Good evening.
My name's Emmanuelle Bruno and I also work at Les Éditions CEC, an educational publishing company. I handle the college sector and publications for our clientele outside Quebec.
An innovative society that wants to stand out culturally, that places value on the creation of original content and wants to assume its place in a knowledge economy cannot allow itself to have a copyright law that does not properly protect the authors and the content. It's sad to see that the current act does not create a healthy environment conducive to investment and creation. The act hurts all actors in the publishing industry. Over the short term, it's the authors, publishers and distributors who've suffered the most. Over the long term — it's important to remember and note — it'll be Canadian users who will ask later: why isn't there more Canadian content? francophone and anglophone cultures in Canada are threatened.
At a time when literacy is an issue, a Canadian challenge, the government's concern must be to ensure that all systems in place work together so that we're heading in the same direction. The act creates an unwarranted imbalance and makes Canada a country that favours an unfair legislative framework, the application of which remains unclear and arbitrary on a principle as important as fair use and that ignores the very principles of copyright. It would certainly have been better to stand out differently. It's time to return to a fair balance for everyone.
In Quebec, they are lucky to have Copibec, which provides a framework for the management of reproductions. The same questions should be asked for the rest of Canada.