Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice-Chair, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon.
As you've heard, my name is Joy Muller. I'm associate director of Seneca College libraries here in Toronto, and manager of Seneca's copyright services. I'm here today representing the Colleges Ontario Heads of Libraries and Learning Resources.
Our college libraries' responsibilities include providing broad library collections, current technology and array of spaces, and library literacy instruction to support the various research and innovation endeavours within the academic programs and subjects offered at the 24 Ontario colleges.
Our colleges respect copyright and the importance of compliance with the Copyright Act, while we recognize that copyright law needs to balance the interests and the rights of both copyright and moral rights owners and users of copyright material.
Our libraries have created opportunities for consistent messaging across the Ontario college community on copyright compliance through a series of locally collaboratively created training modules, which are self-directed learning resources to help educate our faculty and staff. They're entitled “Copyright Literacy in Ontario Colleges”, and these modules won the 2014 Ontario College and University Library Association's special achievement award. Over 90% of English-language Ontario colleges utilize them as either mandatory or optional throughout their institutions.
Consistently since 2012, many of the Ontario college libraries have identified copyright responsibilities as part of at least one employee's job scope. These staff advise students, faculty, and employees on the use of copyrighted materials. In keeping with these best practice efforts by the Ontario college community to support copyright and the exceptions within the Copyright Act, our first recommendation of three is to allow sections 29, 29.1, and 29.2 of the Copyright Act, which are directed to fair dealing, to remain unchanged. That would allow college libraries to continue to offer support and enhancements to teaching and learning that have grown under this legislation.
A further recommendation submitted by Ontario college libraries is to urge upon the government that section 41 of the act be adjusted to permit circumvention of technological protection measures for all non-infringing purposes, in order to ensure that we are able to exercise our statutory rights under the law. The law should be clear that it is only illegal to circumvent digital locks for the purpose of copyright infringement. This change to section 41 would enhance our ability to serve our users.
While prior to 2012, our library collections were largely print based, it's important to note that according to Statistics Canada, Canadian book sales actually increased between 2014 to 2016, as noted by Denise Amyot who presented to this committee.
College students have been asking for more flexible 24-7 access to learning resources, and the ability to access these resources from multiple devices. Ontario colleges have increased our digital footprint as a result, by purchasing licences to more and more databases, and increasing our user licences within those databases.
These digital resources provide around-the-clock access that the students are seeking, as well as supporting the students who are studying remotely through distance education opportunities. As a specific example, my library system at Seneca College has moved, since 2012, to a collection which is 90% digital, approximately 15% of which is comprised of Canadian content. We have in fact tripled our digital collection in those years.
College library collections have also increasingly focused on providing our users with access to open access journals, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed materials, and resources that are publicly available on the internet.
Since 2012, most Ontario college library collection budgets have increased, and last year collectively, the Ontario colleges' libraries collections budgets exceeded $8 million. Statistics Canada reports that since 2012, expenditures of print and electronic acquisitions for colleges and institutes have increased by 26%.
The Supreme Court of Canada has made it clear that fair dealing is a user's right and that it must be given a large and liberal interpretation. With the changes to the Copyright Act in 2012, we feel that Canada has achieved a balance. The act grants extensive economic and moral rights to creators, while granting limited exceptions to these rights for users, libraries, and cultural institutions.
In the digital environment that college education is increasingly adapting for both teaching and learning, our libraries are licensing much of the content that our faculty and students use. These contractual obligations often have clauses that restrict the use of materials and override the exceptions that the Copyright Act provides. The Copyright Act should prevent vendors from overriding and removing uses of materials by licence that the statutory rights in our act provide.
We would, therefore, like to request as our third and final recommendation that an amendment to the Copyright Act be considered that indicates clearly that no contract can take precedence over the exceptions within the act itself.
Thank you.