Jamie Nicholls

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleagues for providing some of the history on this issue. As I said, I was not a member of the House so I was not privy to all the details. I have not looked at it in depth. I thank both members for informing me on the history of this legislation.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, as the member stated, I was not here at that time so I do not know all the details of what went on at committee. However, I have been informed by other members that the Conservative chair of that committee actually supported the legislation. I cannot speak to the details of that because I am not informed on that.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, no one can deny that Steve Jobs was an innovative thinker in the world of business. He gave innovation and business sophistication a face. He became an icon of the new economy. We have lost him but the innovations of his company, namely the universal digital machine, the personal computer, which members on both sides of the House depend upon for their daily work, remains with us. I doubt any member would argue that deep changes occurred in our society through the introduction of the personal computer in our daily lives.

My first introduction to computing was through my dad. He worked for a company called Control Data as a truck driver and he delivered the cardboard cards that kept the information on the federal government's computers in Ottawa. I used to draw on the backs of the cards that were thrown away, so maybe it was one of the first mash-ups or culture jamming that I did.

Then my dad brought home a tape recorder. We recorded our own stories on it and taped over bits that we did not like. It provided hours of humour listening to our own squeaky voices. Then we realized that maybe we could record stuff we heard on the radio and we listened to songs instead of waiting for them to come on the radio. We could sing to those songs and record at the same time. Our minds were thinking of all the possibilities that we could do with the technology that was put before us.

Around the same time that we were doing these goofy things, Mr. Jobs brought his Apple computers to the world. There was also at this time a lawsuit going on that my hon. colleague mentioned and it was the Betamax case.

We were not early adopters in my family so we did not have a VCR when it first came out. Apparently when the Betamax came out in 1976, the television industry was up in arms. When the VCR came out there were no video stores, no rentals, nothing, so, all we could really do with a VCR was record television shows. In effect it became the first time shifting device. Instead of sitting down when broadcasters dictated, we could choose our own time to watch things; that is, if we could program the device, which many people had difficulty doing, so it became the task of members of my generation to do it because our elders could not figure out how to do it.

Television broadcasters did not like this additional consumer control because they did not want consumers to have control. Their greatest fear was the loss of revenue due to people fast forwarding commercials and watching movies and television shows from their personal libraries instead of tuning in to the broadcaster's schedule. The VCR dictated the time that people could watch shows.

The theory of copyright laws is that they limit control over the use of content to the copyright owner. They leverage the right of copyright into revenue. People cannot use what the copyright owner owns unless they pay. The theory is that revenue creates incentive for the creation of new works.

Broadcasters were worried about their revenue. Movie studios were incensed that consumers could record their movies. The sky would fall they said. They did not want VCR technology. They wanted a ban on it, so they filed a lawsuit against Sony, the maker of the Betamax. The studios wanted control over the design of the VCR. TV broadcasters and movie studios wanted certain recording features on the machine, like the recording button or the fast forward button, eliminated. I ask hon. members to imagine the VCR without a fast forward button or a record button, or let us consider for a second a world where the VCR was banned, which was the original intent of this lawsuit.

The reason why I mention all of this is because technology has evolved. People have to be active in the programming of their family lives. We need a more active population, a wider field of choice and possibilities. They have to have the idea that anything is possible because that is the foundation of innovation. I should remind members that innovation is precisely one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest weaknesses in our Canadian economy right now.

Thankfully, in 1983 the U.S. supreme court decided that the VCR was a legal device. Years later the movie industry hailed the VCR as something great. The industry received huge profits from the sale of videos. The industry that had previously feared and misunderstood the VCR realized that it could get money from this new machine. It wanted to lock the march of progress at that time but realized that the VCR provided a monetized stream for it and it was no longer fearful of it.

When I was 20, I managed to get my hands on a video camera. I taped some of my surroundings, took my favourite REM CD, clipped some stuff from the TV, and put them all together using the VCR. It was not very good, admittedly. It was kind of clunky. However I had created something new, something that allowed my interpretation of the music. That action was something that has gone on for ages.

Troubadours in medieval times would take words of songs and change them. Tellers of oral tales would change elements of the story to suit their local cultures. In our times we have groups like Negativland and DJ Danger Mouse, amongst others that do essentially the same thing.

This legislation would try to make this activity illegal. Unlocking the digital lock, something that a young Norwegian did to DVD encryption in the last decade would become a crime.

The 1998 law that the U.S.A. brought in, the DMCA, was found to be unenforceable. Basically this could not be enforced. It is too hard.

The greater problem here is that we have a digital age and a universal digital machine. All the information that we have nowadays, music, movies, text, is all in digital form now. When it is brought into a digital machine, it all gets translated into the same form of information. There is an innovation that happens there when people interact with that.

All the information is digital, so to be truly effective, to protect the copyright owner as this bill tries to do, one would effectively have to control computers. It is this idea that the U.S. tried to do. It tried to develop this idea of the Fritz chip. Every digital device would have this chip that would lock certain activities on that device. However, computer scientists have said this is impossible, that they would not be able to invent something like that.

Basically, a universal machine, a personal computer, would have to be turned into a somewhat limited machine. The effect of that, of course, would be to limit the innovation that we use these machines for.

There are also questions in legal circles about the provisions in this legislation that say that perhaps these are not measures that would fall under a copyright act, they would fall under ideas of property or civil rights, which are a provincial jurisdiction.

To finish off my discourse, I would like to state 12 reasons why our copyright laws are already strong enough and do not require any renewing to protect the copyright owners.

Number one, Canada has about 36 copyright collectives, many of which have received substantial direct and indirect government subsidies. The U.S. has only about half a dozen with no government support. The U.S. is asking us to impose this legislation, and yet we already have stronger copyright legislation than the U.S. does.

Number two, Canada has a full-time Copyright Board which has normally had four full-time members plus a sitting or retired judge as chairman, currently about a dozen full-time professional and administrative staff. The board has enormous policy and effective law-making powers. No other country of which we are aware comes close to having such a large, permanent, powerful and full-time copyright tribunal.

Number three, broadcasters pay far more for copyright loyalties than their counterparts in the U.S., much of it for rights that do not even exist in the U.S., for example, the ephemeral right. The U.S. provides an outright exemption in 17 U.S.C.112 for the ephemeral right.

About $50 million a year more, over and above, is being demanded by a collective dominated by the American dominated record labels for this right, in addition to amounts now collected by composers, authors and publishers. Canada's Copyright Board heard a major case on commercial radio where this and other issues will be decided in December 2008 and January 2009. However, it will probably be at least 18 months to 2 years after the hearing before a decision is announced, based on the timing of some recent major decisions from the board.

Number four, the Canadian Copyright Board values each right under the Copyright Act brought before it separately with little regard to layering and multiplicity of the tariffs which result in effect for the same transaction. Whether this is an error in approach by the board and/or in policy and/or in legislative drafting is subject to fair debate. The fact is that the U.S. law goes to great lengths to avoid such a result as recent court decisions have confirmed.

Number five, educators pay far more for copyright clearance than their American counterparts pay. There is simply no mechanism in place in the U.S.A. analogous to the excessive $5.16 per K-12 student or the excessive per student and course pack rates payable to access copyright for post-secondary students. There is a similar mechanism for Quebec. Canada's Copyright Board has pushed back on what it considers to be fair dealing in the classroom for what the Supreme Court of Canada arguably requires and American law clearly permits. The Copyright Board's controversial decision is currently under judicial review.

Number six, Access Copyright is trying to collect $24 a year for each full-time employee in Canadian provincial and territorial governments, not including Quebec. This potentially would be a cost of $6.5 million a year for Canadian taxpayers, which seems absurd in view of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, since most, if not all, copying of protected material would likely be for research purposes. Nonetheless, a very expensive proceeding would slowly unfold before the Copyright Board and probably beyond into the courts. Even with an unusual push by the Copyright Board to get this moving, it would likely drag on for years.

Such a tariff or equivalent mechanism would never get off the ground in the U.S.A. for many reasons, including that state sovereign immunity is well established by the U.S. Supreme Court. There may very well be provincial crown immunity in Canada but to what extent it would be invoked is currently unclear. At any rate, this new attempted tariff by Access Copyright has no counterpart in the U.S. and is yet another situation in which U.S. copyright owners could prove to be better off in Canada than in their own country.

Number seven, Canadian law requires payment for certain educational uses that are explicitly exempted in the U.S.A., such as the performance of films in a classroom.

Number eight, Canada has no explicit statutory exception for the performance of music for the purpose of selling sound recordings or audiovisual equipment as is found in section 110(7) of the U.S. copyright law.

Number nine, Canadians pay large amounts to SOCAN and NRCC for performances in countless bars, restaurants, retail stores and other small business establishments. The U.S. notoriously exempts these establishments, contrary to a WTO section 110 ruling which the U.S. continues to flout. The U.S. is by far the leading adjudicated current violator of international copyright law.

I could cite more examples which I found online in a blog. I have shared the author's thoughts with the House on why our copyright laws are already stronger than those of the U.S. and yet we are getting pressure from multinationals to impose this law on Canadians when our law is already sufficiently strong.

With that I will conclude.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech. What does he believe are the most negative aspects of this bill? Can he summarize them?

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, while the member opposite talks about pencils, we over here in the NDP are actually in the digital economy. I do not see many people using pencils any more.

Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman? This out of touch government is stuck in the 20th century. The World Economic Forum, during the tenure of the government, has ranked Canada's competitiveness. It went from 6th to 9th to 12th. Why is the government content with being number 12? Why does the government not want to be the number one most competitive economy in the world? Why does it not want to do that? Why will it not act to become the most competitive economy in the world?

[Champlain Bridge, October 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that is not exactly the answer I was looking for. I was talking about public transit.

Why has the government not made any plans for public transit on the new Champlain Bridge? Every day, 400 buses carry 18,000 passengers across the bridge. There is a great demand. The minister keeps saying that it is a provincial responsibility, while repeating that the project is 100% federal. When will this government adopt a plan for public transit?

[Champlain Bridge, October 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government still refuses to say whether a viable public transit plan will be part of the new Champlain Bridge. First it is making Montreal and the south shore families foot the bill, and now it is ignoring 18,000 public transit passengers who cross that bridge each day.

The government members are so out of touch with the needs of Montreal and the south shore, we have to wonder whether they have ever been there. Why will the government not commit to a vital public transit plan for the Champlain Bridge?

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am disturbed that the debate on this motion is being guillotined. We have time limits in the House. I am aware that I was not prevented from speaking, rather my speech was cut off in accordance with those time limits. However, I believe there are more comments of substance to be said about this legislation that might not be said due to time constraints.

To answer my hon. colleague's question, if we look at the economic record of NDP governments in Canada at the provincial level, we have shown ourselves to be fiscally responsible, fact-based and realistic about measures.

During the cuts to the transfers to provinces, in British Columbia Mike Harcourt's government did not reduce costs. It actually invested in infrastructure at that time. We now see that it is in a healthier position regarding its infrastructure.

There are many examples of NDP governments having been successful at managing the economy.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, our party is in a fairly good position to raise its own money, so it will not be a problem for the party.

What I said was that the most disadvantaged members in our society may not be able to participate in the political process because they will not be able to afford it. Therefore, if political parties have to constantly hit up individuals for money, those who do not have the money or whose social situation is affected by the government's economic policies might resent the fact that a political party is asking them for money. Therefore, we see that the per-vote subsidy would allow those poorest members of society to take part in the political process.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 contains a number of intolerable elements. For one, the Conservative government wishes to use this bill to end public funding for political parties. What a shameful proposal. Public funding for political parties is a key element to maintaining democracy in Canada.

The political party financing system offers equal access for all political parties and gives political parties that cannot afford it an opportunity to have their voices heard. Obviously, the Conservative Party would prefer to have a system that favours rich political parties to the detriment of smaller parties. No one is surprised by the fact that the Conservative government is proposing such a measure. It is yet another tactic to solidify their power and muzzle those who have a different vision for Canada.

Public funding for political parties was implemented to put an end to corruption in politics and meddling by rich entrepreneurs. If the state does not subsidize political parties, the funding must come exclusively from private sources. Without public funding, the government would not be much different from a business. Perhaps the government's next proposal will be that political parties be put on the stock market, I do not know.

I will tell hon. members a little tale. About a year ago I was a student and my wife was a student as well. We are both educated people. I have a master's degree. She was a lawyer in Turkey. All the same, we had a hard time making ends meet through these difficult economic times.

An organizer saw me in the summer of 2010 and asked me if I was interested in becoming a candidate for the NDP. Here I was, struggling to keep my business running, studying and taking care of my family. The party thought I might make a good candidate, so it approached me. I accepted, knowing that the campaign financing through the per vote subsidy would support me rather than having to raise my own money, which would have been an impossibility at that time, since I was working, studying and taking care of my family.

I clearly did not have the time to raise money while I was studying and doing all these things, so the elimination of the per vote subsidy might eliminate guys like me as candidates. Instead, they will prefer the professional politicians who have well-polished political machines and this will leave the grassroots voiceless and further alienate the people from the political process.

Voting and elections are part of the common good, so I do not understand why the Conservatives continue to deride the electoral process and thus show their contempt for the electoral process.

However, with that said, we will be in good shape to raise our own money as a party, living without the subsidy, but my fear is that it will discourage certain candidates, those who cannot get involved in the political process because they do not have the money.

There is nothing worse when one is broke to get hit up by a political party for money. I know this from experience. That is when an individual is earning $25,000 a year and a political party says it needs help and asks if he or she has $500 to give. Most Canadians do not have that money and they resent being asked for it.

That is why the subsidy is in place, so the costs of political activity are borne by the greater public for the greater good. Everyone pays, but those who do not have any money will not get dinged for this $2 per vote. It will be borne by the more well off in the taxation system. That is what happens. Those who do not make enough money during the year do not have to pay for this. Those who are well off would end up paying this money through their taxes.

This is the way of the government. The Conservatives believe more in the prosperity of the few rather than the prosperity of all Canadians. They believe that the electoral and democratic system, through the per vote subsidy of our country, is not worth investing in.

I will leave this subject briefly and say that the government is also scattershot on the economy. The Conservatives continue to applaud their Minister of Finance, who was chosen by Euromoney magazine as the best finance minister in the world two years ago.

The current best finance minister in the world is Wayne Swan, a Labour brother from Australia. Why? Because he not only acted quickly on this year's economic downturn, but the one in 2008 as well.

Both times, Canada's Minister of Finance was asleep at the wheel. While he was reading Forbes, with his feet up on the desk in his fine tailored suit in the warmth of his leather and wood office, perhaps he could not hear the voices of our most poor from his Ottawa bubble. He waited too long before acting and it shows, because these measures in this bill are scattershot. They lack coherency.

That is why the government rests upon its platitudes. It says that it is leader of the G7, while ignoring that the top four countries in the World Economic Forum competitiveness report are not from the G7 at all. Why ignore these countries? Because countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Finland invest in public transit. They have coherent plans. They have state-of-the-art infrastructure. Their governance models are orderly and transparent.

The solution of the government has been like the kid in class who neglects to study. He sits next to the smart kid and when he can peek at what the smart kid is doing, he cribs the smart kid's notes.

The small business tax credit was our idea, except our proposition is in a half measure.

The government's tax credit for small business will not be effective in helping small businesses. We proposed the $4,500 tax credit for small businesses and a reduction in small business tax from 11% to 9%. Perhaps the government did not see that part when it was peeking over our shoulder.

Regarding Montreal's infrastructure, we said that the Champlain Bridge needed to be built. We talked about the economic significance of the bridge and its contribution to productivity. Six months later I listened to the minister repeat my exact words to a room full of journalists. He also said it would not cost the taxpayers anything. I guess he missed part of our notes. We have done our homework on the way PPPs work and they often cost more than a regular procurement. There is no such thing as off-the-book accounting and the government should be transparent about that.

However, I guess when the Conservatives cribbed from our notes, they missed the substance of our argument. They prefer the comfort of their own ideology.

Let me remind the hon. members of the 12 pillars of the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index. I will open the answer book to give them a peek so perhaps they can create the jobs necessary to build this economy. We will give them the answers so we know they do not have to copy off of us.

The basic requirements of the 12 pillars are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, and health and primary education. These are the keys for factor-driven economies.

Efficiency enhancers are: higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, and market size. These are keys for efficiency-driven economies.

Innovation and sophistication factors are: business sophistication and innovation. These are key for innovation-driven economies, of which Canada is one.

The Conference Board of Canada identified weaknesses in these last two areas, business sophistication and innovation. That is why since 2009 Canada has slipped from sixth place to ninth place and in September of this year to twelfth place.

The member for Calgary Centre can cherry-pick the facts and figures in this report, but the fact remains that the stability of our financial system was not due to his government but the foundations built by Canadian governments of the past. That is a fact I will acknowledge to the third party in this House even though its last Prime Minister wished to change that system. We are glad he decided not to. Members can take credit where credit is due, but they must realize that it is a misleading practice to claim credit for something someone else has done.

Let us return to the weaknesses identified in the report, that being innovation and business sophistication. The report states:

--greater R and D spending and producing goods and services higher on the value chain, would enhance Canada’s competitiveness and productive potential going into the future.

What is the government's answer to this criticism on competitiveness? It is to focus on export of raw materials like bitumen from the oil sands. To make it a priority to invest in basic--