Having worked with our counterparts in the U.S. government, the GPO, I know that the U.S. government does not have crown copyright on any of the government material it produces. The rights are universal. Anybody can use and reuse U.S. government information without a request.
In Canada, we have a crown copyright. The crown copyright is specifically dealt with in section 12 of the Copyright Act. I think--this is information shared with us by some officials in the U.S.--that Canada should retain copyright in terms of crown copyright. By doing so, we are identifying information that is being produced by the government. We are recognizing that the documents are official. A lot of work has gone into producing those documents and that information, so having a copyright notice is a blessing and an official sort of recognition.
I think the debate is more about permission or about how we administer the copyright. That is, it is about how far we go between giving very limited permission--being very restrictive--and being very open about the permissions we allow. There are cases in which the government does not own copyright on some of the material we publish, and that information is normally stated. A lot of the permissions will say, “unless otherwise stated”. That could be the case of photography in a work for which the rights belong to the photographer and never belong to the crown. There are other instances of that.
We are working towards opening up government information, and I think we've made great strides in that direction, but we have to be careful that we don't attempt to cede rights we do not have. It will require a lot more reflection on our part on what we hold in terms of information and whether we hold the full rights.