Evidence of meeting #8 for Bill C-32 (40th Parliament, 3rd Session) in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
What I was saying was that the people on this side of the table share the concern that the income of creators, those who are doing the writing, will go down if education is included as an exception, because this could be a very broad exemption. We don't know what the scope of the term "education" will be nor what the impact of including it in the legislation will be. We don't know how that will be interpreted in terms of fair dealing.
What does your sector think?
As an Individual
Well, my sector--writers--of course are very concerned about this. We hear a lot about balance between creators and users, but when a writer stands to lose their income for their work, there is no balance there. Balance is when you are paid for your intellectual property.
As I've mentioned, you could potentially lose up to 85% if these exemptions go through. And because it's going to be on a case-to-case basis, we don't know what that means, fair dealing.
It's a very precarious situation for us and publishers to be in. If publishers get afraid about losing income, we lose, as writers.
Conservative
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you very much.
My question is for the Canadian Teachers' Federation. Why do you no longer want to pay copyright fees to the content creators?
Deputy Secretary General, Canadian Teachers' Federation
I don't think we've ever suggested that we don't want to pay copyright. We've never suggested that.
What we are trying to do is to ensure that there's access to material by teachers and students. We don't want to reduce Mr. Brown's income. The fee-setting process for photocopying of material in schools is done by a completely different process. At the moment it amounts to about $20 million for creators in the country through the fees set by Copyright Canada. And if that copying goes up, the next time they sit down to set the fee, then the fee will go up, and Mr. Brown and other people will get a greater amount per student for the amount of copying that's done.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
I apologize for interrupting you but wasn't the fee already set at $5.16 per student?
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
If Bill C-32 is passed, will you continue to pay it?
Bloc
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
In that case, why do you appear to be supporting the exception? I arrived a little late but from what I understood you wanted to be exempted from paying copyright fees.
Deputy Secretary General, Canadian Teachers' Federation
We're not looking for exemptions to paying copyright. If something is copyrighted and a creator wants to be paid for it, and if teachers want to use that material, it should be paid for--no question, no misunderstanding about that at all.
What we are looking for is clarity in the act that ensures that when teachers do certain things that they need to do in order to provide material for the classes, they're not breaking the copyright law. That's what we want to ensure: clarity in the law, in the act, so that there is opportunity for teachers to access material and students to access material without breaking the law.
But paying for it--the process for paying for photocopying and using copyright in Canada--will continue. And it's likely that under this process the amount of copying may increase. As I said, at the moment it's--
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
So you do want to pay for the photocopies you make. You do a lot of photocopies, you do them in Canada at all school levels, at a cost of $516 million if my memory serves me well.
