I have a somewhat different point of view.
As far as we are concerned, any type of exemption should be limited. Any broadening, such as the one proposed in the motion of Mr. Angus, for example, would open the door to numerous disputes that would have to be resolved to in court and would clog the system. Creators would have to police the market, which would be terrible.
That being said, we are not opposed to some compromises. Publishers are the biggest purchasers of rights. People may not know it but, like film directors, we have to purchase lots of copyrights. In the education field, we spend millions of dollars for rights that we then grant to photographers, illustrators and people in many artistic fields.
So, we are very aware of the issues relating to the purchasing of rights. Every time there is a problem, we wonder if we should weaken the copyright or instead find other funding to make sure that the copyright is respected.
I want to underline something else. If we accept exceptions that are clearly limited, in order to allow for some other utilizations requested by other industries, it has to be done without weakening copyrights and clogging the courts.
The key word is money. With digitization, we enter into the world of globalization. Other companies make massive investments, of hundreds of millions of dollars, to support their creators, to protect their network and to purchase rights. We are not doing anything comparable. Here, the funding reaches barely 1, 2, 3 or 5% of what exists elsewhere. In other countries, ministers and prime ministers make public statements to complain about Goggle. Here, our Premier and our minister of culture have not done so.
We have not felt any kind of support, here in Canada, in this kind of wild jungle that the digital world has become over the past five years. We have found some solutions. We see more and more clearly where we are going but it is obvious to us that money will be the key word if we want to be competitive with other countries that would want to come here and play in our markets.