Bill C-294

An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability)

This enactment amends the Copyright Act to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent a technological protection measure to make a computer program or a device in which it is embedded interoperable with any other computer program, device or component.

[Samir Chhabra]

The issue raised in C-244 and C-294 was related to the circumvention of technological protection measures. In the case of the United States, the approaches were different in terms of what cause or what rationale enables the circumvention of a technological production measure. That was the reason for the flag that was provided and raised at committee. In this instance, we do not see the same issue.

Perhaps my colleague is interested in jumping in with—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I want to get some clarification from the officials on this. During the new committee study of Bill C-244, the right to repair, and Bill C-294, the department raised some serious issues about the inclusion of diagnosis, maintaining and repairing and the right to repair as potentially being in violation of CUSMA.

Could the officials clarify a little more that we're not going to be looking at any trading conflicts with the U.S. in regard to this amendment or anything with the right to repair?

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is fantastic to be able to rise once again on behalf of the great people of the province of Saskatchewan, particularly the people in the southwest corner, whom I have the privilege of representing.

Right off the top, I want to just talk about the month of May, which is MS Awareness Month. One of the big asks of the MS community, in particular by MS Canada, is to have the government fund $15 million towards research on the disease, as well as the prevention and repair side of things, for people who suffer with MS.

Normally, I do not get up to ask the government to spend more money, because we know the Liberals are fantastic at spending boatloads of money and accomplishing nothing with it. However, in this particular case, we know that there is over $3.4 billion in costs to the government and in lost wages by people who suffer from MS. A $15-million investment would actually result in a tremendous amount of savings for the government for the taxpayer. It would also result in a higher quality of life for people who suffer from MS.

I just wanted to start off my budget speech by mentioning that. If the Liberals were truly listening to what Canadians want and would like to see, this is something that they could have included in this budget to make sure that they are actually working to better the lives of people in Canada. Canada has the highest rates of people who suffer from MS in the world, with my wife being one of those people as well.

I could not help but notice in the budget that there is a very small amount listed for agriculture. In fact, I believe that agriculture is first mentioned on page 131 of the budget, and it continues for the next page and a half.

One of the issues in the budget concerns the livestock tax deferral. I just want to talk about that briefly, because a lot of ranchers in my riding have been dealing with droughtlike conditions for the last number of years, which is nothing new. We live in southwest Saskatchewan, a part of the country where rain has never been a feature. It is not something that we regularly get, so it is not new for us to have droughtlike conditions.

There is a government program called the livestock tax deferral. What happens is that the local RM has to declare a state of disaster. Then the government takes a look at the rainfall and the forage percentage over the year to see if it has fallen below 50%, I believe. There is quite a process involved in implementing or triggering the livestock tax deferral. Clarification around that would go a long way to help producers to have more certainty in their industry. An issue too, though, is that the livestock tax deferral can only be used for one year. We know that, in Saskatchewan, it sometimes takes more than one year for one's pasture to regenerate. A lot of producers and organizations, such as the Canadian Cattle Association and the Saskatchewan cattle association, are saying that allowing the livestock tax deferral to be used over a period of three years would actually be a lot more beneficial. It would allow for better environmental protection and for pastures to be able to regenerate.

My riding name is Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The “grasslands” part of the name comes from the fact that we have some of the largest amounts of still untouched native prairie grass in my part of the country. It has not been broken up. It has been grazed for years. Buffalo used to be the keystone species there; they have since been reintroduced to the grasslands. Cattle have done a tremendous job of being the keystone species in the grasslands.

For ranchers who have native prairie grass on their ranch, in their rotation, it is of huge value to them to be able to preserve that grass. When ranchers sell their herd, they will get the one-year livestock tax deferral. If they are forced to rebuy and to spend more on cattle to get them back on the land, there will be a degradation of that land. Having a three-year window would actually allow for the pasture to properly regenerate. Even if there is only a small amount of rainfall, that three-year time window would allow for better regeneration of the pasture. The environment would be taken care of in a way that would allow producers to purchase cattle, regraze the land once again and keep that keystone species on the land as well.

That is something that would happen with the livestock tax deferral. If the government were truly listening to the producer groups it mentions in the budget, then that is something it would actually be talking about and looking to implement. After nine years, it definitely has not done that.

One of the other parts about it, which actually took up about a page of the page and a half in that, is the government's commitment to starting consultations, once again, on interoperability. It is really funny that this is in there. I had the privilege to sponsor Bill C-294, which is an act to amend the Copyright Act for interoperability. There are many fantastic short-line manufacturers in Saskatchewan, and quite frankly all across this country, that make great agricultural products. They also make products for other industries, but I am going to focus on the agricultural side of it.

It is funny that this section is included in the “Affordable Groceries” section of the budget. The government is finally realizing that when agriculture is treated with respect and producers are allowed to grow food in the most economical way, if we let them have a choice, they will be able to grow food in a more efficient manner, which, in the long run, is going to have a positive impact on the price of groceries and hopefully lead to groceries being more affordable.

However, Bill C-294 was tabled over two years ago and still has not received royal assent. It did pass this House about a year ago now, and nothing has been done with it so far. In the 2023 budget, the government said it was going to start consultations then. It still has not done it. In 2024, it is once again committing to starting consultations, in June. It has a specific time frame in which it wants to start consultations, but given its previous track record of not doing it, we will wait and see what actually happens.

What would be even better is if Bill C-294 were able to get royal assent. My bill passed the House of Commons unanimously. When it went through committee stage, we were able to accept a friendly government amendment to the bill, which put it a bit more in line with some of the government's priorities but with the law as well. This is important because we want as much certainty as we can possibly get, even though we had done some legal work in the buildup to the bill. We accepted that friendly amendment. This is a bill that is non-controversial, but it is something that would get things done. It would have a whole-of-economy effect and impact.

If the government wants to go through consultations, I am going to make it even simpler. What the government can do is go back and read the report that was done by the government branch that used to be called Western Economic Diversification, which is now PrairiesCan. The government can go back and read the report, which was released in 2020, on this very issue. What it will find in that report is the economic impact that agricultural manufacturing has across the entire country. This is not just a southern Saskatchewan issue; this is a whole-of-Canada issue.

The government can read that report. It can see the dollar value assigned to it. It can see how every single province benefits from it. It is a nation-building exercise. It does not even have to do the consultations; that has already been done. The government department already did the report. The government can read it. The consultations are done.

We are counting on the Senate passing and giving royal assent to Bill C-294 as quickly as possible.

If the government wants to impact the price of groceries, what it could also do is have this House pass Bill C-234 in its original form. It came back from the Senate with a huge amendment that gutted the original intent of the bill, which was to put an exemption in place for all on-farm buildings for all types of fuel, which is important when we consider greenhouses, dairy barns, chicken barns and pig barns. There is a huge level of cost that goes into running those facilities with the carbon tax, so passing Bill C-234 in its original form would have a huge impact on the Canadian economy. It would have a huge impact on the price of food.

Removing the carbon tax in its entirety would be beneficial as well, when we look at the transportation costs and the costs to the grocery stores. It is a huge detriment, so scrapping the carbon tax altogether would also be of huge benefit, and I do not see any of that in the budget either.

Consideration of Government Business No. 30

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place and represent the amazing people of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, as well as all Canadians.

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it is breathtaking just how desperate the Liberals have become. In the House of Commons, we are witnessing a curious trend: imitation disguised as Liberal innovation.

The recent flurry of activity from our Liberal counterparts presents a spectacle. It is desperation masquerading as originality.

It is really fascinating. The Liberals have hastily adopted common-sense Conservative strategies to cloak their actions as a remedy for affordability, all the while seeking recognition for ideas that were not theirs to begin with.

Unfortunately, their replica has flaws, and the Liberals know that they need to ram this legislation through before Canadians realize that it is nothing more than a cheap knock-off.

If the government is looking for another idea to steal from Conservatives, maybe it could finally decide to repeal the carbon taxes, which are the real reason Canadians are facing the soaring cost of living.

First, let us dissect the fabric of the Liberals' imitation. The Liberals’ newfound fascination with affordable living appears more as a last-ditch effort to mirror our common-sense Conservative initiatives, although it lacks the authenticity and the understanding required to genuinely address the woes of everyday Canadians.

This sudden adoption reeks of desperation. Maybe they have seen the polls. Maybe they are hearing in their ridings that the Conservatives are the only party putting forward common-sense ideas.

Maybe the Conservative message of common sense sounds good to them too, but their leadership comes down heavy-handedly when they vote in favour of our legislation, like the Liberal member for Avalon, who tried to do the right thing for his constituents initially, although he eventually betrayed them and caved to his master like a typical Liberal always does.

The government's thievery of Conservative ideas seems relentless. Were members aware that the fall economic statement contained no less than four Conservative private members’ bills?

For example, there is Bill C-323, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act with respect to mental health services, from the good doctor from Cumberland—Colchester. There is Bill C-318, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Canada Labour Code for adoptive and intended parents, from my friend, the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster. There is Bill C-294, an act to amend the Copyright Act, on interoperability, from my riding neighbour to the east, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands. There is Bill C-365, an act respecting the implementation of a consumer-led banking system for Canadians by the amazing member for Bay of Quinte.

While the Liberals eagerly snatch concepts from our playbook, they turn a blind eye to the actual root cause of the economic pains faced by Canadians: their out-of-control debt and deficits, out-of-control spending, a carbon tax that does not do anything for the environment, a rapid housing initiative that cannot build homes and inflation that results from all of their financial mismanagement.

These are the real culprits behind the soaring cost of living, behind escalating interest rates and the burdensome grocery store bills and fuel prices that burden the citizens of this country every day. Our Conservative blueprint for affordable living, particularly our Conservative leader’s building homes not bureaucracy act, stands as a testament to our commitment to the welfare of Canadians.

Our messaging, like the “bring it home” initiative, encapsulates not just slogans but a genuine drive to resolve the housing crisis plaguing our nation.

In contrast, the Liberals’ response to this crisis they partly crafted lacks the depth and innovation required for a lasting solution. Their plan, often confined within the boundaries of existing programs and reannouncements, fails to project a path forward. It is a patchwork of recycled notions rather than a blueprint for real, sustainable change, and they have no problem announcing the same promises over and over again with the same pompous Liberal attitude that most Canadians have grown tired of.

The question remains: Are the Liberals truly addressing the housing crisis or merely engaging in performative arts to mitigate the damage that their policies have caused and the fact that the vast majority of Canadians desire to see them removed from office? Their sudden attempt to provide solutions and then force them on Canadians seems more reactive than proactive, a calculated response to evade accountability rather than an earnest effort to rectify the havoc they created. I can only hope it means they are getting ready for an election.

Liberals may tout their actions as responsive and comprehensive, but in reality, they bear the marks of limited vision and failure of leadership.

The building homes not bureaucracy act, as presented by our Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, is not just a set of words—

Copyright Act

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to a bill that is vital to residents of Abitibi—Témiscamingue and Quebec, and that is Bill C‑244, which was introduced by the hon. member for Richmond Centre.

Bill C‑244 amends the Copyright Act in order to allow a person to circumvent a technological protection measure, or TPM, if the circumvention is solely for the purpose of diagnosing, maintaining or repairing a product.

This bill was examined at almost the same time as Bill C‑294 on interoperability. What is interesting is that the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology was able to look at the issue from different angles and improve the bill's content to allow for the right to repair, to fight waste and to better protect the jobs of repair people, mechanics and technicians in the regions.

Over the past few years, it has become a lot more complicated to repair objects. Our vehicles are turning into motorized computers, and access to programming codes is needed to diagnose problems with them. Unfortunately, more and more manufacturers are refusing to share those codes or are charging independent mechanics exorbitant fees to get them, supposedly for security reasons. This situation is jeopardizing these small businesses and threatening their survival.

How are we to manage when our brand new smart phones get a cracked screen or some other defect? What do we do when our high-end, front-loading washing machine suddenly stops working? What about our three-year-old farm machinery in need of repair?

Let us consider Apple's policy on repairing its products, for example. All Apple products must be repaired at Apple stores, if the parts are available.

By patenting the majority of these parts, Apple holds on to its monopoly, while the electronic locks created by its operating software, protected under the Copyright Act, make counterfeiting liable to prosecution. For a resident of Abitibi—Témiscamingue, the situation is even more troublesome considering that the region has no Apple store. To get the service they are entitled to as consumers, these residents have to ship their product by mail or travel more than 600 kilometres to a large urban centre. Incidentally, the situation is practically the same for passports. That needs to change.

Manufacturers are increasingly choosing the answer for us: toss it out and buy a new one. Tight grips on replacement parts, restrictive design, the use of digital locks and other legal protections have all contributed to the difficulty in repairing and maintaining the increasingly high-tech things that surround us.

Bill C-244 presents a solution to the calls from many individuals who support the right to repair in Quebec. Their message is consistent: The government must make legislative changes that will give us both the right and the ability to repair the objects we own without violating intellectual property laws and other laws.

Although the purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect creators and intellectual property, the way companies have been using it to impede repairs over the last few decades is harmful to society as a whole. It impedes the second-hand market and harms small businesses specializing in repairs.

By supporting this bill, the Bloc Québécois is also supporting Quebec's small businesses that are committed to becoming repair centres, mechanics, computer specialists and artisans who have acquired the skills to repair our everyday products. This industry plays a key role in our energy transition and supports jobs throughout Quebec. Even though repair people are becoming increasingly rare in our communities, this bill lends direct support to their work. It will provide a living for many Quebeckers.

It is not just consumer electronics that are under the microscope. The bill also targets industrial equipment, agricultural equipment, medical devices, electric cars and many other machines that are becoming notoriously difficult for independent technicians to repair and maintain. This increases businesses' operational costs, curtails market competition and discourages follow-on innovation.

The costs of our increasing inability to repair things go beyond pocketbook issues. It is imperative that we consider the environmental impact as well. My colleague from Repentigny will be happy to hear me mention this. The manufacture of new devices generates considerable electronic waste and consumes precious resources. It is therefore crucial to give consumers the right to repair their products. I would like to draw my colleagues' attention to a new law in Quebec that is along the same lines as this one. It reminds manufacturers that they have a role to play in this equation.

Quebec has passed a new law on planned obsolescence. We applaud the leadership of the Quebec National Assembly, which recently passed this legislation to ensure that these products operate properly and to prevent the sale of seriously defective vehicles, what we call lemons.

Let me get back to the shameful waste of raw materials. Extraction of raw materials, use of rare earth metals, lead soldering, shipping and packaging are just a few examples of the ecological toll imposed by the short lifespan of many modern devices and equipment. Electronics waste is now globally among the fastest-growing types of waste, increasing at a rate of 3% to 4% each year. As the global microchip shortage reveals, ostensibly every industry is now the electronics industry. The failure of one electronic part often renders things inoperative, making them all the more likely to end up in a landfill prematurely.

I strongly recommended to my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology that we study the metals, plastics and electronics recycling ecosystems from a circular economy perspective, because the critical minerals in these electronics are important. We must stop them from ending up in landfills. This study will resume once our consideration of Bill C-27 is complete.

We need to address this shameful waste of resources to reduce our tonne of garbage. Quebeckers have had enough. I urge all parliamentarians to support this bill. By voting in favour of this bill, we are demonstrating our commitment to our local businesses, we are contributing to the fight against waste and we are meeting a fundamental need to repair for all our constituents. By supporting this bill, we are sending a strong, united message about our determination to promote a more sustainable and accessible future for all. This is an opportunity for us, as legislators, to make a positive difference in the lives of our constituents and to work in favour of an economy that is more environmentally friendly.

Let us make sure that the right to repair becomes a reality for everyone.

The House resumed from June 8 consideration of the motion that Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to once again be able to rise and speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-294.

This bill comes from constituents in my riding who work at Honey Bee Manufacturing and brought the issue forward to me. It was an issue that came up when we were discussing the CUSMA negotiations. Although it predates CUSMA, it was flagged at that point in time, in the same breath. That was when it was first brought to my attention, and I was able to bring the issue to the House of Commons—

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-294, sponsored by our friend and colleague, the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

I simply want to say how supportive I am of the bill. It is a great bill that will certainly help the great folks in Perth—Wellington and the farmers and farm families across Perth—Wellington and across Canada.

While I am on my feet, I move:

That this question be now put.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, half of me wants to stand on a point of order and speak about this great colleague of mine for suggesting that perhaps he is better looking than I am, but we will let the public be both the judge and the jury on that.

Ironically, although I do not smell like smoked meat, I did appreciate the fact that he spoke about the firefighters in the field, because the truth of the matter is that I was a firefighter for seven and a half years. I put out many a wheat fire and grass fire, many of which were actually caused, unfortunately, by our farming industry, so I appreciate his bringing that up.

It brings me great pride today to stand here in this place on behalf of the fantastic residents of Essex, who sent me here. I say “thanks” to them.

Before I dive into the bill, in great support of the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands's private member's bill, Bill C-294, I do want to just send out heartfelt thanks and best wishes to the firefighters across Canada, who are battling, so dearly and desperately, the raging wildfires.

I have said it before and am proud to say it: My father was the milkman in Essex, with Lewis Dairy. As I always say, am I ever happy that my mother opened the door when he dropped off that milk to the house, because, otherwise, I would not be here today. The reason I say that is that I have heard many stories from my dad about how farming equipment, both in the dairy industry and in the grain industry, has evolved. I know it to be true, because I grew up on a farm.

I, myself, do sharecropping, so I have my own farm. I see the various utility equipment that goes onto a tractor or goes onto a combine. Bless my wife and my daughter for loving horses so much, all five of them. Now we are getting into hay. I suppose it is easy for me to speak to this because all the different farming takes a whole bunch of different utility equipment, to not only harvest but to also plant these crops. I look at this equipment and I look at the interchangeability, the opportunity to save a few thousand dollars, for a thrasher from one company to another that perhaps would not or could not interchange with a Case tractor, a John Deere tractor or a New Holland tractor.

I will then also take it one step further. Especially in Essex, where we are somewhat landlocked in that we are surrounded by three bodies of water, land is, quite frankly, at a premium. It is darn expensive, but it is really expensive, and almost unheard of, for our next generation of young adults not just to be able to afford a home and start a family but also to take over the family legacy, which is the farm. They need every opportunity, every possibility possible, to ensure that they can even begin to think about taking over the local farm.

I have two amazing sons and an amazing daughter. Both of my sons spend a lot of time on the farm. They are grease monkeys, and I am darn proud of them for being grease monkeys. They repair a lot of the farming equipment that, quite frankly, I break. Whether it is cutting the laneways or plowing in the headlands, there is always a screw, a nut, a bolt or a washer that just does not fit anymore. It gets worn out. The cost to repair that, the cost that our farming community goes through because something is not interchangeable, is absolutely astronomical. I think about when we blow a belt on that same utility that I cut the fence rows on. I am sure the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands would know how expensive a farming belt is, especially when one has to bring it in from overseas.

If we start today, if we start in this beautiful country today, to make the equipment interchangeable, the lives of farmers today and the future for the next generations will be that much easier.

My brother-in-law, Rob Reid, has been with the Ridgetown agricultural college, a subsidiary or sister college to Guelph University, for a number of years. He has been in charge of the dairy and the hogs, but he also does all the work with the college training students for future generations with regard to the equipment.

This year, I will have been happily be married to my lovely, loved wife Allison for 25 years, so I have known Rob for about 30 years. I have heard the stories, the trials and tribulations at the college. It has to really watch the money it spends, when it spends a whole bunch of money on one type of equipment, and five, six, seven or 10 years later, when half of the equipment comes to the end of its useful life, it has to buy new additions to that equipment. The tractor still works, but the plow or the thrasher or the planter needs to be replaced, and it is not interchangeable. Therefore, the college has to basically start from zero. What does that do? It not only costs the college, but, ultimately, it also costs the students. As if it were not tough enough to go to college now, and as if it were not tough enough to excite future young adults to get into farming and take over their family business, now the cost of tuition has just gone crazy, right through the roof. Therefore, this private member's bill only checks all the important boxes of what the future of Canadian farming looks like going forward.

I think about Vollans farm equipment business, just around the corner from my house, and about how many times I have taken my Zero-Turn lawnmower there if, as was previously mentioned, there was a nut falling out of the bottom, or there was a worn out U-joint. If it were not for Vollans, and I do not have a lot of money in my pockets here today, I would have a whole lot less money in my pockets, because it is so unique and so excellent in how it is able to adapt various pieces of equipment and put them together. However, we are now getting into the digital age, which allows for an interface of two digital systems coming together to put together two pieces of critical infrastructure needed to feed Canadians, put food on the table of Canadians and, quite frankly, to feed the world, as well as to make life much, much more exciting and more affordable for our farming industry.

Essex, as I mentioned, is a very small, landlocked, area, but it is a very vital area. As a matter of fact, the majority of the grain produced in Essex, and this should put a smile on a lot of faces here, goes straight to our distilleries. If members like Crown Royal, they will probably like the fact that we grow a lot of corn. Now that I have everybody's attention, they probably know just how important this private member's bill is.

To conclude, I am a very proud son of an amazing father who taught me a whole bunch about farming, as did my grandfather while he was still alive. I am proud to be partners with Greg Eisler, a fantastic farmer who farms my land alongside me. Also, I really want to thank, one final time, my dear friend, the member who represents Cypress Hills—Grasslands incredibly well, for bringing this private member's bill forward.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-294, now in its final stage of consideration in the House of Commons.

I am also pleased by the overwhelming support received for this legislative initiative thus far. I want to thank our colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands who brought this important initiative to the House that seeks to remove a copyright barrier to interoperability, which would benefit all Canadians, including those in my riding of Yukon.

The Copyright Act, as it currently reads, represents an obstacle to Canadians who really wish to make their products with functionalities enabled by software, such as smart phones and farm vehicles, interoperable with other products, devices or components.

The Copyright Act currently represents an obstacle to interoperability because it generally prohibits that circumvention of technological prevention measures, also called TPMs, or digital locks. Manufacturers often include digital locks to protect software in their products to prevent unauthorized access and copying.

The Copyright Act also includes an exception that permits the circumvention of digital locks to achieve interoperability between two computer programs. However, being limited to the interoperability between computer programs, this exception is not sufficient to cover the needs of Canadians and the market.

With the increasing number of products with functionalities enabled by software, interoperability also means ensuring that parts or components added to such products be compatible and exchange information with these products' software. As the member for South Shore—St. Margarets just explained, these parts and components actual can then talk to each other.

Without being permitted to circumvent digital locks to access the product's software, it remains difficult to make these products interoperable with other products, components and devices. This obstacle can notably impact Canadians when manufacturers decide to introduce new technologies that are not compatible with the previous generations. In such scenarios, software-enabled products we can own easily become only good to gather dust next to our VHS players.

Bill C-294 specifically seeks to address this issue. The bill proposes to expand the scope of the current exception in the Copyright Act, so the copyright framework allows Canadians to circumvent digital locks to make a computer program, or a device in which it is embedded, interoperable with another computer program, device or component.

Bill C-294 does not call into question the importance of digital locks in the copyright framework but stresses the importance that the Copyright Act provides efficient exceptions and limitations to digital locks when they harm the legitimate interests of consumers to have control over the products they own.

Legal protection for digital locks is an important enforcement regime in the copyright framework with roots in international treaties. Canada has obligations to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of digital locks used by copyright holders under the WIPO Internet Treaties and certain free trade agreements.

Digital locks are meant to grant creators more control over the distribution of their creative works in the digital marketplace by preventing others from copying, accessing or using the fruits of their labour without their permission. This enforcement regime ensures the Copyright Act continues fostering Canada's flourishing creative economy by providing creators with an efficient mechanism to obtain a return on their investments.

Protection for digital locks was originally promoted as a tool to encourage creative industries to offer their works, such as songs, books and movies, on the Internet and in other digital forms. It has never been the intent of the protection for digital locks in the Copyright Act to prevent the interoperability of products.

Bill C-294 is an essential measure to rebalance the equilibrium of interests and provide consumers more control over the products they own and use, while also preserving incentives for creators in the Copyright Act.

For instance, Bill C-294 would solely permit Canadians to circumvent digital locks for the purpose of interoperability. Bill C-294 would not facilitate copyright infringement.

Protection for digital locks and copyright infringement are two distinct regimes in the Copyright Act. While persons may be allowed to circumvent a digital lock on a work to access it, they are not allowed to make unauthorized copies of the work unless an exception to copyright infringement also applies. Bill C-294, with the amendments reported to us by the committee, would ensure that the expanded interoperability exception permitting the circumvention of digital locks would not be available if it involved an infringement of copyright.

I want to reiterate my support for Bill C-294, which is a pledge to Canadians that they should not be frustrated by digital locks when they seek to render the products they own interoperable with a new part, component or device.

I acknowledge that the scope of this bill is limited. It is an exception to the prohibition to circumvent digital locks that addresses only one aspect of facilitating interoperability. As such, it does not encourage industries to develop standards ensuring interoperability between different manufacturer products and ecosystems. However, I am persuaded that the exception proposed in Bill C-294 would have positive impacts in offering more opportunities for Canadians to make their products interoperable. That is especially the case with the amendments reported by the committee, which ensure that the exception would apply to independent service providers, helping the owners of products to achieve interoperability.

Bill C-294 also aligns with the government's commitment to provide Canadians with a right to repair by encouraging the prolonging of the life cycle of products and with its commitment to support innovation and foster follow-on innovation by small and medium-sized enterprises. This is practicality in action. It really is about the choice of products for Canadian farmers and Canadian consumers.

I look forward to the vote and invite my colleagues to support Bill C-294 to send a strong signal to Canadians of the importance that the House of Commons gives to this great initiative.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand here tonight to speak to the bill presented by the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Bill C-294, regarding interoperability, and the member who spoke previous to me, the member for Mirabel, who is my seatmate, spoke eloquently about the impacts and the structure of this on the agriculture industry, which I will come to.

However, if you will provide me a little leeway, Mr. Speaker, as members know, the Speaker's riding and mine have had some dramatic forest fires these last two weeks. In the context of this bill and agriculture, I just want to stand up and thank a few people in the riding and in the Speaker's riding who have done an amazing job dealing with the issue of livestock that had to be evacuated.

It is a huge issue. People do not generally think about that in these kinds of fires, but on Cape Sable Island in Shelburne County there was agriculture livestock, and a lot of it, that had to be quickly evacuated, because it is tough to move it slowly. They actually did not have an evacuation order, but they moved it out in case. They moved it to the exhibition in Yarmouth, in the Speaker's riding, and they were fantastic to deal with. They took in a lot of animals and kept them safe and healthy, as did the exhibition in Bridgewater, in my riding. It was a full house of livestock that had to be safely moved and stored, which is no small effort. I would like to thank both those organizations for all the volunteer work they did to protect the animals.

In Bill C-294, the summary says that the enactment would amend the Copyright Act to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent, or get around, a technological protection measure, TPM, which is a technical term, to make a computer program interoperable, or in other words to make a computer program work with any device or component, or with a product they manufacture.

On this bill, we need to start with what the purpose of the Copyright Act is, and the member for Mirabel touched on it. The Copyright Act provides exclusive rights for authors and creators of works. It can be an artistic work, a dramatic work, a musical work or a literary work, and the latter category encompasses computers and computer programs. These exclusive rights are collectively referred to as “copyright”.

Copyright provides the rights holder, the person who created the work, the sole authority to perform specific acts vis à vis the product. They control what happens to their product. That is the purpose of copyright, and these rights are listed under section 3 of the Copyright Act and include the sole right to reproduce the works, so that the owner and creator is the only one who can reproduce that work, or they can choose to rent that work out to somebody else, and that includes a computer program, like when we sign up for or buy Windows. We buy a licence, but we we do not actually own the software. That is owned by the manufacturer, but the manufacturer can license those out.

A copyright generally lasts for a person's lifetime plus 50 years.

Other persons may use a protected work under certain circumstances. The owner of a copyright may assign it to another person. They may also license the use of the work with or without conditions, often in return for a payment or royalties.

What is this act doing on artistic copyright related to the issue of technology and specifically farm equipment? An important part of that is that section 41 of the Copyright Act defines circumventing a TPM, which I referred to earlier, as descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an encrypted work or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating or impairing the TPM. In other words, circumventing it is trying to find a way to use that computer program or work that one was not authorized to use as a person who is not the original rights holder.

This is an important part of what this is trying to get at. The member who is putting this bill forward worked quite extensively with people in his riding who are concerned and having trouble delivering their businesses.

With increased computerization in the development of everything that we buy or do, whether it be a cellphone or even a fridge now, as everything has computer chips the technology can be used to actually be anti-competitive. It can be used to make it exclusive so that nobody else can access or connect another device to that device, in order to make someone buy their other devices and not be able to buy a competitor's device. It is becoming more difficult over time for manufacturers to market their innovative products if they cannot connect to the original product if it requires that.

Large companies such as John Deere, which the member for Mirabel mentioned, have introduced what are called digital locks on machinery. This move restricts access to repair or interoperate the tractor or equipment with another manufacturer's equipment. One cannot even go in and repair it, whether it is on warranty or not, unless it is through an authorized dealer. That is a primary concern as to operating farm equipment because when a repair of this type of equipment needs to be done, it is not done when one is not harvesting, but done when one is out in the field. It is very difficult often to get those who are the only authorized repair people to actually be able to come out, repair that equipment, get the parts and do it all in a timely manner so that one can get back to one's work in farming. Every day lost is an important and costly loss for that farmer.

As a result of all that, those who are significantly disadvantaged by this have been calling for changes that would safeguard both the right to repair and the right to connect one manufacturer's equipment to another manufacturer's equipment. One may prefer a different combine from the combine that John Deere has one's equipment hooked up to. That is a big issue.

What this bill attempts to do is allow, in certain circumstances, an individual who owns that equipment to seek repair from suppliers or even on their own by accessing it and getting it repaired without having to go to that authorized dealer only. That “authorized dealer only” concept is a sort of monopolistic trait that says that if I can only go to that dealer then I am sort of held captive to what that dealer is going to charge me for those repairs. It prevents a free and open market.

We are going to see this not only in farm equipment but with everything in our lives. Try to buy one's home appliances from different manufacturers. If they are all computerized and one is from one manufacturer and the other from another manufacturer, although they are supposed to be able to “talk” to each other they will not be able to because of these restrictions around TPMs and the inability to do this.

The member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands began working with all of these groups and put together, as the member for Mirabel said, a very simple bill. It is not very long. It is two clauses and it repairs that simple clause in the act.

I would commend the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for tackling this. Sometimes it is confused with the right to repair, which is another private member's bill before this House, which is the right for us to repair a certain thing in a certain way. This bill makes sure that, if one wants to connect two pieces of equipment together that have technological protection, one will be able to get that done without breaking the law.

As we consider this going forward, I will be supporting the bill. We studied it at the industry committee. It is now here for third reading. I would encourage all members of this House to support this important bill, which is pro-competition.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a rare opportunity for me to address you twice in such a short period of time. I am sure you are delighted.

I would like to take a few seconds to say that I am thinking of the people in my riding and all the organizations in my riding that are working very hard in these increasingly difficult economic circumstances, when housing and food prices are rising. My thoughts go out to them, given that the Bank of Canada raised interest rates yesterday.

I have in mind the Centre d'aide et de références de Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines, the Dépannage alimentaire de Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines, the Centre de dépannage St‑Janvier, the Comptoir d'entraide populaire de Mirabel in Saint‑Augustin, the Centre de dépannage de Saint‑Canut, the Comité d'action sociale in Saint‑Joseph‑du‑Lac, the Communauté d'entraide de Saint‑Placide, the Armoire d'espoir in Oka, the Saint-François d'Assise parish in Oka, the Sainte‑Marie‑du‑Lac parish in Sainte‑Marthe‑sur‑le‑lac, the Petite Maison de Pointe‑Calumet, the Centre d'entraide de Saint‑Colomban and all the other organizations that provide support in my riding. I want them to know that they are important to us and that we support them in these increasingly difficult times.

That said, today we are debating Bill C-294 at third reading. First, I would like to thank the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for introducing this bill. I think it is a great initiative. I think, not surprisingly, he knows that we will support it.

This is a very short bill that contains only two clauses. However, the length of the bill is no indication of the quality, because it is designed to resolve important issues related to the debate we had in the House on the issue of planned obsolescence. Essentially, this bill allows the owner of a device that uses an operating system, for example, to break the lock on the operating system in order to take full advantage of it and use applications in the operating system that are not provided by the company that created said operating system. This is essentially an amendment to the Copyright Act.

We understand that creators have to make a living from their art, that it is important, that we have to take action against copying and against the unapproved use of a cultural good or, for example, an application, and so on. However, there are times when the consumer ends up paying a price.

I will give a few examples. Today's phones are literally computers. They are not like the phones of the past. Mine is quite sophisticated, for example. These phones have operating systems. Theoretically, under current copyright law, the company that makes my phone could prevent independent app developers from allowing me to use those apps on my phone. These apps can be extremely useful, like the VaxiCode app we used during the pandemic, or GPS apps that prevent people from getting lost in the woods.

Obviously, phone companies have been gracious enough to allow users to install apps of all kinds, but they do still have the right to prevent us from making full use of our devices. However, it appears that not all companies have been so gracious as to allow us to use other apps on their operating systems, which I think goes a bit too far.

I will give the example of John Deere tractors. I represent an agricultural riding. Over 80% of the city of Mirabel is zoned for agriculture. Our farmers use very sophisticated machinery. Today, these machines are computers on wheels. The operating systems of these tractors have software to optimize the way fertilizer is spread. They come with all kinds of devices that can even coordinate farm machinery based on weather conditions, outside conditions, and so on. They are basically computers.

Farmers think that an innovation market could spring up to allow third parties to offer all the technological innovations that John Deere could offer, but does not. However, when they buy their tractors, they are only paying for a licence to use the operating system.

They do not own the operating system, so they do not have the right to improve the performance of a piece of equipment that they paid a fortune for. Those things are expensive.

There is also the matter of code sharing. The company could say that people can develop apps if they want to but that it will not share its code. That is the kind of situation that my colleague's bill seeks to address.

It is closely related to the issue of planned obsolescence. The House previously worked on the right to repair. What was the objective? The main objective was to give consumers the full value of a product that they paid for, by ensuring that they do not have to buy the same item again at full price when the original item still has years of life and use left in it. We therefore worked on the right to repair.

We worked on planned obsolescence. That is a term that can be defined in a variety of ways, but basically, it refers to methods used by companies to ensure that, after a certain period of time, a period shorter than the full physical lifespan of the product, the product will no longer be usable. There are all sorts of keys and mechanisms that can be used to do this.

How can one describe planned obsolescence? As I said, it can take various forms. A company may simply design a product that is less durable. It could launch new models so that the older model becomes out of date or incompatible with new software. It can make products impossible to repair because the parts are unavailable or prohibitively expensive. It can use the Patent Act to prevent parts from being manufactured, or it can use the Copyright Act, and so on.

The original intent of these copyright laws and patent laws was not to prevent consumers from using their own property. The original intent was to allow the author of a work or the inventor of a new device to earn a living and ensure that a third party did not appropriate their own invention. Today we are in a situation where these laws are being used to prevent the consumer from benefiting. That is precisely what Bill C‑294 addresses.

It is complementary to the approach taken by the Government of Quebec. For example, in 2019, the Liberal MNA for Chomedey at the National Assembly of Quebec introduced Bill 197, which sought to stop planned obsolescence. This bill introduced a sustainability rating. It stated that the replacement parts, tools and repair service required for the maintenance or repair of a good must be available on the market for a reasonable length of time after the purchase of the good. It includes a provision stating that the manufacturer cannot refuse to perform a warranty on the grounds that the good was repaired. We know how it works: If we do not go to the dealer because we do not want a monopoly, since no one likes monopolies, and we get the thing repaired for less somewhere else, we are told that the warranty will not be honoured.

The Quebec government addressed this. The law is not yet in force. Europe has also addressed planned obsolescence. According to a European Union directive, member states are to amend their laws to classify products according to their repairability. Every product will eventually have a rating on a scale of 10 so that buyers know if the product is durable. This is good for consumers and for the green transition. Europe has a repairability index based on five criteria: the availability of documentation; disassembly, thus access to tools; the availability of spare parts; the price of spare parts; and specific criteria for various categories of equipment.

In the Canadian context, this represents consumer protection. It is the responsibility of Quebec and the provinces. No matter what Quebec does to protect its consumers, if the owners of operating systems, in this case, can use the provisions of the Copyright Act against the initial spirit of the Copyright Act to block consumer rights, this counteracts the efforts made by Quebec.

In this context, I want to again applaud my colleague's bill. I thank my colleague for introducing it, and I recognize that his bill complements the work done by Quebec. I will repeat, as I did at the start of my speech, that we will support the bill.

The House resumed from April 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), be read the third time and passed.

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, in her speech, my colleague said that nothing is working here in Canada. The Bloc Québécois also finds that most of the time the government is just treading water, when there is a lot more that could be done for Canadians.

For example, the government launched two consultations focusing on agriculture. With regard to the first consultation, Bill C-294 and Bill C-244 were just examined in committee, so why is this consultation necessary?

With regard to the second consultation, the government wants to consult the provincial and territorial governments to help farmers with urgent financial needs. Why hold another consultation when the government just negotiated the agricultural policy framework?

Does my colleague have a word to describe that? It is as though we are taking one step forward and two steps back.

I will let my colleague come up with a word to describe the government's approach on this.

Copyright Act

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to express my support for Bill C-294, which is now at the last step of its study in the House of Commons. I would like to congratulate and thank the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for bringing forward this initiative for us to consider.

Bill C-294 proposes a measure that removes an important barrier to the interoperability of products in the copyright framework. The Copyright Act already includes an exemption permitting the circumvention of technological protection measures, also known as TPMs or digital locks, to make two computer programs interoperable. However, with the increasing number of software-enabled products that include digital locks, such as smart phones and farm vehicles, achieving interoperability often goes beyond making two computer programs interoperable.

Bill C-294—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for the member of Parliament for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for his dedication and hard work in crafting Bill C-294. As someone who is familiar with the demands of crafting a private member's bill and who understands the complexity of the legal amendments, I recognize the effort and energy that goes into such a private member's bill. I believe that even small changes in law can profoundly impact an industry or an activity, and as such, I commend the member of Parliament for his foresight and fortitude in seeing the bill through.

I was part of the last review of the Copyright Act, and the process was like drinking from a parliamentary lobbyist's firehose. First there were calls from special interest groups to appear, and then there were calls asking to meet prior to the meeting. Then there were calls to come to committee to respond to the position of the first group by a second group, and by then the first group wanted a follow-up meeting. I think everyone gets the picture.

Copyright Act changes are full of winners and losers. Everyone wants to win, often at the expense of each other and especially consumers. This is where government is supposed to come in and make sense of it all. Unfortunately, we have seen time and time again that the government would much rather ignore issues such as these than make changes. It has preferred to make changes when needed to appease a trading partner by inserting a clause pertaining to copyright in an omnibus budget bill, rather than to see a comprehensive legislative change.

At a time when digital innovation is moving so fast, the government simply wants to wait around hoping no one will notice. Well, someone has noticed. We know that by tabling the bill, the member of Parliament for Cypress Hills—Grasslands has uncovered an important issue. I will go back to the copyright report.

In the report, we made several recommendations, which unfortunately the Liberal government has failed to pursue. For example, recommendation 19 states:

That the Government of Canada examine measures to modernize copyright policy with digital technologies affecting Canadians and Canadian institutions, including the relevance of technological protection measures within copyright law, notably to facilitate the maintenance, repair or adaptation of a lawfully acquired device for non-infringing purposes.

Most attribute this recommendation to the issue of the right to repair, which has been addressed by other private members' bills. In today's debate, I would like to focus on the last part.

Bill C-294 is all about the “adaptation of a lawfully acquired device for non-infringing purposes.” By the way, this is because some companies are utilizing technological protection measures, or TPMs. As we know, these technological locks are widely used to prevent users from accessing copyrighted content. While these rules were first put in place to protect the works of others from being stolen, such as a pirated video game or music album, we have seen manufacturers use these copyright technological protection measures to create new business models.

In one of these business models, they create a proprietary data ecosystem, one backed by terms and conditions, protected by law and copyright, and secured in the hardware by a technological protection measure. Farming is one of the first examples where this issue of interoperability has arisen.

Once a customer, like a farmer, agrees to purchase a piece of hardware, such as a tractor, a harvester or another piece of machinery, all the data and all the systems are powered using the manufacturer's technology. While this business model may seem reasonable and offer many benefits at first glance, it becomes problematic when a farmer purchases a separate piece of equipment and finds out that due to the TPMs they cannot use it. It is not that the tractor will not tow it, as it hooks up fine, but it will not function, as neither the data nor its operating system allows for interoperability.

First, this raises costs for the user, as the farmer paid for this expensive piece of equipment from another company, so there is that loss. Second, it hurts innovation and productivity, as that piece of equipment, despite it being from a rival company, may arguably lead the field among that kind of specialized equipment. That company would lose the sale, and the farmer would lose the productivity gain in using a different specialized piece of equipment. This hurts innovation overall, as firms that could make or used to make these specialized pieces are cut out of the game entirely due to this business model.

Some would ask what is wrong with that; that is competition. Well, real competition pits products and services against one another, rewarding innovation and productivity, not copyright and exclusivity. This is where Bill C-294 comes in. The bill proposes to amend the Copyright Act to allow consumers to bypass TPMs for the purpose of achieving interoperability, like in my example of the farmer.

The right to interoperability is critical for consumers. In today's digital age, consumers expect to be able to access their software seamlessly on different devices and platforms. Technological locks prevent this from happening and limit consumers' right to use their purchased equipment for non-infringing purposes. Therefore, as we have heard, this argument applies to more than just farming.

The Internet of things, where every device or part has sensors or relays information, raises important questions. A good example is the standard charging cord. If a consumer purchases a generic charger that meets the specifications of a device like a phone or tablet, it should work. I contend that a phone or tablet company should not be able to deny a consumer's wish to use a different charging product just because it was bought from another supplier and works as well as the one the tablet company might offer.

If I bought a car and was only allowed to have it serviced by the manufacturer's approved vendor or was only allowed to install its approved parts, which of course would have a chip in them, there would be benefits to me and to the company. For instance, I would be eligible for a longer warranty or for discounts, I would get performance data and I would have a plan for when each new part should be replaced, so I could budget accordingly. However, what if I chose a different part or wanted to stick with a trusted mechanic? What if the car manufacturer designated under my warranty that if I used a generic part that worked as well but was not the official authorized part, the car would not start or the manufacturer might void the warranty? I am picking on that industry, and those who work in it would say this is unfair. However, is it unfair? What if a company decided it would change its model, as Microsoft and Apple did in the 1990s and 2000s, in terms of what browsers, programs or apps would be available on their networks or devices?

This is why Bill C-294 is so important. We want to see competition and innovation. We want to see profitable companies hiring workers, making investments and paying taxes, but not with a business model that disables choice by limiting interoperability.

It is also my hope that other members of Parliament will look at the example of the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands and show the same entrepreneurial, competitive spirit, looking at how they can make changes to the Copyright Act that are necessary and needed. This is particularly important because the government looks more and more listless; it does not want to tackle these tougher issues outlined in the recommendations in our copyright report that. To this day, they have been ignored or, worse yet, sold out policy-wise for expedience. The government has done this rather than trying to build a truly competitive copyright system.

In conclusion, the right to interoperability is crucial for consumers, and Bill C-294 proposes to amend the Copyright Act to allow consumers to bypass TPMs to achieve interoperability. This amendment would benefit consumers, promote innovation and create a more competitive marketplace. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I will start with you, but I encourage all members of this place to support Bill C-294 and to recognize the right of interoperability and how important it is for consumers and businesses alike. I hope that members of this chamber support the bill and that the other place takes it up quickly.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise on Bill C-294, an to amend the Copyright Act regarding interoperability. I want to thank the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for introducing this legislation.

As I have mentioned before, private members' bills go through a certain process in this House. This bill builds on previous work done in the House of Commons and at the industry committee. It is almost like a cousin to some of the right to repair work I have done in the past. In particular, this is work related to technological protection measures, or TPMs, which can interfere with the reuse or use of different types of electronics. Many times TPMs are done through a loophole in the Copyright Act that allows them to be used in a way that reduces competition, reduces the ability for products to have an extended life and reduces the ability for individuals to repair an item and for other companies to employ technologies.

What we have, basically, is a system that can be abused to stop devices from talking to each other and, importantly, from being part of the Canadian economy in many different ways. I know we often use it in agriculture, but it is also about other electronic devices, entertainment devices, programs, services and gear. What ends up happening is that we get a lot of waste and get a lot of different ways to reduce competition, affecting small business and innovation. We have a number of different situations where it can be used to create a monopoly in and dependence on different types of industries.

We heard at committee some really good testimony about this. Several witnesses came forward from across the country at the industry and technology committee to talk about the challenges we have. We also had some good testimony regarding what is going on with the United States and the fact that it is a little more advanced than we are in this situation.

This bill would not be the end-all, cure-all for many of the situations we have, but it is a great step forward to start dealing with some of the unfair practices that take place with TPMs. Again, TPMs are technological protection measures.

What they can do is lock in customers. That way, a customer who has been using a certain product, which could be in the farming industry, for example, or another one, is actually stuck with a supplier. That type of product might have been used with something else in the past, but because of the use of technological protection measures, a person is required to make a change and shift into a company's other products, not by innovation but by a designed attempt to circumvent other competition.

In the past, I have worked on the right to repair issue related to automotive. My right to repair bill has been retabled. It would provide more consumer protection, would reduce environmental degradation and would increase public safety.

In the past, automaker companies that were original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, would block the fixing or servicing of vehicles through non-competitive practices to ensure we had limited places to go to fix a vehicle. Why is that important? It is important because if someone has no choice, they are going to need to pay more, which is one thing. Also, people in rural, agricultural or remote communities may not even have access to some of the services and may have to ship or drive their vehicles hundreds of kilometres away, which is bad for the environment and bad for public safety.

I come from Windsor, Ontario, which is right across from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. In my situation, I could get my vehicle fixed two kilometres away when crossing into the United States, but because Canada was behind with its measures, I could not in Canada. The suppliers, the original manufacturers, would not provide information. In the United States, for the most part people can get this through a number of measures, because its laws are much more restrictive on anti-competitive practices. It is still an issue there and different states are dealing with it, but it has a bit of a better situation.

I tabled legislation, which went through this chamber and passed, on the right to repair, but a voluntary agreement with automakers was created instead. We wanted a full law, but at that time, the industry agreed we could try a temporary solution to it. We basically got a field goal instead of a touchdown on the issue.

The problem is that we now have a new digital age where technological protection measures are much easier to embed, and some companies, like Tesla, have opted out of the voluntary agreement. The voluntary agreement has a number of manufacturers that have agreed to participate. There is no free cost to this and no rip-off going on in the aftermarket. It is a way to pay for the product, have a servicing application for the product and get the training and all the necessary things needed for the product. It is not a gift. It is not stealing. It is just a way of being able to use those things.

Unfortunately, if we look at Tesla, Elon Musk is just choosing to opt out, and it is ironic that the government is allowing Tesla to put charging stations in parks and recs but is not enforcing the act. We are actually going into discussions on that. Maybe the act should not be voluntary anymore. We will see about that, but it is unfair to consumers. This is one of the reasons I support this particular bill.

With the TPMs and access to technology, it is also really clear that the agricultural community needs this right now, as this issue creates inefficiency. It puts greater stress on those in the industry, whether they have small, medium or even larger farming establishments. It also creates more pressure for services, because some of these areas are remote, as I have noted before. One of the dangers is that there are fewer options because of the geography of remote or rural areas. We put equipment either on the road or in the fields that is not operating as if in prime condition, as it should be, just because of anti-competitive measures that use a loophole in the Copyright Act.

We have been warned that the bill has to be compliant with the Canada-U.S. trade agreement. This issue was raised at length. We believe we have found a kind of sweet spot for the bill, and we will now pass it on to the Senate for it to have a review. I think that is to the credit of the entire committee, which is known for being as co-operative and collegial as it can possibly be.

One of the reasons I think the bill should go to the Senate now and get passed is that the session is coming to an end. I say it is the end now, but we have a long four weeks and then another four weeks, and believe me, that is a long time. At any rate, it will disappear before we know it. Hopefully the bill will get to the other chamber, where senators will get a chance to look at it and get it done before the end of the summer so it can go to the next process at that time.

This is the policy outcome we want with this legislation. When this type of private member's bill comes forward, it is very much focused on a particular problem and issue. It is why its merits were proven at committee. I think that is important to recognize, because the committee could have sent it back here, and it could have come back at a point where we would not have supported it. However, we have decided to support it as New Democrats, first for the issues related to competition and the TPMs, which basically use a loophole to be anti-competitive, and on top of that, for the stress already placed on the agricultural community. This is one of those unnecessary elements that should be eliminated from it.

This could have been done a long time ago; it is not a new issue, but I do want to acknowledge that it is becoming increasingly complicated to deal with. That is one of the reasons we want this to be done in a relatively quick fashion, if we can. The other House will decide its agenda in terms of its time and what is at committee, but hopefully it can look at the bill and get it done, because there is no time to waste in the chamber on this. There will only be increased elements to consider with artificial intelligence and the other types of electronics and communication issues that take place among devices and goods and services, so this is one of the things we should clear up right away. I am happy to support the bill, and I encourage all members of the House to do so.

I want to conclude by thanking the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for bringing the bill forward. I think it is an important piece of legislation that would create at least one benefit to help people in our economy.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on the importance of this interoperability bill, a key initiative in protecting consumer rights and encouraging innovation.

However, it is equally important to prevent this legislation from being used to restrict competition or limit the consumer's ability to use products and services they lawfully purchased themselves.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands. He answered questions from us and showed a strong command of the topic. I think that all members of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology would agree that many companies will use this new provision of the Copyright Act as intended. I would also like to underscore the work of the member for Halifax and parliamentary secretary, who managed to get us all on board despite our conflicting positions during the negotiation phase.

Like the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, I also come from a rural area, and all too often our farmers, miners and others find themselves stuck in closed ecosystems. In other words, if a farmer purchases a John Deere tractor, and a company has developed a piece of machinery with the features he needs and that suit him, as it stands, it is quite possible that the elements are not interoperable, that they cannot connect to one another. Bill C‑294 will allow the company in question to develop a connector so that the machine can be used properly with a John Deere tractor.

The Bloc Québécois will be voting in favour of Bill C‑294 at third reading.

Interoperability is an important concept in the digital world, too. This is about IT products and services being able to work together, regardless of their origin.

In the copyright context, interoperability means that consumers can legally use the products and services they have purchased with other products and services, even if they are produced by other companies. This might seem obvious, but in practice, companies can use the Copyright Act to limit the interoperability of their products and services with those of other companies.

For example, a company can use technological copyright protection measures to keep consumers from using a product or service with another product or service that has not been approved by that company. That can have major negative consequences for consumers and innovation. Consumers can find themselves stuck in a closed environment where they are forced to use the products and services of a particular company. That can make it difficult for competitors to compete with these companies, which can stifle innovation and lead to inferior products and services. I could cite the example of Apple products, which can only connect with other Apple products.

The interoperability bill seeks to address this problem and allow consumers to circumvent technological copyright protection measures used by companies to limit the interoperability of their products and services. It amends the Copyright Act to allow interoperability in certain circumstances. Specifically, Bill C‑294 proposes to introduce a copyright exception to permit the creation of products and services that are compatible with other copyrighted products, provided that it is done in a fair and equitable manner. This exception to copyright would allow developers to create compatible products and services without infringing on other companies' copyrights. This could pave the way for greater competition and innovation in the technology industries.

In addition, the interoperability bill would help strengthen consumer rights. Consumers would be able to freely choose the products and services they prefer without being limited by digital locks. It may also encourage companies to offer higher quality products and services, as they would be forced to compete on the basis of quality and innovation, rather than on the basis of digital locks.

It should also be noted that the interoperability bill would not affect companies' legitimate copyrights. They would still be able to protect their products and services with copyrights and prevent their illegal use. However, they would not be able to use copyrights to block interoperability and prevent competition. In committee, I wondered in particular about the video game industry, for example, and the possibility of copying games and putting them on other platforms such as online streaming platforms.

The interoperability bill is also important for researchers and universities. They often need to access data and proprietary software to conduct research, which can be easier with interoperability. This could encourage research and innovation in a wide range of areas, from medicine to technology.

Finally this bill could help boost Quebec's economy by encouraging competition and innovation, especially in the regions. Interoperability could stimulate the creation of new companies by making it possible for emerging companies to create products that are compatible with existing products without having to develop a new ecosystem from scratch.

This could also help more established companies to innovate and remain competitive by offering goods and services that are more user-friendly and adaptable. This is an important initiative for the future of innovation and competition in Canada. It will allow consumers to freely choose the goods and services they prefer, help stimulate research and innovation and encourage the creation of new and innovative companies.

This bill brings something positive for consumers, since it frees us from the limitations that many companies tend to impose on their clients, preventing us essentially from becoming prisoners of the original software owner. I commend the companies that do not resort to the act, that allow interoperability and do not obstruct it. If this bill gets through every stage, which has become highly likely on this side of the House, it will be the standard for all. There are many companies that come to mind that illustrate good practices and the benefits for consumers. If there is one thing to remember, it is that interoperability opens infinite possibilities to use the technological tools we have in better ways.

We need to think about the enjoyable and user-friendly tools people want to work with. That is what the bill addresses. Take a cellphone, for example. It is much more than a telephone; it is a pocket computer that can be used for all kinds of activities. To make it even more versatile, we can download many different apps that get added to the operating system and add new functions to it. Without interoperability, would the use of this device be so widespread? I doubt it. The answer is obvious.

I invite all my colleagues to support this bill and to work to promote it. By working together, we can create a more equitable, innovative and prosperous future for everyone. The idea is to dissuade businesses from developing products in a vacuum. I will repeat the same message this evening: We need to shift to a new paradigm and stop throwing money away. Repairability and interoperability are principles that need to be enshrined in the Copyright Act. We have to do much more with fewer resources. This realization is already reflected in Quebec's new laws and policies. It also helps to prevent waste and planned obsolescence.

I want to thank the many witnesses and all the companies that made submissions. They have contributed to an initiative that originated in the work of an MP who was able to reflect the needs his constituents, as well as those in many other ridings.

In closing, I would like to point out that the Copyright Act can be reformed in many other ways. I am thinking in particular of the people from Copibec, who appeared before the Standing Committee on Science and Research today. They basically told us the same thing they have told us in the past. There is recommendation 18 of a report by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage from 2019. The Standing Committee on Industry and Technology has already done a lot of research as well, but I am referring to this recommendation because it could take the Copyright Act further. To be clear, the fair dealing provisions do not apply to educational institutions if the work is commercially available. This creates a whole imbalance in terms of funding for creation in the science and research publishing community. This law prevents full funding because universities do not have to pay dues or royalties. Another example of how the Copyright Act will need to be reformed in the near future is to include all the issues involving artificial intelligence, where interoperability will certainly have many possibilities, but also some limitations.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the manner in which the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands made his presentation on the bill. I also had the opportunity to speak to it previously.

I believe that as a government, and as members on all sides of the House, we have an appreciation for consumers, and it is important that we take legislative and budgetary actions where we can in order to support consumers. That is the way I look at this piece of legislation.

Although the emphasis is in one area, the example I was going to use is the one the member made reference to, which is that of Apple. I recently purchased an Apple iPad. When I say “recently”, it was a number of months ago. The Apple iPad now has a different end on it, so if I have other Apple products I cannot use the same charger, nor plug in a headset to listen. If I want to listen to a video, I have to buy a special attachment, which Apple of course is the first to produce, at a prime price. This is something very serious, and it gives the bill a great deal of merit.

A number of years ago, when I was much younger than today, I can recall being out in the area of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They were stowing a farm, and they had the big John Deere tractors back then. What was really impressive was how this individual, and the family, understood every aspect of the machinery. It is truly amazing how our farmers in the Prairies understand farm machinery. It very much matters should something go wrong on the farm, if they are cultivating their field and they have a computer issue or a part issue, or if they want an add-on. If we want to talk about innovators, we can look to our farmers and we will see innovation in many different ways, in how they can modify equipment to enable the operation of that piece of machinery to ultimately do a far better job because they are using it first-hand.

Therefore, when we talk about interoperability and how technology has changed over the last number of years, we find that the initial thinking behind it, in dealing with issues like the Copyright Act, made a whole lot of sense because as a government we want to encourage and promote creativity and innovation. That is one of the reasons why it is important that we have the Copyright Act, whether it is with respect to our cultural industry or our economic industry, which is specific to things such as manufacturing.

That is why we have the legislation. That is why we have governments around the world, in particular western governments, that have recognized that if they want to support state-of-the-art technological advancements or creativity, they need to have copyright legislation. Generally speaking, it has been very effective. However, when we look at the TPMs and the advancements in technology, in particular in the whole area of computers, we can very quickly understand why in recent years we have seen issues come to the table that I do not think people had really anticipated. I can try to relate to it from a personal perspective.

At one time, I had a car where I could take the motor apart and put it back together and it would actually run. Today, if a person pops the hood of a vehicle, it is truly amazing how the computer is intertwined with the running of the vehicle itself. In the past, one could go to third party manufacturers to pick up the necessary parts and make some modifications so that the vehicle or the tractor would be able to do the things that it was meant to do.

Those are the types of concerns I think that most of us have. This inability was put in place by things like TPM, or better known as digital locks, and particularly through the advancement of computers. The days when someone would look at a motor and attach some wires to it to try to find out what the issues were are long gone. Now we can plug in one thing and it will do a complete diagnostic. Nowadays, through the Internet, we can get notifications telling us when it is time to have an oil change done on a vehicle. Those are the types of advancements that we see in technology. It has actually gone to a degree in which TPMs are now being utilized in such a fashion that it is not friendly to the consumer. That is why there is a need for us to take a look at the act to ensure that there is a heightened sense of fairness to the individual who owns the product or to the third party manufacturers. That is a very important industry to be taken into consideration.

Talking about the Copyright Act, we need to balance consumer rights and competition. I appreciate the member made reference to the bill, Bill C-294, being at committee with presentations being made. Some suggestions from the government were actually incorporated, I suggest, for good reason.

In the chamber I have talked about the importance of international trade for Canada. That is of the greatest importance. International trade and the trade agreements that Canada has entered into need to be respected. Having these agreements in place, we cannot just pass anything that we feel ultimately makes a whole lot of sense too quickly; due diligence must be done. If we were to unknowingly pass something that has an impact, we could potentially be in violation of a trade agreement that could cause other repercussions. I know this should concern all members of the House as we do not want to be in violation of agreements or areas of the legislation meant to promote and protect innovation and creativity.

I think, in listening to the member and having somewhat of an understanding of the legislation, that the legislation will in fact improve upon the system. That is why, I suspect, the member is getting the support because it is indeed a step forward. This government has been a champion of consumer rights and competition. Therefore, I suspect that it will be getting the support of the government.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to once again be able to rise in this place and speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-294. This time, it has reached a new stage, at third reading, in the House of Commons. It is also important to acknowledge many of our fellow Canadians who are listening and who have been following this bill's progress for a while now. They are watching and waiting for the necessary change that it would bring.

So far, the process of reviewing Bill C-294 has been moving along at a steady pace. It might not happen very often, but when we voted on it, this bill passed through the House of Commons at second reading with unanimous support. That was an encouraging thing to see and I remain hopeful that it can happen once again as we go through third reading and debate in the House again. Now that the committee has finished its study and the bill passed through the committee unanimously as well, I am eager to, hopefully, vote and pass this as quickly as we possibly can. There are many communities in my riding of Cypress Hills—Grasslands, in my province of Saskatchewan and all throughout this country who are counting on this bill's passing. The sooner we can help them, the better. That is what got this whole thing started in the first place.

In my first speech with respect to Bill C-294, I told the story of Honey Bee Manufacturing, which is based in my riding, because its owners are the ones who brought this issue of interoperability to my attention. It is one success story among many for small businesses in Canada and it should be allowed to continue doing what it does best. However, it is the company's larger impact on the survival of local communities in the surrounding area that really brings it home for me, so when we had witnesses appear for the committee study, it felt like I had some déjà vu, because some people from Honey Bee came all the way out to Ottawa just to be part of the panel. About three years earlier, they had done the exact same thing when I was a member of the industry committee and we were studying the CUSMA deal. That is when they started to raise the issue of interoperability under the Canadian Copyright Act.

The same effort to make sure that Canadian innovators and communities can thrive has been going strong ever since. Once again, during their most recent appearance, they were the best advocates for the issue because of their unique position on the front lines as the people who are the boots on the ground working on these issues each and every day. I am going to quote from a large portion of their statement to the committee, because they can speak to their own situation better than anyone else can. I quote:

We are a global company, from the people we work with to the 29 countries we export to. Honey Bee sells 50% of its product in North America and exports the remainder to the rest of the world. However, our industry is still placed on an uneven playing field versus our U.S. counterparts. Foreign platforms seek to prevent participation by Canadian brands.

Honey Bee's opportunity to capitalize on intellectual property is based on our ability to interoperate with OEM equipment platforms. Interoperability means that a Honey Bee harvest header can “plug and play” with OEM equipment. Historically, this has been provided in a straightforward and obvious way, like the way a keyboard plugs into a computer.

Today, Canadian industry is technically blocked by some dominant international brands, with the impact being a loss of substantial market participation opportunity. The net result is “authorized use only”. This is controlled by OEM digital locks and keys that are unavailable to manufacturers of implement. Instead of spending our research budget on innovation, we are burning it on adaptation.

It is important to state that in no way should Canadian manufacturers, dealers and—most importantly—farmer customers be at a disadvantage on choice. Historically, we had an integrated farm equipment market in North America and abroad. Honey Bee innovation caters to the specific needs of many markets and considers their unique environments, practices and crops. Meeting these challenges brings Canadian innovation to the world. The impact of technical lockout by OEMs will be the collapse of our Canadian implement manufacturing industry, which will decimate many of our smaller communities.

Throughout the different stages of Bill C-294, I have talked a lot about Honey Bee specifically. It is a good example of short-line manufacturing in particular, but it is always important to emphasize that the issue of interoperability is something much larger and more significant than a single business or any one single type of product. In their presentation, the people from Honey Bee made a point of passing on support for the Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada and the North American Equipment Dealers Association, whose representatives were unable to attend the proceedings on that particular day. They mentioned that those two industry associations represent 240 members and 4,000 members, respectively.

In addition, the committee heard directly from other witnesses who were present. Along with members of the Canada West Foundation, there were various stakeholders and experts who specialize in copyright or related areas of public policy. Overall, it is fair to say that the testimony provided to the committee was overwhelmingly supportive of Bill C-294 and what it is aiming to do.

For the benefit of my colleagues who were not at the committee meetings but are participating in this debate tonight, I will try to quickly provide some highlights from the study. One of the witnesses, Anthony Rosborough, is a lawyer with relevant expertise. He explained part of the issue this way:

In the world of embedded computer systems and the Internet of things, interoperability is synonymous with innovation.

Bill C-294 reflects this reality, and it reflects the needs of Canadian innovators by not allowing manufacturers to prevent competition in secondary markets under the auspices of copyright.

In another part of his opening statement, he added:

This bill takes the right approach by broadening the application of the interoperability exception to include not only computer programs but also devices in which they are embedded. This is crucial, because the distinction between the computer program and the computing hardware is much less clear than it once was. In the past, it may have been easier to distinguish between hardware and software, but when software now controls the physical functioning of devices and components, the software and hardware blend together. As I wrote in my 2021 article, the Copyright Act’s conceptualization of interoperability needs to reflect today's computing and innovation paradigm. Computers are no longer just boxes with screens and keyboards. They are cars, home appliances, pacemakers, agricultural equipment and learning technologies.

With the rapid pace of changing technology, it is no surprise we need to update the Copyright Act after its most recent update over 10 years ago. The focus of Bill C-294 is to update our legal enforcement of TPMs so they are not misused to stifle creativity and innovation. That was never their original intention, and we have to make sure our law is applied fairly and with common sense. Over the last decade, the use of digital locks has been spreading far beyond the simple protection of creative works.

Dr. Alissa Centivany, who works as a professor and researcher, provided more detail and context about TPMs. In her opening remarks, she said:

TPMs were originally intended to create artificial digital scarcity so that creators of creative and artistic works who feared that the burgeoning Internet would lead to unfettered infringement on their works online wouldn't lose all incentive to create. Times have changed. We can now see that TPMs overshot their original mark. Today TPMs are used to restrict a wide range of lawful non-infringing activities that bear no relationship to protected works at all. By being keyed to access rather than infringement, TPMs have been a disaster for consumers....

TPMs lock consumers and third parties out. They also lock us in to ongoing relationships with companies and service providers whether we like it or not. We live in walled gardens, platform bubbles and tech silos—disconnected, closed worlds—and we are largely stuck because restrictions on interoperability have enabled switching costs to rise to untenable levels. We lack the economic agency to leave for an alternative or substitute provider. No matter how nice the trappings might appear at times, a cage is still a cage.

On a similar point, a witness for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre added:

In order to achieve improved access to compatible goods, competing companies must be able to examine each other's software for the purpose of developing interoperable products. Currently, manufacturers use TPMs to deny competitors access to the information, preferring instead to make goods that can only be used in conjunction with other products that they manufacture in a closed loop that encourages anti-competitive lock-in.

It was good for us to hear some of the academic input in committee. It helped us to step back and hear about the issue in a way that shows how broad and far-reaching it can be. While most people do not think of interoperability very often, if they ever do at all, it is still an issue that affects us as consumers or as businesses in a competitive marketplace. This issue has so many aspects and we only have a limited amount of time for debate.

There were some points of disagreement between different witnesses, although there seemed to be almost consensus that Bill C-294 is going in the right direction and would improve an outdated version of the Copyright Act. It reaffirmed the all-party support that this bill received at second reading. We are moving forward with the same principles that the Copyright Act has always maintained.

This bill is not doing something new. It is only responding to recent changes in the marketplace that have caused innovators and consumers to lose ground they once had. All we are trying to do is get back to the right balance, which we had before. Interoperability has existed all along and was taken for granted. It is an essential part of our economy that we cannot afford to lose. Bill C-294 has a simple solution. We would have a limited exemption for interoperability with clear and meaningful language that is currently lacking.

Something else that should be discussed at this stage is the amendment that was made to the bill at committee. The original draft that I introduced had a separate section with specific language about manufacturers. With the example of Honey Bee and similar businesses out there, it is absolutely necessary for the legislation to protect what they are doing. At the same time, I have acknowledged from the start that our approach to copyright has to be compliant with our trade agreements. The additions to the bill have taken a careful look at our agreements and have expanded the scope of the bill in some ways. That is what we are trying to do by using newer language about “lawfully obtained computer programs”, instead of specifically mentioning manufacturers.

To be clear, the intent of this bill remains exactly the same as it was in the first version. We want to guarantee manufacturers the right to circumvent TPMs for the purpose of interoperability. That is non-negotiable. For my part, I agreed to accept this amendment from the government on the understanding that this would be the case. I have been assured that this is what the bill’s language would do in practice if it is, hopefully, passed.

Along with the need to use technical language that is in harmony with our trade agreements, I want to reassure my colleagues across the House once again about our relationship with our trading partners, especially the United States. For the agricultural sector, we are seeking an exemption for interoperability that is equivalent to what already exists south of the border. Their system for regulating copyright is quite different from ours in practice, but this bill is trying to accomplish the same goal, mainly for our farm equipment, but also across other parts of the economy.

We did hear some testimony at committee about the potential benefits of imitating the U.S.'s regulatory approach, and that could be a conversation worth having. That will have to be on another day. It is not the intent of this particular bill. What we wanted to deal with is what is not happening in Canada, and we need to catch up. Sometimes we have to move faster than the speed of bureaucracy, which is why we are taking this legislative approach.

As it stands, our consideration of Bill C-294 has helped to show how we might want to improve the Copyright Act in other ways, such as by having a more flexible approach that can be accomplished through regulation, but that is a much larger issue than is typical or realistic for a private member’s bill. I will leave that to the government side to figure out, and I hope the work we have all done together on Bill C-294 will help that out.

I have a lot of hope that we can move forward with this bill and see it quickly pass this House and move on to the other place, where hopefully it can receive royal assent.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Industry and Technology

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology in relation to Bill C-244, an act to amend the Copyright Act (diagnosis, maintenance and repair).

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendment.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology in relation to Bill C-288, an act to amend the Telecommunications Act (transparent and accurate broadband services information).

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendment.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 13th report of the the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology in relation to Bill C-294, an act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House also with amendment.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Those innovators wouldn't be captured by proposed paragraph 41.12(1)(a) in Bill C-294 as written.

[Patrick Blanar]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In Bill C-294 as drafted presently, proposed paragraph 41.12(1)(a) already captures the majority of it, but it doesn't go as far as what the government amendment would do by expanding it to beyond only those who own and license. With regard to proposed paragraph 41.12(1)(b), it is difficult to interpret whether or not it would apply to a broader universe or whether it continues to be restricted by that same requirement of ownership and licensing.

I think, from what I've heard, that the intention is to expand it, but at that point it becomes somewhat expanded without bound. I think it's still bound by subsection 41.12(6), which basically says that you can't do anything that's infringing, but it still has fewer bounds, which I understand is what seems to be sought. This is where we think that this concept of “lawfully obtained” also, by being somewhat undefined, allows for more of that flexibility and more of that certainty that, as long as it is not infringing or illegally acquired, at the end of the day they can work on it. It can be used not only in tractors but in any number of industries, and not only by manufacturers but by others who are seeking to create interoperable devices, including small inventors who might be working in their garages and who would not qualify under the definition of a manufacturer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I think that “lawfully obtained” shortens and, as you say, broadens the definition. There is still the practical barrier around how that's all obtained. I'm just going to get right into the specifics of it.

The John Deere X9 combine, for example, is set up so that part of the controller is on a header and part of it is now in the combine itself. Normally the controller is all in the combine, and then you have a cable running out through the feeder house to the front end, where the header would attach. Then the header manufacturer has their interface with the cabling that goes out to make the connection, and away it goes. The interface does the talking with the controller, and it's done.

However, the way that John Deere is now manufacturing products is that you have part of it here and part of it there. It's now a technical or physical lock as well that is now in between there, but through the Copyright Act, they're still able to hide and be able to lock John Deere off the platform, because they still can.... Honey Bee, for example, is not going to buy 70 different models from all the different manufacturers across the world. They testified about how they sell to 27 countries around the world. Some of those machines never make it to North America, so they're not actually going to be able to have the machine come to their shop and to reverse engineer it and do the thing.

A lot of it is dependent on companies just having a standardized electrical cabling system, but now you have a company that has gone beyond that and has reinvented the wheel, per se, and nobody else is allowed to have access to the reinvented wheel. This is what's happening, both physically and digitally. That's the barrier we're trying to prevent from becoming a more common practice, because as the rest of the OEMs see that John Deere can get away with it, they are going to start doing the same thing—monkey see, monkey do.

Again, whether it's Honey Bee or the tow-behind implements for planting and seeding, there are lots more short lines in the industry. The impacts are going to be realized by them in the not too distant future as well. Then the other industries, like mining and forestry, are going to see the impacts as well, as companies go to both physically and digitally locking out these other companies.

The reason we had the very specific exemption for manufacturers was that we think that under (a) we would be able to get somebody who is maybe not necessarily a manufacturer but is still trying to make a product. They would fall under proposed paragraph 41.12(1)(a), whereas proposed paragraph (b) would be very specific. The dictionary references a manufacturer as a corporate entity that makes a product. It's very specific about what they're talking about. It also recognizes that what we're trying to accomplish with some of the new wording that has been added to the other portions of the act is the aftermarket product that we're talking about here and being specific to.

I definitely appreciate the language that has been recommended through G-1. I just don't know that it's actually going to provide the certainty and clarity that industry is looking for, especially since a lot of this will be settled in court. That's the way a lot of this will work. At the end of the day, some of these big OEMs have a lot of power behind them, and nobody can withstand that legal challenge. We want to make sure we have absolute certainty and clarity within the act so that it's abundantly clear to the people who are trying to make these short-line products.

Again, there was a good study done by Western Economic Diversification Canada that speaks to the impacts that it has across the country. It's about making sure that those people have the jobs, but also the innovation that goes along with it, and about the benefit to small town and rural Canada all across this country.

I worry that by removing some of the specifics on the manufacturers exemption that we put in there, we're removing the clarity and certainty we were trying to achieve and obtain by putting forward the bill.

I agree with the language in proposed paragraph 41.12(1)(a). The way (a) and (b) are written, they make sense, but again, steering away from the actual intent of (b), as it was written in the draft of Bill C-294 originally, waters it down. It makes it a bit ambiguous, which opens the door for litigation to be levied against people who are trying to innovate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We are now proceeding with clause-by-clause study of Bill C‑294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

With us again are Mr. Patrick Blanar, director of the Department of Industry's Copyright and Trademark Policy Directorate. With him is Mr. Pierre-Luc Racine, policy advisor within the same department. They are now true committee regulars. We thank them very much for being with us today.

(Clause 1)

We will start right away with clause 1 of the bill. There is an amendment on the table, amendment G‑1, for which I will give the floor to Mr. Fillmore.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Yes. Congratulations to Mr. Mazier, and thank you to all for your collaboration. Good work.

I will briefly suspend so that we can get to Bill C-294.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, and welcome to meeting No. 64 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, November 30, 2022, we are studying Bill C‑288, An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act (transparent and accurate broadband services information).

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of Thursday, June 23, 2022.

We welcome Mr. Andre Arbour, director general of Industry Canada's Telecommunications and Internet Policy Branch, as a witness to answer questions that may arise as we proceed with clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. I thank him for being with us.

Let's proceed without further ado with clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C‑288. We will then move on to study Bill C‑294.

I will start by clarifying that, pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), study of the preamble is deferred to the end of clause-by-clause consideration.

(Clause 1)

We are now reviewing Clause 1 and amendment CPC‑1.

Who will move this amendment?

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks.

We're going to have a further conversation, I think, at this committee around ensuring compliance with CUSMA. Obviously, it applies to Bill C-244 as well. It's been a more challenging conversation for this bill as well.

To Mr. Rosborough's point, as I understand it, you mentioned article 20.66(4)(h). However, article 20.66(4)(a) says:

non-infringing reverse engineering activities with regard to a lawfully obtained copy of a computer program,

Okay. Check.

carried out in good faith with respect to particular elements of that computer program that have not been readily available to the person engaged in those activities, for the sole purpose of achieving interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs

One would think.... The fact is that interoperability is clearly marked out here as an exception. You then have the basket clause in paragraph (h) that you pointed to.

I guess the question is not for you, Mr. Rosborough, but for Ms. Lovrics or your colleague.

Given articles 20.66(4)(a) and 20.66(4)(h), so that I'm better prepared to ask the question when we have a trade expert in front of us, how should I understand a CUSMA objection in the course of Bill C-294?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

In your opinion, are the amendments proposed in Bill C‑294 consistent with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement? Do you have any suggestions for wording to avoid any problems with the Americans?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Yes. If we compare the interoperability provisions of the U.S. law against the current Canadian law or Bill C‑294, can we tie in? Will these exceptions help bring our position into line with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement?

[Catherine Lovrics]

I'm sorry. Is it how does something compare to what's in Bill C-294, the current provisions?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Lovrics or Ms. Stanley, the anti-circumvention provisions of U.S. copyright law, that is, Chapter 17, paragraph 1201(f), contain an exception for interoperability purposes. How does this exception compare to the one currently in the Canadian Copyright Act, or to the expanded exception proposed in Bill C‑294?

[Colleen Stanley]

In terms of the objective of the bill, which is to take away barriers to interoperability to improve businesses like Honey Bee and other agricultural parts manufacturers, the issue is just a technical one. The current CUSMA section on technological protection measures and exceptions to them doesn't allow for non-infringing exceptions. In the way Bill C-294 is drafted, it seems that it would allow non-infringing exceptions, at least in some cases. It really gets down to a drafting issue.

I'm not talking about the broad policy issue here. It's that, as currently drafted, the bill would put us offside with CUSMA, and in particular of article 20.66.

I'd like to ask my colleague, Catherine Lovrics, if she has additional comments.

[Colleen Stanley]

I don't know why the issue of AI in TPM and interoperability hasn't been raised in negotiations with the U.S., but I'm not involved in international negotiations at all.

From the perspective of how IPIC would talk about AI in the context of TPMs, it would be in terms of the safety and security risks that we flag when you put in an amendment that is far too broad. That is one of our concerns with Bill C-294. It may not be intended to be broad, but the language that's used, like “manufactured product” or "device or component", could have many unintended interpretations and consequences.

In the context of the role that AI could have in terms of security, safety, health care and the whole Internet of things, that would be the comment. It's safety and security and making sure there are not unintended consequences from a broad amendment.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is open for all witnesses.

During the study on Bill C-244, there were opposing views on the bill. OEMs were quite opposed to the right to repair frameworks for a number of reasons, including safety concerns and IP theft.

Are these issues of concern for Bill C-294 as well? What are your thoughts on this?

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for making time for this committee.

Ms. Centivany and Mr. Rosborough, thank you again for being here. We really appreciated your testimony on Bill C-244 a few weeks ago. As we understand it, Bill C-294 raises similar concerns around Canada's obligation under CUSMA. Would you agree with this? Are there suggested amendments that you would make or that you want the committee to consider?

[John Lawford, Executive Director and General Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Thank you.

Chair and honourable members, my name is John Lawford. I'm the executive director and general counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

PIAC is a national non-profit organization and a registered charity. We provide legal and research services on behalf of consumer interests, in particular vulnerable consumer interests concerning the provision of important public services. We've been active in the field of digital consumer protection and policy for over 20 years.

PIAC supports Bill C-294's goal of the creation of an exception to technical protection measures under the Copyright Act to allow consumers or businesses to circumvent TPMs for the purpose of attaching a further product to enhance the utility of the original consumer or business product in which the TPM is embedded.

The expression of the circumvention right in Bill C-294 covers all software-enabled products, but only to the extent that the TPM circumvention is required to make another product interoperate with the restricted product. It is aiming, therefore, at attachments or aftermarket products.

This aspect of the bill is its strength, as it limits its ambit and perhaps will not tread on the perceived rights of the initial owner's copyright or market. In other words, the primary or parent product must still be purchased by the consumer, and then the attachment or aftermarket product is permitted to read the information from the parent product to be made functional.

What this bill does not do, unlike Bill C-244, is give consumers a right to repair that furthers a number of public interest aim. These include consumer freedom and right to use their legally owned items more flexibly, the extension of useful life of products, the avoidance of consumer costs and environmental harm from needless disposal of otherwise workable products and the toxic and expensive precious minerals that are in them, and an increased control of the timing and expression of consumer demand that can lead to increased competition, consumer choice, lower prices, improved customer service, greater innovation and support of small local repair businesses.

What is not in this bill is a consumer right to be informed of the possibility and availability of replacement parts. This is required in France under their Code de la consommation, under article L111-1, which requires vendors to publicly list a product or service's functionality, compatibility and interoperability with computer programs.

Parliament would also do well to consider, as in article L111-4 of the same French law, stipulating a list of consumer electronic products that must have replacement parts available to any repairer for a period of at least five years after the sale of the last unit of the specified consumer goods.

Finally, subject to provincial jurisdiction, Parliament should consider an offence, perhaps under the Competition Act, of planned obsolescence, which is an offence under the same French law at article L441-2.

PIAC believes that consumers should have access to a wider range of interoperable products. The government's recent copyright consultation stated that interoperability “fosters competition, promotes overall business competitiveness and supports incremental innovation. Interoperability also gives consumers more ability to make the most use of the products they buy.” We agree.

In order to achieve improved access to compatible goods, competing companies must be able to examine each other's software for the purpose of developing interoperable products. Currently, manufacturers use TPMs to deny competitors access to the information, preferring instead to make goods that can only be used in conjunction with other products that they manufacture in a closed loop that encourages anti-competitive lock-in.

PIAC supports adding a definition of “interoperability” in section 41.12 of the Copyright Act. In his paper, Anthony Rosborough argues for adding such a definition to the act, as allowing the term to be used in section 41.12 but leaving it undefined simply empowers original equipment manufacturers to narrowly define interoperability and to leverage the legal uncertainty with third parties to their advantage.

The definition of “interoperability” could parallel that in 17 U.S.C., section 1201(f)(4), which is “the term 'interoperability' means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.” It should also be extended to include replacement physical parts, interfaces and other compatibilities as well.

In conclusion, we support Bill C-294 as far as it goes, but we want additional consumer protection in the area of consumer product use versus copyright overreach in the digital economy.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[Colleen Stanley, Member, Copyright Policy Committee, Intellectual Property Institute of Canada]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and honourable members, on behalf of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, thank you for the invitation to appear today as part of INDU's study. My name is Colleen Stanley, and I am here as a member of IPIC's copyright committee and a member of the subcommittee on interoperability.

IPIC is pleased to provide comments in response to Bill C-294. IPIC recognizes that the bill aims to remove barriers to the development of third party parts by the Canadian manufacturing industry, particularly in the agricultural sector. The subcommittee studying Bill C-294, however, has had some difficulty in understanding exactly what the specific objectives of Bill C-294 are, as the wording is somewhat uncertain and ambiguous.

From what we can ascertain, the proposed amendments appear to target two main objectives. The first objective is permitting circumvention of a TPM to obtain information from a computer program for the purposes of making it interoperable with another computer program when one or both computer programs are embedded in hardware. In this objective, we're talking about smart products being made interoperable with other smart products. By “smart” products, we mean products that have code or embedded software.

The second objective we see is permitting circumvention of a technological protection measure to obtain information from a computer program, embedded or otherwise, for the purpose of making it interoperable with another product that may not be smart—i.e., making smart products interoperable with non-smart products.

With respect to objective one, the smart interoperable with the smart, IPIC's response is that the amendments are unnecessary. Subsection 41.12(1) in its current form already permits the circumvention of a TPM for the purpose of interoperability of computer programs embedded in hardware. It is clear in Canadian copyright law that “computer program” includes embedded software. The definition of computer program in the Copyright Act is broad, and includes this: “a set of instructions or statements, expressed, fixed, embodied or stored in any manner”. Case law to date supports this interpretation.

In addition to the amendments being unnecessary, they would introduce uncertainty into the Copyright Act. The term “computer program” is used throughout the act, and in each instance is interpreted to include embedded software.

With respect to objective two, where we're talking about smart programs being interoperable with not-so-smart programs, the amendments will likely not achieve the intended objective. That's because the subsection being amended by Bill C-294, subsection 41.12(1), does not work in isolation. It works in conjunction with two other sections of the Copyright Act. One section provides that the benefit of the TPM interoperability exception is lost if the circumvention enables a copyright infringement. The other section provides that reproducing a computer program for the purposes of making it interoperable with another computer program is not an infringement of copyright, but making a computer program interoperable with a product or device is not covered by the infringement exception.

This does not necessarily mean that an infringement would result from breaking a TPM, but in many cases it could. Therefore, as drafted, Bill C-294 would end up creating a TPM circumvention exception that may be available only sometimes or not at all.

With respect to objective two, there is also the issue of treaty compliance. CUSMA sets out the exception for circumventing a TPM for purposes of interoperability and provides that such exceptions be for the sole purpose of achieving interoperability with another computer program.

As well, the use of a broad term like “manufactured product” will introduce uncertainty into the Copyright Act and may result in a TPM circumvention exception that is much broader than originally intended.

In conclusion, if the government wishes to pursue the policy objectives in Bill C-294, IPIC advises taking an approach that considers three factors. The first is how the Copyright Act works as a whole. As discussed, a number of sections of the act work together with subsection 41.12(1), but Bill C-294 amends only that one subsection.

They also have to take into account Canada's international treaty obligations. These require that any exception to the protection of a TPM be carefully crafted, narrowly focused and enable only non-infringing uses.

The third factor is societal safety and security issues. TPMs play a vital role beyond intellectual property protection, and circumventing TPMs can open access to sensitive or private information stored within a computer program or impact its safe operation. The broad variety of TPMs and their related business models calls for a legislative framework that identifies specific cases in which safety and security can be taken into account.

In conclusion, a targeted regulatory approach with a framework for case-by-case assessment that would consider the risks and benefits of each exception is the approach recommended by IPIC to address the policy objectives raised in Bill C-294. IPIC will provide suggested wording for proposed amendments that would address these concerns in its brief, which will follow shortly.

Thank you very much.

[Jamie Pegg, General Manager, Honey Bee Manufacturing Ltd.]

Mr. Chair and committee members, my name is Jamie Pegg and I have the privilege of representing 180 employees and nine area communities as general manager of Honey Bee Manufacturing. I have with me Mr. Scott Smith, our CSI manager.

Greetings are offered by Ms. Donna Boyd and the 240-plus members of the Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada, and by Mr. John Schmeiser and the 4,000 members of the newly developed North American Equipment Dealers Association.

We want to thank you for the opportunity to express our support for Bill C-294.

Three years ago, we sat before this committee with respect to the CUSMA trade agreement. We discussed the need to address the copyright changes Bill C-294 now brings to the table. In 2020, the reasons for changes were based on expected events. Since then, we have felt the impact.

TPMs have disabled technology at normally interoperable intersections between products from Canadian agricultural manufacturers and OEM equipment platforms. The result is a 53% market denial for Honey Bee in Canada alone. The proverbial USB port has been replaced by an OEM-specific connection that is not publicly documented and has no available compatibility parts.

We are a global company, from the people we work with to the 29 countries we export to. Honey Bee sells 50% of its product in North America and exports the remainder to the rest of the world. However, our industry is still placed on an uneven playing field versus our U.S. counterparts. Foreign platforms seek to prevent participation by Canadian brands.

Honey Bee's opportunity to capitalize on intellectual property is based on our ability to interoperate with OEM equipment platforms. Interoperability means that a Honey Bee harvest header can “plug and play” with OEM equipment. Historically, this has been provided in a straightforward and obvious way, like the way a keyboard plugs into a computer.

Today, Canadian industry is technically blocked by some dominant international brands, with the impact being a loss of substantial market participation opportunity. The net result is “authorized use only”. This is controlled by OEM digital locks and keys that are unavailable to manufacturers of implement. Instead of spending our research budget on innovation, we are burning it on adaptation.

It is important to state that in no way should Canadian manufacturers, dealers and—most importantly—farmer customers be at a disadvantage on choice. Historically, we had an integrated farm equipment market in North America and abroad. Honey Bee innovation caters to the specific needs of many markets and considers their unique environments, practices and crops. Meeting these challenges brings Canadian innovation to the world. The impact of technical lockout by OEMs will be the collapse of our Canadian implement manufacturing industry, which will decimate many of our smaller communities.

In Bill C-294, “innovation” is the act of offering improved components or products for use, either as an independent product or used in conjunction with other products. When innovation is applied in conjunction with another product, it is required to interoperate in a compatible way. In Bill C-244, “repair” is the act of restoring a failed device to its original state, as designed and manufactured. Neither of these needs access to internal source code or involves undesired exposure to valued IP. What is needed is the supply of external specifications for protocols, and interfaces to achieve the required functionality result.

Historically, this has been the norm. As this is no longer the case, it is now an industry requirement that companies can legally reverse-engineer a product. This may include circumventing a TPM for the purpose of accessing the required systems in order to develop the information needed for achieving interoperability or repair.

The CUSMA agreement does not place U.S. and Canadian implement manufacturers on the same footing. U.S. copyright law makes exceptions for legally modified, motorized agricultural equipment for the purpose of interoperability. Canadian copyright law does not. This makes it illegal for Honey Bee, or any other Canadian company, to reverse-engineer OEM platforms to achieve the required interoperability. This means products made in Canada cannot be legally adapted in Canada. Canadian manufacturers and farmers are at a huge disadvantage. Why is that? It's a lack of clarifying language.

Bill C-294 solves this problem.

At the start of this testimony, I offered you greetings from our employees, their families and our communities. My desire is to see the number of employees and families increase with company growth because Bill C-294 is passed. If we really want to support Canadian content and innovation, we should support the work of Canadian manufacturing. By passing Bill C-294, we are voting for Canada.

Thank you.

[Anthony D. Rosborough, Researcher, Department of Law, European University Institute, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee.

It is my pleasure to once again appear to share my perspective on copyright, software TPMs and anti-circumvention policy. This time it is in relation to the proposed Bill C-294 and interoperability.

I am a doctoral researcher in law at the European University Institute and a graduate of the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. I am also a practising member of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society.

My doctoral thesis explores the design, function and implications of TPMs across the automotive, consumer electronics and agricultural equipment industries. My research includes an exploration into how TPMs impact innovation and interoperability. I have spent a significant amount of time learning from cybersecurity experts, electrotechnical engineers and Canadian innovators to better understand this issue and its relationship to copyright law.

In 2021, I published a peer-reviewed article in the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology that examines Canada’s copyright interoperability framework and addresses many of the issues under consideration by the committee today. I have provided an electronic copy of this article to the committee clerk for your review.

Overall, I strongly support this bill and the concerns of Canadian innovators who have found TPMs to be an obstacle to devising new products and services as well as a source of considerable business risk and uncertainty.

These perspectives demonstrate that innovation in the 21st century does not occur in a vacuum. It's a cumulative process and it thrives when knowledge and expertise can be devoted to improving the technologies we already have to perform new and unprecedented things. In the world of embedded computer systems and the Internet of things, interoperability is synonymous with innovation.

Bill C-294 reflects this reality, and it reflects the needs of Canadian innovators by not allowing manufacturers to prevent competition in secondary markets under the auspices of copyright.

In my remarks today, I would like to make three main points. First, I'll explain why the Copyright Act’s existing interoperability exception is inadequate. Second, I'll explain how the bill could be improved. Finally, I'll clarify the appropriate role and scope of copyright law in this context.

In the concept of interoperability in the act, the existing exception allowing circumvention of TPMs conceptualizes interoperability as the mutual exchange of information between two computer programs. Given the history of this exception, this narrow view is understandable.

The existing exception was included in the act as part of the Copyright Modernization Act over a decade ago. However, a lot has changed since 2011. Policy experts and standards organizations around the world now recognize a much more complex and context-specific understanding of interoperability. This includes embedded systems, computerized devices and Internet of things technologies.

This bill takes the right approach by broadening the application of the interoperability exception to include not only computer programs but also devices in which they are embedded. This is crucial, because the distinction between the computer program and the computing hardware is much less clear than it once was. In the past, it may have been easier to distinguish between hardware and software, but when software now controls the physical functioning of devices and components, the software and hardware blend together. As I wrote in my 2021 article, the Copyright Act’s conceptualization of interoperability needs to reflect today's computing and innovation paradigm. Computers are no longer just boxes with screens and keyboards. They are cars, home appliances, pacemakers, agricultural equipment and learning technologies.

By viewing interoperability narrowly, as purely a relationship between two computer programs, the act’s existing exception does not address the reality of 21st century computing or 21st century innovation.

Here is how the bill can be improved.

Though the bill offers a lot of promise by expanding interoperability to devices and components, there remains one important drawback left over from the existing exception. That is the caveat that the person circumventing the TPM—who is not a manufacturer themselves—must own “the computer program or a copy of one, or has a licence to use the program or copy”.

It may not be clear in every case that a person circumventing a TPM for interoperability has a licence to use the computer program embedded in the device or is the owner of a copy of the program. For this reason, the bill could be improved by making it clear that the ownership of a device or component in which a computer program is embedded creates an implied licence to use that computer program.

Legislating an implied licence to use the embedded program for interoperability would enable Canadian innovators and researchers outside of the manufacturing context to develop interoperable solutions without the prior consent of the original manufacturer. This would create a more open and competitive marketplace and better choices for consumers and ensure that copyright law is not used by foreign multinationals to stymie Canadian research and innovation.

This brings me to my last point: to clarify the role of copyright law when it comes to innovation and computing.

The purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the production of artistic and literary works. It encourages authors to bring ideas into the public realm. Software is a type of work capable of copyright protection, but the physical functioning of the devices that it controls is not and never was intended to be within the scope of copyright law and policy.

If we follow the logic of rights holders, it goes something like this: Where there is computing hardware, there is software; where there is software, there is copyright; and where there is copyright, TPMs can be used to prevent access. The trouble is that even when access to software bears no relationship to infringement, the act still treats that as an unlawful activity.

Though original equipment manufacturers and industry groups may contend to this committee that the bill could enable piracy-related circumvention of TPMs for infringing acts under the auspices of interoperability, this fearmongering is unfounded, for two reasons.

First, I strongly doubt that any of us are interested in making unlawful copies of the firmware used by our microwaves, televisions or laptop computers, and I have a hard time believing that bootlegged copies of firmware would attract much interest on illicit markets.

Second, and more importantly, we need to be clear about what is really being contorted here. The bill is not about enabling piracy under the auspices of interoperability; the bill is about preventing OEMs from roadblocking innovation and research under the auspices of copyright.

At a fundamental level, access-control TPMs in physical devices undermine the public policy goals of the copyright system as a whole. They function as absolute barriers to the diffusion of knowledge, are indefinite in duration and can undermine Canadian competitiveness and innovation in the global marketplace. Innovation, research and discovery are not infringing activities. Canadian innovators should not be held hostage by copyright protections designed decades ago to protect digital content industries from online infringement.

To conclude, I ask this committee to consider amending the bill to include an implied licence to use the computer program embedded in the device or component necessary to achieve interoperability. That would broaden the scope of the bill's application to research and innovation beyond product manufacturing. Following such an amendment, I wholeheartedly recommend that this committee move the bill forward toward royal assent.

Thank you.

[Dr. Alissa Centivany, Assistant Professor, Western University, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee.

My name is Alissa Centivany. I'm an assistant professor at the faculty of information and media studies at Western University, where I work on technology, policy, law and ethics, and I serve as co-director of Tesserae, The Centre for Digital Justice, Community and Democracy at Western University.

I have a JD specializing in intellectual property law and a Ph.D. in information science. I've held research appointments at the Center for Law & Technology at the UC Berkeley law school and at the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto law school.

I'm currently the primary investigator on a SSHRC-funded study of copyright, computerization and the right to repair. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today about Bill C-294. This bill improves the existing exemption, but in my view, it doesn't go far enough.

First, I'd like to acknowledge that this topic is both critically important and also somewhat inaccessible. Interoperability demands that we navigate between distinct, sophisticated, highly technical fields—copyright law and technological protection measures, or TPMs, on the one hand, and the design of complex emerging technologies on the other.

This is no easy task. I caution the committee to be wary of what I call “strategic befuddlement”, a tactic of using overly technical jargon that is employed by some stakeholders to obfuscate and confuse, rather than illuminate, what's really at stake. With that in mind, I'd like to make a few brief, hopefully straightforward, big-picture points and offer a few recommendations.

Interoperability is the act of making a new product or service work with an existing one. This includes peripherals, consumables, interfaces, data, software, replacement parts and so forth. Interoperability is good for consumers, for research, for follow-on innovation and for competition. The standards and shared norms at the heart of interoperability make life simpler, more efficient and more connected.

Interoperability can be co-operative, ambivalent or adversarial. It's this last category, coined by Cory Doctorow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that is perhaps most relevant to our discussion today. Adversarial interoperability, also called competitive compatibility, refers to new products and services connecting to existing ones against the wishes of the original company.

Before TPMs were added to the Copyright Act, this form of non-consensual interoperability was a normal way of innovating in tech and other sectors. TPMs changed that, though.

TPMs were originally intended to create artificial digital scarcity so that creators of creative and artistic works who feared that the burgeoning Internet would lead to unfettered infringement on their works online wouldn't lose all incentive to create. Times have changed. We can now see that TPMs overshot their original mark. Today TPMs are used to restrict a wide range of lawful non-infringing activities that bear no relationship to protected works at all. By being keyed to access rather than infringement, TPMs have been a disaster for consumers.

Even with the current interoperability exemption, TPMs have also been a disaster for follow-on innovation, because they can still be used to inhibit competition and protect the business models of incumbents. For example, in the context of repair, companies today routinely use proprietary tools and interfaces and parts-pairing restrictions to block third party replacement parts and lock out independent service technicians.

Even more troubling, though, is that companies like Apple, John Deere and video game console makers Microsoft and Sony even block their own authentic OEM parts from interoperating with their products absent some additional authorization by, and payment to, a company-approved technician. The use of TPMs to block interoperability is anti-competitive, anti-innovation and anti-consumer, and it reflects, in my view, an astounding degree of corporate greed.

There's a lot of talk about how we live in a connected world, but what all this shows, I think, is that we don't really. TPMs lock consumers and third parties out. They also lock us in to ongoing relationships with companies and service providers whether we like it or not. We live in walled gardens, platform bubbles and tech silos—disconnected, closed worlds—and we are largely stuck because restrictions on interoperability have enabled switching costs to rise to untenable levels. We lack the economic agency to leave for an alternative or substitute provider. No matter how nice the trappings might appear at times, a cage is still a cage.

Bill C-294 represents a step in the right direction, but in my view, it doesn't go far enough. In addition to what I've already said, I'm concerned that the entirety of the Internet of things may remain insulated, given the bill's focus on embedded computer programs.

In terms of offering some recommendations, I have a few that I'll put forward in a descending order of radicalness.

First, we could get rid of anti-circumvention provisions. Infringement is already illegal. Let's let the Copyright Act do what it was designed to do.

Second, we could mandate interoperability rather than permit it in limited circumstances.

Third, we could create broad immunity for acts aimed at promoting interoperability.

Fourth, we should absolutely reform the TPM provisions to make it clear that anti-circumvention applies only to infringing activities, and that exemptions to infringement, such as fair dealing and research, are preserved.

Finally, we should create broad exemptions for interoperability that include not just computer programs and embedded systems but also smart technologies, peripherals, consumables, interfaces, data formats, connectors and so forth. Making and trafficking in tools to accomplish the above should also be clearly exempt.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 61 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, November 30, 2022, we are considering Bill C‑294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

Today's meeting is in hybrid form, pursuant to the House order adopted on Thursday, June 23, 2022.

I want to begin by thanking all the witnesses who are joining us today on this Wednesday afternoon, and offer our apologies on behalf of the committee for the brief delay in starting the meeting. We had to vote in the House.

Without further ado, Mr. Lemire, you have the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a technical question.

If BQ‑1 is deemed out of order, would it be possible to somehow turn it into a subamendment to G‑1?

I ask because the Entertainment Software Association of Canada raised concerns in a letter it sent the committee. The association is concerned about Bill C-294's impact on the video game industry and requested an exclusion for video game consoles because the nature of the industry is such that it produces data that can be copied and exported online.

They need a specific exclusion. Obviously, it's not the same as repairing a tractor. There are legal precedents in some U.S. states, including Washington.

I think this is important because it's about protecting the content and intellectual property of numerous video game companies. Not only do they have a presence in almost every province in Canada, but they also are part of a flagship industry in Quebec.

The safety and security of consumers and data are at stake. Gaming platforms are increasingly moving to the web, so removing this safeguard would make it possible to copy and share games. This has repercussions for the funding of the video game industry because companies could see their intellectual property being copied.

For that reason, I propose including our amendment in G‑1, between proposed subsections 41.121(1) and 41.121(2). That would exclude the video game industry.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Part of it is the right to innovate...or the safety concerns. A lot of that comes down to enforcement in other jurisdictions. It's not copyright that would be the enforcement mechanism for a lot of those things. Safety isn't copyright. When you're talking about motor vehicle safety acts or environmental protection, that's not the Copyright Act.

Both Bill C-244 and my bill, Bill C-294, which we're talking about today, are not going to allow people to alter or make substantive changes to an already existing piece of equipment. When you look at the very definitions of “diagnose”, “maintenance” or “repair”, you're maintaining it to what the original state was or you're repairing it to the original state. In order to do that safely, you have to be able to access information to restore it to the original state.

What we're trying to do with my bill is to make more products available to the consumer to use, to have the choice and the options for what they want. Again, that's not going to violate environmental protection laws. It's not going to alter motor vehicle safety. There are standards in place that still have to be respected.

All of these companies are certified companies; they're making good products. Are there going to be some bad actors or other people who are black market or whatever? Yes. With or without this, that's going to exist.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

The World Bank released a report entitled “What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management”, which identifies numerous initiatives around the world to reduce the amount of electronic goods that end up in landfills.

Adherence to the principle of interoperability would reduce the number of electronic devices that give rise to connection issues. We know that Apple changed its connectors, obviously to force customers to buy more Apple products.

Is that also one of the objectives of your legislation, Bill C-294?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Patzer, for being here. It's nice to see you again, here at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I want to build on something Mr. Fillmore mentioned. Quebec unanimously passed similar legislation in 2019, Bill 197, an act to amend the Consumer Protection Act to fight planned obsolescence and assert the right to repair goods.

What I take from Bill C-294 is that it would prevent manufacturers from using the federal Copyright Act to thwart efforts to make Quebec the number one place in the world for consumer protection against these types of practices. That's how we see it, anyways. In that regard, I commend you on your leadership.

Why do you care so much about planned obsolescence?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much to the members of the committee.

It's an honour to be here. I was a member of the committee previously, so it's fun to be back here and, in particular, to talk about a bill that I think we have all already found some semblance of agreement on.

The House of Commons already voted unanimously to pass this bill at second reading, and I believe there is good reason and enough public support as well to keep the momentum going through the remaining stages ahead.

Many people are not familiar with the concept of interoperability, but it is fairly easy to understand the problem we have right now in Canada. It’s the result of rapid technological changes, especially over the last few years.

The federal government updated the Copyright Act 10 years ago in response to new developments back then, which gave us the current version of Canadian copyright law. Since 2012, the act includes a new section for the enforcement of technological protection measures, or TPMs for short.

At the time, there was a clear need to better protect the copyrighted works of artists and entertainers. That is why there is language that specifically mentions “performers” and “sound recordings”. Digital locks and similar technology were created to combat piracy and related issues, and the Copyright Act backs them up with enforcement and legal penalties.

The wording of section 41 made sense for what was happening 10 years ago, but we all know that has a lot has changed since then.

Now there are other industries that have incorporated digital features and software into their products. This has allowed digital locks to appear in places that were unimaginable when the law was put in place. It has opened our eyes to how common something like interoperability is.

For the benefit of the committee, and for anybody who might be listening online today, when we think of the concept of interoperability, one of the simplest forms to describe it.... For those of you who have Surface Pros, if you use an external mouse and you plug it in via USB, it just works. It doesn't matter what brand your mouse is. You plug it in, it downloads the driver and it interoperates. It's basically a plug-and-play concept. That's one of the simplest ways to describe what interoperability is and how it should seamlessly work.

For something like computer hardware, though, there hasn’t been as much of an issue. The market incentive favours allowing interoperability between different brands, and everyone is better off for it. However, other industries are starting to lose ground with letting people enjoy interoperability.

I have already said a lot—in my speech, back at second reading—about how there are problems with using agricultural machinery for farmers and short-line manufacturers, and I would be happy to talk about more of the details during your rounds of questions. Obviously, machinery for farming and heavy construction is not the same thing as copyright for music or movies. The nature of the business and products involved are quite different. Restricting interoperability in these areas has more practical consequences because there is more at stake with these sectors.

It is also important to remember that interoperability existed and was practised before these new conditions came along. What Bill C-294 proposes to do is not anything new. Instead, it is trying to close a loophole and bring back what farmers and manufacturers were always allowed to do. It's an acceptable and perfectly normal thing that should not be treated as if it were part of a black market. Until we return to the clarity of a simpler time, we are leaving people in an awkward, arbitrary and inconsistent position.

Bill C-294 is our opportunity to update the Copyright Act with a small, limited amendment. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just common sense. With your support, and that of the rest of our colleagues in the House, we can make a simple fix that will support Canadian consumers and industry.

I look forward to responding to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 59 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, November 30, 2022, we are considering Bill C-294, an act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022.

During the first hour of our meeting on Bill C‑294, we are fortunate to have with us the sponsor of the bill, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Jeremy Patzer.

Thank you for being here this afternoon, Mr. Patzer. The floor is yours.

[Anthony D. Rosborough]

For the purposes of the right to repair, absolutely. I think it may be beyond the scope of this bill, but a system of...maybe like a sustainability index under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. If the government is serious about pursuing the right to repair at the federal level, some sort of system would be essential. We have seen in other jurisdictions similar indexes that have been very successful, France being the main example.

With regard to provincial efforts toward the right to repair, such as the bill proposed by Guy Ouellette, these jurisdictions provincially in Canada are waiting for federal leadership on the IP issue. Bill C-244 and Bill C-294 are the important starting point. These bills are starting at the right place to give provinces the leeway they need to move ahead with those types of systems.

[Anthony D. Rosborough]

Repair and innovation go hand in hand in a number of ways. There's evidence of that in this bill, in addition to Bill C-294, which speaks to prohibitions on innovation as implicated by TPMs.

The fact is that the process of repair requires a type of research and analysis. Product tear-downs are an example of this. If you look on iFixit's website, you see an entire library of, basically, research and discovery as to how things work.

When that becomes unlawful to do, we're restricting the flow of knowledge and information, which is really antithetical to the purposes of the intellectual property system. The reason we have IP is to bring ideas forward that we can share and benefit from. When we're putting an indefinite block on the flow of that information, we should have a really compelling reason to do so. Contorting copyright law to be a vehicle for cybersecurity or the theft of automobiles is probably not a sufficient justification.

[Anthony D. Rosborough, Researcher, Department of Law, European University Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee.

I'm a lawyer and doctoral researcher in law at the European University Institute. I'm also a practising member of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society. In the past I've taught in the intellectual property area at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. My doctoral thesis investigates the design, function and implications of TPMs across the automotive, consumer electronics and agricultural equipment industries. I have published several peer-reviewed articles on the right to repair and TPMs, including a forthcoming publication in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, which analyzes the right to repair in Canada and the bill under discussion today, along with Canada's international trade obligations. I've included open access links to these works in a brief I've submitted to the committee.

I firmly support the right to repair and the substance of this bill, but my focus this afternoon is not to reiterate the numerous social, economic or ecological benefits of repair. Rather, my aim today is threefold: first, to explain why repair restrictions enabled by TPMs are a misuse of copyright; second, to explain how the bill could be strengthened; and finally, to respond to the core arguments put forward by those who have opposed the bill.

To begin, looking at copyright misuse, access control TPMs in physical devices are best understood as an aberration in the history of copyright. TPMs were first recognized in the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty as measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict acts in respect of works that are not authorized or permitted by law.

TPMs were originally conceived as legal protection to safeguard copy control technologies to assist the digital content industry, but today's access control TPMs in physical devices often bear little, if any, relationship to copyright infringement. They bear only a superficial resemblance to copyright. They function principally to protect technologies, rather than works or the rights of authors, so when device manufacturers rely on anti-circumvention to prevent diagnosis, understanding or repair of computerized devices, this contorts copyright policy to perform the work of a patent or a trade secret. Put simply, this is a misuse of copyright.

As for how the bill could be strengthened, one approach would be to transpose it into a system of comprehensive regulation under section 41.21 of the act. That section allows for regulations that could exclude certain TPMs, or classes of them, from protection and to conduct review and consideration of specific implementations. This may also assist in providing a path forward for Bill C-294, which aims to create a new exception to anti-circumvention for the purposes of interoperability between embedded computer systems. A regulatory framework under section 41.21 could safeguard a whole host of socially beneficial activities. It could also address new and unforeseen uses of TPMs.

To respond to the opponents' claims, opponents have put forward three main themes in their remarks. The first is cybersecurity concerns. The second is health and safety risks, and the third is carve-outs for certain industries.

With respect to cybersecurity, we have scant evidence that repair activities can or will undermine cybersecurity. In any event, cybersecurity should not form part of TPM policy under the Copyright Act. This is not the role of copyright law. A more appropriate framework for cybersecurity considerations is under Bill C-26, currently under consideration, or the Telecommunications Act.

As for health and safety risks, these fears seem to misunderstand what the bill seeks to do. No longer making it unlawful to circumvent a TPM does not equip anyone with new powers or capabilities. The fact is that anyone who wishes to manipulate or modify a device for unlawful purposes can already do so. Any system can be hacked. If the repair of devices poses health and safety risks, the government should consider amending the Consumer Product Safety Act or other legislation. We should ask more of manufacturers and not rely on copyright law to ensure the health and safety of Canadians.

As for industry-specific carve-outs, opponents of the bill have often sought to exempt certain industries or limit the bill's application to consumer products. The reasons for this have not been convincingly argued.

The Copyright Act's purpose is to create a system of rights and incentives, including exceptions and limitations, which govern the use of works. It's not the role of copyright law to distinguish between different technologies or physical devices. In fact, Canadian copyright law has long rested on the principle of technological neutrality. This means that copyright policy should not discriminate against any technology or medium of expression, so to create a TPM distinction based on the type of product or device would amount to a clear violation of this principle.

To conclude, TPMs are increasingly used by manufacturers as a tool for protecting a series of interests that are unrelated to copyright. Repair is not infringement.

The purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the production of artistic and literary works. It encourages authors to bring ideas into the public realm.

Repair-inhibiting TPMs undermine these goals. They function as absolute barriers to the diffusion of knowledge. They are indefinite in duration and receive legal protection in the absence of any connection to copyright.

I ask this committee to move the bill forward and to include it as part of a comprehensive regulatory scheme that ensures that TPMs in devices are protected to the extent that they are connected to copyright.

Thank you.

[Matthew Hatfield]

That's a huge question. I think in general I'll defer the interoperability discussion to both the Bill C-294 discussion and also looking at our Competition Act—and the privacy act, for that matter, in Bill C-27.

The big picture around interoperability is that many, many digitally savvy companies are locking their consumers within walled gardens. As many people on Twitter know these days, it can be very hard to leave a company once they get you locked in, no matter how you feel about that company. In general, we want to see our government passing legislation that gives consumers real ownership of our data and makes it easy for us to see our data, take our data out of a system and put it into another system. We want them to really facilitate that transfer, because people don't have the options they deserve in terms of who to do business with anymore. A lot of us are locked into commercial relationships that we are not satisfied by.

[John Lawford, Executive Director and General Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Thank you, Chair.

Honourable members, my name is John Lawford. I'm executive director and general counsel at PIAC, a national not-for-profit and registered charity. We provide legal and research services on behalf of consumers and, in particular, vulnerable consumer interests concerning the provision of important public services. PIAC has been active in the digital consumer protection world for over 20 years.

PIAC supports Bill C-244's creation of an exception to technical protection measures under the Copyright Act to allow consumers and businesses to circumvent TPMs for the purposes of diagnosing, maintaining and repairing a consumer product in which a computer program is embedded. PIAC believes that consumers should have the option to repair their own products or select repair providers of their choosing.

The fact that mechanical or electrical parts have been replaced by software in many consumer goods, such as household appliances, medical devices and vehicles, must not impede that possibility. Currently, consumers cannot legally circumvent TPMs, and as a result they are forced to use manufacturer repair services or manufacturer-endorsed, authorized repair shops when something goes wrong.

This restricted access makes it possible for manufacturers to set inflated prices, extend timelines, disconnect users' access when TPMs are circumvented, prevent users from accessing their own data, and create other unfavourable conditions for product utility and use, which can harm consumers financially, emotionally, and even physically. If the product needing repair is a tool required for work, such as a vehicle or a table saw, then manufacturer-imposed repair restrictions can potentially lead to job insecurity.

Consumer inability to circumvent TPMs can also create life-and-death situations. Under the current regime, many people who own software-integrated medical devices, such as insulin pumps and oxygen machines, cannot fix the medical equipment themselves or have qualified technicians service their devices without authorization from the manufacturer. This inability to seek out quicker or more cost-effective solutions places strain on those consumers and may result in their underservicing or needlessly replacing incredibly vital, expensive medical equipment.

The effects of limited repair options have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is creating workflow disruptions, supply shortages and reduced access to in-person services.

The expression of the repair right in Bill C-244 indeed covers a wide and generic range of software-enabled products. This aspect of the bill is a strength and is not over-broad. This means it applies to a piece of farm equipment, a thermostat, a medical device or a gaming console. This wide scope is needed to avoid siloing variable consumer rights in particular products.

Diagnosis, maintenance and repair are all related acts that further the public interest, the aims of which are: consumer freedom and the right to use their own, legally owned items; extension of the useful life of these products; avoidance of the consumer costs and the environmental harm from needless disposal of workable products, which often contain, as mentioned, toxic or precious, expensive-to-obtain materials and minerals; and increased control of the timing and expression of consumer demand, which can lead to increased competition, consumer choice, lower prices, improved customer service, greater innovation, and support of small, local repair businesses.

I'll speak briefly to what is missing in the bill—both interoperability, which, as has been mentioned, is the subject of another bill; and consumer manuals.

The bill lacks an exception to copyright infringement that allows consumers to find, reproduce and disseminate information such as diagnostic codes and repair manuals for the purpose of facilitating repair. This exception would be complementary to the TPM exception at issue in this bill and would better support the development of a repair market.

The new repair information right would be a species of fair dealing. Repair information requirements could be limited to personal, non-profit or commercial contexts, depending on where Parliament draws the balance between original equipment manufacturers and repair rights.

Without dealing in detail with interoperability, I'm happy to take questions. It could be either in this bill or in Bill C-294. The scope of interoperability is, I think, the issue, and whether we put a definition of “interoperability” into the Copyright Act in the section under consideration here, or in a different bill or act is something that we can discuss.

In conclusion, PIAC supports Bill C-244 as a necessary consumer protection in the digital economy.

I thank you and look forward to your questions.

[Matthew Hatfield, Campaigns Director, OpenMedia]

Good afternoon. I'm Matt Hatfield and I am the campaigns director of OpenMedia, a grassroots community of nearly 300,000 people in Canada who work together for an open, accessible and surveillance-free Internet.

I am speaking to you from the unceded territory of the Stó꞉lō, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam nations.

I am thrilled to be here to tell you that Copyright Act amendment Bill C-244 is critical and common-sense legislation that you should pass immediately. Canadians need full ownership of the products we buy, and that means being able to get them diagnosed and appropriately fixed by anyone we choose, including ourselves. Bill C-244 will help us do this.

Digital technology is increasingly built into everything. Not just computers and phones but also cars, appliances and even clothing are now digitally intelligent and connected. We're seeing the birth of the Internet of things, a world in which everything we own can digitally communicate. If we can make citizens and consumers the full owners and primary beneficiaries of that world, we're looking at a very exciting future; but if we allow the Internet of things to wrest control of our possessions from us, leaving us stranded by fridges, farming equipment and everything else that requires constant approval from the original manufacturer's data centres to perform their basic functions, we're on the threshold of a nightmare.

Sound rights-reinforcing legislation like Bill C-244 will make the difference in what comes next.

In the pre-digital world, producing an excellent product and selling lots of it once was considered good business. In the digital world, many companies see that as a fool's game. Why charge a one-time price when you can transform your product into a service and collect perpetual fees for the life of the consumer? Some ways of doing that are relatively benign and consumer-friendly, like most streaming services, but some are plainly unfair and parasitic.

The digital locks that Bill C-244 will prevent are a clear example of parasitic abuse of power by manufacturing companies. Digital locks force consumers out of the competitive market and into a monopoly market in which the manufacturer sets the cost of repair parts and services. Sometimes they even lock customers into a repair market that no longer exists, as the manufacturer goes out of business or stops supporting their devices well ahead of schedule.

Not surprisingly, customers often find that repairs in this system somehow cost nearly as much as a new device and wind up buying a new product rather than repairing the otherwise functional device they have. A public survey we commissioned in 2019 showed that 76% of Canadians had thrown out a digital device that could be repaired to be fully functional due to fixable problems like dead batteries, cracked screens or lack of security software updates. Electronic devices frequently contain rare minerals and compounds—some toxic—and represent a spiralling share of our societal waste, with net global e-waste growing by an estimated three to four per cent a year.

That is bad for the consumer, bad for society at large and bad for the environment—bad for everyone except the manufacturing company in question. Preventing a net social loss due to bad incentives is exactly the kind of problem on which we need the government to intervene.

Bill C-244 isn't going to get us all the way there by itself. I hope our government will also adopt the interoperability changes in Bill C-294 and introduce full right-to-repair legislation soon thereafter. We also agree with the speakers from CFLA, who flagged the importance of archival copyright exceptions.

The big picture is that it isn't enough to stop manufacturers from suing repairers or customers who break their software locks to repair their devices. Much more is needed to right the growing imbalance between what manufacturers choose to provide and what Canadians need for an affordable green future. To name just two common-sense changes, I hope we will soon see an obligation for manufacturers to provide replacement parts, instructions and software security updates for their products for a healthy five to 10 years after purchase, as exists in the EU; and I hope that we will see legislation requiring products to display a repairability score at purchase so that manufacturers are incentivized to compete on durability and long-term performance, not just initial price.

I was privileged this year to work with the environmental non-profit Équiterre on a deeply thoughtful report studying how to implement the right to repair in Quebec and Canada. I encourage all of you who want to see this right fully implemented to give it a close read.

OpenMedia has collected nearly 20,000 petition signatures from our community asking you to fully legislate the right to repair. Passing Bill C-244 is a critical and necessary step to fulfilling that request. We have been truly heartened by the level of bipartisan consensus shown around Bill C-244. It proves that the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and that you, our representatives, can still come together to support measures that are plainly in the public interest. We hope to see that consensus continue to move forward, both on Bill C-244 and on full right-to-repair legislation.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Copyright Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-294 under Private Members' Business.

The House resumed from November 25 consideration of the motion that Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise at the end of this debate on my private member's bill, Bill C-294. I would like to thank all of my colleagues who have expressed interest in speaking to this bill, in particular the members from all of the other parties of the House and the great ideas that they spoke about on this bill. I think of the planned obsolescence issue that the Bloc Québécois raised in both of their hours of debate. I definitely appreciate what they had to say about that issue.

At the start of our discussion, I provided the background for the issue of interoperability. I spoke about what it is and how it is important for the life of communities across Canada. It will allow them to survive and to keep on doing the good work that they have been doing for decades. That is what leads me to raise this issue and bring this bill forward.

While I focused on the familiar examples of farming equipment in rural areas, I will repeat that interoperability is something much larger than just a single sector. We are really talking about something that lays a foundation for stronger competition and innovation in the workplace.

It is not anything new. Before digital technology was a factor, there were always innovators creating new equipment or devices, which customers could freely use with the products from established brands. It happened in an open market where all of the players, as well as their customers, could benefit. One such example is a simple USB connection. That is one of the easiest ways to describe interoperability. One simply plugs it into one's computer and the brand does not matter; it will work. That is what copyright is supposed to encourage and protect.

All we need to do is to update and clarify the law to uphold this principle under changing circumstances. It should never be discouraged by a technicality found in the Copyright Act. Digital locks and TPMs have a legitimate function and the law will continue to enforce them as such, but the force of law should never be used by larger companies to discourage or shut down competitors and innovators. For this sole purpose, Bill C-294 would provide a clear, limited exemption to enable interoperability.

I would like to go back to what brought attention to this issue in Parliament. A short-line manufacturer from my riding provided witness testimony while the industry committee studied the CUSMA trade agreement. Considering our trade relationship, they said this:

It's a challenge for us to achieve the ability to continue to legally manufacture our product and sell it onto these platforms. The copyright act in the United States has provision for circumventing for the purpose of interoperation. The Canadian Copyright Act does not have this same term in the agreement.

They explained that they do not want to have an uneven footing with the U.S. if they are facing a barrier in Canada that does not exist south of the border. Even if a short-line manufacturer operates outside of a small town or rural Saskatchewan, they are still selling their equipment internationally, whether it goes to the States or down to Australia. Both of these countries, by the way, are moving in this direction with interoperability. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has studied the situation with agricultural machinery and recommended data standards to promote interoperability between brands of machinery.

Similarly, our own Competition Bureau has discussed barriers for interoperability and has signalled some support for updating the Copyright Act. The U.S. Copyright Office, with the Library of Congress, regularly reviews the application of TPMs and provides exemptions. Their ruling, in 2018, allowed for circumvention in different areas, which included agricultural equipment, vehicles and phones, to name a few. This worked well enough for them to renew the exemptions in 2021 for another three-year term.

While the process might work differently in their system, Bill C-294 is seeking to provide an equivalent exemption here in Canada, as requested by our own industry. We have industry associations, manufacturers and dealers from many provinces, including Ontario, who see the growing need for us to do this so that they can stay in business and remain competitive.

As I said earlier, the process that led to this bill began with studying CUSMA. Our international agreements are an important factor for our policy decisions. Canada has made certain commitments with respect to intellectual property and what our own copyright laws will look like. I want to reassure my colleagues that I have kept this in mind while researching and discussing the issue with policy analysts from the Library of Parliament. It has shaped the drafting of this bill from early on.

With the support of my fellow members at this stage, I am hopeful that Bill C-294 will be studied at committee and we can continue to have a constructive discussion throughout the legislative process. As always, I am happy to talk with my colleagues further about this as we go forward.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-294, the unlocking innovation act. I was delighted to hear from the member for Winnipeg North just a few moments ago that the Liberal members will be supporting this very important piece of legislation introduced by my Conservative colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands. I want to thank that colleague for all the hard work he has done to bring this important piece of legislation before the House.

The bill would amend the Copyright Act to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent a technological protection measure to make a computer program interoperable with any device or component, or with a product they manufacture. It would allow the owner of a software-enabled device to bypass the lock in order to make it compatible with other applications, even if they are not developed by the original software developer. It would not allow anyone to break digital locks in order to copy or alter the work of an artist or a copyright holder without their consent. Authors have been protected by the act since 2012.

The bill would allow people to break digital locks solely so the program can be used with another platform. This is called interoperability, and it is a very good thing. The bill results from a loophole in the Copyright Act applying to computer programs, also known as software, which are increasingly found in any number of digitized products imaginable.

The bill would also harmonize our Copyright Act with American legislation, ensuring Canadian innovators and businesses remain competitive with small innovators, not just in the United States but in the European Union and Australia. The American regulation currently views that reverse engineering a computer program for a legitimate reason, such as achieving interoperability, falls under the general copyright exception of fair use.

This is what the bill seeks to extend to Canadian innovators. The bill is also complementary to Bill C-244, addressing the right to repair. Whereas the right to repair tends to focus more on the consumer’s needs, interoperability necessarily carries broad implications for how competitive markets can function. There can be an equal or greater impact on the marketplace than from the right to repair. Specifically, it determines if small innovators and entire areas of industry can exist, let alone succeed, as seen in the Nintendo v. King decision.

This case centred around the expansive use of technological protection measures. Increasingly, content creators and copyright owners have turned to technological protection measures to control how their works are accessed and used. Technological protection measures include technology that provides digital locks, preventing individuals from undertaking a variety of actions, such as printing, making alterations or controlling viewing. However, when a customer buys a product, they should be allowed to make alterations or repair the product themselves if they wish. After purchasing it, they are the owner of that hardware.

In the case of Nintendo v. King, Go Cyber Shopping had advertised and offered for sale devices, referred to in the judgment as “mod chips”, a type of computer chip. Go Cyber Shopping offered mod chip installation services as well, which means it had merely offered to sell and install computer chips, including ones a customer may have bought elsewhere. The Federal Court in Canada found these activities constituted a circumvention of technological protection measures and awarded Nintendo $11.7 million in statutory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

This is why a bill like Bill C-294 is so important. It would allow small businesses who want to assist customers who own a personal technology device to make upgrades, modifications or alterations, or to repair that device. These small businesses would be able to do so without running afoul of overly expansive copyright regulations.

The bill would not only help with consumer technology devices; it would also help many Canadian farmers. As Donna Boyd, president of the Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada, said:

In today’s digital environment, physical product design is increasingly reliant on software, networking and computerization, and farmers must continue to have the freedom of choice to select the equipment that is right for their operations. Canada’s framework for interoperability is outdated and reflective of an era prior to widespread technological advancement, and it is time for meaningful modernization.

By amending Canada’s copyright law, Bill C-294 seeks to provide a clear and limited exemption for consumers and future innovators to enjoy the benefits of interoperability.

A growing number of Canadians believe the Copyright Act is long overdue for an update. Those who deal with copyright and intellectual property, including industry associations, are actively calling for it. This is what Bill C-294 will accomplish, allowing industry to meet modern technological demands.

For the last 10 years, since 2012, Canada’s Copyright Act has enforced technological protection measures to help businesses and creators benefit from their own work, including software. Some companies use this to put digital locks in place, limiting which information their competitors or users can access within their products. Combined with a lack of clarity in copyright law, this can block users from having their machinery or devices interoperate with other equipment, as they were once able to do.

Along with consumers, manufacturers are left with both practical barriers and uncertainty under the current legal precedent if they want to sell their competitive products. This bill will provide a clear, limited exemption for consumers and innovators who simply wish to enable their devices or machinery to interoperate with other equipment, as they were always able to do before.

If passed, Bill C-294 will better support Canadian innovators and consumers to maintain a competitive marketplace while upholding Canada’s copyright framework. I look forward to having the opportunity to vote to send this bill to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

I would like to again congratulate my colleague for bringing forward this important initiative for us to consider. I hope that, as parliamentarians, we can all work together to get this bill passed as soon as possible.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time the House is dealing with measures in right to repair legislation and modifications to the Copyright Act. In fact, Bill C-244 was here a bit earlier in the year. It was introduced by the member for Richmond Centre, and we had a fairly healthy debate on that issue. As alluded to earlier, some members had the opportunity to put some comments on the record with respect to that legislation. Many of the things that were said during that debate could also be said for this particular debate. Today, Bill C-244 is still at the committee stage, and I suspect there is going to be a great deal of seriousness in looking at the ways we can improve upon it.

With respect to the member's bill, Bill C-294, the government will be supporting the legislation. More importantly, I think there is a great deal of sympathy from all members on all sides of the House in recognizing the importance of the principles the member is trying to achieve through passing Bill C-294.

Modernizing the Copyright Act is of critical importance. There are certain things one has to take into consideration. Whenever we think of copyright, we like to think it is pretty simple and straightforward. We should be able to do this and that to different products, and there are things in place related to international trade. We can talk about, for example, the trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States. We can talk about international agreements. Copyright does play a very important role in society, and we can look at it from both an economic and a cultural perspective. That is why it is absolutely essential that we have copyright legislation.

The member made reference to modernization, and I think that is, in essence, what we should be looking at, whether it is with Bill C-244 or Bill C-294, the bill we are debating today. They demonstrate that it does not matter what side of the House we are on; there is very much a keen interest in the copyright legislation we have in Canada today. This speaks to the need for us to look at ways to maybe further study the Copyright Act.

The nice thing about Bill C-294, and why we will be supporting it, is that ultimately, by going to committee and listening to the different stakeholders, we can make some changes and, at the same time, still abide by those important agreements that allow for our economy and cultural sector to continue to grow and prosper. It is so very important.

I have indicated that things tend to get a bit more complicated and a bit more expensive, and I recall the days when I could buy a car, pop the hood and do all sorts of wonderful things to it. Believe it or not, I even did a motor transplant of sorts back in the late seventies on a 1976 Mustang. Today, if I pop the hood on a 2022 Mustang, I am not going to touch it. I suspect that if we were to investigate it, we would find TPMs on all forms of things that are locked. Some of that no doubt is justifiable, but other aspects, I would suggest, are not. I like simplicity and to think I own something.

This year we are focused a great deal on agriculture. I remember, from many years ago, the farms out in Saskatchewan. It was truly amazing to see the farmers' abilities to fix equipment.

We see a lot of equipment on a farm, from tractors and combines to cultivators. The ingenuity and expertise there is such that farmers can add something to a piece of machinery that would even make it work better. If something breaks down, they do not have the opportunity to call John Deere or whomever else to get them to come out to the field and fix the machinery. There are issues, and we are talking about hundreds of thousands if not going into the millions of dollars' worth of machinery.

There is a great deal of understanding and sympathy that there are certain aspects where we do need to come down a little harder in recognizing that consumer rights are very important. Consumer rights and competition in society is of the utmost importance, which is why I think that, as legislators, we need to be diligent in terms of what comes before us, with the idea of recognizing that we have a responsibility to look at ways in which we can protect consumer rights and encourage, wherever we can, competition. Through that competition, we are able to ensure that there are better price points and better quality products.

Someone earlier made reference to the fact that when we purchase something we like to think that it is ours. Unfortunately, because of things such as the TPMs that are put in place, a lot of things ultimately go in the garbage a little sooner than they should have. Often it is more practical or less expensive to throw something into the garbage and buy something new in some situations. In other situations, if we had the simple solution of having a third party, or better yet a third party part as opposed to having to purchase a manufacturer's part, it could save us a great deal of money. It could also make it that much more accessible in terms of availability when we actually need to use that part.

When we think of it from that perspective and factor in the issue of competition, at end of the day, there is more that we can look at, which is why I am pleased that not only do we have one but now two pieces of legislation. One is from the Conservatives and one is from my colleague and friend from Richmond Centre in the form of Bill C-244 on the right to repair.

When I spoke on the right to repair, one of the examples I used when debating Bill C-244 was something as simple as a washer and dryer. It is amazing what we see when we go to landfill sites now. We can compare to average usage to the ability to repair. These are the types of discussions that I would like to see at committee, with the idea that we keep an open mind and look at ways in which we can make some modifications to the Copyright Act.

However, we do have to take into consideration how important the Copyright Act is. As I said, it does foster creativity and innovation, which is why we have it. There are also obligations through international agreements. After all, Canada is a trading nation, but we are also a nation that cares deeply about consumer rights, which is the primary reason I think it is important that the bill before us be passed.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the benefit of hearing the speech by the member for Saint-Jean. She was very good at detailing the division of the bill, the importance of the bill and how we could move forward on a number of issues related to copyright.

It is really key to reinforce the fact that this is not about trying to circumvent a process to protect copyright. Bill C-294 would deal with interoperability and other issues, similar to the right to repair work I have been doing, where the digital age has created competition issues, ingenuity issues and practical applications that have become very difficult, not only for farmers, which are of particular interest to the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands who put forth this worthy legislation, but also others in different fields.

In the past, when it came to a number of different innovations, there was the ability to alter work among platform differentials and to be innovative on products and services in our economy. That has allowed a lot of people, whether it be in repair shops, their own home environment or smaller businesses and companies, to thrive, build on innovation, build competition and do so in a way that is very responsible and important, especially when it comes to rural and remote areas where there is often not even the chance to get certain things repaired.

In a digital age where we have programs and services that are very much affected by updates and the management of data, there can be gatekeepers and those in strategic positions who try to make things redundant, expose things to weaknesses or go to a source point of development or renewal, which really should not be taking place in a free-market economy that is now dependent on the digital age. That is why the computer program software issue is of particular interest to me. I want to touch a little on the right to repair issues so people get a better understanding of that. This is part of the bill in some respects, but it also goes to a deeper level. I will get to that later.

The right to repair work I have been doing over the last decade involves Canadians being, quite frankly, treated the same as those in many other jurisdictions across the world, where people are allowed to fix their vehicles and vehicles used for emergency services and other types of goods and delivery to get proper updates. What people may not be aware of, or maybe they are, is that sometimes garages or repair facilities are restricted in fixing vehicles because they could not get a simple flash update or a downloaded program. What we pushed for and got is the CASIS agreement, which is a voluntary agreement to allow the fixing of vehicles.

Nobody is asking for anything for free, so this is just a process where the aftermarket can purchase training, data or equipment to repair vehicles, often at times when even the dealers or the OEMs' officially designated repair facilities were not able to do so because of sheer volume. This put vehicles on the road that were damaged, not in proper working condition or were substandard to what they could be. Unfortunately, that has consequences in terms of traffic accidents and emissions, and it is a competition issue as people are forced out of business, not from lack of ability, skill set or investment, but basically from not being able to download a program.

A vehicle that needed a simple software update after being physically repaired might have to be towed sometimes hundreds of kilometres to another place to get the update, which could been on one's computer or personal phone. Different types of data could go through these things, so it is unfortunate because that creates a drag on the economy. This bill would prevent customers from being locked out where there should not be that type of behaviour.

The amendment to the act would allow for greater competition. It would stop the denial of access to technology. There would be some responsible rules related to sharing that information.

Interoperability issues are another part of this bill that is a little different. It would allow for someone to use one version with another. I think we have all had those frustrations in the past. A simple analogy would be sharing a song from an artist that one legally purchased, yet not being able to use it on different platforms. That used to be the case several years ago, really in a toxic type of way. Now it is better, but there are still some issues. That is a good example that, if one pays for something once, one should be able to use it with several different types of platforms, provided it is being done responsibly and is part of the agreement.

Agricultural equipment is particularly vulnerable to this. We should also recognize that it is a changing environment. The agricultural equipment we are talking about represents millions of dollars in investment for small business operators and people with family farms, so we are talking about investments that go for generations. This is not just about the big ones and the ones in the after market.

This is unfortunate because it also affects our food safety and our food supply, so it is a serious issue. That is why I congratulate the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for this legislation. It tackles a particular problem in the venue it is related to, but the issue is not a mere inconvenience. It is actually a significant economic hindrance as well as a food safety issue, in particular when looking at some of our western producers. That is one of the reasons New Democrats really support this bill. We also want to make sure that it is also part of a repertoire of legislation that is more enforceable.

I will return to the work that I did with the issue of a right to repair, and we ended up getting voluntary agreements. My legislation actually passed in the chamber. It went to the committee and then the OEMs decided that they could live with the aftermarket with voluntary agreements.

Unfortunately, what we have seen now though, is companies, such as Tesla, opting out of and not even participating in the voluntary agreements. I have called for repercussions on Tesla because there are different vehicles now on the road that are participating in this voluntary agreement to certain degrees. This bill would not have that critical flaw.

We knew of the flaw at the time. We accepted it, so it was kind of like we got a field goal instead of a touchdown in passing the legislation, getting it through the chamber and getting a voluntary agreement, but now we are left with the consequences 10 years later. We have to actually re-table legislation, which I have done. There is a movement on the Hill for this bill, my bill and another one that talks about access to information and data, which is really important because it is affecting our competition.

I really think that this bill can go to the next stage. It is one that we would like to see as a part of the discussion and repertoire of changes taking place. It is critical to understand that there is also a social justice component to this. Some of the OEMs and some of the ways in which we have been treated as a country could be seen as us being more like a colony. I can say that quite clearly with regard to consumer protection. There have been a number of examples where we have not been treated the same as other nations. This bill will also bring us in line with some international responses.

Just because we have a small population compared to other places, I do not think we should be taking ourselves to a point where we accept these types of conditions. Our purchasing power is significant. Our economic power is significant and our contribution to the world is significant. All we are asking for, and what this bill is asking for, is proper treatment in that context.

I will conclude by again thanking the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for this legislation, which that continues a necessary debate to modernize our policies. Hopefully, we will see better digital rights for all Canadians. As New Democrats, we believe that our digital rights include elements like this, and they should be protected.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with you that the time went by really fast. I did not think it would be my turn to rise so soon, but I am pleased to do so.

I rise today to speak to Bill C‑294. I already spoke in April about Bill C‑244, which has the same objectives. If anyone wants to read the speech I gave in April, they can safely apply my comments mutatis mutandis to Bill C‑294 because they still hold true. Perhaps that is what people refer to as recycling and it is completely in line with the bill before us today.

Bill C‑294 seeks to combat planned obsolescence, but what is planned obsolescence?

I want to remind members that the term “planned obsolescence” was coined by American businessman Bernard London in 1932 in an essay entitled “Ending the depression through planned obsolescence”.

At that time, we were in the midst of the Great Depression following the roaring twenties. Mr. London complained in his writings that, because of the crisis, consumers had taken to using products until they were no longer useful, until they were completely worn out. London said this was hurting the economy. As a result, companies began to create strategies to replace items as quickly and as often as possible in order to boost sales. This has led to a form of disposable culture: manufacture, buy and throw away. It has had a very significant impact on the environment.

The main pillars of planned obsolescence are as follows. First, goods are designed to be less durable. We see this happening more and more these days. For example, my washing machine is older than I am and I will do everything I can to avoid having to replace it, which is what my washing machine repairman suggested to me, because they do not make machines like mine anymore. The last time I tried to fix it, it cost me $5 because it is a simple part, but modern machines are so complicated and fragile that they break after five years.

Second, fashion is another pillar of planned obsolescence. People are urged to buy something new even if the version they already own is still perfectly good.

Third, an item can be designed so it is impossible to repair, forcing us to buy a new one. That is what Bill C‑244 addresses. I am very pleased that it passed at second reading because it allows people to circumvent digital locks in order to repair goods that otherwise could not be repaired because of a technological barrier.

Today, we are looking at the possibility of preventing new functionalities from being embedded in a device and rendering it obsolete more quickly. The bill before us today would amend the Copyright Act. In general, the Copyright Act seeks to make it possible for creators to earn a living from their art and to protect their works from being copied or used in a manner that they would not permit. That is a good thing. However, the problem is that it also applies to digital works. A digital work is protected by a digital lock that the Copyright Act has prohibited users from circumventing since 2012.

The work cannot be altered without the consent of the copyright owner. That is a good thing, generally, but it does have a negative impact. For instance, some companies have decided to invoke the Copyright Act to prevent people who own devices running on the company's software from downloading new apps that would require access to the operating system in order to function. The legislation already includes an exception to address this aspect and, since the bill before us contains only two clauses, I would like to go through the bill and explain a little more about the legal process that applies here, since we do not often take the time to do so in the House.

Under the former section of the Copyright Act, circumventing a technological protection measure was prohibited. Circumventing a digital lock is therefore prohibited. The legislation included an exception to indicate that it does not apply to the owner of the program, who has the right to circumvent the lock if it is for the sole purpose of obtaining information in order to make that program interoperable with another computer program.

For example, the person who creates software to run a device has the right to break the lock on another piece of software to ensure that their software works if they want to use someone else's product on their device.

The lack of a broader exclusion in the law means that the owner of a product that has computer software becomes somewhat of a prisoner of the original software owner, who grants himself or herself exclusivity over any new software or applications that might be installed.

Take cellphones, for example. As we know, there are plenty of apps available to download that make our phone much more interesting. Technically, this could be covered by the Copyright Act. Apple could say that they do not want a software creator to break the lock on the Apple phone to ensure their application is compatible. Obviously, this is unattractive to Apple because it would make its phones virtually useless and uncompetitive on the market. Apple therefore does not invoke the Copyright Act, but the fact remains that it could.

The amendment in the bill would add to the existing interoperability exception in the Copyright Act by saying that it:

does not apply to a person who...manufactures a product and circumvents a technological protection measure that protects a computer program embedded in another product for the sole purpose of allowing the person to make the computer program, or a device in which it is embedded, interoperable with [it]

This means that external individuals who create programs have the right to break locks on devices they want to connect to to make sure they are interoperable.

Agricultural machinery is one example that I talked about during my last speech on Bill C‑244. Take John Deere tractors, for example. The days of tractors like my dad's old 1958 Farmall are long gone. My dad still enjoys puttering around with it to plant a dozen rows of corn behind the house. Today's tractors are much more powerful and are equipped with GPS.

The lack of an exception in the Copyright Act prevents companies from doing things like creating software that could be added to the tractor's computer to help with spreading different kinds of fertilizer. That is impossible because John Deere holds the intellectual property rights to everything on the tractor.

That means external suppliers cannot add anything to improve the device, nor can external software be added that might, say, extend the useful life of the things we own.

Let us be clear, the bill does not seek to abolish software designers' copyright. That is being maintained. It does not allow it to be copied, either. It does not facilitate unfair competition from predatory competitors. It just ensures that we can maximize the lifespan of products we already own by adding external components.

Two bills on this topic are being studied in the House. Bill C‑244 addresses the issue of repair. Today, we hope to address the issue of interoperability through Bill C‑294.

Quebec is addressing the sustainably aspect, which is another pillar of programmed obsolescence, through legislation that would assign a sustainability score to objects. Bills C‑294 and C‑244 would ensure that people could not invoke federal copyright legislation to get around Quebec's measure. That is a good thing. Now we just have to work on planned obsolescence in fashion. We hope this will be a pillar that will allow us to have an impact on social awareness. I do not think we are at the point of legislating fashion in the House, but there is still a bit of work to do.

I hope that all these other bills will be an incentive to finalize, in good conscience, our work to counter programmed obsolescence.

The House resumed from October 6 consideration of the motion that Bill C‑294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Wilson Miao, Liberal, Richmond Centre, BC]

As I mentioned previously about how our world is filled with the Internet of things, these devices are communicating with each other through a network. I believe that a member of the opposition has brought forward Bill C-294in discussing the interoperability of devices. This is something that we can look into further to see how we can be more secure and consider the effects and the consequences when computer programs are talking with each other.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Madam Speaker, when we have private member's hour and we are debating, we sometimes pay attention and we sometimes do not. This has been a really interesting conversation. I actually want to thank the member for bringing this forward because, while we have had a bill that was very similar with respect to the right to repair, this one seems to narrow in on another aspect of the Copyright Act.

There is, sort of, a loophole that is preventing farmers, in this case, from being able to use the equipment they have rightfully purchased and leverage it and adapt it. I want to thank the member for educating us on this issue, and I think that it is definitely an important concept that merits further study to understand it more.

As the member knows, often when members bring forward private members' business, they will then reach out to members across the aisle to meet with them, to explain the bill and to solicit support, so I do look forward to meeting with the member to learn more about this bill.

The intent of the bill, Bill C-294, is to allow consumers to repair a product on their own without violating the Copyright Act. I think that, with consultations under way right now to inform the modernization of our copyright policy framework, including the facilitation of repair and interoperability, Bill C-294 actually presents a unique opportunity for us to build a strong foundation for the work ahead.

When I hear of interoperability, and I can say it quickly, I always think defence, because I worked in the defence field previously. Therefore, when I think of interoperability, I am always thinking of the defence industry. It has actually been quite interesting for me to hear tonight about the application in the farming industry.

The member opposite and the previous speakers talked about innovation in terms of farming and doing things quicker, smarter, faster, cheaper. I really am interested to hear more about how the change in this legislation could benefit farmers but also other industries. I actually think it would be quite interesting once this goes through the process, if it does get to committee, to see how this can actually apply to other industries as well and benefit other industries that are looking to innovate.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology in the last Parliament, I learned that industries have many issues with change.

A lot of industries do not want to change. A lot of industries are not ready to change.

I think that this bill actually brings a unique opportunity for us to do things differently and, as I have said previously, I do look forward to hearing more about this bill. I think it is quite interesting and I think that there is a good complementarity with Bill C-244, the right to repair act, which has been sent to the industry committee.

I will conclude by saying that I am quite interested in hearing more. I am not quite sure what my position is in terms of supporting it or not. I would like to meet with the member and get his perspective on a couple of questions.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to contribute to the debate on Bill C-294, and I want to thank my colleague for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for bringing it forward.

Interoperability is a lot more fun to say in English than it is in French. However, the bill seeks to amend the Copyright Act, specifically regarding technological protection measures, more commonly known as digital locks, and the interoperability exemption to those locks.

New provisions would be in effect such that, and this was brought from the Library of Parliament to be studied in committee, if a person has lawfully acquired an agriculture machine, for instance, and if this machine contains a copy of a computer program and this copy monitors and/or controls the functioning of that machine, then that person will be deemed to have a licence or use of that copy.

What does that mean? It means that in the agriculture sector when we have technological advances, such as new software that comes about to make farmers' lives easier or the advancement of AI and a lot of other technological advances that need to use software, when someone buys that equipment, they would be able to use that equipment with other systems that work with it. I can tell members that it is a lot more complicated than a lot of us can understand, but to make a long story short, it would help farmers save money in order to grow more crops, which is really important.

Also important, when we talk about industry in Canada, is that it would create competition. When we create competition, we ensure that not only are we looking after farmers and entrepreneurs, but we allow people to have a choice. When people have a choice, they can then make decisions that save them money and that are best for their businesses.

Of course, we are talking about farmers in a very rural part of this nation, and we have talked all week about farmers, who are so very important. They are number one in this nation. We plant 89 million acres of crops, but the U.S. is about 10 times that and plants about 890 million acres. However, we have land that can be used for farming and we have technological advances that can make it into a greater reality. Fifty-three per cent of all of our land in Canada is used for farming, and as we have developments in DNA sequencing and genomics, we are able to grow corn farther north almost every year. We are finding advancements in protein clusters. We are finding better ways to grow our food and to be more sustainable, and the world is going to need that.

By 2030, the world will need 50% more food, which means we have to produce 1.5 times the amount of food we grow now. Therefore, when we look at farming when it comes to Canada, it is tremendously important, and the bill before us would help out. At the end of the day, the bill would allow farmers to be more competitive, to find more technological advances and to make sure that when we develop the future of farming we have all the tools in place so that farmers can make the best choices and save money.

Farmers are so important. They grow the best food in the world here in Canada. We are the breadbasket of the world with a lot of our wheat as well as our protein clusters with our fisheries, farms and animals. At the end of the day, we need farmers to not just survive but to thrive. The bill, of course, would handle only one part of that. However, there will be more advances in the future. I will talk about a few them, and I think it is important to talk about what the advances are right now.

When farmers are looking to keep birds and pests away from their crops, they are now using laser scarecrows. We have Bee Vectoring, a new Canadian technology that uses software and bees to help keep pests away from plants. We have Harvest Quality Vision, which uses drones in the air and sensors in the soil to detect nitrogen, so that we can see the best weather and at what point we have to put certain nutrients into the soil.

Farmers will also be able to use technology to save on labour, because they cannot find labour anywhere right now. Finding someone to pick crops or work in the field has been increasingly hard. We are going to need technology because of some of our labour shortages. If we do not have labour, we cannot grow crops and we cannot pick our food. We are talking about an industry that is so important that we will need 1.5 times of it in the next eight years. We will need technology to solve some of those problems.

On crop and soil monitoring and management, as a colleague mentioned earlier, we have zero tillage happening right now. This means we can plant seeds and harvest crops without touching the soil, which saves the soil. We used to have to do fallowing. This is a new technology that is really amazing for our farmers.

There are a lot of other different things being developed. This week, Loblaws, which I know is a dirty word in the House today, launched its first automated vehicles. There is GPS-controlled and automated farm equipment that will be able to manage literally thousands of acres for farmers and do the work that is needed. I do not know if members have seen the movie Interstellar. It had equipment operated by GPS. Let us hope we have a better future than what was in that movie.

We need to make sure this is a good bill, and I think it does the bare minimum, which is to ensure that we look at how technology is used on our farms and at how we can support our farmers with control.

There is a lot of other help we could give our farmers, and we have talked about it this week. They have a triple threat happening right now. Farmers have increased interest rates, which are really hurting them. There are increased costs when it comes to fertilizer tariffs, which no one else in the world has. Somehow Canada is the only one to have these tariffs on fertilizer, which are going to affect farmers' costs by up to 35%. Third, we have a triple increase to the carbon tax. I will not say it three times, as that has been done enough today, but these are real hardships for farmers.

We talk about farmers in Canada, but how many farms do we have? I talked about 89 million acres. There are 189,000 farms in Canada and that is not including hobby farms. I have a lot of hobby farms in my riding.

Just a few weeks ago, an ostrich farm opened in my riding. Ostriches look kind of neat and they are delicious. They are also great for the kids. When we were there, they fed them. What is really neat, from an environmental standpoint, is that ostriches use one-fiftieth of the land that cattle do, they let off one one-hundredth of the waste and their tenderloins taste just like beef. It is unbelievable. I am going to bring more people to see them this week. They are trying to scale and grow. They are already using technology as well. They are using technology for feeding and breeding them. It is quite a new industry. Those are the hobby farms outside of the other farms.

Another great type of farm in my region is dairy. We have quite a few dairy farms. One of them is Lee Nurse, which is doing robotic milking. All the milking is done by computers. When we talk about interoperability and dairy farms, it is about how they are going to be able to service, upgrade and manage those systems as the technology is advanced, which is really amazing. When it is time to milk, the cows all line up together. I guess they go because there is a cookie with protein that attracts them. With the computer, the robot milks the cows and away they go. It is unbelievable. They have about 180 head of Holstein, and at the end of the day they are doing something really amazing. Of course, this bill would help them, which is really great.

It is natural for other companies in the marketplace to try to innovate with new products and develop new marketable items that would make life easier. We want to make sure there is control and that we have given copyright protection to farmers so they can better our lives, grow the food we need and make sure we grow the farming community and economy here in Canada. More competition means more progress. Let us help our farmers, at least in this way.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to rise to join debate on Bill C-294. I would like to congratulate the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands on bringing forward a bill for debate. We know the lottery system has its winners and losers, and to have a spot to be able to bring forward a piece of legislation for debate is a pretty big honour.

Bill C-294 is an enactment that would target the already existing statute of the Copyright Act to essentially allow a person, under certain circumstances, to circumvent what is known as a technological protection measure, also referred to as a TPM, to basically make a computer program interoperable. Let us see how many times I can say that word quickly without stuttering over it, but basically it would be to make it interoperable with any device or component or with a product they manufacture.

Just so we can understand the section of the Copyright Act this bill would be amending, the existing text of paragraph 41.1(1)(a) specifies that “no person shall circumvent a technological protection measure”. That is a pretty solid barrier to any kind of progress in this specific area.

Before I go much further, I have been pleased to be the agriculture critic for my party now for four and a half years. I recall an important study we did back in the 42nd Parliament on the pace of technology and innovation in agriculture in particular. As a part of that study, our committee travelled right across Canada. We stopped in several different locations and met with some of our leading agricultural producers, manufacturers, researchers and scientists, who are really pushing the envelope in so many different areas and lending themselves to establishing Canada as the agricultural powerhouse it is. We got to see some of the amazing crop breeding technologies going on, but also the equipment.

One thing that became abundantly clear is that, with the manufacturing of agricultural equipment, the pace of technological change, particularly in how advanced the computer programs operating this equipment are, is going ahead at a speed that leaves one's head spinning. It is still quite a competitive field, but it is also one dominated by several big players. We heard in other speeches about the fact that because they want their equipment to be used with other pieces of their equipment and are basically trying to corner consumers into sticking with their line of products, they are increasingly resorting to what is known as digital locks. Those locks do not allow for different pieces of equipment to operate with one another. It has long been identified as a frustration among farmers, but this also goes beyond the agricultural sector.

This can be applied to many different areas of business, where they are increasingly having to use different computer programs that do not always mesh well with each other, and it can cost a lot of money for a business to have to switch gears and maybe dump one computer program and adopt a whole new system. This is really an important change to basically allow a bit more consumer choice but also to allow some of those small and medium-sized enterprises that are really trying to get their foot in the door to compete on a level playing field, so they can go out into the marketplace with confidence knowing that when they sell their products it is not going to put any pressure on someone to maybe disregard their product because it is not compatible operating with maybe a larger manufacturer. In that sense, this is very noble intention in this bill.

When we speak of the word “interoperability”, that basically is what it is. It is going to allow those different systems, devices, applications, products or whatever one may have to be able to essentially connect and communicate with one another in a coordinated way. This is something the user of the product ultimately wants all their stuff to do.

I heard one of my colleagues talk about the problem of e-waste. That is a very real problem in this country, and indeed around the world. We are generating so much e-waste and toxic chemicals that can leach into our landfills as a result.

If we want to try to stop that from happening, then we have to find ways in our policies and in our laws to encourage people to be able to use a product for as long as they possibly can. Interoperability is going to be a key component of that, so that people can feel confident they do not need to throw something away but can keep on using it with another product.

I want to also reference the fact that we in the House have already voted on a bill that was dealing with the concept of the right to repair, and now we are dealing with a bill that would also amend the Copyright Act to allow for interoperability. There is a slight difference between those two concepts, and I know the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands has taken some time to really delve into that from a previous question, but I think we can tackle both of them.

On the right to repair, I know at committee I have certainly had some manufacturers raise some concerns with it, so I certainly hope that at the committee stage, dealing with the right to repair bill in particular, they address some of those concerns. Manufacturers were concerned that some people might be able to tinker with their equipment to remove safety mechanisms. For example, a lot of forklifts require that an operator be sitting down in the seat, and the seat has to feel a person's weight in order for the machinery to operate. Manufacturers were worried that a person could tinker with that safety system, so that they could operate the forklift while standing beside it and outside the safety box, which, of course, would be incredibly unsafe were the load to tip over or something like that.

There have been some concerns raised on it, and I know the committee will do its due diligence in addressing those.

Returning to Bill C-294, we also have to set the context. This bill came about after an important report was issued by Western Economic Diversification Canada in February of last year. It essentially set the context of the fact that this is a pretty big issue within the agricultural field. It is a big issue because of new market dynamics that have arisen, created by those digital technologies.

Ongoing policy in this area, because of the rapid technological change, has to really address a number of items. The first bullet point here was on copyright policy and whether there are exceptions in the law to permit circumvention of technological protection measures, TPMs, so that we can adapt to this and the reality in the marketplace.

I do not want to spend too much more time speaking to the bill. I know my colleague, the member for Windsor West, who sits on the industry committee, may want to say some words on this bill during its second hour of debate, but I know he is looking forward to getting this bill to committee so that it can be studied in further detail. It deserves to continue on its journey to committee. We can let that deliberative body take a closer look at it and really get that airing from witnesses who are directly involved in the field, so they can come and say in their own words why this initiative is so important and give the reasons parliamentarians should ensure that it continues on its journey.

I will end by just saying that I look forward to having the opportunity to vote to send this bill to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and I would like to congratulate the member again on bringing forward this initiative for us to consider.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the bill that would amend the Copyright Act. The sponsor of this bill, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, will be pleased to know that the Bloc Québécois supports what is proposed in his bill.

If Bill C-294, which has only two clauses, is passed, the Copyright Act will be amended to “allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent a technological protection measure to make a computer program interoperable with any device or component, or with a product they manufacture”.

In other words, it allows the owner of a software-enabled device to bypass the lock in order to make it compatible with other applications, even if they are not developed by the original software developer. Ultimately, the Copyright Act is essentially about protecting literary and artistic property rights and encouraging fair compensation for the work that is done.

For example, like Bill C‑244, it does not allow anyone to break digital locks in order to copy or alter the work of an artist or a copyright holder without their consent. Authors have been protected by the act since 2012. This bill will allow people to break digital locks solely so the program can be used with another platform. This is called interoperability, and it is a good thing.

This bill is a good thing for consumers because it frees them from the limitations that many companies place on their customers, effectively making them prisoners to whoever holds the original software. I applaud companies that do not use the act and that allow interoperability instead of preventing it. If this bill makes its way through all the stages, that will be the norm for everyone.

Many businesses come to mind as examples of best practices and benefits for consumers. I want to emphasize that interoperability opens the door to infinite opportunities to do better things with the technological tools available to us.

We need to think about the enjoyable and user-friendly tools people want to work with. That is what the bill addresses. Take a cellphone, for example. It is much more than a telephone; it is a pocket computer that can be used for all kinds of activities. To make it even more versatile, we can download many different apps that get added to the operating system and add new functions to it. Without interoperability, would the use of this device be so widespread? The answer is obvious.

In Quebec, many apps have been developed in record time, and because they were interoperable, everyone could use them, no matter what kind of smartphone they used. There is VaxiCode, the vaccine passport app developed by the Quebec government at the height of the pandemic, the Transit app that gives us public transit schedules in real time, or even a financial app that allows us to access our credit union accounts in one click.

Although the operating system designers did not choose to invoke the Copyright Act to prevent us from downloading all these apps, the act would give them the power to do so. Our devices would be less versatile and would become outdated more quickly, and a new technology developer would be excluded from the market, restricting competition and innovation. Fortunately, they understood the benefits of interoperability.

Interoperability is considered to be very important, even critical, in many areas, including information technology, medicine in the broad sense, rail, electromechanics, aerospace, the military and industry in general. The different systems, devices and elements must be able to interact seamlessly.

Even if cellphone designers chose not to invoke their copyright to exclude competitors, other businesses did choose to do so, which is unfortunate. The idea here is to encourage and clarify the option that legislators wanted to put forward in the act, that is interoperability. I salute the member for La Prairie. That is the kind of word that he would have made me repeat and that I would have mispronounced again.

Even though Quebec has not codified the circular economy, it applies the principles of the circular economy in many of its policies, and most of its major industrial strategies are now developed in accordance with the principle of reclaiming the materials and energy used to produce goods.

It is high time we reconsidered the linear economic model and, in conjunction with Bill C‑244, adopted the principle of interoperability for the goods we consume.

The idea is to dissuade businesses from developing products in a vacuum. I will repeat the same message: We need to shift to a new paradigm and stop throwing money away. Repairability and interoperability are principles that need to be enshrined in the Copyright Act. We have to do much more with fewer resources. This realization is already reflected in Quebec's new laws and policies.

Recently, the National Assembly of Quebec unanimously adopted Bill 197, which will completely ban planned obsolescence and force companies to label their products with a sustainability and repairability rating. An ambitious update to the Consumer Protection Act is needed to make companies change their practices in ways that benefit consumers.

With the recent election, the Government of Quebec has not yet adopted the order to bring the new legislation into force, but it has clearly indicated its intention to do so swiftly.

Far from interfering in the work of the National Assembly of Quebec, passing Bill C‑294 would prevent manufacturers from invoking federal copyright law to counter the work being done to make Quebec the place where consumers will be best protected against this practice.

A World Bank report entitled “What a Waste 2.0” identifies several initiatives around the world to reduce the volume of electronic goods ending up in landfills. Members will understand why I am so excited. Very soon, probably in this parliamentary term, great strides will be made in laying the foundation for the circular economy.

I encourage members to follow the work of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, specifically in November, for I am sure they will find our study on the electronics recycling industry very interesting. It will be in November at the earliest, but this subject is very important to me.

The objectives are clear. We have to break free from disposable plastic, better inform consumers, fight waste and promote social enterprise in recycling, take action against planned obsolescence and improve manufacturing quality. This is our future.

I am encouraged, because the movement is taking hold, although several pieces of legislation still need to be modernized. This societal shift is being led by ordinary citizens and is gaining momentum. All levels of government must act, because not only is waste a health issue, but it is also key to the green transition, since the resources needed to produce these goods are not available in infinite quantities.

E-waste is a growing environmental concern, and there are several laws that should be amended to address the issue. Today's debate represents a small part of this burden, but we must redesign our laws to allow interoperability. Slowly but surely, everyone will come to see the benefits.

In conclusion, it makes sense to be able to repair our own belongings, but it does not make sense to keep supporting throwaway culture. The message must be clear: Let us put an end to schemes that encourage consumers to throw items away because they cannot repair them.

Regulatory progress is slow, but I remain convinced that this bill will make its way to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology very soon. I still hope the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry will introduce a bill to modernize the Copyright Act as soon as possible, like this fall. We are running out of time to clean up our manufacturing methods and our consumer habits.

[Wilson Miao, Liberal, Richmond Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-294 tackles a public policy challenge of importance to Canadians. I believe that we need to do more to facilitate the interoperability of products. An interoperability-friendly environment means empowering Canadians to adapt the products they own to their needs. For example, it means giving the ability to farmers to install different add-ons to their tractors so that they can do a number of different tasks with the same piece of machinery. It also means giving Canadians the ability to render compatible their old electronic devices with new technological standards to address the accumulation of electronic waste on our planet.

Many of the current obstacles to interoperability have arisen as a result of new market dynamics created by digital technologies and the increase of embedded software in products such as smart phones, televisions and vehicles. Removing these obstacles will require a variety of measures in both federal and provincial areas of responsibility. At the federal level, there is one particular marketplace framework that comes into play when discussing interoperability, and that is the Copyright Act, which is the subject of amendments proposed in Bill C-294.

The Copyright Act, as it currently reads, represents an obstacle to the ability of Canadians to extend the life cycles of their software-enabled products protected by digital locks. The Copyright Act prohibits Canadians to circumvent digital locks protecting copyrighted content like software. An exception to this prohibition already allows the circumvention of digital locks for the purpose of interoperability, but it is limited to the making of two computer programs interoperable. Bill C-294 seeks to expand this exception to allow Canadians to also circumvent digital locks to make their software-enabled products interoperable with other devices or components. This bill will work in conjunction with my private member's bill, Bill C-244, which was just voted on, to allow Canadians an increased autonomy over their purchased goods.

Because of the complexity of copyright policies and the issues related to interoperability, it remains that an expanded interoperability exception, such as the one proposed in Bill C-294, should be carefully considered so as to prevent any unintended consequences. Without prejudging the outcome of Bill C-294, I look forward to working with my colleagues to constructively scrutinize this bill.

Last year, the government conducted a number of consultations on copyright, one of which discussed the interoperability issue. The government's consultation on a modern copyright framework for artificial intelligence and the Internet of things highlighted some of the challenges for Canadians in rendering their products protected by digital locks interoperable with other products. The comments provided by stakeholders in response to this consultation are publicly available and they will greatly assist in our work.

First, some stakeholders pointed to the importance of ensuring that exceptions allowing the circumvention of digital locks respect Canada's treaty obligations. Canada must provide legal protections for digital locks that, notably, respect the terms of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties. Canada also needs to comply with the additional requirements to protect digital locks that have been integrated into CUSMA, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, which limits our flexibility to enact new exceptions allowing for the circumvention of digital locks or to expand the existing ones.

It will thus be important to ensure that the measures proposed in Bill C-294 and their effects on the Copyright Act comply with Canada's international obligations.

Second, I urge us to consider the perspective of a broad range of stakeholders in studying Bill C-294. The diversity of views will enrich the policy debate and lead to a more effective balancing of the various interests at play. The stakeholder submissions received in response to the government's consultations attest to this diversity of views.

Particularly, manufacturers have expressed concerns that expanding the scope of exceptions allowing the circumvention of digital locks could introduce personal safety and security risks for consumers. They have also noted potential cybersecurity and privacy risks, especially for products that connect to the Internet. Moreover, copyright holders argue that expanding these exceptions would expose them to piracy of their content and potential economic losses. We need to ensure the amendment sought in Bill C-294 does not negatively impact the ability of manufacturers and copyright holders to market their products and innovate.

Despite these considerations that will need further exploration, I want to reiterate the important issue Bill C-294 brings forward to us as it seeks to remove an important barrier to the interoperability of products. I look forward to continued discussions on this important matter.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I must say that the Bloc Québécois is very much in favour of Bill C‑294. One of the reasons we support it is that it also addresses the problem of planned obsolescence, which means that devices must constantly be updated and upgraded. We can finally break the “buy-use-toss” cycle, where scientists are asked to put all their efforts into innovating products designed to become obsolete quickly, so people have to get a new refrigerator every seven years and a new cellphone every two years, and so on. Apparently there is a light bulb in a fire station somewhere that still works after more than 100 years. This is a sign that there is a way to make things that last.

Quebec has passed legislation that takes aim at and directly prohibits the system of planned obsolescence, although the act is not yet fully in force. We welcome the fact that Bill C‑294 does not interfere with it.

Could my colleague comment on the need to explicitly tackle the “buy-use-toss” cycle that is actually preventing sustainable growth?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

moved that Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to rise in the House today and speak to my first-ever Private Member's Bill, Bill C-294, an act to amend the Copyright Act as it relates to interoperability.

It has also been unofficially called the “unlocking innovation act”. The pathway for putting together this bill began in the winter of 2019-20 as the federal government was finalizing the new NAFTA deal, which is now officially known as CUSMA. For my part, it started with working on the industry committee. We were studying the legislation which would implement the new trade deal. Some of my own constituents from back home in Cypress Hills—Grasslands appeared as witnesses to give their feedback on it. They were representing Honey Bee Manufacturing, and I will say more about them in a moment.

During the meeting, while expressing their support for having a free trade agreement in place, they pointed out a threat to their industry. This is what they laid out in their opening statement:

The challenge we face is interoperability. Recently, with technical protection measures and so on, companies have started to use digital locks and keys to prevent us from allowing our equipment to interoperate with these major OEM brands. It's a form of protectionism that allows them to own and operate the entire value chain at the exclusion of independent manufacturers.

In Canada we have 1,400 manufacturers of implements that are attached to agriculture, mining, forestry or construction equipment. Of those manufacturers, 500 are for agricultural equipment. That agricultural equipment is primarily manufactured adjacent to small communities in Canada, rural communities, where the majority of that type of manufacturing takes place. It's a challenge for us to achieve the ability to continue to legally manufacture our product and sell it onto these platforms. The copyright act in the United States has provision for circumventing for the purpose of interoperation. The Canadian Copyright Act does not have this same term in the agreement.

We would like to see that ratified prior to the signing of the trade agreement so that we're not on that uneven footing that prevents us from competing legally in the marketplace here and abroad.

That is the main problem in a nutshell, and it is the type of challenging situation that this bill would correct. The requested change did not end up happening around the timing of CUSMA, or in the time since then, but it has brought us to today as we debate this bill. Bill C-294 seeks to move ahead with a change to the Copyright Act that would help to put interoperability back in its rightful place in the Canadian marketplace.

This is the right thing to do on a number of fronts, because interoperability means support for innovation, consumer choice and protection, competitive markets, small business and job creation. Before explaining in a little more detail what it is, I am going to tell a story about why interoperability is important.

Two farmers from southwest Saskatchewan, Glen and Greg Honey, out of a desire to have a product that worked better and more efficiently on their farm, took the initiative to engineer and build a 425-horsepower tractor. They then went on to make a self-propelled swather, as well as the grain belt header that has become the standard in the marketplace for how headers are built.

As farm implements and attachments, it was easy to use them with something else, such as a tractor or a combine, which they would have already had. At that time, interoperability was generally open and achievable because of the simplified nature of the equipment. All one needed was a common hydraulic hose connection and a PTO shaft, and they would be ready to go. It did not stop there.

As local farmers around the area began to see the equipment the Honeys were using on their farm, they began to want the same kind of swather and header as well. Over the course of a decade, they eventually moved their new manufacturing outfit from their farm to the town of Frontier.

There they were able to set up in the shop in the space vacated by Flexi-Coil when they bought out Friggstad Manufacturing, another family-owned and operated farm equipment manufacturer in Frontier. Friggstad had a similar operation that had built a superior product of its own. However, it was a victim of rapid inflation and market instability in the 1980s which unfortunately put it in receivership. It was eventually bought out by the bigger competition. The sale of Friggstad Manufacturing to Flexi-Coil was devastating to the community because they moved the operation up to Saskatoon, cutting the population of the town almost in half, from over 500 people down to around 300.

However, the move into town in 1987 by the Honey brothers became a new opportunity for the community, and soon Honey Bee Manufacturing became the largest source of employment for the region. They created a future for the community once again. It really shows how crucial and how much of a difference these short-line manufacturers can make in rural communities when they are in business and are allowed to succeed. The success story of Honey Bee is not unique just to Frontier. There are hundreds of companies across the Prairies and this country that share a similar success story of innovation that was born out a need to create either a better product or a new one altogether.

Whether it is a company such as Schulte in Englefeld, Bourgault in St. Brieux or Väderstad north of Langbank, these are companies in Saskatchewan who are driving innovation in their industry. While doing it, they are making an absolutely essential contribution to the livelihoods and the social fabric of our small communities and rural area.

Sadly, Honey Bee Manufacturing's level of early success 40 years ago would likely not be possible right now. This innovative industry has long been losing ground to large companies that are pushing them out of the market. It might sound hard to believe, but our copyright law seems to be helping large companies and providing them the tools to do just that, which is actually the opposite of what the Copyright Act was originally intended to do. I will offer some support for this common sense principle from a book on Canadian copyright law by David Vaver, who published it while serving as an Oxford professor of intellectual property law and a director for the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre.

It reads:

patents and copyrights are supposed to encourage work to be disclosed to the public and to increase society's pool of ideas and knowledge.

Keeping a broad public domain itself encourages experimentation, innovation, and competition—and ultimately the expectation of lower prices, better service, and broader public choice.

Those are the known benefits of an open and competitive market against a monopoly. Interoperability has been a key part in that for the agriculture sector as long as anyone can remember and that is what it is still doing in other areas of our lives. At a basic level, interoperability is something that is actually quite broad.

It happens whenever different devices, machines or pieces of equipment can connect and work together. There are many examples of this, including how people use simple tools or digital technology that we simply take for granted in our daily lives. It is something that we do not usually notice, and there is a good reason for that. That is because most of the time we do not actually have a problem with interoperability and there is usually not a barrier to prevent it from happening.

However, today, I am talking about where a barrier does exist and how a simple update to the Copyright Act would get us back on track for supporting innovation and consumer choice. A new barrier comes from technological protection measures, or TPMs for short. They are a legitimate tool designed to protect intellectual property, including things like movies, music or software, and they have been enforced by Canadian copyright law for over 10 years.

The bill introducing legal recognition for TPMs into the Copyright Act had this to say in its preamble:

Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to enhancing the protection of copyright works or other subject-matter, including through the recognition of technological protection measures, in a manner that promotes culture and innovation, competition and investment in the Canadian economy;

That is exactly how they should be used in line with the principles of copyright. At that time, copyright law in different parts of the world was catching up to significant changes in technology and industry. We have reached the point again where there is a critical need to do the same thing in our own time. Technology has advanced into new areas. Everything is increasingly digital. This enables new features in our homes, our vehicles and our machinery.

However, in some ways, this has also created a catch when it comes to the Copyright Act. The digital aspect of machinery means that it is operating with software to communicate as needed with a user interface or with other devices or attachments. Copyright applies to the software contained inside these products, and this has given the original manufacturers a new mechanism to control access to the entire product after it has been purchased.

This is what is happening with digital locks. If a user of the equipment wants to attach a piece of equipment to a tractor, but it was not made by the same major brand, if we keep down the path we are on, it will be locked out and will not be used. Good luck keeping customers for innovative SMEs.

The digital lock also prevents a short-line manufacturer from reverse engineering to make their products compatible in the first place, since the OEMs own the software in the machine, as per the terms and conditions that must be accepted every single time the machine is started after purchase.

Clearly, there is movement toward a monopoly, and it is partly being done in the name of copyright. While the current version of the act explicitly mentions interoperability of two computer programs as a non-violation of TPMs, the language in place does not capture what is happening right now. As it is, there is enough ambiguity to allow for some OEMs to take advantage of it and hold it over their customers and their competitors.

There is more reason to be uneasy than having a vague fear in the face of an unknown. Back in 2017, the Nintendo v. King decision came out from the Federal Court. It is one of the first decisions to apply to Canada's TPM provisions and, since then, has been cited in several other cases.

For the larger issue of interoperability, the main point is not really about how Nintendo games were used in the particulars of this case. The case set a precedent in which a piece of physical hardware was considered copyrighted material. That is how the current law has been interpreted, and it means there is one more way to stop reverse engineering for legitimate reasons.

It is easy to see this becoming a bad trend across various industries if it were left unchecked, but right now the battle line seems to be in agriculture. There is still some time to clarify the law in line with its spirit and intent, but there are already some signs of damage.

A 2021 report released by what was then called Western Economic Diversification outlines industry data for the agriculture manufacturing sector in Canada and organizes it for us to get an idea of the economic impact. It starts out by presenting a financial picture:

Nationally this sector accounts for total revenues over $4 billion with western Canada accounting for a dominant share, 65.9 percent, of Canadian agricultural equipment manufacturing. In 2018, agricultural equipment manufacturing in Western Canada contributed an estimated $2.6 billion in revenue with total salaries and wages accounting for $488 million.

For the breakdown of employment, the report found that 87% of the businesses are micro, meaning they have 1 to 4 employees, or small, with 5 to 99 employees. Regardless of their size, they are productive in their own right. The report continues, “Based on 2018 data for small and medium sized enterprises, industry averages for revenue was $996,900 with 72 percent of establishments being profitable. Financial performance data was reported for 311 businesses with an annual revenue range of $30,000 to $5 million.”

Besides showing these numbers, the report later states:

Impacts of interoperability will be affecting the industry in 2020 as one OEM’s starts restricting access to short line manufactures equipment. A survey of implement dealers has indicated a significant drop in orders of short line manufacture combine headers for the coming year and in to the future.

From table 4, dealers of agriculture equipment have indicated a reduction in intentions to purchase headers from short line manufactures base on the past five-year average. The current sales, specifically in OEM 1 mainline dealers, could see sales numbers decreasing by as much as 60 percent this year over the five-year average. A further reduction in future sales is predicted moving forward.

Again, so many of our SMEs are independent from major brands. They tend to make their own innovative pieces of equipment that are meant to connect with others produced by different companies, which are often the bigger players. If restrictions tighten on equipment users and engineers with the expanding use of digital locks, these small competitors and innovators will die out as time goes on. Everybody will lose. What has to be understood here is the nature of a rural economy and how it all works. Rural areas have small populations that are spread further apart. They cannot afford to lose the people or the jobs they have. It is nothing less than their survival that is at stake.

Section 92 of the Copyright Act mandates that it be reviewed every five years, and we have reached that designated time for reviewing it. Both Parliament and the government have been taking steps toward updating our copyright laws, and this bill is exactly in line with what needs to be done to improve it. The work has been done and the change is ready to be made.

Bill C-294 will provide a clear, limited exemption for consumers and innovators who simply wish to enable their devices or machinery to interoperate with other equipment, as they were always able to do in the past. My conversations with other members across party lines has been encouraging, and I look forward to discussing it with more of my colleagues.

This is a simple update to make sure that our Copyright Act is fair for everyone, while also making sure that it is in line with our international commitments and our international trade agreements with other countries, while in the meanwhile making sure that we are on the same level playing field as other signatories in the CUSMA deal.

I believe that as a Parliament we can work together to see this bill gets it done.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

Madam Speaker, today I am here in support of Canadian consumers as well as the countless innovators who work in our industry across the country.

Bill C-294 would provide a clear and limited exemption to consumers and product innovators who simply wish to enable their device or machinery to interoperate with other equipment, as they were once able to do. Right now, they run into a problem with doing this under the Copyright Act. Section 41 was passed back in 2012 to legally enforce technological protection measures, but 10 years later, technology has changed a lot and we see a much different landscape with the types of products available.

Many devices and machinery now include software, and that is how some companies try to block interoperability for users and small competitors alike. I have seen first-hand how this issue plays out with our farmers and manufacturers.

Interoperability is important for a lot of other industries as well. There is a special business near Frontier, Saskatchewan, called Honey Bee Manufacturing. It is a short-line manufacturer of farm equipment. I would be happy to share its success story when we discuss this bill in greater detail, but what I will say for now is that it is a source of creativity and innovation in the field. It is also the lifeblood that is keeping a small rural community alive.

There are other stories like this, and there is no reason to shut them down. Canada has been the home of many remarkable advances. We should never discourage new ones from happening now or in the future. If we make a small adjustment in the law, Canadian creativity will do the rest. We can support consumers and innovators while upholding our copyright framework, and I hope all members will help in doing that.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)