Evidence of meeting #102 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
President, Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
It is the moral right....
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
David Lametti Liberal LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
With all due respect to you, I will say that most experts in the country agree with me. In Canada, moral rights are added only for integrity and authorship. There is no destination right. The Supreme Court clearly indicated as much in its Théberge ruling. When the work is sold, the economic rights are already acquired by the author, and it's done.
You are telling us that a destination right should be added to the legislation, but that has already been rejected. The idea is very innovative, but it is inapplicable in this case.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
I'm sorry. We're out of time. Perhaps we can come back to that.
We're going to move to Mr. Lloyd.
You have five minutes.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Thank you for coming out today. It's been very interesting to listen to the very informed points of view.
My first question will be directed to Ms. Haigh.
For your stakeholders, what has been the trend line in spending on copyrighted licensing and materials since 2012? Has it been going up or down, or has it been steady? What have you been observing?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
In terms of the purchase of licensed material?
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Yes, what has been your budget for those things?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
For the CARL, the total annual university spending is $370 million. Our figure for our 29 academic libraries is $338 million in 2016-17. This is a CARL statistic; it's reliable. This compares to 2011-12 when it was $280.5 million. It's been a steady increase.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
There has been an increase, and we're hearing from the publisher and the creator side that they're seeing less benefit because of these policies.
To what do you attribute the increase in spending? Is it that you're using more products or that it's more expensive to use these products? What is the reason that prices have gone up?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
Well, prices go up. I think the licence costs have gone up over that time.
If there's a change that's been seen, from the collectives' perspective, it has to do more with the changing marketplace and the fact there is other open access content. There are other types of things happening that are much bigger than just the regular print-based price-setting kind of relationship that was there in the past. It's all changing.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Thank you.
I'll pose the same question to Monsieur Dubois.
From your perspective, what would you say about the comments made previously? How is this affecting you? They say they're spending more, but your stakeholders don't seem to be seeing the benefit of this. Where's the loss happening?
4:40 p.m.
President, Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
That is an obvious paradox. With us being paid much less—and we gave you very concrete figures earlier—and with increased university spending on Canadian content, which we are talking about here, where is the money going?
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
So from your perspective, you are unaware of where that money is going.
4:40 p.m.
President, Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
Well, it's not in our pockets.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Okay.
My question then would be, and this is open to the floor, what is the impact of piracy? How significant is the impact of piracy on the price and the costs and losses you have suffered?
4:40 p.m.
President, Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
That is a good question, but it is extremely difficult to answer right now because some websites operate without following with the rules. Publishers are trying to get them shut down, but they pop up elsewhere.
It is difficult to measure their impact, but writers tell us about them. They see their work being copied, pirated by users who are difficult to catch, especially since those platforms are accessible from any country. It is not easy. That is why piracy should be considered very seriously in policies, which should find ways to fight it. The damage should be measured.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
There were some comments made earlier by other witnesses that we're living in a much more content-heavy world. There's a lot more content production.
Would you say that the increase in competition among content producers could be one reason your stakeholders might be realizing lower prices for their products?
4:40 p.m.
General Manager, Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
You raise a good point.
It could in fact be assumed that, individually, revenue and income are being shared among more creators. That is possible. The fact remains that, in the issues we have been discussing since earlier, we are talking about the overall envelope. What we just told you is that there is an overall envelope related to royalties in terms of education, and that envelope has gotten smaller. So it is not just a matter of distribution. As for the book industry, it is indeed possible that having more creators means less revenue for each of them—which I am fully prepared to accept—but in terms of collective management, the overall envelope has been reduced since 2012.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you very much.
I think this is an excellent start to our study.
At our last session, at meeting 101, we heard some very interesting testimony, which is being covered off here today. I want to thank you for creating some sort of juxtaposition to it. It will help us to think.
Michael, you talked about some of the new emerging technologies that people are using. You referenced YouTube and things of that nature.
One of the things I find interesting, which was never around when I was at school nor when I taught at college—it was probably just emerging then—is the other technologies out there, in particular the 3D printing, augmented virtual reality, big data, and artificial intelligence. These are all very big things right now.
Do we need to amend the act to better support innovation and technologies of the fourth industrial revolution?
I'll start with you, Michael.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
From a student perspective, we would stress that this is the kind of thing you need to make sure is flexible and adjustable and that individuals not be caught in a significant amount of red tape in what they're going to be doing, and giving some ability, especially to students, who are going to be some of the leading innovators.... They're going to be trying out new things in these environments. Making sure they are able to access content to be able to re-imagine that content is at the core of that philosophical question about what innovation is. Again, you want your political science majors to be hanging out with your welders, because it is a weird thing and they might come up with a really cool idea. This is the kind of thing you want to be able to promote, and anything that restricts that pool of information will make it more difficult for those kinds of things to occur.
I can't tell you what the next innovative new thing is going to be. If I could, I'd probably be sitting somewhere else, but we do know that it will be a result of neat ideas coming together. Anything that restricts that is something we would be concerned about.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
That's very interesting testimony. Does anybody else what to chip in there?
Carol?
4:45 p.m.
Past Vice-Chair, Chief Librarian, Ryerson University, Canadian Research Knowledge Network
Sure. One of the comments I would make in regards to CRKN is that in our licences, we have been doing more work to allow data and text mining of the resources, which is very critical for AI. I think that would be an area where additional efforts.... We can see that impacting AI development very positively.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Mr. Chair, I'm splitting some of my time with Lloyd Longfield.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you for sharing your time.
I had one question that I didn't get out last time.
For the libraries, concerning the investment in the French language online streaming open access to journals, the Érudit system, is this something we need to pay more attention to? Is there enough funding to get access to French language content? This question is for anybody at the table.