Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for your invitation to present today.
As you said, my name is Charlotte Kiddell, and I am the deputy chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. The federation is Canada's largest and oldest national student organization, representing over 650,000 university and college students, including the 90,000 graduate student members of our national graduate caucus. Those in this latter group are themselves educational content creators.
The federation has a mandate to advocate for a system of post-secondary education that is of high quality and is accessible to all of Canada's learners. This includes advocating for our members' ability to access learning materials for the purposes of research and education in a way that is affordable and fair.
Over the last several years, we’ve seen a shift initiated within the academic community to prioritize learning opportunities that allow for multiple points of access to information. Tired of predatory pricing from large corporate content owners, academics have increasingly opted towards models of providing content directly to the education community. These models include the use of open access journals and open educational resources. In fact, today nearly half of all research publications in Canada are available online for free.
There's another essential facilitator of access to information—the current fair dealing provisions within the Copyright Act. Fair dealing, which has been affirmed by the Supreme Court as a central tenet of copyright law since 2004, allows for the limited use of copyright-protected works, without payment or permission, for the purposes of research and education. Such provisions allow educators to share brief video clips, news articles, or excerpts of a relevant text. Fair dealing has not resulted in the replacement of traditional learning materials. Rather, it allows educators to supplement these materials for a richer, more dynamic learning experience.
The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly affirmed the role of copyright law in serving the public good. The ability of students to fairly access an array of research and educational materials is essential to not only the quality of post-secondary education they receive but also their ability to contribute to innovation and development in Canada.
This government demonstrated its commitment to scientific development and innovation with substantial investment in fundamental sciences in budget 2018. We would ask that the government uphold its commitment to research and development by protecting fair dealing.
In recent months, students have heard myths, perpetuated by private publishing stakeholders, that students’ advocacy for fair dealing is rooted in an unwillingness to adequately compensate content creators for their work. I wish to address these concerns in case they are shared by members of the committee today.
First, let me affirm that students and their families have paid and continue to pay significant sums for learning materials. According to Statistics Canada, average household spending on textbooks in 2015 was $656 for university texts and $437 for college texts. Indeed, a report on the book publishing industry in 2014 finds educational titles to be one of the top two commercial categories in domestic book sales.
Second, I will acknowledge that students do struggle to afford textbooks. A 2015 British Columbia study found that 54% of students reported not purchasing at least one required textbook because of cost; 27% took fewer courses to lessen textbook costs; and 26% chose not to register for a course because of an expensive textbook. However, these results are hardly due to a desire to keep profits from content creators. When both textbook prices and tuition fees increase each year at rates that far outstrip inflation, students and their families are forced to make difficult decisions on how they afford post-secondary education.
Today the average undergraduate student accumulates $28,000 in public student debt for a four-year degree. A student relying on loans may find that a $200 textbook eats up most of their weekly loan disbursement and thus is put in the impossible position of choosing between course books and groceries.
To conclude, I would like to say that both the Supreme Court decisions and Parliament’s passage of the Copyright Modernization Act in 2012 affirmed the wisdom and justice of our current copyright regime, including fair dealing. Canadian copyright law has positioned Canada as a leader in the fair and dynamic exchange of knowledge and ideas. We ask this committee to protect our copyrights in the interest of students and educators, but also of the broader Canadian public. Students have benefited from a good system over the last several years, and are eager to continue working with this government to maintain and strengthen it.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.