Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 6th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Ms. Royer, you have five minutes. Thank you.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Merci, Madam Chair, esteemed colleagues and panel.

I'm not much of a musician—to my colleague opposite—but I do identify as a visual artist. For the better part of my 11 years on the city council in Port Moody, which is known as “city of the arts”, I chaired the civic arts and culture committee, among many other committees. I worked very closely with artists over that time.

As a side fact, I also had an art gallery for several years, before COVID, and curated approximately 40 exhibitions during that time, featuring the work of emerging and professional west coast artists.

Ms. Desrochers, you mentioned returning from a conference with over 100 cultural ministers, and you touched on the pillars of authorization, compensation and transparency. Can you drill down a little deeper? I know that artists in my community care about these pillars.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

As I said, authorization falls under the Copyright Act. With regard to remuneration, the goal is to allow a licensing market to develop in Canada, and to do that, we need the final pillar, which is transparency. This could come from a bill that specifically addresses artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, creators were included very late in the discussions on Bill C‑27. We are very pleased to be heard today and now hope that the next time a bill on generative artificial intelligence is drafted, we will be included in the discussions from the outset.

At the MONDIACULT 2025 conference, some very encouraging commitments were made. More than 100 ministers of culture made the following commitment: “Supporting decent work for artists, creators, and cultural workers, including fair remuneration and adequate social protection, building on relevant international labour standards, upholding their economic and social rights, reinforcing the protection of intellectual property, supporting transition to the formal economy, if applicable, and addressing systemic gender-based and other inequalities”.

This is a commitment that Canada has also made. We simply need to turn these commitments into action.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Amazing, thank you very much.

I know that Canada's not alone in facing this incredible challenge. How can we work better with like-minded countries to implement and promote these ethical, transparent AI practices?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

I think there is definitely an avenue to explore. As I said, our work is based on the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

A group of 18 experts at UNESCO recently recommended the adoption of an additional protocol to the convention to improve its implementation in the digital environment and thus recognize the challenges posed by the digital environment in terms of discoverability and generative artificial intelligence. At present, there are approximately 159 UNESCO member countries that have the opportunity to take action and adopt this protocol.

We hope that Canada will continue to be the leader it has always been in promoting this convention and that it will therefore support this protocol, which will be discussed again at UNESCO in February. We hope that countries will decide to move forward with its adoption. Canada can play a role.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

Of course, large companies have the resources to navigate some of these shifts, but many independent artists do not. What practical steps could help ensure that all creators, not just the biggest players, benefit from AI responsibly and fairly?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

This is another major finding of the MONDIACULT 2025 conference. We have to make sure, as I already mentioned, that the cultural sector is involved in the decision-making. For example, the work we do at the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is to bring organizations together. We also represent the visual arts: CARFAC, the Canadian Artists' Representation, is a member of the coalition, as is RAAV, the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec. We get all these organizations in Canada and Quebec, as well as minority francophones, to discuss things together. We invite lawyers and share expertise to try to include as many players as possible in the deliberations. Later, all you have to do is consult with us when the time comes to develop public policies.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Champoux now has the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Anctil, in two and a half minutes, I can't run your answers through the Copilot chatbot to get a summary. It goes quickly, and if you could keep your answers short, I'd appreciate it.

This week, my attention was drawn to news about the Claude artificial intelligence tool, which actually detected that it was being tested, that it was being challenged. It asked, “Are you testing me?” or something like that. I don't know if you've heard of that.

Earlier, when I was talking to you about superintelligence, I may have gone a bit far in my example, but it's clear that the evolution of artificial intelligence sometimes pushes us into some troubling areas. Could what we saw this week with the artificial intelligence tool mean that, one day, AI will refuse to be regulated, detect that parameters and limits have been imposed on it and decide on its own to circumvent the regulations? Could such a scenario occur?

[Dave Anctil]

Certainly. In fact, there are already artificial intelligence systems that are finding solutions for circumventing regulatory barriers, such as online paywalls.

In closing, I would say that it is good news that Anthropic is making these safety risks public. The company is highly admired for its safe and ethical approach to artificial intelligence. It makes public the risks that are discovered during testing and development. It's important to understand them, precisely to avoid rolling out dangerous systems.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I want to come back to the cultural sector and the impact of artificial intelligence on it. In your opinion, have we reached a point of no return for some jobs related to artistic creation? For example, are there sectors where people say that AI has gone too far and that some trades are finished? Can you name a few?

[Dave Anctil]

Yes. I see two trades that will be permanently transformed. First of all, there is the illustrator/graphic designer who uses digital tools, as opposed to painters who use paint brushes, paint and so on. Even I, with AI-assisted Adobe, can now create works that would make me seem talented. However, I assure you that I have no talent. Of course, there's also French dubbing of foreign productions, something that's very important in Quebec. As you know, we dub a lot of foreign productions, particularly American ones. However, I get the feeling that it's unfortunately the end of an era for this translation work, and that it will become a cottage industry.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

That breaks my heart. I think it is another sign of the urgent need to protect these specific sectors back home in Quebec.

Thank you, Mr. Anctil.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

Next I have Mr. Waugh.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Artificial intelligence represents a major growth opportunity for this country. I think that, if you look at the last 10 years in our country, our productivity has gone down, and our prosperity and even our economic well-being are being questioned in every province. I've looked at AI. Even the newspapers, every day in this country, are talking about AI. If we get left behind, we will be a third world country, if we're not already.

I'm going to maybe talk to The Hub, here, and Mr. Griffiths. It's just moving quickly. I know that, when you move quickly, there will be some mistakes but, at the same time, if you don't move quickly, you'll get left behind. I think that's what's happening here.

I hope legislatures do not block progressive AI, because we need this in this country. There's a danger here that people in Parliament or elsewhere are going to block AI. Then we will get left behind.

I want to talk to you because you started up a few years ago. You've had two million people go through your independent publisher. I just want to know how you did it and if AI had any effect on you.

[Rudyard Griffiths]

I'm glad we're getting to this line of questioning. There are significant productivity gains, obviously, that a variety of types of businesses are experiencing through the adoption of AI. I think the news industry—largely because so many of the LLMs were trained on the output of that industry—is in many ways well positioned to use the types of outputs that the LLMs produce, as I explained earlier, to enhance various aspects of news gathering, synthesis and dissemination.

You're right; we have a profound productivity problem in Canada. AI surely is a piece of that solution. What we need to try to figure out, and this will by no means be easy, is how to ensure fair competition. We are in favour of competition at The Hub. We like the idea that, in fact, it would be great in the news industry if people actually competed on the basis of the content they produced and the audiences they were able to bring to that content, as opposed to, as we now largely compete in Canada in the news industry, on the basis of how many full-time employees you have and how many subsidies you can claim as a result of those full-time employees.

That's an apt analogy to understand the opportunity of the applications of some of these AI technologies in our own industry of news and publishing. There are all kinds of tools now that this technology gives me as a smaller publisher to compete with my larger peers. I'm able to do investigative journalism in a way I could never have done even six or 12 months ago on a scale that would only have been afforded a newsroom of the type and size that you would have seen at, let's say, The Globe and Mail.

Your line through this debate should be where competition is enabled and where competition is thwarted. There are smart ways to have a view on AI and to regulate AI that further competition overall.

I'll end by going back to what I said earlier: I don't think it's fair that I as a news publisher am forced to give away the content behind my paywall to, in this case, Google, which is responsible for serving 90% of all search volume across Canada, and if I install Cloudflare software that prevents Google's AI bots from crawling the subscriber-only content behind my paywall, I will be removed from all searches across all Google platforms. That is not competitive; that is anti-competitive. That is the abuse of a monopolistic position in a marketplace by a company that is absolutely dominant in the search category.

I will end on that and state that you're right to focus on competition and you're right to focus on productivity.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Under the Online News Act— Bill C-18—Google, for essentially $100 million, has everybody under their wrap now, as you just said. Google controls the map on every news outlet other than yours in this country because they paid $100 million and now has all of the stories come through them, and they'll dictate who goes number one and who goes number 10. Is that right?

[Rudyard Griffiths]

Yes. As I've said before, under the Online News Act, a condition of receipt of funds from the Journalism Collective is that you, as a news recipient of those funds, have to give all of your content over to Google. You could not install bots on your website as a group funded under the Online News Act to prevent Google from crawling your subscription-protected content or any other content you have, because then you would be in violation of your funding terms with the online collective.

There is a delicious problem that needs to be figured out here by all of you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Al Soud, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Earlier on, this committee found consensus on the importance of undertaking studies on the impact of AI on Canadian culture and heritage. I say “studies” because I think—and I suspect some of my colleagues here agree—every committee should be undertaking a similar study on AI. Thank you for agreeing to be part of ours.

I will start with this first question, and I hope it speaks to the importance of human-centric design. AVIA has repeatedly spoken to this, but I'm open to thoughts from all, of course, including Professor Anctil.

You've described the need to put living beings at the centre of AI development. What does that look like in practical regulatory terms?

[Dave Anctil]

In terms of public and legislative policy, I think we should target areas where humans are not in control, meaning where there are vulnerabilities that have changed as a result of these systems. In particular, we need public policies and legislation aimed at protecting professions that, in the past, were not protected because no one felt the need for it. The arts and culture field is one where human beings can be the focus of legislators' work. Of course, as Mr. Griffiths mentioned earlier, the Internet is absolutely dominated by American digital giants, which have absolutely no consideration for vulnerable individuals and industries, and even less for the small cultural industries of Quebec and Canada. In my opinion, making human beings the focus of public policy and legislation means protecting the most vulnerable.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you.

When it comes to protecting the most vulnerable, we often talk about the risks of artificial intelligence, including job losses and biases that can lead to disinformation. However, we don't talk often enough about what a healthy AI ecosystem is. What are the indicators of an environment that is ethically and socially beneficial?

[Dave Anctil]

The ability to access AI must be fairly distributed. Currently, there are already major inequities because Canada is not coming up with artificial intelligence solutions that can compete with American products. I'm optimistic that Cohere will be able to make a difference, particularly with the investments that have been announced.

In addition, there is unequal access to higher-performance AI. For example, subscriptions to ChatGPT Pro and ChatGPT Plus are unaffordable for most people. As a result, they use free services. The same will be true for businesses. Some services that provide access to higher capacities will cost thousands of dollars more per month. This will give absurdly disproportionate competitive advantages to companies that have the capital to form strategic partnerships with digital giants.

We need a healthy ecosystem that avoids monopolies and oligopolies and provides checks and balances for our industries and workers here so that they can compete and innovate. I agree with Mr. Griffiths that this is important. It should also be seen as a very unequal balance of power for the moment. That's why digital sovereignty is strongly linked to cultural sovereignty for all non-U.S. and non-Chinese countries.