Good morning, Mr. Chair, honourable committee members and fellow witnesses.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that we have the privilege today of gathering on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe people.
My name is Adam Brown. I am the chair of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, or CASA. I am also the vice-president external of the University of Alberta Students' Union, and a fourth-year student completing a business degree majoring in business economics and law.
CASA is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that represents roughly 350,000 students at colleges, universities and polytechnics across the country. Through a formal partnership with the Union étudiante du Québec, we are a trusted national student voice. We advocate for a post-secondary system that is accessible, affordable, innovative and of the highest quality.
Today I will be speaking to two important aspects of this bill.
The first relates to the Copyright Act and its impact on the quality of education here in Canada. The second relates to education as a missing component of the government's poverty reduction strategy.
These are two key elements that will significantly impact the quality and accessibility of student post-secondary experiences.
Bill C-86, part 4, amends part of the Copyright Act relating to the Copyright Board by improving the timelines and clarity of its proceedings and decision-making process. Students are pleased to see this as CASA highlighted it as an issue in its Copyright Act review submission to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology earlier this year.
In fact, students are directly impacted by the decisions of the Copyright Board, specifically when it comes to fees associated with copyrighted materials. Post-secondary institutions will either pass the costs of copyrighted works onto students through increasing ancillary fees, or they will pay out of their operating budgets, which will affect the quality of the education being given.
Despite the fact that the Copyright Board's decisions directly impact the accessibility and affordability of education, students are often left in the dark about the fees that are levied on them.
Tuition is only one piece of post-secondary cost that students are expected to cover, and students will continue to struggle with unpredictable education costs if these high ancillary fees, such as those coming from copyright costs or the high costs of textbooks, remain.
While CASA is pleased to see reforms to the Copyright Board, the question is still up in the air as to whether the existing statutory protection of education as a component of fair dealing will remain following the Copyright Act review.
Fair dealing for the purposes of education specifically helps Canada offer an accessible and high-quality post-secondary education system by not subjecting information and knowledge to unreasonable restrictions.
The way it accomplishes this is twofold. First, fair dealing for education purposes ensures that students can access a variety of quality learning materials with varying perspectives throughout their studies.
For example, I've taken a few classes where professors use a variety of text, audio and visual materials from different sources that do enhance the quality from diverse perspectives.
Second, fair dealing for educational purposes keeps in mind the financial realities of students. As you're likely aware, students already face significant costs to their education. The average undergraduate student with loans in Canada graduates with approximately $27,000 in student debt. Without fair dealing, students would lose because they would face overly burdensome processes and fees to access integral education materials. Faculty would lose as they're not able to have the same freedom to provide their students with affordable and diverse learning materials. Industries would lose because the incoming talent would lack exposure to a diversity of ideas throughout their learning. Finally, Canadian post-secondary institutions would lose to their foreign competitors who are making larger strides with respect to providing their students with affordable and accessible education materials.
Content creators are important. As a matter of fact, many of us students will go on to become those content creators. However, unnecessarily restricting students' access to learning materials is not a good way to protect those materials. CASA welcomes Copyright Board reforms but calls upon all members of Parliament to do what they can to protect education as a component of fair dealing in the Copyright Act.
To move to my second point, we're pleased to see the inclusion of the poverty reduction act in Bill C-86. CASA believes that post-secondary education is an important tool for reducing poverty in Canada.
Earlier this year, we also submitted recommendations to the government's poverty reduction consultation and in this submission, students suggested ways to increase the usage of the Canada learning bond to help families in need save for their children's education. The government currently supports low-income families by providing Canada learning bonds that contribute up to $2,000 to a child's registered education savings plan. While the bond provides much-needed support to aspiring students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, sadly, only 31% of eligible families access the benefit.
In Ontario, RESP registrations are now linked with online birth registration to ease the process of accessing this Canada learning bond. This is a step in the right direction to making the bond more accessible to families.
CASA strongly encourages the Government of Canada to begin working with the provinces to increase the uptake of the Canada learning bond as well as the number of young Canadians able to access post-secondary education in the future.
Thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee to discuss the concerns of post-secondary students regarding copyright and Canada's poverty reduction strategy, which are addressed in Bill C-86.
Thank you.