Finance committee  Absolutely. The international norm now is life-plus-70. It has been for a long time, so all of Canada's major trading partners have been at life-plus-70 for a very long time. Canadian rights holders are at a disadvantage when in Canada the term of protection is shorter than what it is in the rest of the world, so this will allow Canadian creators to be more competitive and Canada to be more competitive in the cultural sector.

Finance committee  Sure, it extends the time under which a creator and the estate of the creator, as well as the producers of the works, will be able to monetize and get return on their investment. This is absolutely critical to ensuring that there is continued investment in creative works.

Finance committee  Unfortunately, you can't have regulations under that provision. It requires a legislative amendment to be done. That is the only way to set this straight.

Finance committee  No, there is no relation to that scenario.

Finance committee  The 2012 Copyright Modernization Act included quite a few amendments. It was a massive bill. Specifically to “fair dealing”, education was added to fair dealing so that uses can be made of works for educational purposes as long as they are fair. The intent of the change was never to have education institutions stop paying for the copying they were doing.

Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. Before beginning, I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking from the traditional territory of many nations—including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples—which is now home to many diverse first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Canadian Heritage committee  No worries. I answer to all of the different pronunciations.

Canadian Heritage committee  Roanie Levy.

Canadian Heritage committee  We have not had any results yet. We hope that this committee will help us. When the Copyright Act gets amended for the Canada—United States—Mexico Agreement, we expect recommendations 18 to 21 from the committee's report to also be added. We expect the issue to be resolved once and for all, so that we can come up with courses and establish a better partnership with the education sector.

Canadian Heritage committee  The one thing that hasn't been said is that the writing and publishing sector is not against fair dealing for education. That is not what we are against, and that is not what we're asking. We're not asking for fair dealing for education to be removed; we are asking for it to be put in the proper kind of parameter and to be encompassed within the context of licensing as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  One thing that makes a big difference between fair use and fair dealing is that the courts in the U.S. have said that there are no bright-line rules, so you cannot come up with guidelines the way the education sector has done here and say you can copy up to 10%, a chapter, etc., and be blessed to go ahead and roll that out across the country, as has been done in Canada.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. That's another interesting difference. In the U.S., the use of an unpublished work, under fair dealing, tends to be not fair, whereas it's the opposite in Canada. That all just points to the fact that the concept of fairness is very vague and is always changing. Another set of judges might come up with a different set of fairness rules.

Canadian Heritage committee  What we hear and what we've heard also before the court in the York case is that people already pay for it or that what they use is offered in open access licences and therefore they don't need to pay for it, or that the amount they use is so little that it is fair. It's done under an exception.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are two issues before the court right now. The first issue is whether or not the copying guidelines that York University has, which are the same as the rest of the education sector, are fair. In other words, are they legal? Do they comply with the Copyright Act as well as the Supreme Court of Canada's past decisions on fair dealing?

Canadian Heritage committee  That's right, because the interpretation of fair dealing will not turn it into a good law. It will still remain uncertain, and we will still be before the courts again for another 10 years. This has been going on long enough. The damage is not just the payments to the collective for creators and publishers.