Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is the second half of our attempt to link the criminal intent to get around a digital lock to the notion of copyright. I am quite partial to this amendment.
It refers to the intent behind the act. In my view and as Mr. Angus so eloquently stated, the digital lock provisions should not be applied blindly. Doing so would be dogmatic and ideological.
Mr. Angus and Mr. Regan gave a number of examples of situations in which regular people breaking digital locks unintentionally or without criminal intent would have the presumption of guilt imposed on them.
That could also harm innovation and competition. Consumers have also pointed to problems.
I want to come back to another side of the digital lock debate. I would point out that the federal government is now dictating how to handle course notes and run a classroom, activities that are the domain of the province.
A number of witnesses have said that, on top of the challenges I just mentioned, the digital lock system again raises constitutional concerns. Even though the federal government is entitled to regulate trade, in accordance with the applicable section of our Constitution, the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over contractual obligation matters. A serious concern has been raised to the effect that end-user licence and application agreements involving digital locks are indeed contracts pertaining to protection measures or e-commerce rules, which are the exclusive jurisdiction of the province. As a result, they cannot be legitimately regulated by the federal government, whose role in this area is limited strictly to copyright.
Lawyers will have a field day with that debate in court. This bill is going to fuel legal disputes in many areas for years to come, especially in Quebec, whose Civil Code contains unique French-language protection measures. You can't simply cast aside these concerns out of hand. These concerns may be of no importance to a government that did not even have the courtesy to ask a single question in French while this controversial bill was being studied. However, I can assure you that they are extremely important to the members of the Quebec nation, which Parliament recognized. We urge you not to meddle in the province's domain.