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.

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

Mr. Chair, it is needless to say that I will be voting against that because I think my motion is reasonable. The Conservatives might move all the motions they want and for as long as they want, but that will not change my mind. Bill C-32 was introduced at first reading in the House on June 2. It took them five months to introduce the bill at second reading. Out of those five months, there were three months when Parliament was sitting and when they could have introduced it. They could have come back to the House with Bill C-32 at any time. Everyone was expecting it. And yet, we did not see anything resembling Bill C-32 until November 2, about two weeks ago.

And now they are off and running like crazy. They want to stuff C-32 down our throats and do not want to hear from witnesses, probably because they do not want to hear a number of truths. They are disregarding the rules of the game. We absolutely must take the time to do serious work and listen to what witnesses have to say. We need time between meetings to read the serious briefs that witnesses will have prepared. Some will place all their hopes in those briefs; others will infuse theirs with their articulated analyses. As parliamentarians, we must listen to them and respect what they have to say by taking the time to read what they will have written before presenting their summaries to us.

They can move amendments until the cows come home—it appears that is their right—but people on Twitter are listening and are realizing that the Conservatives only want to buy time. That is dumb because they are wasting both their time and our own today by moving amendment upon amendment, when all they want is to buy time. That does not make sense, but I for one am fed up and hope that this will be the last amendment we will have to defeat.

Thank you.

[The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)), Conservative, Gord Brown]

Good morning, everyone. We are of course going to spend some quality time together over the next little while and we are here today pursuant to the order of reference of November 5, 2010, referring Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, to this legislative committee.

What I suggest is that we deal with the following items. Now, a special legislative committee is somewhat different from a standing committee, so I think the first order of business would be for our clerk to give us a little presentation on exactly what the differences are.

Madam Clerk.

Copyright

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

Mr. Speaker, I will continue a little further down the page with all the groups that have come forward in support of Bill C-32, including entertainment software companies such as EA, Microsoft, Nintendo and Ubisoft. I think some of those are in Quebec. They are supporting this.

Ultimately, here is what this is about. The Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal Party all voted earlier in the House to extend something that we referred to as the iTax, a tax on digital devices and memory devices. Canadians do not want to pay fees and taxes on upgrading and updating media. This kind of tax on technology is regressive thinking. That is the Bloc—

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I also have a nice big page. More than 50,000 creators, artists and artisans in Quebec strongly condemn parts of Bill C-32, which contains no fewer than 17 exceptions to the requirement to pay a copyright fee. ADISQ, the UDA, SARTEC, DAMIC and SODEC, in short, Quebec's entire cultural community is demanding amendments.

Will the government amend its bill to protect Quebec artists' copyrights?

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

Mr. Speaker, the special legislative committee will be considering Bill C-32 beginning next week. It is important that the member be aware of how many people actually support the bill: over 400 film, television and interactive media companies; 150 chief executives across Canada, representing companies with $4.5 trillion in assets; 38 multinational software companies, including Corel, Dell, HP, Apple, IBM and Intel; 300 of Canada's board of trade associations; 25 university student associations. It is a big page. I hope he has another question.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion calling for an overhaul of Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, thereby showing their solidarity with the creators and artists who condemn the fact that the bill will create a new group of workers who will be dispossessed of the fruits of their labour to benefit the big distribution companies.

Will the government finally listen to Quebec and amend its bill to protect Quebec artists and culture?

Procedure and House Affairs

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 113(1), I have the honour to present in both official languages the 21st report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the membership of the legislative committee on Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Madam Speaker, our party has been very clear. We are not going to support an iPod tax.

In fact, the member well knows that when the Canadian Recording Industry Association came before committee, it indicated to her, “You want to give us scraps. What we want is a market”.

That is what Bill C-32 would provide. It would provide the opportunity to re-establish a marketplace where people buy music, and it would absolutely shut down illegal file sharing in this country. That is what we need to do. We need that member on board.

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

Madam Speaker, the problem with Bill C-32 is that it takes away a great deal of revenue that artists were already receiving, from private copying for example, without replacing that revenue with something else, quite the contrary.

Again, the parliamentary secretary keeps saying that it was a tax on iPods. It is not a tax; it is a royalty. A tax goes into the pockets of the government, while a royalty goes to an artists' collective that distributes the money according to a complex but fair formula.

To answer the assertion that consumers are not interested in this, I would like to remind the parliamentary secretary that a Conservative Party pollster, Dimitri Pantazopoulos, conducted a survey in January 2010. He found that 71% of Canadians think that the current royalty of 29¢ on blank CDs is fair to consumers. These same Canadians are also prepared to pay royalties that could run between $20 and $30 on MP3 players and iPods, the type of devices that could hold 7,500 songs or 500 CDs. And 58% would pay up to $20, 59% would pay $25, and 56% would pay $30. Consumers—

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

Madam Speaker, I will do my best to provide an answer for that statement as factually as I can.

To begin with, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages is not in the House. That is the first answer I would provide, but the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages is most certainly on board with updating the Copyright Act.

Bill C-32 is an outstanding bill. While it may need some technical amendments, upon which we have consulted with some groups, let us face it. We have the basic tenets of the bill right.

What is so important to the constituent who has just been cited by the hon. member is that we will actually put a system in place again whereby a creator who creates a piece of music, video or intellectual property can sell it, rather than have it stolen or compromised over the Internet.

It was mentioned to me the other day that Canada is the number one location in the world for Bit Torrent sites. Why is this happening? It is happening because we need to update the Copyright Act. Unless members like this get on board, frankly, we will have a difficult time doing that. The hon. member would prefer to favour a system whereby we would put a tax on devices, an iPod tax, a digital tax or something like that, rather than actually tackle the problem. The problem is that the Copyright Act is out of date.

Furthermore, in the statement it was indicated that Bill C-32 is just Bill C-61. Actually, I worked on Bill C-32 and there are a lot of differences between Bill C-32 and Bill C-61. I thought Bill C-61 was a good bill, but Bill C-32 is a much better bill and corrects some of the shortfalls in Bill C-61.

I can also say to the hon. member that we have been told by groups from across the country that this bill does strike the appropriate balance. In fact, I would argue that she should actually speak to her constituents and indicate to them what she is lobbying for, and in fact she has asked the same question many times. What they are actually looking for she refers to as a levy, but my constituents will not see it as a levy. It will be as much as $28 per device, which is what ACTRA has indicated to me when they met with me the other day. It would be added on to digital devices. That is what they would request at the copyright collective. On top of that $28, which would be arbitrarily added to the price of every single digital device, we would then also pay sales taxes in the various jurisdictions, so it becomes even more.

People at home are asking why we are taxing technology. Why would we want to put a tax on technology? They want us to just make the system work. If people want music, they will buy it.

What we want to do is shut down the sites that are allowing people to obtain these works illegally, music, movies or whatever. We want to shut down illegal file-sharing.

At the same time, we will allow for format-shifting, so if people buy CDs and want to format-shift them on to their digital device, their BlackBerry, their iPod, their laptop, their home computer or whatever the case may be, we will allow that. Bill C-32 is entirely technologically neutral. It allows for a review every five years, and it is in the interest of all Canadians. An iPod tax is not in the interest of all Canadians.

The House resumed from November 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Yeah!

In Bill C-32, with regard to the exemption which is extended to education, where it refers to fair dealing, what does the word "fair" mean?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

No, absolutely the advice is informed not only by what's happening in Canada but what also is happening at the international level. You'll notice that in the preamble of Bill C-32, it does reference the fact that we are cognizant of international standards. So yes, it's part of the evaluation.

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

Thank you.

It's excellent to have both Industry and Heritage.

Mr. Blais, we've talked many times, so I'm not going to focus on you today, but I want to say that you did say Canada is a world leader. I certainly agree. I think that in the six years I've been here, with much of the frustration we've had about us lagging behind in terms of moving to the new platforms, of getting our isolated cultural silos into the digital sphere, I'm seeing phenomenal change, even within the last year. In particular I commend you on the magazine file. I think it's really exciting.

But I'd like to talk to Mr. Beaudoin because we don't get that opportunity very often. Please don't take it personally after I've complimented you.

Mr. Beaudoin, I'm interested in where we're going to be going in terms of becoming internationally WIPO-compliant in updating our copyright laws. Certainly we all agree that this is a key element.

I'm interested in the decision around the digital locks. Article 10 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty has some pretty specific language about the right of a country to bring into the digital realm, when it becomes WIPO-compliant, the exemptions that existed under its laws, and that the protection for digital locks, or TPMs, can be legally supported as long as they don't interfere with the rights that have existed already.

I see that under Bill C-32 the public will be granted a number of rights, but those rights don't supersede the digital locks. Why was the choice made to say you can have these rights as long as they don't interfere with the digital lock?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We don't have a lot of time. I will ask a few brief questions.

Mr. Blais, at what point was your department consulted on development of Bill C-32?