One of the things that's concerned me in the discussion is this continued polarization of creators and users.
Our organization is probably the largest organization representing authors of books in the country. We had to wrestle with all of the issues before you in developing our position: how to be fair to students and to faculty members and librarians, but also how to be fair to our members in their role as creators of cultural and intellectual material.
The kind of balance we're suggesting—having a clear fair dealing provision—is important to all creators, because they all use other people's work and draw on that and need it for those purposes. It's important for our students, and, as my colleague Paul Jones has said on several occasions, if you look at the provisions for fair use in the United States, they're far more generous than what we're considering, and they have had none of the devastating effects that some witnesses before your committee have suggested.
We've really worked hard to try to balance those things, because our membership is from all sides of this. We think the kinds of recommendations, both on fair dealing...but also asking you to reconsider the absolute prohibition on breaking digital locks and modifying that so it's limiting it to breaking digital locks for infringing purposes but allowing it for non-infringing purposes.
I think if you made that change, that would be a major step to bringing forth a piece of legislation about which all Canadians could be proud.