The 2012 Copyright Modernization Act included quite a few amendments. It was a massive bill. Specifically to “fair dealing”, education was added to fair dealing so that uses can be made of works for educational purposes as long as they are fair.
The intent of the change was never to have education institutions stop paying for the copying they were doing. In fact, many representatives of the education community came before the legislative committee and said that they would not stop paying, that they would continue paying and they would continue buying books.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Immediately, within weeks of the act coming into force, educational institutions stopped paying for the copying of the books and essentially decided to do the copying for free under the rubric of fair dealing.
The idea of fairness—what is fair and what is not fair—is where the rubber hits the road, and it gets super complicated. We then end up in court for years and years.
The surest way to solve this problem is to provide more parameters around fair dealing and to do what the U.K., Ireland and New Zealand have done, which also have fair dealing for educational purposes. What they've done is that they've limited the ability to rely on fair dealing by educational institutions when a work is available under licence, either through a collective or through the rights holders.
Students can continue relying on fair dealing for the use of reasonable portions of works, but when a work is being copied in a massive and systematic way by an educational institution, that would be the subject of a licence, when a licence is available. It ensures that the market is able to function, while also ensuring that students and educators have access to works in a reasonable and cost-efficient way.