First of all, that was well quoted. Thank you.
Not to repeat what my colleague Glenn said, the great irony of what happened in 2012 was that Parliament intended, I believe, to save students money, give greater access to professors, and smooth the process. Student costs have gone up since 2012, considerably.
I've done a lot of research on this. Especially in the student press there is considerable indication that course packs, a sample of which I have here today, have in some cases doubled in price. Why did that happen, when there's no licensing and everything is being claimed as a fair dealing? It is because somebody has to assess that fair dealing. There has to be a centralized body within the university to do all of that assessment. It slows down the process.
There were times, certainly early on—and I'm sure it has continued—when professors were not able to get their course packs done in time for the start of class because of that bottleneck of fair dealing assessment. The price went up because the administrative fees were larger than the $26 per student that was being charged through the access copyright licence.
While I'm on the subject of the $26 per student, that's how it's calculated. It's not necessarily how it's meant to be paid. The bill goes to the educational institution. They choose to pass that charge on to the student. That is their decision. I've done a lot of research on university and college budgets across the country, and they can afford a licence. For many of them, it's a fraction of 1% of their budget.
What we're talking about here is an efficiency. Licensing is an efficiency. It's cheaper and it works better than what we have now. To me, that's the solution: go back to licensing.