Industry committee  Yes, absolutely. The only way copyright works is if we know what's in it. The only way we can know what's in it is if it's made broadly and widely available. As I said in my opening statement, even if that's a really big spreadsheet, that shouldn't concern anyone.

Industry committee  Bill C-27 currently provides that data must be retained, but we think that's not enough and request that data be both retained and made available to the public. Second, to make the Copyright Act more effective, we request that this be clearly stated in Bill C-27 in order to clarify certain obligations of transparency.

Bill C-374 An Act to amend the Copyright Act (Crown copyright)

R.S., c. C-42 Copyright Act 1 Section 12 of the Copyright Act is replaced by the following: No copyright — His Majesty 12 Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown, no copyright subsists in any work that is, or has been, prepared or published by or under the direction or control of His Majesty or any government department.

Copyright Act  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-374, an act to amend the Copyright Act (Crown copyright). Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my seconder of the bill. This is important for Canada, in particular for businesses, researchers and educators. The act to amend the Copyright Act would actually address a law that was created back in 1911, only adjusted in 1921, where right now, government research, innovation papers and a number of materials are not released to the public.

Industry committee  How do we allow for greater assurance that we have great data to train models? There are techniques, too, on the output side to ensure that we suppress copyrighted content. It is possible to ensure that models have suppression techniques to ensure that copyrighted content is not on the output side of the model It's good to separate the discussion into understanding the two aspects of AI and ensure that we have good models that reflect Canadian content as well.

Industry committee  With regard to deepfakes, similar to my colleague from AWS, we see an opportunity to either make adjustments to the Criminal Code or think about opportunities to address that concern in the upcoming online harms legislation. With regard to copyright, from our perspective there's a need to think about how we're enabling the use of AI to advance the spread of knowledge, to enable new creative works consistent with copyright law and to protect the rights and needs of creators.

Industry committee  If that's a harm committee members are concerned about, that can be addressed through a quick amendment to the Canada Elections Act. There's even the Copyright Act on issues of creator rights. The use of material in the context of AI development that impacts creator rights can be dealt with through the Copyright Act as well. There are existing statutes.

Parliament of Canada Act  AI tools can create art using people's thoughts and ideas, and this can lead to infringements on copyrights of artistic styles and works. The availability of Al-powered tools, like image editing or video production, may lead to a devaluation of traditional artistic skills and craftsmanship.

Industry committee  I noted down which ones we discussed today: The Canada Health Act, the Canada Elections Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the Criminal Code, the Copyright Act, the Patent Act and measures specifically targeting advertising for children. These types of changes would require endless legislative work, especially with the type of Parliament we’re sitting in today.

Industry committee  I think it is worth discussing an accountability framework to account for harm and bias and it is worth discussing the privacy change to account for AI. It is also possibly warranted to make a change in the Copyright Act to account for generative AI and the new challenges it brings for copyright.

Industry committee  Cofone can highlight a little bit of this with his governance background—is that I met with ACTRA, the actors guild, and a lot of their concerns on this issue have to be dealt with through the Copyright Act. If we don't somehow deal with it in this bill, though, then we actually leave a gaping hole for not just abuse of the actors—that includes children—and their welfare, but we also leave a blind spot for how the public can be manipulated and so forth in everything from consumer society to politics to a whole slew of things.

Industry committee  Copyright is not an area of my expertise, but I would say that updating the Copyright Act and then linking that into this bill would be a way to go.

Information & Ethics committee  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development conducted a study on AI with G7 ministers, and the three greatest risks identified were disinformation or misinformation, the effects on copyright, and the effects on privacy. So this is a very important issue. Last week, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced its three strategic priorities. The first is optimizing and modernizing the office's structure to ensure we have the maximum impact.

Industry committee  I would now like to come back to something that may seem innocuous. My colleague Ms. Rempel Garner asked you some questions and talked about copyright when our faces are used. I understand that you may not have the necessary expertise, but you said that it wasn't always possible, based on the results of the model, to identify the faces used.

Industry committee  It would be very difficult to trace back what the offending pieces of training data are that the copyright claims are being made with respect to.