Bill C-32 (Historical)

Copyright Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Copyright Act

This enactment amends the Copyright Act to
(a) update the rights and protections of copyright owners to better address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet, so as to be in line with international standards;
(b) clarify Internet service providers’ liability and make the enabling of online copyright infringement itself an infringement of copyright;
(c) permit businesses, educators and libraries to make greater use of copyright material in digital form;
(d) allow educators and students to make greater use of copyright material;
(e) permit certain uses of copyright material by consumers;
(f) give photographers the same rights as other creators;
(g) ensure that it remains technologically neutral; and
(h) mandate its review by Parliament every five years.

Copyright

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House and present a petition brought forward by many people across Canada who are concerned about the government's very unbalanced approach to copyright, particularly its provisions on digital locks, the technological protection measures.

It is one thing to have technological protection measures on copyrighted works to ensure they are not stolen or pirated, but to put technological protection measures in place to erase the rights that Canadians would otherwise be able to enjoy would interfere with the rights that Canadians have, rights that are defined under Canadian parliamentary tradition. Serious questions are being raised about its effect on education and the development of further arts.

Many of these petitioners are concerned that what will end up happening is the locking down of content that Canadians have paid for.

I would like to present this petition and call upon the government to recognize that we need a balanced approach on the digital lock provisions under Bill C-32.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I will say at the outset that I look forward to the member's support for Bill C-32. As somebody who wants to see the arts, culture and creative sector in Canada succeed, she knows that we need to modernize Canada's Copyright Act. I hope the member is going to support Bill C-32, a balanced modernization of the Copyright Act.

With respect to the copying levy, as she puts it, I think my party has taken a position that is very principled, one that suggests we are going to stand up for Canadian consumers. I know the Bloc does not understand what I am saying on this, so I am going to try to speak to it in a manner whereby it is well understood.

Thirty years ago when the transition was first made from vinyl records to cassette tapes, people often made copies on cassette tapes. Cassette tapes could be used for one thing and one thing only: audio recording. There was a system put in place whereby people who made copies of audio recordings paid a small fee, a tax, on the cassette tapes and that fee went to a collective. Many people did not even know they were paying it. I have a problem with that because most people did not know they were paying this tax to begin with, but it did go to a collective.

As technology improved, people could write onto CDs. CDs, unlike cassette tapes, could also be used with computers, for storage of information, quite a bit more storage actually, and they could also be used to store photos. The connection between audio recordings and CDs started to get stretched, but there was a levy, or a tax, placed on blank CDs for all Canadians. People did not pay it in the United States or in a lot of competing jurisdictions, but Canadians were forced to pay it here. A lot of Canadians did not know that.

The device I have on my hip is a telephone, but I can surf the Internet, send emails and take pictures and video with it. Unfortunately, perhaps I could also copy a song onto it. What the Bloc and the NDP propose is that we put an additional tax on devices like this, even Canadian-made devices like the one I am proud to own, which is made by a company in Waterloo. That does not make any sense. Nobody agrees that this makes any sense.

I suggest that I accompany the member to her riding and ask her constituents these simple questions: Are they prepared to pay more money for their iPod, laptop, cell phone or home computer? Are they prepared to pay more money which will go to a collective, which will come up with a formula to redistribute money? Or would they rather have a system that works, a market-based system? That is what Bill C-32 does. It re-establishes the market.

The member was in committee when she heard representatives of the Canadian recording industry say, “You want to give us pennies when what we really need is a market system that works, one that allows us to get paid for the music and albums we are producing”. That is what Bill C-32 delivers and the member should support it.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to come back with a new question for the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.

On June 4, I asked a question about Bill C-32, introduced by the Minister of Industry on June 2. He answered my question himself. However, I was not at all satisfied with the answer, which made no sense. I will repeat my question and someone on the other side of the House will certainly be able to answer it. Here it is:

...there is no monetary compensation for artists in this bill. [In Bill C-32, there is no monetary compensation and previous levies have been taken out.] Sales of music CDs are in free fall and artists' revenues are slowly drying up. However, the appetite for music has not wavered [people have not stopped listening, and neither have I] and makers of MP3 players are still raking in huge profits. ADISQ, UDA [l'Union des artistes], the Canadian Private Copying Collective and even the Union des consommateurs are calling for a levy on digital music players [l'Union des consommateurs is an influential group].

Why is the government denying creators their fair remuneration?

Why has Bill C-32 eliminated all sources of compensation?

There are none left. The private copying levy—I will come back to that in a moment—amounts to $180 billion paid to artists throughout Canada and Quebec over the past 15 years.

The Minister of Industry replied:

We want to help artists, but we also want to help consumers.

This bill is about copyright and the Minister of Industry replies that he wants to help consumers. After that, we saw him go off in all directions to help consumers. The Union des consommateurs does not support Bill C-32, but does support the private copying levy.

I would like to take a moment to explain what that kind of system involves. Artists receive levies from the sale of blank cassettes and CDs. Private copy levies are already in the act. Every time consumers buy a blank cassette or CD, they pay 29¢ to a collective society that redistributes the money to artists according to a complex but fair formula. Artists receive their fair share, which enables them to keep creating. Many artists go for months without earning any income because they are busy creating.

The Union des consommateurs agrees with the system and, in its September 2009 brief, suggested the following:

We therefore suggest extending Part VIII of the Copyright Act [the part that modernizes private copying] to devices such as digital audio recorders, digital video recorders including Tivo and other decoders with integrated hard drives, telephones with digital-capable memories, and DVDs.

That text appears on page 21 of the Union des consommateurs September 2009 brief.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, certainly in the course of my comments I will answer both of those questions. We will continue debate today on Bill C-49, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act.

Tomorrow we will call Bill C-36, the consumer product safety bill. Since it was only reported back from committee today, we will need to adopt a special order, which I will propose after my statement. This is a bill that will help protect children, help protect families, and I think it speaks incredibly well of all four political parties that they put politics aside and are seeking speedy passage of the bill. So I would like to thank everyone in all parties for their support on this important initiative. It is a good day for Parliament.

On Monday, we will continue debate on Bill C-47, the second budget implementation bill. I know the member opposite has been waiting for this and I hope he will have the opportunity to speak to this important piece of legislation.

That would be followed by Bill C-49, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act; Bill S-2, regarding the sex offenders registry; Bill S-3, the tax conventions; Bill C-41, strengthening military justice; Bill C-48, the protecting Canadians by ending sentence discounts for multiple murders act; Bill C-29, safeguarding Canadians' personal information; and Bill C-30, on the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Shoker.

On Tuesday, we will call Bill C-32, copyright modernization. At the conclusion of debate on the bill, we will call Bill C-48, protecting Canadians by ending sentence discounts for multiple murders. Following Bill C-48, we will return to the list for Monday, starting with the budget implementation act, which again speaks to one of the member's questions.

On Tuesday evening we will have a take note debate on honouring our veterans and I will be moving the appropriate motion in a few minutes. I think it again speaks well that we are having a take note debate. I know the member for Vancouver East joined members of the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party in supporting this.

Thursday shall be an allotted day for the New Democratic Party, an opposition day as requested by the House leader for the official opposition.

Therefore, consultations have taken place among the parties and I am pleased to move:

That a take-note debate on the subject of the courageous contribution and service to Canada by Canada's Veterans take place pursuant to Standing Order 53.1, on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

Safeguarding Canadians' Personal Information Act

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to the member from the New Democrat Party. I know that the member for Eglinton—Lawrence was on a roll about chihuahua governments, but I will bring him back to the issue at hand.

The member from the NDP asked what the government was doing about e-commerce. What 1995 language. It demonstrates a gap between what is actually happening in the digital field versus what was happening in the 1990s. I will speak on my own portfolio, as Minister of Canadian Heritage. We are proud of digitizing government content and ensuring that Canadian content is being supported as never before in the new media.

First, we put forward Bill C-32, a good-faith, comprehensive effort to modernize copyright legislation. We are prepared to work with all opposition parties to ensure that this legislation is effective. We have a stand-alone legislative committee, and this bill is going to go forward and help to advance in the digital economy. The first thing that the government has to do is protect people from those who want to harm Canada's creators by stealing from them, ripping them off and legitimizing piracy. We are going to do that.

There are other things that we have done in my department. We have created the Canada media fund. Previously, we had the Canada television fund and the Canada new media fund. To support digital products by Canada's creators, we merged the two to create the Canada media fund. We wanted to ensure that these products are available on the platforms that our media creators choose, not only to support television content but also to support new media, video games, stuff that is streaming online, and stuff that is available for download. We wanted to ensure that Canada's creators have access to more money than ever before to support the creation of content in the digital platform that they choose.

Although we were in a recession, we made a commitment in the last election campaign to maintain or increase funding for the CBC. We have kept our word. The reason is that the CBC has modernized itself. It has become a true pan-Canadian multimedia platform for Canadian content. We have worked with the CBC to ensure that this is the role that it performs. The National Film Board has iPad and iPhone apps that for the first time make it possible to stream Canadian digital content online. Tens of thousands of Canadian films and shorts, children's shows, and documentaries are available online, free, through the web, through iPad apps. We have gone across the board. There is a publications fund to support the digitization of magazines.

No other government in Canadian history has made a more comprehensive and aggressive effort to ensure the digitization of Canadian content and government information.

Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to start off with some of the technical matters at the very beginning, including the title of the bill and some of the functions in clause-by-clause material, but I do want to pick up on one thing that was brought up by my colleague from Sudbury.

He talked about seniors, and this is a perfect illustration of why we work in this House to legislate practices like this, because many seniors now are using devices such as Facebook and text messaging. Pictures can be transferred through our phones now and that sort of thing. A lot of seniors get these emails and a lot of them become victims as a result in many cases. One of the reasons is that it is hard for public relations campaigns, such as Crime Stoppers and others, to keep the pace going with the methods with which they are communicating and getting their bad products out there. It started out with just emails. Now we have things such as text messaging and Facebook.

My hon. colleague brings up a good point. We are looking at victims now, and because the seniors' ranks are becoming much larger because of what we call the baby-boom effect, we do have to keep pace with legislation much more quickly than we have been thus far. I would have to say that we have been a little too delayed in this particular bill, but nonetheless we have it here and it is nice to see that all parties are in support and that we are going to do this exercise once again. I say “once again”, because we started out with Bill C-27, which was left over from the last session. Now we find ourselves with Bill C-28, and some modifications have taken place since then, which I will touch upon in just a few moments, but this indeed does look to enact an electronic commerce protection act, prohibiting the sending of electronic commercial messages, or spam email, without the prior consent of recipients.

One of the key elements of this is going to be the idea of consent and just how we have to formalize this. Not only that, but we have had to expand the idea of what consent means, whether it is implied or not. As we know, if we are dealing with websites, many of them prompt us for contact information and there is always that disclaimer or a box that we have to click on, giving consent to receive unsolicited email. That has to be brought into context.

We have to talk about the international context, which my hon. colleague from Mississauga South mentioned earlier. That is to say that in the context of the G8 we are the last ones to get on board, so it is time we saddled up to this particular issue and did it the right way. I would implore all members to send this to committee as soon as possible, similar to the last go-round with Bill C-27. Some modifications were made in Bill C-27 that help with the language and allow it to be a little more flexible.

This is not on the floor yet, but when we talk about the copyright bill, Bill C-32, which is on the order paper and hopefully will come up for debate pretty soon, we are looking at ways in which the context of digital technology is changing the way we act as legislators. Flexibility is required. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you will agree with me that in the context of flexibility, the legislation has to be devised and written so that it can be enforced in a way that gives people protection and preserves their rights but at the same time goes after the people out to do nefarious things, in other words, circumvent laws, whether it be about copyright and digital locks in Bill C-32 or, in this particular case, getting around the consent for people to receive this information. Sometimes these people are very deceptive. They pretend to be what they are not. They shroud themselves in a realm of legitimacy.

Whether they call themselves a bank or a financial institution, they parade themselves as such and become a part of a person's life or know they can get involved in a person's life by pretending to be something that has a great reputation. With the imagination of using emails, Facebook and messaging, they have ways of doing this. It seems there are advances every day in the criminality of this type of activity. So we have to look at that.

The other issue we have to look at, of course, is digital technology itself and how it proliferates in a short period of time. When we first tackled the issue in the House, we looked at it through a panel. We set up a panel to decide how we were going to deal with all the spam email. Billions of dollars every year are spent on trying to cut down on spam email. It now constitutes the majority of traffic around the world when it comes to e-commerce and emailing in general, for that matter.

We can well imagine that back then, as it was becoming a problem, we set up a panel. That was in 2004 and 2005 when we were primarily looking at emails. There was just that one form of communication that we were focused on. Since then, we have text messages and Facebook, which was not looked at in 2004-05 as it is a relatively new concept, and other modes of communication such as texting.

Right now, Mr. Speaker, I can take a picture of you and send it around the world. How about that?

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Madam Speaker, I was not really prepared to discuss this question from my Bloc Québécois colleague, but we are here to discuss the important matter of the firearms registry. I will take this opportunity to point out that our government is against a new tax, which goes against the interests of consumers, on iPods, BlackBerrys, computers, automobiles, laptops and anything else that is capable of playing music. But that is what the Bloc Québécois is proposing.

I understand the concerns she has raised about copyright, and that is why our government introduced Bill C-32, which would modernize our country's copyright laws. We conducted unprecedented consultations to ensure that everyone was involved in the copyright debate. As a result of our consultations, we introduced Bill C-32, a very responsible bill for both consumers and artists.

What we are talking about here is the fact that the NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois want to impose a huge new tax on consumers. The last time that the Bloc Québécois spoke here, the last time that this tax was proposed, it was a new $75 tax on every iPod, BlackBerry, computer and laptop, on anything that is capable of playing music.

This idea of imposing a new tax on iPods and MP3 players is not a new idea because there are very few new ideas, unfortunately, that come from the opposition on the issues of copyright and taxes. However, this idea is really toxic and, frankly, really dumb. This would punish consumers if we were to put in place a tax of up to $75 on iPods, Blackberries, cell phones, laptops, computers, memory sticks and automobiles, anything that is capable of playing digital music.

I understand the idea of modernizing the private copying levy and I understand the desire, but every time the opposition has come up with an idea with regard to this, I can say, as we have looked at this issue and we have struggled with this issue, that it gets very tricky.

This simplistic idea that has been put forward by the opposition, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberal Party, with regard to a new iPod tax is incredibly shortsighted and it is an incredibly bad idea for consumers. It is not the way to go. We have artist after artist who has come forward and said that this is not the way to go.

We will go forward as a government will Bill C-32, the modernizing copyright legislation. We are prepared to work with the opposition parties to ensure the legislation is in the interest of consumers and in the interest of creators. We will not support an amendment to our copyright bill that puts in place a massive new tax on consumers. We will not support that. It will not happen.

However, we are more than prepared to take forward reasonable ideas to ensure that artists' creations are protected and to ensure that just compensation and the framework for that, through effective copyright legislation, goes forward. We also want to ensure that the legislation takes care of what is in the best interests of consumers.

This idea from the Bloc Québécois is a massive tax increase on consumers. It does not achieve the balance that we want to achieve, which is in the interest of consumers and creators, and we will block every effort by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois to put forward any tax on consumers that will punish consumers and do nothing that is in the long-term interest of creators.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to be back in the late show once again. As you know, I have often taken part because we never get good answers to the questions we ask in the House. Question period is aptly named; it certainly is not answer period.

On April 20, I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage a question in the House because he had stated the day before that only ADISQ was in favour of a royalty on MP3s. Everyone knows that an MP3 royalty is not a tax. It is money paid to a collective society that distributes rights, and that money is redistributed to artists according to a complex but fair formula.

Members of all of our households have purchased CDs and made copies for our MP3 players. We used to burn copies on blank CDs to play in our cars, and long before that, we made copies on four-track cassettes. These days, we are making fewer and fewer copies on four-track cassettes and CDs.

The current law, a descendant of the long-ago Bill C-42, recognizes the principle of private copying. We know that people make copies for themselves, and that is why royalties exist. They compensate for the shortfall in copyright revenue that artists might receive. They do not exist to legalize copying for any purpose or in any way whatsoever. Their purpose is not to market copies—anything but. They exist so that consumers do not feel like thieves every time they make a personal copy to listen to on their computer or MP3 player.

Of course we cannot purchase as many original CDs by a single artist as we have devices in our homes. The principle of private copying allows a family that purchases a CD to copy it to various media. Naturally, when the current legislation was passed in 1995, MP3 players did not exist. They do now. We are asking, have asked and will continue to ask the government, in the next few weeks, months and over the course of the year, when discussing Bill C-32, to update the legislative provisions for private copying by ensuring that not only will there be a levy on CDs, not only will there be a levy on cassettes, but there will also be a levy on MP3 players such as iPods. Nothing more, nothing less.

I know that in a few minutes my Conservative colleague will reply that it will cost $75 per device. An amount has never been set but it is obvious that this is a reasonable amount. We pay 29¢ in royalties on all blank cassettes and CDs. That is not a tax. We said it before and we will say it again. It is not in any way a tax. A tax is paid to government but in this case the payment goes to the artists. It is quite simply a royalty paid to artists. We already do this when we purchase an original CD of a musical work because a portion of the money is paid to the artist for copyright.

That was the purpose of my question.

Copyright

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, groups of Quebec's artists, creators, authors, publishers and even consumers are opposed to Bill C-32 on copyright because the bill ignores the consensus of the Quebec cultural community concerning the remuneration of artists through levies on digital audio recorders and through making Internet service providers more accountable.

Will the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages admit that everyone in Quebec is opposed to his copyright vision, which benefits neither creators nor consumers?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, that was remarkable. The member jumped back and forth between both groups on both sides and talked both in favour of stronger, more prohibitive copyright legislation and weaker copyright legislation in the exact same speech. It is remarkable.

When we write a copyright bill, such as Bill C-32, it is about the appropriate balance.

The member is going to get angry when I say this. She has advocated on behalf of a tax on iPods, MP3s, laptops, PDAs, and BlackBerrys. She wants to put a tax on them. She wants consumers to pay this tax into some conglomerate fund which would then trickle down to the artists. We do not want to tax consumers.

She talked about how consumer groups are upset about digital locks. It is interesting. I gather from the member's speech that she is in favour of circumvention of digital locks. These are the technological protection measures that would protect against people buying a DVD, putting it on their computer and then sending it out to the Internet.

Under her provision, she is saying that they should be able to do that. It would not pay actors and it certainly would not pay the movie companies, but she is saying that she would put a levy on iPods and so forth so that she could then give the money to music artists for people who break the digital locks on movies and then send them out to the Internet. This does not make any sense at all. The people at home have to be confused. As I talk this out, her positions are in complete contrast with one another.

Bill C-32 is about balance. It is about balancing the rights of consumers and the rights of rights holders. That is why groups across the spectrum, musicians, actors, film companies, students, schools, have come forward and said that it is a balanced bill. Is it perfect? It is pretty tough to write a perfect copyright bill by its very nature. People are going to say they would really like to have just a little bit more rights one way or the other. Consumers would like just a bit more liberty in some ways and rights holders would like to have a bit more protection in some ways. It is about balancing the two.

What people cannot do is argue both in favour of stronger copyright rules and weaker copyright rules and somehow come out with a bill at the other end.

What she has proposed in her speech just a few minutes ago would anger artists and consumers at the exact same time. The member comes from Quebec. I am sure she knows that Montreal is the number three destination for the creation of video games in the world. The position the member is arguing is contrary to those software creators. They are the ones who are asking for technological protection measures to protect the work they are doing in the video game software industry. I cannot believe she would argue that we should not have digital locks on these things.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on April 19, I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages a question in this House about royalties on MP3s and copyrights. The minister told me to wait to see his bill in order to discuss it with full knowledge of the facts. I can now discuss it with full knowledge of the facts, for we have seen the bill.

The minister was tweeting again today on Twitter. He said that Bill C-32 was fair and had broad and deep support from across Canada, including from consumers, provincial ministers, the software industry, the music, film and television industries, small businesses, chambers of commerce and photographers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We have seen that creators, artists, cultural organizations and the publishing community do not support this bill. Only businesses support it. I do not know what planet he lives on if he really believes that the bill has broad support across Canada.

Every day we receive press releases, open letters and opinion pieces criticizing this bill. I receive them from people not only from Quebec, but from the rest of Canada.

Today, the Canadian Consumer Initiative wrote to the minister to tell him that he was completely out to lunch on Monday, when, in answer to a question, he told me that this bill had the support of consumers and that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce acts in the best interests of the Conservatives, I mean consumers. That was a Freudian slip. It acts in the best interests of the Conservatives, not consumers.

The Canadian Consumer Initiative set the record straight and again condemned the protection of digital locks and the anti-circumvention provisions in the current bill. The letter goes on to say that, in the opinion of the initiative's members, the bill's provisions undermine Canadian consumer interests. I am not the one saying this; it is the Canadian Consumer Initiative, which is made up of four of Canada's largest consumer associations: the Consumers Council of Canada, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Option consommateurs and the Union des consommateurs.

When the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages confuses a chamber of commerce with a consumer advocacy group, we wonder where we are going with this sort of argument. We wonder whether it is really worthwhile talking to someone who does not know what he is talking about.

Today, the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, ANEL, weighed in on this issue. It said that its board of directors had voted on a strong resolution against Bill C-32. According to ANEL, which is a Canada-wide association, new exceptions to fair use will deprive copyright holders of income they would normally receive. After examining all the provisions as a whole, in an attempt to anticipate the effects of the marketplace, the ANEL board of directors concluded that the bill would lead to the collapse of educational publishing, create serious difficulties for their collective and represent an obstacle to the development of its digital strategy. ANEL also concluded that it was a direct attack on traditional Quebec values of support for creators.

I would like to take a few moments to talk about AGAMM, which includes almost every big name in the Quebec music industry. This organization proposed that the minister have Internet service providers make a financial contribution consisting of a percentage of their sales revenues to music rights holders.

I do not have time to talk about ADISQ. I will let my colleague answer and come back to that.

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-32, which we introduced in the House of Commons, is fair to both consumers and creators.

The Canadian Film and Television Production Association applauds the government’s proposed copyright reform. Film, television and online content creation is responsible for more than 160,000 jobs in Canada.

The government’s actions play an important part in ensuring that those jobs are maintained and that new jobs are added. We kept the promises that we made to creators and consumers.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, artists and creators are very critical of Bill C-32, the copyright bill. The bill's new digital lock will not help, because they will have to play the part of investigator, detective and lawyer—just like Claude Robinson—if they want their rights to be respected.

Does the minister understand that by forcing creators, artists and artisans to enforce their rights themselves, he is not giving copyright holders enough protection?

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, we are here. After the last election campaign, we made a commitment to Canadians in our throne speech to strengthen our system of copyright laws, which we have done. We have introduced our Bill C-32 here in the House to improve our copyright laws. This bill is balanced, and it serves the interests of consumers and creators.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government's Bill C-32, which is supposed to protect copyright, will allow people to copy any legitimately acquired work onto the device of their choice for personal use, without fear of repercussions. However, the ADISQ, UDA, Canadian Private Copying Collective and SPACQ would have preferred a levy on digital players like the one on blank CDs, which a House majority recently voted for.

Why is the government refusing to ensure that creators receive fair compensation?