Evidence of meeting #112 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was publishers.
3 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
The main barrier is that a lot of the information that has come to the NCTR has been in the form of school records and pictures. I'm going to focus on pictures, because that is what people are more interested in. We don't own the copyright to that information, so it's—
3 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
The creator. It could be the priest who took the picture.
3 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
In order to have access—for example, if a survivor says, “I want a picture of my dad”—they'd have to go back to that person for permission. That's a real barrier.
3 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Okay.
My last question is to Ms. Rollins.
Can you compare for us your practices before fair dealings and after fair dealings? We heard about schools and institutions photocopying the works of creators. Can you talk to us about whether or not that practice changed after fair dealing? In other words, has the practice of teachers in schools remained the same?
3:05 p.m.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Winnipeg School Division
Yes. I was interested to see Ms. Greenberg's book beside me, because it's one that I know our educators have bought. There's some level of school-based decision-making whereby our educators go out and purchase books, such as Indigenous Writes, that are excellent. It isn't for them to photocopy the whole thing; it's for them to then tell other educators, “I've read this really great resource, and you should buy it.”
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Is there a policy in place? I know we've talked to a lot of the post-secondary institutions, and they've put together a policy of how to comply with—
3:05 p.m.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Winnipeg School Division
If you're asking whether our policies changed before, during, and after fair dealing, the answer is no. We still have the same practices. What has changed is that we've had to let go our librarians and library technicians because of chronic underfunding of our education system. Some of those things have changed, let alone the ability to pay for new textbooks. Some of those things have changed in terms of the length of time that we keep textbooks around.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Then there aren't any new policies for your teachers and educators on how to comply with the Copyright Act. Would you say that there are or there aren't any policies?
3:05 p.m.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Winnipeg School Division
Yes, I would say we have policies. We have several policies in terms of how to comply with the Copyright Act at the schools. One of the things we've done has been to centralize copying at the division level, not only to save costs but also so that we have some controls over it. Our schools cannot afford their photocopiers, let alone to make copies anymore, so we have centralized our print services.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
We're going to move back to Mr. Lloyd. You have five minutes.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Ms. Andrew, you brought up a very interesting point about the archival footage. I don't think anyone on this committee wants to deny survivors and their family members—or researchers for that matter—the right to do research and use archival footage, but are priests, as you said, or content creators, challenging your ability to share this archival material, or is this just a theoretical barrier that could happen?
3:05 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
It's not theoretical. It is a real barrier. We do have those records now. We have a mandate to share them, not only upon request but proactively under privacy legislation specific to the NCTR. However, often we cannot do that, so it is a real barrier.
3:05 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
We don't own it and we have a hard time finding the creator of it. I would imagine we could build an exemption if a person who is an author or a copyright owner of a specific piece in the archive has an issue with it, but the problem is that for the most part we cannot find the person who created it. If we have a picture—
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Has any author or content creator—or a priest, as you mentioned earlier, or anyone—ever come to you and said, “Don't share this information; I'm claiming the copyright on this”? Has that ever happened?
3:05 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
I can't speak to that, and I shouldn't speak on behalf of the director of the NCTR. I do know that when we receive information, the person who the information is about has asked for it to remain restricted, and we do have material that is restricted. We also make material restricted that we think is sensitive or inappropriate, even if no one has had it.
Sorry, I can't speak from the creator point of view, but NCTR will be submitting an independent brief. I would say that for a lot of it, we don't know who the author is.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Okay. It's like an orphan work. I think we heard that term.
3:05 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
Yes, it is, very much so.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
3:05 p.m.
University Librarian, University of Manitoba
I just want to add an important piece to that.
My understanding, from talking to our indigenous community and the NCTR people, is that part of this relates to having the indigenous people have to go back to the perpetrators of what they feel are the crimes and re-empowering them by giving them that power to say no. The act of asking is painful because it is giving power back, and they find that inappropriate.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
These people don't seem to exist, or we don't seem to know who they are, so is that empowering these people?
3:05 p.m.
University Librarian, University of Manitoba
They would start by going back to the churches.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
I see. Okay. Thank you.
This line of questioning is for Ms. Robertson. You're the only one I haven't really gone after today.
Your resume is quite impressive and very interesting, because you have a lot of cross-sections of experiences. You're not only an author but someone who has taught at universities and schools, and you have also worked in libraries, as a writer-in-residence. Have you been able to see the interaction in copyright in all those institutions that you have worked in, in the university and in the library?