I'll start and then turn it over to colleagues after that.
Let me come back to what you were saying about whether we're allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I fully agree with you. Whatever bill comes out of this Parliament, or whatever legislation there is, will not be perfect. It'll represent Parliament's best attempt to put a modern regime in place, and it'll start to feel the creaks and the strains as technologies change very rapidly.
But the only thing that I'm sure of, Mr. Cardin, is that it will be infinitely better than what we have today. And the plea I would make to Parliament is, do not lock us into the 20th century when we've moved into the 21st century. We need to modernize what we do.
Again I come back to the question, what can we do for our artists? One of the key things we have to do is to ensure protection is in place in terms of copyright to protect their creations. That's essential. Is that all we can do for them? No, it's not.
I am a former Minister of Communications responsible for culture. in addition government has many tools to address issues artists have, which it should use. Société Radio-Canada, of which I was president, is the largest cultural institution in Canada and a great source of support for artists as well.
There are many tools, but one of the tools that artists definitely need is to have modern copyright legislation. Without that, we'd lock ourselves in the past, and everybody loses. If we make the change, does everybody win as much as they would like to win? Inevitably there will be debate on that. The only thing I know is that if we don't act, everybody loses. That's why we must act.