Thank you, Mr. Dubois.
I would like to mention first that my father was the head of the Ottawa Public Library for roughly 30 years. If he were here today, we would have a good discussion because we obviously do not share the libraries' position, and I will now explain why.
Writers provide a significant part of the raw material for the education system, raw material that Stephen Harper's Conservative government wanted to make available to users, free of charge, based on so-called “fair dealing” as defined by the Supreme Court in 2014. The absence of a clear requirement for educational institutions to pay authors for the use of their works has been unprecedented. Under section 29 of the act, it is legal to use a copyrighted work provided that it is used for one of the purposes mentioned in this section. I do not want to put you to sleep, so I will not list all the uses mentioned in this article, but there is no definition of the portion of a work that may be used without copyright violation.
As expected, this vague wording has led to litigation involving the relationship between creators and users. The number of court cases has multiplied in recent years, including the Université Laval case, which decided of its own accord and without approval from the courts or the act that fair dealing allowed them to reproduce a short excerpt of up to 10% of a work or an entire chapter. Its policy states that “every time one intends to use a short excerpt, it is important to take the greatest advantage of the possibilities on offer.”
These multiple, vague exceptions have reduced collective management revenues for writers and publishers by $30 million since 2012. Payments from secondary licences accounted for up to 20% of writers' income before the educational exception was introduced.
These exceptions are numerous and very prominent in the 2012 act. They have significantly reduced revenues for creators.
While the introduction of specific measures for the education sector seems commendable to us, and we certainly support education and access to works, that access must be clearly defined. The integrity of works is no longer guaranteed, artists' moral rights are violated, and piracy is encouraged in a sense, through section 29.21, for instance, which allows users to use or modify copyrighted content for non-commercial purposes. Further, the act's sanctions for violations are so weak that they are not a deterrent.
I will let Mr. Dubois finish up.