Thank you very much.
I am here on behalf of the Coalition for Culture and Media, which is a group of organizations involved in the cultural and media environment, representing hundreds of thousands of creators, publishers and producers in Canada.
Those organizations have identified, among other things, urgent amendments to be made to the Copyright Act, as the Canadian cultural community is experiencing the negative repercussions of the most recent changes to the act. Those changes introduced new exceptions that are harmful to Canada's economy, as they affect the normal use of works. You have received the brief that resulted from our reflections.
Our coalition is proposing three areas of focus to provide an economic and legal environment that would guarantee rights holders the conditions they need to innovate and give us with a rich and diversified national culture.
The first area of focus is to recognize the primacy of copyright.
After all, it is shocking to realize that, in the 21st century, we have to reiterate that the primary purpose of the act is to protect creators' intellectual property and allow them to be compensated for the use of their creative work.
The principle put forward is very simple: partial or total use of another person's intellectual property is prohibited, unless the rights holder gives their consent, either for a fee or free of charge. Every time this right is violated, the very structure that protects creators and all rights holders is weakened. We cannot ignore the growing number of players who are giving access to cultural products, for free or not, and are using them to attract, like Internet access providers, without sharing with the creators of those contents the value added to their company.
In a balanced copyright system, there must be true sharing of revenues and a true recognition of the contribution of cultural products and creators' work. Since 2012, we have rather seen a progressive decline in the participation of creators in the economic life of their works. So Parliament should use the five-year review of the application of the act to become a true standard-bearer for the defence and promotion of Canadian rights holders.
The second area of focus concerns the fact that a plethora of exceptions is in conflict with the above-mentioned principle.
In 2012, the legislator introduced a slew of exceptions to the act, under the pretext of modernization. However, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, to which Canada is party, provide that any limitation or exception to the rights of creators must pass what is referred to as the three-party test. So the exceptions must be limited to special cases, they mustn't affect the normal use of the work and cannot cause unjustified prejudice to creators' legitimate interests. A number of exceptions introduced in the 2012 legislation simply do not pass that test.
The parliamentary revision exercise you are engaged in must become an opportunity to improve the economic situation of creators by reducing the number of non-remunerated or poorly remunerated exceptions contained in the act.
The last area of focus is the urgency of re-establishing the balance and equality in our digital world.
Copyright is not an obstacle to technological innovation and effectiveness. Our areas of focus have nothing to do with the so-called fight to preserve an analog economy by resisting the digital economy. Economy as a whole is being digitized and we are perfectly aware of that. We are often in front-row seats to recognize it and be witness to it.
The act should apply completely neutrally, without favouring or disadvantaging a specific form of technology. The introduction of the principle of users' rights in the act weakens the protection of the economic and moral rights of rights holders. Not only are we being told to now interpret the exceptions in the act broadly and liberally, but even authors' reproduction and communication rights—basic rights—are contested by those same users, who have been challenging the legitimacy of those rights since 2012 and are wondering whether they should not be further reduced.
Those attacks on copyright must stop, and Parliament must reverse the interpretation principles harmful to creators that the courts could set out.
At the end of its review, your committee must propose to Parliament amendments to the act, taking into account the three main areas of focus presented to you today.
It is necessary to reduce and tighten up the number of exceptions in the act such as the exception of fair dealing; regulate economic actions intended for Canadians, even if they come from online services abroad; adapt legislative provisions to the technological realities of the market, for example, by including digital audio recorders in the private copying regime; and finally, force Internet access providers to play a bigger role in the remuneration of rights holders.
Those are just the most urgent amendments to be made to the act. I invite you to listen carefully to the individual coalition members who will appear before you over the next few months. They will propose more specific and concrete solutions to implement in each of their sectors.
Thank you for listening. I will gladly answer your questions.