and what does not. It is not enough to just listen to certain lobby groups wishing to defend their own interests. In that respect, it is not just about business, it is about use, it is about life. All of these factors must be taken into consideration.
Incidentally, the bill refers to students, but I prefer to talk of youth in general. With today's software tools, it is possible to piece together content from multiple sources and create something new. This is not science fiction; it is something that has been going on for some years now. It is important, therefore, to do more than just protect these works. For instance, when a work is reconstituted, how can the person responsible be compensated for the value of the work that they have done, work that may be different from what goes into reproducing a film or reading a book?
Another example would be a presentation on any subject that a student wishes to use in making an argument. It cannot be stressed enough that there are artistic and literary creations that are, first and foremost, educational. The point of these works is essentially to advance knowledge and culture, as well as to be disseminated. A balance needs to be struck, in my opinion, that is still is not evident in this bill.
I shall close with an example. I had a talk with the director of the Laval University library about the use of books and digital books. Digital books are still being managed just like printed books, one by one. Evidently, there is still much to be done.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.
I am going to ask him a brief question. Back in history, people said, “No taxation without representation”. What we are talking about here is accountability. The senators will not be accountable. So I would like him to comment on this expression: “No representation without accountability”.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.
The purpose of this bill is to make changes by proposing a pool of people who might become senators someday. I would like my colleague to say a little about this stealthy change to our parliamentary system and the consequences of this kind of thing. When we do something to a structure like the parliamentary system, we have to look to see where it is going to take us. Here, I am not certain that the government is seeing the big picture. I would like the member from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord to comment on the big picture we should be looking at when we address this kind of question.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Madam Speaker, I would like to come back to the part of my colleague's speech that had to do with financing these election campaigns, where nothing is clearly worded and the rules seem to be flexible.
I would like him to talk about the inequities there.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question, because it gives me a chance to correct something. As I said, the Senate was initially supposed to represent the regions, but it was also supposed to represent minorities. The hon. member points out another problem with the upper house: groups that are generally under-represented are even more so in the Senate. This is just further proof that the Senate is no longer fulfilling its role.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Madam Speaker, my colleague has raised a very important problem. It shows that we have hit rock bottom. “Rock bottom” is my polite way of sharing how I feel about partisan appointments. The fathers of Confederation wanted a chamber of sober second thought, a chamber of people who could reflect and serve as a sort of counterbalance. Those were great principles. However, in reality, as time passes we get further and further away from these principles and it all becomes shamelessly partisan. It is completely unacceptable.
Senate Reform Act November 22nd, 2011
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting question. History has shown us that when appointments are made by small groups, when we give the party in power the choice to make appointments, all successive governments—both Liberal and Conservative—have made strictly partisan appointments. If we give governments permission to make partisan appointments, the Senate can certainly not fulfill its role. So I do not have much faith in this hypothesis.