Thank you very much.
Well, we had a little discussion on emerging and digital media, and a copyright discussion broke out. It seems as though, despite the fact....
What I had really hoped for, and what I think we're hoping to do, to steal a phrase from Star Trek, one of my favourite shows when I was a kid, is to boldly go into this new universe and leverage all the opportunities there are for Canadian artists to expand their reach and to in fact enrich them from a monetary perspective. Also, we want to make sure that there's greater access, more enhanced access, to Canadian artists within Canada and beyond.
I think that's really where we want to go with this. We want to come up with a strategy and recommendations for the minister and the government to help us take advantage of these opportunities.
With respect to copyrights, I understand that they're part and parcel of this. I understand that you want an environment in which, as you said, good fences make good neighbours. You want to know what the fences are. I understand that. In Canada, we've been working since 1996 to update our copyright laws. That battle continues.
There are a couple of things I want to ask. I'd like to play a little bit of the devil's advocate with you, not because it's my position, but just to give me some idea of what you deal with when you're talking about copyright.
On the issue of fair use or fair dealing or “such as”, part of the reason we have to rewrite a copyright bill is that technology has changed, and our copyright bill is no longer protecting copyright holders. We have the problem of illegal redistribution in Canada. Other jurisdictions see us as a violator. I've met with those other jurisdictions. I'm sure that other people around the table have.
If we don't create a bill that is somehow adaptable in some way, we'll be back in this position. We might be back in this position much sooner than we were last time, because technology changes much more rapidly now than it did even a few years ago.
If we're not prepared in any way to look at fair dealing or the way fair dealing is written, what would lead you to believe that the next copyright bill would be any more prepared for or adaptive to emerging technologies than the one we have before us right now? Why wouldn't we be back in this position in a year or two or whatever?