Industry Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Paul Jones]

I'll speak to the compensation. For some of the creators, these would be university professors and researchers. They earn a salary every year, and producing this stuff would be considered part of their work.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

It's included in their salary? When they put something on creative commons, they don't receive anything?

[Paul Jones]

There would be a multiplicity of different versions, but the core idea is that as part of their salary, university professors do this kind of writing and would volunteer to devote some of their time to these projects.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Is there government funding that's going into this? That's not paying any of the creators; is that just basically for the set-up and providing of the program?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

It is going to pay for some of the creation of course material.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Would you say, then, to answer the question, that it is a cost-effective way of providing resources?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

Yes. I suppose it depends on whose perspective we're looking at, right? Perhaps I'm going to comment on that today, but it is important that the committee review some of the recent developments in this case—the creation of open education resources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Longfield. You have three minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Chair, a fast three minutes.

I'm going to open up with Mr. Gilbertson. It was good to hear you mentioning Cengage, because that is one of the game-changers we're facing.

The cost of books going into tuition is another model. As we look at possibly supporting tuition, we could also be supporting texts at the same time.

Two other pieces for me are the French-language open access journals, the Érudit journals, and looking at the model of digital learning products tied to assessments. That came up in conversations in Guelph as well.

There's policy needed around all of that. Could you comment on where the gaps are that we could be diving into in future discussions?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

I think at the provincial level, we don't necessarily have specific pricing floors or limits, but I do think that's something—you know, indexing to inflation—that will have to be explored at some point.

I probably can't speak to your first question on French-language open access journals. I'm not a content expert in that field of study.

I'll maybe pass it over to Paul.

[Paul Jones]

I don't have an answer for that either, but I can commit to finding out, because that's something we will be able to put our fingers on.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

When we look at larger publishing houses out of the States supplying textbooks into Canada, I think it's important that we still get access to Canadian content, in both languages, as well as information that Canadian students need.

With the measure around protecting student copyright over works, students who are studying and contributing to creation of content, we're providing more money for students to be engaged in research. Whether there is some type of opportunity there for students to get relief on textbooks.... I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but the students are part of the equation. On research, they are part of the equation on having to access information.

Maybe this goes back to the comment by Mr. Baylis around creators not getting paid for content. Really, a lot of them aren't motivated to be paid for content; they want to be published.

[Paul Jones]

What your point hits on is that these are very disruptive times, and new methodologies, new approaches, are being tried all the time. What we want to see coming out of this review is that the environment, that ecosystem, is protected. When it's open access, open education resources, fair dealing, the knowledge networks, the site licences, the new approaches, what's the way to go?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Terrific, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to move to Mr. Jeneroux. You have three minutes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you all for being here today.

I have just one question for you. You've answered a lot of them.

This is similar to the question that I asked to Universities Canada in terms of the open access policy that stipulates that reports from grant-funded research must be made freely available to the public within 12 months after publishing.

I imagine it's mostly you, Mr. Jones, but you're welcome to weigh in on it as well, Mr. Gilbertson.

What is your assessment of that policy?

[Paul Jones]

Our organization supports open access and we support those policies, but we talked about the disruption and the dislocation that it's caused. Moving to an open access system was something new for our members. It was greeted with interest and some skepticism, and, as it's developed, people are moving to it more and more.

It's not without its problems. One is that the publishing systems are sometimes created by submission fees. If you want to get an article published, it may cost you $500 or $1000. We're looking for ways to bring that out of the grant money that professors get, and other sources, so that new scholars or people in areas where there's not a lot of grant support are still able to publish.

It's working well. We endorse and support it, but there are still some kinks to be worked out.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Do you think that should be expanded once again to all publicly funded research dollars?

[Paul Jones]

I think we would support the idea of making as widely available as possible that research knowledge for which the public has paid for the creation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

For the final three minutes of the day, Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I want to keep going down the road that Mr. Jeneroux is going down. You brought up crown copyright earlier. I find it a fascinating topic that a lot of people have never heard of.

I would go one step further and ask, should publicly funded works be placed in the public domain?

[Paul Jones]

Yes, that would be the ultimate goal. That would be the direction that we would want to move towards.

I know there are some areas where there are issues of confidentiality that may restrict that immediate flow. There are also areas where there is revenue derived from the commercial sale of some material. Maybe things have to be worked out before that is placed immediately into the public domain or crown copyright is removed on those things. Overall, as a matter of principle, we would look towards moving away from crown copyright. I know that in the United States there's no equivalent of that.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

With what would you replace crown copyright?

[Paul Jones]

Nothing.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Anything published by the government or belonging to the government would become public domain. Is that how you'd see it?