Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to address the copyright review committee. My name is Alison Balcom. I am the vice-president internal of the University of New Brunswick student union. Unfortunately, the flood in Fredericton prevented the president from joining me today, but I am here on behalf of students, the users of copyrighted materials as an essential component of our education.
We stand with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations in the assertion that students require government support for innovative learning. We believe that fair dealing fosters access to a diversity of sources and perspectives, and that any potential new fees must be both justified and transparent.
As a student in a multidisciplinary program, I know first-hand how important it is to have a variety of perspectives available and accessible for my courses. For example, community problem-solving and world-views both rely on accessible and available diverse materials. They are unsuitable for a textbook and they promote critical thinking and dialogue, fundamentally relying upon accessible online readings from a variety of perspectives. We are all familiar with the financial burden that accompanies a post-secondary education. The recently proposed tuition hike at our university, for example, yielded responses from students indicating that exiting high school, finances are the key factor that determines whether students can or cannot access a university education.
Thank you very much for your time.