Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the bill, although I am not so pleased to rise to speak to the motion for time allocation. I find it hard to believe that this is what we are doing here today. We are actually shutting down debate on copyright legislation.
As far as the bill goes, I want to communicate some things to the House while I have the floor. Copyright legislation and copyright reform is really important to people in the riding of Halifax. This is because it is home to many creators and many consumers.
In the three short years since I was elected, I have attended several different workshops and panel discussions in my community on copyright. I attended a discussion held by Dalhousie Law School, a round table to talk about the key issues that we need to look at here. There were law professors, law students and lawyers who deal with copyright.
I also attended a panel discussion put on by students at NSCAD, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. They are creators who want to understand the key issues and how copyright legislation should be reformed when it comes to our rights as creators.
I was delighted to moderate a panel discussion during the Halifax Pop Explosion. During this great music festival, there were opportunities to learn about different issues facing artists. Copyright was the big panel discussion that folks wanted to have and it was very well attended. I actually learned quite a bit during that panel discussion.
As I said, it is important to the folks in my riding. I look at the number of people who have contacted my office about copyright via email, Facebook and Twitter. Lots of people have contacted me, the majority of whom are creators and, of course, consumers. In this day and age, almost all of us are consumers. They are trying to present to me the perspective of a consumer, the perspective of a creator.
I have heard the Conservatives in this House stand up and talk about why we need copyright reform, and they are right, we absolutely do. This is a very much out-of-date piece of legislation. Yet, in changing it, when I listen to the arguments that have been brought forward, I see arguments that will really stand up for the owners of copyright, which is different from the creators and consumers of copyright. Being owners of copyright is not the same as being consumers or creators.
I am sad because we did see a version of the bill in the last Parliament. That bill was brought forward. It went to committee. We heard from people in the community. We heard from experts and academics. We heard from owners, creators and consumers, and it did not change.
The bill is being brought forward now and there is nothing different about it. That is really disappointing. If we are to be good legislators, if we are to bring forward sound public policy, which I hope is the point, we should be relying on the people with the expertise, people who are actually working day to day with these issues. Not all of us have that expertise.
We are members of the House of Commons. We represent the common people and we are here as their representatives. It does not mean we are experts on copyright.
I have colleagues in the House who handwrite their emails and give them to their staff to then type up and send. Obviously there are folks in this House who have no expertise when it comes to what should happen when we download a video, if they are handwriting their emails.
We need to rely on the people we have at committee, rely on their expertise and heed their advice. We also need to rely on our constituents. I am relying on Carrie Forbes, Jessica McCarvell and Mike Wade, George Edwards and Ricky Tang, and Ryan Clancey. These are folks who have written my office as consumers or creators to say, “Wait a minute, here is my stake in this. As someone in your community, here is what I want you to know”. Sarah Wilkin, Jake Parker, Will Hopkins are all people who have contacted my office. We should be taking their advice and hearing what they have to say.
One of those folks, Evan Walsh, a member of the Halifax community with Stitch Media, wrote to my office. I want to read his letter into the record because I think there is some good advice in it. He wrote:
I would like to take this opportunity to convey my concerns and suggestions for points of revision and amendment in regards to Bill C-11, The Copyright Modernization Act. Although Bill C-11 appears to be more flexible than the previous attempts at copyright reform, this Bill is flawed to its core by the inclusion of strict, anti-circumvention provisions. As a Canadian, I am both concerned and disheartened by how easily my rights are trumped by the overriding and all encompassing protection for digital locks contained in the legislation.
The anti-circumvention provisions included in Bill C-11, unduly equip corporate copyright owners and distributors in the music, movie and video game industries with a powerful set of tools that can be utilized to exercise absolute control over Canadians' interaction with media and technology, and may even undermine Canadians' constitutional rights.
A solution to Bill C-11's contentious core problem and the means to avoid the unintended consequences generated by the broad protection for digital locks is to amend the Bill to permit circumvention for lawful purposes. Not only is this approach compliant with the WIPO Internet Treaties, but it also provides legal protection for digital locks while maintaining the crucial copyright balance. I urge this Government to either add an infringing purpose requirement to the prohibition of circumvention or add an exception to the legislation to address circumvention for lawful purposes.
I strongly believe that in addition to linking the prohibition of circumvention to the act of infringement, it is also paramount for consumers to have commercial access to the tools required to facilitate such lawful acts. It is imperative that the ban on the distribution and marketing of devices or tools that can be used to lawfully circumvent be eliminated by removing--
--and here is a very good suggestion:
--paragraph 41.1(c) and any associated references to it or any paragraphs in the Bill that would be rendered irrelevant by this change.
Some have suggested that market forces will decide the fate of digital locks in Canada and that codifying strong protection for such measures in Canadian law is simply good interim policy. I disagree. Rather than handing control of Canadians' digital rights over to corporations, the Government must consider regulating how digital locks are implemented to ensure they are not simply used to deny user rights. I put forward to this Government that adding a labelling requirement to disclose the use of digital locks on consumer goods be considered. A requirement as such, would permit Canadian consumers to make informed decisions about the products they purchase and the access and usage rights, or lack thereof, they can expect with the ownership of a given product.
In review, I believe it is in the best interest of Canadian consumers and creators alike to amend Bill C-11 to clearly link the act of circumvention to infringement, removing the all-encompassing ban on circumvention tools, and to establish a new TPM labelling provision.
I think that is fairly reasonable.
As I said, we rely on experts. We rely on academics and folks who actually work on these issues day to day. We rely on our communities to give us good advice. Many of those people are experts.
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with the Girl Guides in Halifax. I asked them how many did classes online at school. They all put up their hands. I said “What if I told you that, after a certain number of days, you would not be able to access that information you were given by your teacher anymore?”
These girls, who were 12 to 18 years of age, said that that was not right, as it was class information that their teacher gave them. They accessed it and used it to keep learning. Maybe they would want to use it a year later, in their next class.
We have the experts, and we have out of the mouths of babes. It is clear that there is a lot of concern about this bill and we need to listen to the concerns and make amendments at committee. I am hopeful that will happen this time around.
