Evidence of meeting #5 for Canadian Heritage in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Anctil.
My next question is about your work, which is extremely interdisciplinary.
As members of Parliament, how could we better integrate the social sciences and not just the technical side of AI to create a framework that works for Canadians?
Affiliated Researcher, International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies
That's a very good question and a very difficult one to answer.
I would quickly say that artificial intelligence is a different technology from others, because it is the most human. By that I mean that it is literally based on data produced not only from human activity, but also from human intelligence itself. Given that, we need many perspectives and a lot of expertise. For example, AI can be good for mental health, but it can also be addictive. We need the perspectives of psychologists and psychiatrists who study these phenomena.
Transferability is a defining feature of this technology, which can be used by anyone. People who are 80 can use ChatGPT, they can use Dall-E to generate images or Suno to generate music. We all master the basic language of this technology, which is not a programming language but natural language like English, French and so on.
As a result, it is very difficult to pinpoint the issues of a technology that increases human capacity and has constant interactions with human beings. We don't yet have the definitive approaches that will help us understand these phenomena. At the same time, every year, technology takes absolutely gigantic leaps, and its rollout into society is not really controlled or legislated as such. In addition, there is no approval process for risks and hazards. All of this is complex.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lisa Hepfner
Thank you, Mr. Anctil. I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't like cutting people off, but time is limited.
Mr. Diotte, you have the floor for five minutes.
Conservative
Kerry Diotte Conservative Edmonton Griesbach, AB
Thank you very much.
Mr. Griffiths, you made some fascinating observations. The one that strikes me is that, with the AI tools, basically you can do a Google search now and it scrapes all the content from people's websites, whether they have it behind a paywall or not. That's obviously a big challenge.
Is there any advantage to Canadian news sites with this phenomenon?
Publisher, The Hub
There are some advantages. To be fair to Google, they have indicated that the quality of the traffic that clicks through from AI Overviews or from a search query undertaken in AI Mode has a better effect for you as the publisher. The user stays around longer and they engage more with your content.
Google has not released any information to actually document this. Again, here I think transparency is important. If large public companies are going to make claims about how their technology is beneficial, then I think there's an onus on releasing the data to back up these types of assertions.
I think there might be a quality of traffic issue. Nonetheless, even though there might be a quality of traffic issue, the Pew Center in the United States—a well-respected foundation—did a study looking at behaviours within AI Overviews and these types of summaries that are produced for topical queries on news and other relevant information and in many cases found that the click-through rate from those AI summaries to a news outlet like The Hub was in the single digits. It's 5%, 6%, 7% or less, when they look at users clicking through.
I'll go back to my original point. This technology is helping news and journalism. It is empowering journalists. It is dealing often with the asymmetry between smaller organizations like The Hub, larger competitors and large organizations like The Globe and Mail or others that have to deal with reporting out on even larger organizations, like the federal government, for example. There are all kinds of positive things that are happening for the industry related to AI, but I go back to issues of competition, fairness and transparency; I think there's work that needs to be done.
Conservative
Kerry Diotte Conservative Edmonton Griesbach, AB
On that note, you don't strike me as somebody who likes a lot of government interference, but what would you like to see if you could wave a magic wand to improve the situation for you and other online journalists?
Publisher, The Hub
I think necessity is the mother of invention. I would urge that we take away all the subsidies and supports that are out there and allow competition to occur on a level playing field in our industry, like we should be allowing it to occur, as we know, in other industries like telecommunications or banking. I think this would do more to address Canada's productivity problems than anything else that we could consider at this time.
With regard to the actual technology itself and the large operators of this technology, clearly there are big challenges in terms of asserting issues of transparency and fairness in their dealings with content creators of all types, from the spectrum of news through to visual and other types of artistry.
We have to look at that. Ideally, copyright law probably should be where we start and end that conversation. I would be very leery if the conversation skews into more subsidies, that we need to find more ways to create, in a sense, an artificial economic foundation for industries that are challenged, because I think those subsidies distort free and fair competition and they ultimately lead to poorer outcomes for consumers. We certainly see that in the news industry in Canada.
Conservative
Kerry Diotte Conservative Edmonton Griesbach, AB
Right now if you google something, AI searches are basically controlled by Google. Is there any way around that? Is there anything the government could do so that Google doesn't basically control all of the algorithms to point people to certain websites?
Publisher, The Hub
That's correct.
I think there is a concern that right now it is entirely at the whim of Google and the other LLMs. If they do put a citation into AI Overviews, or if you are in AI Mode it can google. It is that company that is choosing which organization gets cited. These companies are entering into agreements with different news outlets. Those agreements are private. We don't know what's in them. We know now that companies the LLMs enter into agreements with get preferential citing in these summaries. It creates other distortions in the market. As a smaller publisher compared to The New York Times or Fox News or whatever—
Liberal
Publisher, The Hub
—we are pushed aside and not able to compete on a level playing field.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to start by thanking the Copibec representatives. In my time as a member of Parliament, this is the first organization I've had a conversation with about the impacts of AI on Canadian culture and heritage. During our discussions, I recall that the organization was extremely clear when it said that it wasn't a matter of avoiding technological progress, which will happen anyway, but rather a matter of ensuring that it would happen in a way that takes into account our industries and our culture. Artificial intelligence models—this has been mentioned several times—are now trained on a vast amount of data, much of which comes from copyrighted works.
What would a fair and workable compensation framework for rights holders look like?
Assistant General Manager, Copibec
Your question is very relevant, because it relates to the aspect of adding value to content. With generative AI, we are seeing a new redistribution of value. Artificial intelligence systems, particularly the Pro or Plus subscriptions that were mentioned earlier, generate considerable, even astronomical, revenue. We need only look at the investments made in these technologies.
As of now, the balance of power is uneven. Authors cannot negotiate on their own, individually, hence the need for a structured legislative response to the situation. Rights holders no longer have a choice, in a way. They cannot make their own choices about allowing their content to be used or not or about its corresponding value.
The redistribution of value must be fair so that the rights holders or creators who produced the content that was used to train AI are compensated for its fair value. Models are starting to take shape to compensate rights holders, but they are still programming-based exploratory models. That said, I feel that these models are very limited, since technology actors are the ones who have set up the models and who have absolute control over their operation.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Great. Thank you for that detailed answer.
Copyright enforcement is sometimes perceived by the public as hostile to users. In fact, that has been mentioned several times today. How could organizations like Copibec ensure that copyright is tied to fairness and sustainability and not to the restriction of AI?
Advisor, Legal and Public Affairs, Copibec
The basis of the Copyright Act is to ensure that someone who creates a work receives royalties. This is compensation for work of a somewhat unusual nature compared to employer-employee type of work. That's the purpose.
Instead of seeing it as a constraint, we could instead see it as a way for a sovereign Canada to have this valuable collective wealth to share. I don't think we can make this point by pitting users against creators. By that I mean that adding value to creative work is also an economic asset for our country.
That's how I would answer you if I had to, and I think I just did.
Assistant General Manager, Copibec
If I may, I would add something further. Human data is considered the black gold of today's digital economy. There have been a lot of attempts to create models that generate their own training data, but they haven't really come to fruition. The fact that the value of human-created content is recognized means that content creators must also be compensated at fair value.
Liberal
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Ms. Desrochers, you are back from the MONDIACULT 2025 conference held last week. As you said earlier, it's a major UNESCO conference that brings together a number of global cultural players, including about 100 ministers of culture.
Did you sense the same urgency for action on artificial intelligence from the countries at the conference?
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Yes, absolutely. It was an impressive consensus. Obviously, there are maybe a handful of dissenting countries that are perhaps less enthusiastic. However, in the overwhelming majority of the discussions I was able to hear about generative AI, there was a recognition of the urgency to act, as well as the need to support intellectual property and adopt measures that promote transparency. Above all, people emphasized the human nature of the creative act and the importance of arts and culture for social cohesion, for building our identities and for protecting minority voices around the world. Protecting the diversity of cultural expressions means protecting every person in Canada. At UNESCO, we often say that no one should be left behind. It was therefore an extremely inspiring consensus.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
What you just said is very interesting. I took part in the MONDIACULT edition that took place in Mexico City a few years ago. We spoke to representatives of a number of countries at various conferences. Representatives of small African countries, in particular, told us that they could not stand up on their own to multinationals whose sales were higher than their GDP.
Do you think there's a country that's going to step up and take the lead? We often hear about Europe, which is moving a little faster than anyone else. Do you think that Canada can finally act as a leader in this area and take a stand to regulate artificial intelligence by bringing in other countries, including more vulnerable ones?
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
I hope that Canada will continue to be a leader.
Another inspiring country at the moment is Brazil, which is strongly committed to being a leader. Earlier, I mentioned the additional protocol to the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Brazil's Minister of Culture is herself an artist, and she spoke at UNESCO, where there were three major interventions on the issue of the protocol: hers, one by Minister Steven Guilbeault, and one by Quebec's Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe. So, I hope there will be real political will.
Yes, we need to take action internationally and consult with each other, but we can't wait for that to happen. We are capable of taking action right now in Canada. At the moment, artificial intelligence falls under the purview of various ministers, but I am pleased with what I heard Minister Mélanie Joly say on the radio this week about the importance of taking action on generative artificial intelligence. We also saw that Mr. Solomon cares about our issues. We will be able to meet with him this week, along with the cultural community. We hope that there will be synergy between the parties, stakeholders and departments to take concrete action quickly in Canada.
Liberal